But the hope in his
wisdom was at length changed into dread, for no one believed him
when he said he knew no charms and could work no cures, and every
man and woman who had an accident or a new attack after applying to
him, set the misfortune down to Master Marner's ill-will and irritated
glances. Thus it came to pass that his movement of pity towards
Sally Oates, which had given him a transient sense of brotherhood,
heightened the repulsion between him and his neighbours, and made
his isolation more complete.
Gradually the guineas, the crowns and the half-crowns grew to a
heap, and Marner drew less and less for his own wants, trying to solve
the problem of keeping himself strong enough to work sixteen hours
a-day on as small an outlay as possible. Have not men, shut up in
solitary imprisonment, found an interest in marking the moments by
straight strokes of a certain length on the wall, until the growth
of the sum of straight strokes, arranged in triangles, has become a
mastering purpose? Do we not wile away moments of inanity or
fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until
the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit? That will
help us to understand how the love of accumulating money grows an
absorbing passion in men whose imaginations, even in the very
beginning of their hoard, showed them no purpose beyond it. Marner
wanted the heaps of ten to grow into a square, and then into a
larger square; and every added guinea, while it was itself a
satisfaction, bred a new desire.
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