THROUGH THE MILL
Most people are ashamed of their skeletons, hiding them up in
their respective cupboards as though the very ownership were a
degradation—alluding to them, perhaps, occasionally in the domestic
circle, but ignoring them utterly before the world—a world that knows
all about them the while,—that has weighed their skulls, counted their
ribs, and can tell the very recesses in which they are kept. Now, in
my opinion, to take your skeleton out and air him on occasion, is very
good for both of you. It brings him to his proper dimensions, which are
apt to become gigantic if he is hidden too scrupulously in the dark,
and it affords opportunities for comparison with other specimens of
the same nature entertained by rival proprietors in the line. If I kept
mine, as some do, in close confinement, I should be in a continual
fidget about his safety; above all, I should dread his breaking out
at untoward seasons, when he was least expected, and least desired.
But “Bones and I” have no cause to be ashamed of each other. There is
no disgrace nor discomfort attached to either of us in our cheerful
companionship. He is good enough to express satisfaction with his
present lodging, and even affirms that he finds it airy and commodious,
as compared with his last; while it is a real pleasure to me, living
as I do so much alone, to have a quiet, intelligent companion, with
whom I can discuss the different phases of existence, speculative and
real,—the sower who never reaps—the fools who are full of bread, roses
for one, thorns for another; here over-ripe fruit, there grapes sour,
though by no means out of reach; successful bows drawn at a venture,
well-aimed shafts that never attain the mark, impossible hopes,
unavailing regrets—the baseless mirage of the Future, and the barren
reality of the Past.
It was colder last night. The wind was getting up in those fitful howls
which denote the commencement of a two-days’ gale; veering besides
from east by north to east northeast. So we made fast the shutters,
stirred the fire, and drew our chairs in for a comfortable chat.
Something in the sound of that waking blusterer out of doors recalled
to me, I know not why, the image of a good ship, many long years ago,
beating on the wide Atlantic against a head-wind, that seemed to baffle
her the more for every plunge she made. No steam had she to help her
struggle against the elements; tough hemp, patched canvas, and spars
as yet unsprung, were all her reliance; and these strained, flapped,
and creaked to some purpose while she battled foot by foot to lie her
course. Again I seemed to watch the dark wave race by our quarter,
with its leaping crest of foam, the trickling deck, the battened hold,
the diving bowsprit, the dripping spars, the soaking canvas, with
its row of reef-points like the notes on a music-score. And the grey,
sullen curtain of mist and rain, walking on the waters, nearer, nearer,
till it dashed its needle-pointed drops into my face. Again I looked
admiringly on the men at the wheel, with their pea-jackets, glazed
hats, sea-going mits, keen, wary glances, and minute wrinkles about
the eyes. Again I heard the pleasant voice of the bravest, cheeriest
skipper that ever stood five feet two, and weighed fifteen stone,
while he accosted me with his “Dirty weather, sir, and looks sulky to
windward still. Makes her drive piles, as we say, and speak Spanish
about the bows; but she behaves beautifully! Bless you, she likes it!
Yes, I expect we shall have it hotter and heavier too, after sundown. A
head-wind, no doubt. I’ve just been jotting off the reckoning; you’ll
find the chart below, in my cabin. We’ve made a longer leg than common
on the starboard tack. I’ve left a pencil-mark at the exact spot where
we went about. Steady, men” (this to the glazed hats). “Luff, and be
d——d to you! Can’t ye see it coming?”
So I went below and conned the captain’s chart thoughtfully enough,
comparing our great expenditure of energy with the small results
attained, and wondering how we were ever to make our port at last.
The scene thus conjured up awoke its corresponding fancies.
“Have you never reflected,” said I, “on the utter fallacy of that
French proverb which affirms, ‘Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coûte’?
Unless indeed it refers to immorality, the downward career of which
beats the rolling stone of Sisyphus in a canter. But on all other
journeys through life, it seems to me that not only the first steps,
but the first leagues, are intensely laborious and unsatisfactory.
Disappointment lies in wait at every milestone, and the traveller
feels tired already ere he has reached the crest of the first hill.
