t is the Hero only
that can gain victory, that can do more than _seem_ to succeed. These
things will deserve meditating; for they apply to all battle and
soldiership, all struggle and effort whatsoever in this Fight of Life.
It is a poor Gospel, Cash-Gospel or whatever name it have, that does
not, with clear tone, uncontradictable, carrying conviction to all
hearts, forever keep men in mind of these things.

Unhappily, my indomitable friend Plugson of Undershot has, in a great
degree, forgotten them;--as, alas, all the world has; as, alas, our
very Dukes and Soul-Overseers have, whose special trade it was to
remember them! Hence these tears.--Plugson, who has indomitably spun
Cotton merely to gain thousands of pounds, I have to call as yet a
Bucanier and Chactaw; till there come something better, still more
indomitable from him. His hundred Thousand-pound Notes, if there be
nothing other, are to me but as the hundred Scalps in a Chactaw
wigwam. The blind Plugson: he was a Captain of Industry, born member
of the Ultimate genuine Aristocracy of this Universe, could he have
known it! These thousand men that span and toiled round him, they were
a regiment whom he had enlisted, man by man; to make war on a very
genuine enemy: Bareness of back, and disobedient Cotton-fibre, which
will not, unless forced to it, consent to cover bare backs. Here is a
most genuine enemy; over whom all creatures will wish him victory. He
enlisted his thousand men; said to them, "Come, brothers, let us have
a dash at Cotton!" They follow with cheerful shout; they gain such a
victory over Cotton as the Earth has to admire and clap hands at: but,
alas, it is yet only of the Bucanier or Chactaw sort,--as good as no
victory! Foolish Plugson of St. Dolly Undershot: does he hope to
become illustrious by hanging up the scalps in his wigwam, the hundred
thousands at his banker's, and saying, Behold my scalps? Why, Plugson,
even thy own host is all in mutiny: Cotton is conquered; but the 'bare
backs'--are worse covered than ever! Indomitable Plugson, thou must
cease to be a Chactaw; thou and others; thou thyself, if no other!

Did William the Norman Bastard, or any of his Taillefers,
_Ironcutters_, manage so? Ironcutter, at the end of the campaign, did
not turn-off his thousand fighters, but said to them: "Noble fighters,
this is the land we have gained; be I Lord in it,--what we will call
_Law-ward_, maintainer and _keeper_ of Heaven's _Laws_: be I
_Law