Into these he dribbles handfuls of flour before he starts for walking exercise, increasing the quantity little by little every day till the bags are quite full, and he carries clinging to every part of his body several pounds of dead weight, nor considers himself fit for his situation till he can move under it with the freedom and elasticity of a naked man. He will then tell you that, on throwing off his self-imposed burden, he finds all his muscles so invigorated by their own separate labours, his strength so stimulated, his wind so clear, his condition so perfect, that he shoots away over the plains, mountains, and tea-gardens of the Flowery Land less like John Chinaman with a letter-bag than an arrow from a bow. What would our old friend Captain Barclay, of peripatetic memory, say to such a system as this?
I doubt if the Chinaman’s theory of training be founded on sound principles; but I am quite sure that in bearing our moral burden we cannot dispose it over too extended a surface, or in too many separate parcels. I see fathers of families carrying surprising weights, such as make the bachelor’s hair stand on end from sheer dismay, with a buoyancy of step and carelessness of demeanour only to be accounted for by an equal distribution of pressure over the entire victim. A man who has his own business to attend to, his domestic affairs to regulate, half-a-dozen hungry children to feed, and a couple of poor relations or so to assist with sympathy, counsel, and occasional aid, finds no time to dwell upon any one difficulty, no especial inconvenience from any one burden, because each has its fellow and its counterpoise elsewhere. It is not only in pharmacy that the principle of counter-irritation produces beneficial results. A man with two grievances never pities himself so much as a man with one; and a man with half-a-dozen treats them all with a good-humoured indifference little removed from positive satisfaction.
Some people even appear to glory in the multitude of their afflictions, as though the power to sustain so much ill-luck shed a certain reflected lustre on themselves. I recollect, long ago, meeting an old comrade hanging about the recruiting taverns in Westminster. The man was a clean, smart, active, efficient non-commissioned officer enough, with the average courage and endurance of the British dragoon. A year before I had parted with him, languid, unhappy, and depressed, longing only to return to England but not yet under orders for home. Now he looked cheerful, contented, almost radiant. I stopped to inquire after his welfare.
“I landed a fortnight ago, sir,” said he, with something of triumph in his voice, “and a happy home I found waiting for me! I haven’t a friend or a relation left in the world. My father’s absconded, my mother’s dead, my brother-in-law’s ruined, and my sister gone into a mad-house!”
It sounded melancholy enough, yet I felt convinced the man reaped some unaccountable consolation from his pre-eminence in misfortune, admired his own endurance, and was proud of his power to carry so heavy a weight.
Custom, no doubt, in these as in all other inflictions, will do much to lighten the load. There is a training of the mind, as of the body, to bear and to endure. With wear and tear the heart gets hardened like the muscles, and the feelings become blunted by ill-usage, just as the skin grows callous on an oarsman’s hands. There is some shadow of truth in the fallacious story of him who carried a calf every day till it became a cow. None of us know what we can do till we try; and there are few but would follow the example of the patient camel, and refuse to rise from the sand, if they knew how heavy a weight is to be imposed on them ere they can reach the longed-for diamond of the desert, gushing and glittering amongst the palms! It is fortunate for us that the packages are not all piled up at once. Little by little we accustom ourselves to the labour as we plod sullenly on with the tinkling caravan, ignorant, till too late to turn back, of the coming hardships, the endless journey, or the many times that cruel mirage must disappoint our fainting, thirsting spirits ere we reach the welcome resting-place where the cool spring bubbles through its fringe of verdure—where we shall drink our fill of those life-bestowing waters, and stretch ourselves out at last for long, unbroken slumbers under the “shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”
But the worst method of all in which to carry our load is to build it up on the pack-saddle so as to attract notice and commiseration from those who travel alongside. The Turkish hamals, indeed, may be seen staggering about Constantinople under enormous bales of merchandise, twice the height and apparently three times the weight of the herculean bearer; but a Turkish hamal, notwithstanding his profession, ignores the meaning of a sore back, moral or physical. Other jades may wince, but, under all circumstances, you may swear his withers are unwrung. To be sure, the first article of his creed is resignation. Fatalism lulls him like opium, though, kinder than that pernicious drug, it leaves no torment of reaction to succeed its soothing trance. Hard work, hard fare, hard bed, hard words, hard lines in general, a tropical sun and the atmosphere of a jungle, it is all in the day’s work with him! Backsheesh he will accept with a smile if he can get it, or he will do without, consoling himself that it is kismet, for “There is one God, and Mahomet is His prophet.” With this philosopher, indeed, “a contented mind is a perpetual feast,” otherwise how could he sustain his stalwart proportions on a morsel of black bread and a slice of watermelon? His dissipations, too, are mild as his daily meals. A screw of weak tobacco, folded in a paper cigarette, wraps him in a foretaste of his anticipated paradise; a mouthful of thick, black, bitter coffee stands him in lieu of beer, porter, half-and-half, early purl, blue ruin, and dog’s-nose. Once a week, or maybe once a month, he goes to the bath for two hours of uninterrupted enjoyment, emerging healthy, happy, refreshed, and clean as a new pin.
Perhaps it is his frugal, temperate life, perhaps it is his calm, acquiescent disposition, that enables him thus to carry weight so complacently. He never fights under it, not he! Through the narrow lanes of Stamboul, across the vibrating wooden bridge of the Golden Horn, up the filthy stairs, not streets, of Pera, he swings along with regulated step and snorting groans, delivered in discordant cadence at each laborious footfall; but he carries his weight, that is the great point—he carries a great deal of it, and he carries it remarkably well—an example of humility and patience to the Christian who employs him, an object of comparison, not much in favour of the latter, between the votaries of the Crescent and the Cross.
When I protest, however, against making a display and a grievance of the load you have to bear, I am far from maintaining that you are to keep it a profound secret, and hide it away in unsuitable places under your clothes. A man can carry a hundred-weight on his shoulders with less inconvenience than a few pounds about his heart. If you doubt this, order cold plum-pudding for luncheon, and you will be convinced! A secret, too, is always a heavy substance to take abroad with you, and your own seems to incommode you more than another’s, probably because you are less indifferent about letting it fall. As for attempting to dance lightly along with the jaunty air of an unweighted novice, be assured the effort is not only painful but ridiculous. No, never be ashamed of your burden, not even though your own folly should have clapped an additional half-hundred on the top of it. Get your shoulders well under the heaviest part, walk as upright as you may, but do not try to swagger; and if you have a friend who likes you well enough to give his assistance, let him catch hold at one end, and so between you move on with it the best way you can.
Some packages grow all the lighter, like a contraband trunk at the Douane, for being weighed and examined, or, as our neighbours call it, “pierced and plumbed.” Some again gather increased proportions when we enlarge upon them; but it is only those of which we dare not speak, those which no friend must seem to see, for which no brother must offer a hand, that sink our failing strength, that crush us down humbled and helpless in the mire. There is but one place for such burdens as these, and we never lay them there till we have tried everything else in vain; just as we offer the remnants of a life from which we expect no more pleasure, where we ought to have given all the promise and vigour of our youth, or take an aching, hopeless, worn-out heart back to our only friend, as the crying child runs to its parent with a broken toy.