All crowns, I grant you, like those of the Isthmian Games, are mere
parsley at best; but in these days no competitor ever wins that
worthless head-dress till he is so bald that common decency demands
a covering. Where are the heaven-born statesmen now, to rule the
destinies of continents at twenty-six? the generals and admirals, who
became world-wide heroes within ten years of corporal punishment at
school? the poets full-fledged in immortality before their whiskers
were grown? Where, in short, will you point me out a single instance
of any individual attaining fame until his zest for it has passed
away—winning his pedestal till his poor legs are too tired to stand
straight thereon—making his fortune till he is too old to enjoy it; or,
indeed, getting anything he wants _when_ he wants it? Lazarus has no
dinner—Dives has no appetite—Struggler, who thinks he has both, is sure
to be kept waiting that extra half-hour, which sickens him, and finds
he can’t eat his soup when it comes!
“What up-hill work it is, that beginning of the pilgrimage. And how
confidently we start in the glorious ignorance of youth, heads erect,
backs straightened, footsteps springing like a deer, with an utter
disregard of warning, a sovereign contempt for advice. Like myself,
I doubt not you have scaled many a hill, even when you carried more
flesh than you do now. Don’t you remember, in the clear, pure mountain
air, how near the top looked from the valley down below? Don’t you
remember how, about noonday, still full of strength and spirit, though
having done a stalwart spell of work, you spied the ridge that you
were convinced must be your goal, and strained on, panting, heated,
labouring, yet exultant, because success was so nearly within your
grasp? A few more strides—hurrah! your chin is level with the ridge,
and lo! there is another precisely similar to be surmounted at about
the same angle and the same distance. Not yet discouraged, only a
little startled and annoyed; till another and another have been
gained, and so surprise becomes disappointment, vexation, misgiving,
discomfiture, and lastly, but to the strongest natures, despair! Even
with these, when the real summit has been at length attained, all
their long-looked-for enjoyment resolves itself into the negative
satisfaction of rest; and for one who thus arrives exhausted at his
destination, think how many a footsore, quivering, way-wearied wanderer
must lie out all night shelterless, on the barren, wind-swept hill.
“It seems that the process, termed at Newmarket ‘putting a race-horse
through the mill,’ is practised with the human subject till he has
learned the disheartening lesson that labour pushed to exhaustion
borders on pain—that heartbreaking efforts, while they lower the tone
of our whole system, are apt to destroy the very efficiency they are
intended to enhance. I have heard good judges affirm that even at
Newmarket they are apt to overtrain their horses. Do you not think that
we, too, should run the race of life on better terms were we not put so
pitilessly ‘through the mill’?”
Here my companion allowed himself a mild gesture of dissent, clasping
his bony fingers over his knotted knees, as if prepared to go into the
subject at length. “You are one of those people,” said he, “who seem
to think the world is intended for a place of uninterrupted rest and
enjoyment—a sort of ‘Fiddler’s Green,’ as sailors term their paradise,
where it is to be ‘beer and skittles’ every day and all day long. You
would have no ‘small end to the horn,’ as my friends over the water
say; and what sort of music do you think you could blow out of it? You
would have food without hunger, rest without labour, energy without
effort. You would be always going down-hill, instead of up. And think
where your journey would end at last! You object to the mill, you say,
and yet it is that same process of grinding which converts the grain
into flour fit for bread. Look at the untried man, the youth embarking
on his career, vain, ignorant, sanguine, over-confident, prejudiced.
How is he to learn his own powers, his capabilities of endurance, his
energy under difficulties, above all, his readiness of resource, save
by repeated disappointment and reverse? You have alluded to statesmen,
commanders, and poets, who, in seven-leagued boots, as it were,
reached the top of the hill at one stride. But Pitt’s was an abnormal
temperament—a grey head upon green shoulders—an old man’s heart beating
its regular pulsations within the slender compass of a young man’s
waistcoat. Nelson’s chivalrous and romantic disposition preserved
him from the overweening vanity and self-esteem that might have been
looked for as the result of such brilliant achievements at so early an
age. His mad, absorbing passion, too, may have scored many a furrow
in the hero’s heart, while his young brow remained smooth and fair as
marble. ‘On vieillit bientôt sur le champ de bataille!’ and the first
Napoleon’s aphorism holds good no surer on the field of honour than in
the lists of love. Shelley’s fate was scarcely an enviable one; and did
you like Byron any better after you had read his letters and learned
the demoralising effects, even on such genius as his, of temples
crowned by an immortal Fame, ere yet the beard had sprouted on his chin?
“Alexander of Macedon, indeed, conquered the world before he was
thirty, and—drank himself to death ere he had reached his prime!
