At every step I had to contend for the honor and independence of my
islanders; so that early I came to understand the weight of Shakspeare's
sentiment--

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown!"

O reader, do not laugh! I lived forever under the terror of two separate
wars in two separate worlds: one against the factory boys, in a real
world of flesh and blood, of stones and brickbats, of flight and
pursuit, that were any thing but figurative; the other in a world
purely aerial, where all the combats and the sufferings were absolute
moonshine. And yet the simple truth is, that, for anxiety and distress
of mind, the reality (which almost every morning's light brought round)
was as nothing in comparison of that dream kingdom which rose like a
vapor from my own brain, and which apparently by _fiat_ of my will
could be forever dissolved. Ah! but no; I had contracted obligations
to Gombroon; I had submitted my conscience to a yoke; and in secret
truth my will had no such autocratic power. Long contemplation of a
shadow, earnest study for the welfare of that shadow, sympathy with
the wounded sensibilities of that shadow under accumulated wrongs,
these bitter experiences, nursed by brooding thought, had gradually
frozen that shadow into a rigor of reality far denser than the material
realities of brass or granite. Who builds the most durable dwellings?
asks the laborer in "Hamlet;" and the answer is, The gravedigger. He
builds for corruption; and yet _his_ tenements are incorruptible: "the
houses which _he_ makes last to doomsday." [13] Who is it that seeks for
concealment? Let him hide himself [14] in the unsearchable chambers of
light,--of light which at noonday, more effectually than any gloom,
conceals the very brightest stars,--rather than in labyrinths of darkness