whole story with gusto whenever it is put into a fresh form--and each
man thinks that he at least is not one of those for whom the poet's
lash is meant. Novel, essay, poem, play, and sermon--all recur with
steady persistence to one ancient topic; and yet men try their best to
bring themselves low, as they might if Job, Shakspere, Congreve, and
Tennyson had never written at all, and as though no warnings were
being actually enacted all round, as on a stage.

Sometimes I wonder whether the majority of men ever really try to
conceive what it is to be down until their fate is upon them. I can
hardly think it. It has been well said that all of us know we shall
die, but none of us believe it. The idea of the dark plunge is
unfamiliar to the healthy imagination; and the majority of our race go
on as if the great change were only a fable devised by foolish poets
to scare children. I believe that, if all men were vouchsafed a sudden
comprehension of the real meaning of death, sin would cease.
Furthermore, I am persuaded that if every man could see in a flash the
burning history of the one who is down, the whole of our reasonable
population would take thought for the morrow--drink-shops would be
closed, the dice-box would rattle no more, and the sight of a genuine
idler would be unknown. Not a few of us have seen tragedies enough in
the course of our pilgrimage, and have learned to regard the doomed
weaklings--the wreckage of civilisation, the folk who are down--with
mingled compassion and dismay. I have found in such cases that the
miserable mortals never knew to what they were coming; and the most
notable feature in their attitude was the wild and almost tearful
surprise with which they regarded the conduct of their friends. The
pictures of these forlorn wastrels people a certain corner of the
mind, and one can make the ragged brigade start out in lines of deadly
and lurid fire at a moment's warning, until there is a whole Inferno