The more ignorant, the more
narrow, the more mean, the more unnatural, you can contrive to be, the
better will be your lot in this sad monastery of Mammon. When the door
hissed behind you, with that little patent pneumatic device, you ceased
to be a human being, and began to be--the human machine. All the
vitality you have stored within that pale body you are expected to
exhaust here,--you have sold it, don't you remember, for sixty or three
hundred pounds a year; you are not expected to have any left over for
pleasures. That will be robbery. Masters suffer much from peculation
indeed in this way; but a machine is in course of invention which shall
put an end to this, by the application of which to your heart the
task-master will know whether or not you have spent every available
heart-beat in his slavery during the day, or whether you are
endeavouring, you miserable thief, to steal home with a little remnant
of it for your children at night.
This was the theory of the office, as Henry once heard it expressed,
with a cynicism more brief and direct from the lips of one of his
task-masters; but it must be admitted that in certain respects his
experience was extreme.
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