onist. He had never visited
St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey; had never travelled so far as Kew or
Greenwich; had never been inside a picture gallery; and had never
attended a concert in his life. The pendulum of his innocuous
existence swung between the office and his home with a uniform
monotony. Yet not only was he contented with his life, but I believe
that he regarded it as entirely successful. He had counted it a great
piece of luck when he had entered the office as a youth of sixteen, and
the glow of his good fortune still lingered in his mind at forty. He
regarded his employers with a species of admiring awe not always
accorded to kings. The most violent social democrat could have made
nothing of Arrowsmith; there was not the least crevice in his heart in
which the seed of discontent could have found a lodgment. As for
making any question of whether he was getting the best or most out of
life, Arrowsmith was as incapable as a kitten.

The virtues of Arrowsmith, which were in their way quietly heroic,
impressed me a good deal; but his abject contentment with the
limitations of his lot appalled me. I felt a dread grow in me lest I
should become subdued to the element in which I worked as he was. I
asked myself whether a life so destitute of real interests and
pleasures was life at all? I made fugitive attempts to allure the
little man into some realms of wider interest, but with the most
discouraging results. I once insisted on taking him with me for a day
in Epping Forest. He came reluctantly, for he did not like leaving his
wife at home, and it seemed that no persuasion could induce her to
undertake so adventurous a jaunt. He was no walker, and half a dozen
miles along the Forest roads tired him out. By the afternoon even his
cheerfulness had vanished; he gazed with blank and gloomy eyes upon the
wide spaces of the woodland scenery. He did not regain his spirits
till we drew near Stratford on the homeward journey. At the first
sight of gas-lit streets he brightened up, and I am persuaded that the
rancid odours of the factories at Bow were sweeter in his nostrils than
all the Forest fragrances. I never asked him again to share a pleasure
for which I now perceived he had no faculty; but I often asked myself
how long it would take for a city life to extirpate in me the taste by
which Nature is appreciated, as it had in Arrowsmith.

I have taken Arrowsmith as an example of the narrowness of interest