第58章 SKETCHES(5)

When she goes home that night,how lonely will the room appear to her!Perhaps the neighbours may hear her sobbing to herself in the dark,with the fire burnt out for want of fuel,and the candle still unlit upon the table.

And it is for this that they live,these quasi-mothers -mothers in everything but the travail and the thanks.It is for this that they have remained virtuous in youth,living the dull life of a household servant.It is for this that they refused the old sweetheart,and have no fireside or offspring of their own.

I believe in a better state of things,that there will be no more nurses,and that every mother will nurse her own offspring;for what can be more hardening and demoralising than to call forth the tenderest feelings of a woman's heart and cherish them yourself as long as you need them,as long as your children require a nurse to love them,and then to blight and thwart and destroy them,whenever your own use for them is at an end.This may be Utopian;but it is always a little thing if one mother or two mothers can be brought to feel more tenderly to those who share their toil and have no part in their reward.

V -A CHARACTER

THE man has a red,bloated face,and his figure is short and squat.So far there is nothing in him to notice,but when you see his eyes,you can read in these hard and shallow orbs a depravity beyond measure depraved,a thirst after wickedness,the pure,disinterested love of Hell for its own sake.The other night,in the street,I was watching an omnibus passing with lit-up windows,when I heard some one coughing at my side as though he would cough his soul out;and turning round,I saw him stopping under a lamp,with a brown greatcoat buttoned round him and his whole face convulsed.It seemed as if he could not live long;and so the sight set my mind upon a train of thought,as I finished my cigar up and down the lighted streets.

He is old,but all these years have not yet quenched his thirst for evil,and his eyes still delight themselves in wickedness.He is dumb;but he will not let that hinder his foul trade,or perhaps I should say,his yet fouler amusement,and he has pressed a slate into the service of corruption.Look at him,and he will sign to you with his bloated head,and when you go to him in answer to the sign,thinking perhaps that the poor dumb man has lost his way,you will see what he writes upon his slate.He haunts the doors of schools,and shows such inions as these to the innocent children that come out.He hangs about picture-galleries,and makes the noblest pictures the text for some silent homily of vice.His industry is a lesson to ourselves.Is it not wonderful how he can triumph over his infirmities and do such an amount of harm without a tongue?

Wonderful industry -strange,fruitless,pleasureless toil?

Must not the very devil feel a soft emotion to see his disinterested and laborious service?Ah,but the devil knows better than this:he knows that this man is penetrated with the love of evil and that all his pleasure is shut up in wickedness:he recognises him,perhaps,as a fit type for mankind of his satanic self,and watches over his effigy as we might watch over a favourite likeness.As the business man comes to love the toil,which he only looked upon at first as a ladder towards other desires and less unnatural gratifications,so the dumb man has felt the charm of his trade and fallen captivated before the eyes of sin.It is a mistake when preachers tell us that vice is hideous and loathsome;for even vice has her Horsel and her devotees,who love her for her own sake.

(1)'This paper was written in collaboration with James Waiter Ferrier,and if reprinted this is to be stated,though his principal collaboration was to lie back in an easy-chair and laugh.'-[R.L.S.,Oct.25,1894.]

(2)See a short essay of De Quincey's.

(3)RELIGIO MEDICI,Part ii.

(4)DUCHESS OF MALFI.