“The fact that he does not care one straw about it, is the very
antidote to preserve a man from the subtle poison of success. He who
has been long climbing the ladder finds that when he looks over the
parapet all sense of elevation and consequent giddiness is gone.
Whatever others may think, to his own perceptions he is on a level with
the rest of his kind—can judge of them, and for them, from the same
point of view; and, more important still, experiences no misgivings
that he may topple down and break his neck. Ambition is a glorious
lure, no doubt, tempting the climber to noble efforts, skilful,
vigorous, and well-sustained. But when he has reached the fancied
resting-place so ardently desired, what does he find? A keener air,
a scantier foothold, a sentry-box instead of a feather-bed, a stern
necessity for further exertion, where he expected indulgence and
enjoyment and repose.
“Duty is a cold-eyed monitress, reserved, inflexible, severe; Ambition,
a high-born lady, haughty, capricious, unfeeling, like those dainty
dames of old patrician Rome,
‘Who in Corinthian mirrors their own proud smiles behold;
Who breathe of Capuan odours, and shine in Spanish gold;’
Pleasure, a laughing, lavish courtesan, gay, gaudy, thoughtless, slave
to the impression of the hour. This last you may buy at your will for
a handful of silver, or, at most, a talent of gold; and there are few,
alas! who have not learned how soon her false smile palls upon the
fancy, her painted cheek grows irksome to the eye. The second you must
woo, with many a stealthy footstep, many a cringing bow, offering
at her shrine truth, honour, self-respect, to find, if you are so
fortunate as not to be discarded like a pair of worn-out gloves, that
you have only gathered a nut without a kernel, after all. For the
first, you must serve as Jacob served, through long years of labour,
patience, and self-denial; but when you have won your Rachel at last,
she discloses for you all her glorious, unfading beauty, cleaving to
you, true and constant, through good and evil, the warmth and comfort
of your hearth, the light of your happy home.
“When the courtesan has been paid off and dismissed in early youth,
the haughty lady wooed through long years of manhood, and won, to be
despised, in middle life, this is the goddess you claim to be your
bride, and once wedded, you will never leave her till you die.
“The Isthmian crown was indeed woven from humble parsley, but do you
think it could have borne a higher value had every leaf consisted of
beaten gold? Which would you rather wear, the bronze Victoria Cross, or
the Star and Ribbon of the Garter? Depend upon it, that to the young
champion of the games, flushed, exulting, treading upon air, that
vegetable coronal represented everything most desirable and precious in
earth or heaven. No; it is the old experienced athlete, the winner of
a thousand prizes, who has learned the intrinsic value of the article,
and who knows that its worth consists not in itself, nor even in the
victory it represents, but in the strength of frame, the speed of foot
attained by training for its pursuit. From many a long summer’s day of
toil and abstinence, from panting lungs and aching muscles, from brows
covered with sweat, and feet with dust, he has wrested the endurance of
the camel, the strength of the ox, and the footfall of the deer. Does
he grudge his past labour? Not he, thankful that he has been ‘through
the mill.’
“I grant you the process is not entirely pleasant; I grant you that
effort is with many men a sensation of discomfort almost amounting to
pain; that self-denial is very difficult to most, disappointment simply
disgusting to all. When the body feels weary, the brain overtasked,
we are apt to think the meal is being bolted too fine, the grinding
becoming unnecessarily severe; above all, when that pitiless millstone
comes crushing down upon the heart, and pounds it to powder, we cry
aloud in our agony, and protest that no sorrow was ever so unbearable
as ours. What mole working underground is so blind as humanity to its
own good? Why, that same grinding to powder is the only means by which
the daintiest flour can be obtained. The finest nature, like the truest
steel, must be tempered in the hottest furnace; so much caloric would
be thrown away on an inferior metal. Capacity for suffering infers
also capacity for achievement; and who would grudge the pain about his
brows, when it reminded him he was wearing an imperial crown?
“Sooner or later the process must be undergone by all. With some it
goes on through a lifetime; others get the worst of it over in a few
years. One man may have done with it altogether before his strength of
mind or body has failed with declining age—
‘Dum nova canities—dum prima et recta senectus.’
“His neighbour may have one foot in the grave before the grain has
been thoroughly purged and sifted, and refined to its purest quality,
but through the mill he must pass. It is just as much a necessity of
humanity as hunger or thirst, or sorrow or decay. There is no escape.
However long protracted, it is inexorable, unavoidable, and effectual,
for
‘Though the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small.’”