Jude the Obsure

The speaker was a man named Jack Stagg, with whom Jude had formerly

worked in repairing the college masonries; Tinker Taylor was seen to

be standing near. Having his attention called the latter cried

across the barriers to Jude: "You've honoured us by coming back

again, my friend!"

Jude nodded.

"An' you don't seem to have done any great things for yourself by

going away?"

Jude assented to this also.

"Except found more mouths to fill!" This came in a new voice, and

Jude recognized its owner to be Uncle Joe, another mason whom he had

known.

Jude replied good-humouredly that he could not dispute it; and from

remark to remark something like a general conversation arose between

him and the crowd of idlers, during which Tinker Taylor asked Jude if

he remembered the Apostles' Creed in Latin still, and the night of

the challenge in the public house.

"But Fortune didn't lie that way?" threw in Joe. "Yer powers wasn't

enough to carry 'ee through?"

"Don't answer them any more!" entreated Sue.

"I don't think I like Christminster!" murmured little Time

mournfully, as he stood submerged and invisible in the crowd.

But finding himself the centre of curiosity, quizzing, and comment,

Jude was not inclined to shrink from open declarations of what he

had no great reason to be ashamed of; and in a little while was

stimulated to say in a loud voice to the listening throng generally: "It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man--that

question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing

at the present moment in these uprising times--whether to follow

uncritically the track he finds himself in, without considering his

aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and

re-shape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and I

failed. But I don't admit that my failure proved my view to be a

wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though

that's how we appraise such attempts nowadays--I mean, not by their

essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes. If I had

ended by becoming like one of these gentlemen in red and black that

we saw dropping in here by now, everybody would have said: 'See how

wise that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature!' But

having ended no better than I began they say: 'See what a fool that

fellow was in following a freak of his fancy!' "However it was my poverty and not my will that consented to be

beaten. It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do

in one; and my impulses--affections--vices perhaps they should be

called--were too strong not to hamper a man without advantages; who

should be as cold-blooded as a fish and as selfish as a pig to have a

really good chance of being one of his country's worthies. You may

ridicule me--I am quite willing that you should--I am a fit subject,

no doubt. But I think if you knew what I have gone through these

last few years you would rather pity me. And if they knew"--he

nodded towards the college at which the dons were severally

arriving--"it is just possible they would do the same."