like a daw when occasion served him. He had never read a book in his
life; his mind subsisted wholly upon the halfpenny newspapers. He had
no pleasures, unless one can count as such certain Bank Holiday
excursions to Hampstead Heath, which were performed under a heavy sense
of duty to his family. He had lived in London all his days, but knew
much less of it than the country excursionist. He had never visited
St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey; had never travelled so far as Kew or
Greenwich; had never been inside a picture gallery; and had never
attended a concert in his life. The pendulum of his innocuous
existence swung between the office and his home with a uniform
monotony. Yet not only was he contented with his life, but I believe
that he regarded it as entirely successful. He had counted it a great
piece of luck when he had entered the office as a youth of sixteen, and
the glow of his good fortune still lingered in his mind at forty. He
regarded his employers with a species of admiring awe not always
accorded to kings. The most violent social democrat could have made
nothing of Arrowsmith; there was not the least crevice in his heart in
which the seed of discontent could have found a lodgment. As for
making any question of whether he was getting the best or most out of
life, Arrowsmith was as incapable as a kitten.

The virtues of Arrowsmith, which were in their way quietly heroic,
impressed me a good deal; but his abject contentment with the
limitations of his lot appalled me. I felt a dread grow in me lest I
should become subdued to the element in which I worked as he was. I
asked myself whether a life so destitute of real interests and
pleasures was life at all? I made fugitive attempts to allure the
little man into some realms of wider interest, but with the most
discouraging results. I once insisted on taking him with me for a day
in Epping Forest. He came reluctantly, for he did not like leaving his