"You are then—"
"A shoemaker."
"A what," ejaculated Herman, jumping from his chair.
"A shoemaker," repeated Arthur Dermoyne. "I gain my bread by the work of my hands, and by the hardest of all kinds of work. I am not only a mechanic, but a shoemaker."
Herman could not repress a burst of laughter.
"Excuse me, but, ha, ha, ha! You are a shoemaker? And you visited the house of the wealthy Burney, and aspired to his daughter's hand? You will excuse me, ha, ha, ha!—but it is so very odd."
Dermoyne's forehead grew dark.
"Yes, I am a shoemaker. I earn my bread by the work of my hands. But before you despise me, you will hear why I am a shoemaker. As an orphaned child, without father or mother, there was no other career before me, than the pauperism of the outcast or the slavery of an apprentice. I chose the latter. The overseers of the poor bound me out to a trade. I grew up without hope, education, or home. In the day-time I worked at an occupation which is work without exercise, and which continued ten years, at ten hours a day, will destroy the constitution of the strongest man. From this hopeless apprenticeship, I passed into the life of a journeyman, and knew what it was to battle with the world for myself. How I worked, starved and worked, matters not, for we folks are born for that kind of thing. But as I sat upon my work-bench, listening to a book which was read by one of my own brother workmen, I became aware that I was not only poor, but ignorant; that my body was not only enslaved, but also my soul.—Therefore, I taught myself to read; to write; and for three years I have devoted five hours of every night to study."
"And are still a shoemaker?" Herman's smooth face was full of quiet scorn and laughter.
"I am still a shoemaker—a workman at the bench—because I cannot, in conscience, enter one of the professions called learned.—I cannot separate myself from that nine-tenths of the human family, who seem to have been only born to work and die—die in mind, as well as body—in order to supply the idle tenth with superfluities. Oh! sir, you, who are so learned and eloquent, could you but read the thoughts which enter the heart of the poor shoemaker, who, sitting at his work-bench, in a cramped position, is forced sometimes to reflect upon his fate!—He beholds the lawyer, with a conscience distinct from that given to him by God; a conscience that makes him believe that it is right to grow rich by the tricks and frauds of law. He beholds the doctor, also with the conscience of his class, sending human beings to death by system, and filling graveyards by the exact rule of the schools. He beholds the minister, too often also with but the conscience of a class, preaching the thoughts of those who do not work, and failing to give utterance to the agonies of those who do work—who do all the labor, and suffer all the misery in the world. And these classes are respected; honored. They are the true noblemen! Their respectability is shared by the merchant, who grows rich by distributing the products of labor. But as for the shoemaker—nay, the workman, of whatever trade—whose labor produces all the physical wealth of the world—who works all life long, and only rests when his head is in the cold grave,—what of him? He is a serf, a slave, a Pariah. On the stage no joke is so piquant as the one which is leveled at the 'tailor,' or the 'cobbler;' in literature, the attempt of an unknown to elevate himself, is matter for a brutal laugh; and even grave men like you, when addressed by a man who, like myself, confesses that he is a—shoemaker! you burst into laughter, as though the master you profess to serve, was not himself, one day, a workman at the carpenter's bench."