M'Kay's dreams therefore were not realised, and yet it would be a
mistake to say that they ended in nothing. It often happens that a
grand attempt, although it may fail--miserably fail--is fruitful in
the end and leaves a result, not the hoped for result it is true, but
one which would never have been attained without it. A youth strives
after the impossible, and he is apt to break his heart because he has
never even touched it, but nevertheless his whole life is the sweeter
for the striving; and the archer who aims at a mark a hundred yards
away will send his arrow further than he who sets his bow and his arm
for fifty yards. So it was with M'Kay. He did not convert Drury
Lane, but he saved two or three. One man whom we came to know was a
labourer in Somerset House, a kind of coal porter employed in
carrying coals into the offices there from the cellars below, and in
other menial duties. He had about fifteen or sixteen shillings a
week, and as the coals must necessarily be in the different rooms
before ten o'clock in the morning, he began work early, and was
obliged to live within an easy distance of the Strand. This man had
originally been a small tradesman in a country town. He was honest,
but he never could or never would push his trade in any way. He was
fond of all kinds of little mechanical contrivings, disliked his
shop, and ought to have been a carpenter or cabinet-maker--not as a
master but as a journeyman, for he had no ability whatever to control
men or direct large operations. He was married, and a sense of duty
to his wife--he fortunately had no children--induced him to stand or
sit behind his counter with regularity, but people would not come to
buy of him, because he never seemed to consider their buying as any
favour conferred on him; and thus he became gradually displaced by
his more energetic or more obsequious rivals. In the end he was
obliged to put up his shutters. Unhappily for him, he had never been
a very ardent attendant at any of the places of religious worship in