deed unaccomplished.



THE CORONATION OF MR. THOMAS SHAP


It was the occupation of Mr. Thomas Shap to persuade customers that
the goods were genuine and of an excellent quality, and that as
regards the price their unspoken will was consulted. And in order to
carry on this occupation he went by train very early every morning
some few miles nearer to the City from the suburb in which he slept.
This was the use to which he put his life.

From the moment when he first perceived (not as one reads a thing in a
book, but as truths are revealed to one's instinct) the very
beastliness of his occupation, and of the house that he slept in, its
shape, make and pretensions, and even the clothes that he wore; from
that moment he withdrew his dreams from it, his fancies, his
ambitions, everything in fact except that ponderable Mr. Shap that
dressed in a frock-coat, bought tickets and handled money and could in
turn be handled by the statistician. The priest's share in Mr. Shap,
the share of the poet, never caught the early train to the City at
all.

He used to take little flights of fancy at first, dwelt all day in his
dreamy way on fields and rivers lying in the sunlight where it strikes
the world more brilliantly further South. And then he began to imagine
butterflies there; after that, silken people and the temples they
built to their gods.