Ellesmere. Or fancy a bustling Glasgow merchant of Adam Smith’s day watching him. How little would the merchant have dreamt what a number of vessels were to be floated away by the ink in the Professor’s inkstand; and what crashing of axes, and clearing of forests in distant lands, the noise of his pen upon the paper portended.
Milverton. It is not only the effect of the still-working man that the busy man cannot anticipate, but neither can he comprehend the present labour. If Horace had told my prætor that
“Abstinuit Venere et vino, sudavit et alsit,”
“What, to write a few lines!” would his prætorship have cried out. “Why, I can live well and enjoy life; and I flatter myself no one in Rome does more business.”
Dunsford. All of it only goes to show how little we know of each other, and how tolerant we ought to be of others’ efforts.
Milverton. The trials that there must be every day without any incident that even the most minute household chronicler could set down: the labours without show or noise!
Ellesmere. The deep things that there are which, with unthinking people, pass for shallow things, merely because they are clear as well as deep. My fable of the other day, for instance—which instead of producing any moral effect upon you two, only seemed to make you both inclined to giggle.
Milverton. I am so glad you reminded me of that. I, too, fired with a noble emulation, have invented a fable since we last met which I want you to hear. I assure you I did not mean to laugh at yours: it was only that it came rather unexpectedly upon me. You are not exactly the person from whom one should expect fables.
Dunsford. Now for the fable.
Milverton. There was a gathering together of creatures hurtful and terrible to man, to name their king. Blight, mildew, darkness, mighty waves, fierce winds, Will-o’-the-wisps, and shadows of grim objects, told fearfully their doings and preferred their claims, none prevailing. But when evening came on, a thin mist curled up, derisively, amidst the assemblage, and said, “I gather round a man going to his own home over paths made by his daily footsteps; and he becomes at once helpless and tame as a child. The lights meant to assist him, then betray. You find him wandering, or need the aid of other Terrors to subdue him. I am, alone, confusion to him.” And all the assemblage bowed before the mist, and made it king, and set it on the brow of many a mountain, where, when it is not doing evil, it may be often seen to this day.