le to arrest is for being drunk, or disorderly, or for refusing to
fight, and to these perils a young man is peculiarly susceptible and
is, to that extent, interested in the Force, and critical of their
behavior. The sight of a soldier annoyed him, for he saw a conqueror,
trampling vaingloriously through the capital of his country, and the
inability of his land to eject the braggart astonished and mortified
him. Landlords had no bowels of compassion. There was no kindliness of
heart among them, nor any wish to assist those whose whole existence
was engaged on their behalf. He saw them as lazy unproductive gluttons
who cried forever "Give, give," and who gave nothing in return but an
increased insolent tyranny. Many employers came into the same black
category. They were people who had disowned all duty to humanity, and
who saw in themselves the beginning and the end of all things. They
gratified their acquisitiveness not in order that they might become
benefactors of their kind (the only righteous freedom of which we
know) but merely to indulge a petty exercise of power and to attain
that approval which is granted to wealth and the giving of which is
the great foolishness of mankind. These people used their helpers and
threw them away, they exploited and bought and sold their fellow-men
while their arrogant self-assurance and the monstrous power which they
had gathered for their security shocked him like a thing unbelievable
in spite of its reality. That such things could be fretted him into
clamor. He wanted to point them out to all people. He saw his
neighbors' ears clogged, and he was prepared to die howling if only he
could pierce those encrusted auditories. That what was so simple to
him should not be understood by everybody! He could see plainly and
others could not, although their eyes looked straightly forward and
veritably rolled with intent and consciousness! Did their eyes and
ears and brains act differently to his, or was he a singular monster
cursed from his birth with madness? At times he was prepared to let
humanity and Ireland go to the devil their own way, he being well
assured that without him they were bound quickly for deep perdition.
Of Ireland he sometimes spoke with a fervor of passion which would be
outrageous if addressed to a woman. Surely he saw her as a woman,
queenly and distressed and very proud. He was physically anguished for
her, and the man who loved her was the very brother of his bones.