United States or Dominica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
To work the breakers, a man need have no more intelligence than the tow-mule that plods a beaten path; and such a man is the ideal laborer from the standpoint of the owners of the breakers. But such men are not indigenous to America; they must be imported, and that, too, from the most benighted lands of Europe. What an incubator of warped humanity the breaker has become!
The lawyer plods, quite care-worn; the physician is up at all hours, and travelling in all weather; and even the clergyman " she stopt a moment to consider what might do for the clergyman; "and even the clergyman, you know is obliged to go into infected rooms, and expose his health and looks to all the injury of a poisonous atmosphere.
The "confidence" swindlers are mostly Americans, so that, the pickpockets being mostly English, you may see some national character in crime, aside from the tendency of races. The Englishman is conservative, sticks to traditions, picks and plods in the same old way in which ages have picked and plodded before him. Exactly like the thief of ancient Athens, he
Husbandmen's lore is profound, practical, poetic, superstitious, but it is singularly stagnant. The cycle of natural changes goes its perpetual round and the ploughman's mind, caught in that narrow vortex, plods and plods after the seasons. Apart from an occasional flood, drought, or pestilence, nothing breaks his laborious torpor.
When backed by an intrepid spirit, like the grand heroic poets, Pegasus is the stately war-horse eager for the fray, and sniffing the battle from afar; or else, controlled by the nervous reins of genius like that of Shelley and Coleridge, he appears as the high-mettled racer, pure-blooded and finely-trained, who may win some great race, but is unfit for any ordinary work; or, again, when ridden by a Wordsworth, he plods along wearily, with lack-lustre eyes, dragging a heavy load, such as The Excursion, behind him!"
It is sad to think that I alone of mortal men should be here to see this glorious panorama. It seems such a waste of nature's bounteous store that night after night this wondrous spectacle should be solemnly displayed, with no better gallery than a stray shepherd, who, as he "homeward plods his weary way," cares little for the grand drama that is being performed entirely for his benefit.
Under those frowning heights, and the smell from our roaring thirty-two-pounders in the air, I heard him say: "The curfew tolls, the knell of parting day; The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me."
He paces up still noisy Piccadilly, and then up silent Bond Street; pauses to look at some strange fish on Groves's counter anything to while away the time; then he plods on toward the top of the street, and turns into Mr. Pillischer's shop, and upstairs to the microscopic club-room. There, at least, he can forget himself for an hour.
"There is something in that," said Miles; "but when two men work side by side with equal industry, and one finds a nugget worth thousands of dollars, while the other plods along at a few dollars a day, isn't there some luck there?" "It may be so," said the Scotchman, cautiously, "but such cases are exceptional."
He is, of course, well enough aware that many sturdy girls stand the strain, but he knows also that very many do not, and that the brain, sick with multiplied studies and unwholesome home life, plods on, doing poor work, until somebody wonders what is the matter with that girl; or she is left to scramble through, or break down with weak eyes, headaches, neuralgias, or what not.
Word Of The Day