standards instead of measuring it by theirs? Business, for the man of
business genius, is more than an employment; it is his epic, his
romance, his adventurous crusade. He brings to it something of the
statesman's prescience, the diplomatist's sagacity, the great captain's
power of organising victory. His days are battles, his life a long
campaign; and if he does not win the spoil of kingdoms, he does fight
for commercial supremacy, which comes to much the same thing. No doubt
there is much truth in this putting of the case, though it really begs
the main question. But even if we grant that in the larger operations
of commerce a certain type of genius is required, we must remember that
the men of this order are few in number. Every lord of commerce is
attended by a vast retinue of slaves. Very few of these humble
servitors of commerce can ever hope to rise from the ranks into supreme
command. They must labour to create the wealth of the successful
merchant as a private soldier suffers wounds and hardships that fame
may crown his general. Do these men share the higher privileges of
life? Is not life with them the getting of a living rather than
living? Nay, more; is it not the getting of a living for some one else?

The merchant-prince fulfils himself, for his highest powers of
intelligence are daily taxed to the uttermost; but the case is very
different with that vast army of subordinates, whom we see marching
every morning in an infinite procession to the various warehouses and
offices of London. I have often wondered at their cheerfulness when I
have recollected the nature of their life. For they bring to their
daily tasks not the whole of themselves, but a mere segment of
themselves; some small industrious faculty which represents them, or
misrepresents them, at the tribunal of those who ask no better thing of
them. Few of them are doing the best that they can do, and they know
it. They are not doing it because the world does not ask them to do