On the official road,
if he has interest and ability--the first is to be preferred--he might
have become anything, and with ordinary fortune would certainly have
become something.
But on the path that he has chosen what is there for him to gain? An
inheritance of dim glory beyond the stars, obscured doubtless from
time to time, if he is like other men, by sudden and sickening
eclipses of his faith. And meanwhile the daily round, the insolent
gibe, and the bitter ingratitude of men that leaves him grieving. Also
not enough money to pay for a cab when it is wet, and considerable
uncertainty as to the future of his children, and even as to his own
old age. Few comforts for him, not even those of a glass of wine to
stimulate him, or of tobacco to soothe his nerves, for these are
forbidden to him by the rules of his Order. Unless he can reach the
very top of his particular tree also, which it is most unlikely that
he will, no public recognition even of his faithful, strenuous work,
and who is there that at heart does not long for public recognition?
In short, nothing that is desirable to man save the consciousness of a
virtue which, after all, he must feel to be indifferent (being well
aware of his own secret faults), and the satisfaction of having helped
a certain number of lame human dogs over moral or physical stiles.
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