I never was, and never shall be, capable of democratic fervour, is a characteristic of my mind which I long ago accepted as final.  I have known revolt against the privilege of wealth (can I not remember spots in London where I have stood, savage with misery, looking at the prosperous folk who passed?), but I could never feel myself at one with the native poor among whom I dwelt.  And for the simplest reason; I came to know them too well.  He who cultivates his enthusiasm amid graces and comforts may nourish an illusion with regard to the world below him all his life long, and I do not deny that he may be the better for it; for me, no illusion was possible.  I knew the poor, and I knew that their aims were not mine.  I knew that the kind of life (such a modest life!) which I should have accepted as little short of the ideal, would have been to them—­if they could have been made to understand it—­a weariness and a contempt.  To ally myself with them against the “upper world” would have been mere dishonesty, or sheer despair.  What they at heart desired, was to me barren; what I coveted, was to them for ever incomprehensible.

That my own aim indicated an ideal which is the best for all to pursue, I am far from maintaining.  It may be so, or not; I have long known the idleness of advocating reform on a basis of personal predilection.  Enough to set my own thoughts in order, without seeking to devise a new economy for the world.  But it is much to see clearly from one’s point of view, and therein the evil days I have treasured are of no little help to me.  If my knowledge be only subjective, why, it only concerns myself; I preach to no one.  Upon another man, of origin and education like to mine, a like experience of hardship might have a totally different effect; he might identify himself with the poor, burn to the end of his life with the noblest humanitarianism.  I should no further criticize him than to say that he saw with other eyes than mine.  A vision, perhaps, larger and more just.  But in one respect he resembles me.  If ever such a man arises, let him be questioned; it will be found that he once made a meal of blackberries—­and mused upon it.

XVI.

I stood to-day watching harvesters at work, and a foolish envy took hold upon me.  To be one of those brawny, brown-necked men, who can string their muscles from dawn to sundown, and go home without an ache to the sound slumber which will make them fresh again for to-morrow’s toil!  I am a man in the middle years, with limbs shaped as those of another, and subject to no prostrating malady, yet I doubt whether I could endure the lightest part of this field labour even for half an hour.  Is that indeed to be a man?  Could I feel surprised if one of these stalwart fellows turned upon me a look of good-natured contempt?  Yet he would never dream that I envied him; he would think it as probable, no doubt, that I should compare myself unfavourably with one of the farm horses.