Against its strong, unfathomable
stream, nothing made head. No living creature, no flower, no leaf,
no particle of animate or inanimate existence, ever strayed back
from the undiscovered ocean. The tide of the river set resistlessly
towards it; and the tide never stopped, any more than the earth
stops in its circling round the sun.
He lived in a busy place, and he worked very hard to live. He had
no hope of ever being rich enough to live a month without hard work,
but he was quite content, GOD knows, to labour with a cheerful will.
He was one of an immense family, all of whose sons and daughters
gained their daily bread by daily work, prolonged from their rising
up betimes until their lying down at night. Beyond this destiny he
had no prospect, and he sought none.
There was over-much drumming, trumpeting, and speech-making, in the
neighbourhood where he dwelt; but he had nothing to do with that.
Such clash and uproar came from the Bigwig family, at the
unaccountable proceedings of which race, he marvelled much. They
set up the strangest statues, in iron, marble, bronze, and brass,
before his door; and darkened his house with the legs and tails of
uncouth images of horses. He wondered what it all meant, smiled in
a rough good-humoured way he had, and kept at his hard work.
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