“You are right,” said Tom, thoughtfully.
“It's not his poverty I 'm thinking of,” cried Fossbrooke. “With health and strength and vigor, a man can fight poverty. I want to learn that he is as clean-handed in this affair with the Sewells as he thinks himself. If I once were sure of that, I 'd care little for his loss of fortune. I 'd associate him with us in the mine, Tom. There will always be more wealth here than we can need. That new shaft promises splendidly. Such fat ore I have not seen for many a day.”
Tom's mouth puckered, and his expression caught a strange sort of half-quizzical look, but he did not venture to speak.
“I know well,” added the old man, cautiously, “that it 's no good service to a young fellow to plunge him at once into ample means without making him feel the fatigues and trials of honest labor. He must be taught to believe that there is work before him,—hard work too. He must be made to suppose that it is only by persistence and industry, and steady devotion to the pursuit, that it will yield its great results.”
“I don't suspect our success will turn his head,” said Tom, dryly.
“That 's the very thing I want to guard against, Tom. Don't you see it is there all my anxiety lies?”
“Let him take a turn of our life here, and I 'll warrant him against the growth of an over-sanguine disposition.”
“Just so,” said Fossbrooke, too intensely immersed in his own thought either to notice the words or the accents of the other,—“just so: a hard winter up here in the snows, with all the tackle frozen, ice on the cranks, ice on the chains, ice everywhere, a dense steam from the heated air below, and a cutting sleet above, try a man's chest smartly; and then that lead colic, of which you can tell him something. These give a zest and a difficulty that prove what a man's nature is like.”
“They have proved mine pretty well,” said Tom, with a bitter laugh.
“And there's nothing like it in all the world for forming a man!” cried Fossbrooke, in a voice of triumph. “Your fair-weather fellows go through life with half their natures unexplored. They know no more of the interior country of their hearts than we do of Central Africa. Beyond the fact that there is something there—something—they know nothing. A man must have conflict, struggle, peril, to feel what stuff there 's in him. He must be baffled, thwarted, ay, and even defeated. He must see himself amongst other men as an unlucky dog that fellows will not willingly associate with. He must, on poor rations and tattered clothing, keep up a high heart,—not always an easy thing to do; and, hardest of all, he must train himself never in all his poverty to condescend to a meanness that when his better day comes he would have to blush for.”