It has always seemed a great, sad, heroic thing,—plain day labor. Those common, ignorant men, working before flaming forges, stripped to the waist in some instances, fascinated my imagination. I have always marveled at the inequalities of nature—the way it will give one man a low brow and a narrow mind, a narrow round of thought, and make a slave or horse of him, and another a light, nimble mind, a quick wit, and air, and make a gentleman of him. No human being can solve either the question of ability or utility. Is your gentleman useful? Yes and no, perhaps. Is your laborer useful? Yes and no, perhaps. I should say obviously yes. But see the differences in the reward of labor, physical labor. One eats his hard-earned crust in the sweat of his face; the other picks at his surfeit of courses, and wonders why this or that doesn’t taste better. I did not make my mind. I did not make my art. I cannot choose my taste except by predestined instinct, and yet here I am sitting in a comfortable English home as I write, commiserating the poor working-man. I indict nature here and now, as I always do and always shall do, as being aimless, pointless, unfair, unjust. I see in the whole thing no scheme but an accidental one, no justice save accidental justice. Now and then, in a way, some justice is done, but it is accidental; no individual man seems to will it. He can’t. He doesn’t know how. He can’t think how. And there’s an end of it.
WINGÈD VICTORY
BY VICTOR WHITLOCK
O PATIENT, wounded warrior of the range,
Braving the might of all the storms that blow,
Breasting the bandit winds that never change,
Fighting forever with an unseen foe.
How your brave spirit breathes of sturdy cheer—
You that the ranger deems a worthless tree.