Qualities
hitherto but little known, and generally despised--not, as we shall
see, without some reason--were developed in them. Self-consciousness,
aestheticism, a dislike for waste, a hatred of injustice; these--or some
one of these, when coupled with that desire natural to men throughout
all ages to accomplish something--constituted the motive forces which
enabled them to work their bellows. In practical affairs those who were
under the necessity of labouring were driven, under the then machinery
of social life, to the humaner and less exacting kinds of butchery, such
as the Arts, Education, the practice of Religions and Medicine, and
the paid representation of their fellow-creatures. Those not so driven
occupied themselves in observing and complaining of the existing state
of thing. Each year saw more of their silver cockleshells putting out
from port, and the cheeks of those who blew the sails more violently
distended. Looking back on that pretty voyage, we see the reason why
those ships were doomed never to move, but, seated on the sea-green
bosom of that sea, to heave up and down, heading across each other's
bows in the self-same place for ever. That reason, in few words, was
this: 'The man who blew should have been in the sea, not on the ship.'"
The droning ceased. Hilary saw that Mr.
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