means commonplace, and he had sorrows which were as exquisite as
those of his betters. He did not much resent his poverty. To that I
think he would have submitted, and in fact he did submit to it
cheerfully. What rankled in him was the brutal disregard of him at
the office. He was a servant of servants. The messengers, who
themselves were exposed to all the petty tyrannies of the clerks, and
dared not reply, were Taylor's masters, and sought a compensation for
their own serfdom by making his ten times worse. The head messenger,
who had been a butler, swore at him, and if Taylor had "answered" he
would have been reported. He had never been a person of much
importance, but at least he had been independent, and it was a new
experience for him to feel that he was a thing fit for nothing but to
be cuffed and cursed. Upon this point he used to get eloquent--as
eloquent as he could be, for he had small power of expression, and he
would describe to me the despair which came over him down in those
dark vaults at the prospect of life continuing after this fashion,
and with not the minutest gleam of light even at the very end.
Nobody ever cared to know the most ordinary facts about him. Nobody
inquired whether he was married or single; nobody troubled himself
when he was ill. If he was away, his pay was stopped; and when he
returned to work nobody asked if he was better. Who can wonder that
at first, when he was an utter stranger in a strange land, he was
overcome by the situation, and that the world was to him a dungeon
worse than that of Chillon? Who can wonder that he was becoming
reckless? A little more of such a life would have transformed him
into a brute. He had not the ability to become revolutionary, or it
would have made him a conspirator. Suffering of any kind is hard to
bear, but the suffering which especially damages character is that
which is caused by the neglect or oppression of man. At any rate it
was so in Taylor's case. I believe that he would have been patient