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Perhaps you think that Doctor of Divinity who weighs two hundred pounds more or less, and is clad in glossy broad-cloth, and lifts his shining forehead above a white cravat, as Mont Blanc pierces a belt of cloud, and talks articulated thunder, and veils his wisdom behind gold-mounted spectacles, and moves among men with ineffable dignity, is above the need of, and the appetite for, praise.
And, O Bharata, at length at a beautiful place called Pramanakoti on the banks of the Ganga, he built a palace decorated with hangings of broad-cloth and other rich stuffs. And he built this palace for sporting in the water there, and filled it with all kinds of entertaining things and choice viands. Gay flags waved on the top of this mansion.
There was Tom with his ill-fastened shoelaces trailing, his smart bandsman's coat buttoned awry over a pair of trousers which were neither his Sunday best, nor the white-piped blue ones which formed part of his uniform as musician these were a shabby, shiny, pair of worn broad-cloth usually kept for wet Sundays and Saturday expeditions to town; a suit, in fact, which had long been considered by no means presentable.
When cloth is to be washed after it has been worn, it is taken down to the brook, and left to soak, being kept fast to the bottom, as at first, by a stone; it is then gently wrung or squeezed; and sometimes several pieces of it are laid one upon another, and beaten together with the coarsest side of the mallet, and they are then equal in thickness to broad-cloth, and much more soft and agreeable to the touch, after they have been a little while in use, though when they come immediately from the mallet, they feel as if they had been starched.
This walking horror, this mass of loathsome rags endued with motion, this living disease, was the sometime prosperous stockbroker, the man whom it had been impossible to think of except furnished with linen of spotless whiteness, and the glossy broad-cloth, and well-made boots, and keyless chronometer, and silk umbrella of commercial success.
Dost thou remember the Nurse's dream in that exquisite work, which she recounts in such agony to Hubble Bubble? When she would have taken up a piece of broad-cloth in her vision, lo! it exploded like a great iron cannon; when she put out her hand to save a pirn, it perked up in her face in the form of a pistol. My own vision in Edinburgh has been something similar.
You do not see her broad-cloth, or her soft fabrics, or her steam-engines, but you see the broad shoulder of her sons and the soft cheeks of her daughters in vast states whose names you are utterly ignorant of; and as for the exportation of her products to foreign lands, just come with me on board this ocean steamship "Samaria", and look at them.
I knew not what ideas they could have had about me, and cared as little: but, judging from the looks of the men the broad-cloth gentlemen in particular I was impressed with a suspicion that I was neither admired nor welcome.
To Ireland are exported fine broad-cloth, rich silks, ribbons, gold and silver lace, manufactured iron and cutlery wares, pewter, great quantities of hops, coals, dyeing wares, tobacco, sugar, East India goods, raw silk, hollands, and almost everything they use, but linens, coarse woollens, and eatables.
However this may be, it is certain that there are souls born to reign over the hearts of their fellows, kings walking about the world in broad-cloth and fustian, shooting-jackets, ulsters, and what not swaying hearts at will, though it may be all unconscious of their power; and only the existence of some such psychological fact as this will account for the incident which I am about to relate.
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