ely
we should find it both touching and inspiriting, that in a field from
which success is banished, our race should not cease to labour.

If the first view of this creature, stalking in his rotatory isle, be a
thing to shake the courage of the stoutest, on this nearer sight he
startles us with an admiring wonder. It matters not where we look, under
what climate we observe him, in what stage of society, in what depth of
ignorance, burthened with what erroneous morality; by camp-fires in
Assiniboia, the snow powdering his shoulders, the wind plucking his
blanket, as he sits, passing the ceremonial calumet and uttering his
grave opinions like a Roman senator; in ships at sea, a man inured to
hardship and vile pleasures, his brightest hope a fiddle in a tavern and
a bedizened trull who sells herself to rob him, and he, for all that,
simple, innocent, cheerful, kindly like a child, constant to toil, brave
to drown, for others; in the slums of cities, moving among indifferent
millions to mechanical employments, without hope of change in the
future, with scarce a pleasure in the present, and yet true to his
virtues, honest up to his lights, kind to his neighbours, tempted
perhaps in vain by the bright gin-palace, perhaps long-suffering with
the drunken wife that ruins him; in India (a woman this time) kneeling
with broken cries and streaming tears, as she drowns her child in the
sacred river; in the brothel, the discard of society, living mainly on
strong drink, fed with affronts, a fool, a thief, the comrade of
thieves, and even here keeping the point of honour and the touch of
pity, often repaying the world's scorn with service, often standing firm
upon a scruple, and at a certain cost, rejecting riches:--everywhere
some virtue cherished or affected, everywhere some decency of thought
and carriage, everywhere the ensign of man's ineffectual goodness:--ah!
if I could show you this! if I could show you these men and women, all
the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error,
under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without
thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still
clinging, in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of honour, the
poor jewel of their souls! They may seek to escape, and yet they cannot;
it is not alone their privilege and glory, but their doom; they are
condemned to some nobility; all their lives long, the desire of good is
at their heels