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Here were a cabinet portrait to which Hawthorne perhaps had done justice; and yet not Hawthorne either, for he was mildly minded, and it lay not in him to create for us that throb of the miser's pulse, his fretful energy of gusto, his vast arms of ambition clutching in he knows not what: insatiable, insane, a god with a muck-rake.
So this is the way, he thought, the youth of England is being brought up. Masters tell us to fix all our energies on achieving school successes, and think of calf-bound prizes and tasselled caps all day long. No wonder that, if they bind us down to trivial things, we become like the Man with the Muck-Rake, and drift on with low aims, with nothing to help us to live differently from cattle.
Well, every day I see and hear and appreciate these things better, and I thought that you were to blame." "Am I very much to blame?" she inquired, archly. "Yes, very much," was his laughing answer. "It seems to me that a few months since I was like the old man with the muck-rake in 'Pilgrim's Progress, seeking to gather only money, facts, and knowledge things of use.
Chu Pa-chieh, the Pig Fairy, with his muck-rake, stands for the coarser passions, which are constantly at war with the conscience in their endeavours to cast off all restraint. Sha Ho-shang, Priest Sha, is a good representation of Mr Faithful in The Pilgrim's Progress. In the Hsi yu chi he stands for the human character, which is naturally weak and which needs constant encouragement.
The Miss Gilpins told their brother that the universal subject of conversation during the voyage was gold, gold-digging, gold-washing, gold-scraping. "Like the old man in the `Pilgrim's Progress' with his muck-rake, always scraping with downcast looks, never gazing upwards," remarked James.
It is in the realm of thought here explored, that Natural Science, whose figure we are wont to look down upon, crouching to her task, like him of the muck-rake, as he painfully gathers together his sticks and straws, rises erect, and lifts her forehead into the upper atmosphere of philosophy, where the clouds are indeed thickest, but the stars are nearest.
This also has been recognized by that common instinct of people which goes to the making of proverbs; for "Hen's time ain't worth much" is a common saying among farmers' wives. How she dawdles about all day, with her eyes not an inch from the ground, forever scratching and feeding in dirtiest places, a sort of animated muck-rake, with a mouth and an alimentary canal!
This done, and after these things had been somewhat digested by Christiana and her company, the Interpreter takes them apart again, and has them first into a room where was a man that could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand.
Now, whereas, it was also showed thee, that the man could look no way but downwards, it is to let thee know that earthly things, when they are with power upon men's minds, quite carry their hearts away from God. CHRIST. Then said Christiana, O deliver me from this muck-rake! INTER. That prayer, Said the Interpreter, has lain by till it is almost rusty.
Needing rest on Sunday, he denies himself respite and scourges his jaded body and brain into new activities. Every thought is a thread to be woven into a golden net. He lifts his life to strike as miners lift their picks. He swings his body as harvesters their scythes. He will make himself an augur for boring, a chisel for drilling, a muck-rake for scratching, if only he may get gain.
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