Caleb made no rejoinder, but presently lowered his spectacles, drew up

his chair to the desk, and said, "Deuce take the bill--I wish it was

at Hanover! These things are a sad interruption to business!"

The first part of this speech comprised his whole store of maledictory

expression, and was uttered with a slight snarl easy to imagine. But

it would be difficult to convey to those who never heard him utter the

word "business," the peculiar tone of fervid veneration, of religious

regard, in which he wrapped it, as a consecrated symbol is wrapped in

its gold-fringed linen.

Caleb Garth often shook his head in meditation on the value, the

indispensable might of that myriad-headed, myriad-handed labor by which

the social body is fed, clothed, and housed. It had laid hold of his

imagination in boyhood. The echoes of the great hammer where roof or

keel were a-making, the signal-shouts of the workmen, the roar of the

furnace, the thunder and plash of the engine, were a sublime music to

him; the felling and lading of timber, and the huge trunk vibrating

star-like in the distance along the highway, the crane at work on the

wharf, the piled-up produce in warehouses, the precision and variety of

muscular effort wherever exact work had to be turned out,--all these

sights of his youth had acted on him as poetry without the aid of the

poets, had made a philosophy for him without the aid of philosophers,

a religion without the aid of theology. His early ambition had been to

have as effective a share as possible in this sublime labor, which was

peculiarly dignified by him with the name of "business;" and though he

had only been a short time under a surveyor, and had been chiefly his

own teacher, he knew more of land, building, and mining than most of

the special men in the county.

His classification of human employments was rather crude, and, like the

categories of more celebrated men, would not be acceptable in these

advanced times. He divided them into "business, politics, preaching,

learning, and amusement." He had nothing to say against the last four;

but he regarded them as a reverential pagan regarded other gods than

his own. In the same way, he thought very well of all ranks, but he

would not himself have liked to be of any rank in which he had not such

close contact with "business" as to get often honorably decorated with

marks of dust and mortar, the damp of the engine, or the sweet soil of

the woods and fields. Though he had never regarded himself as other

than an orthodox Christian, and would argue on prevenient grace if the

subject were proposed to him, I think his virtual divinities were good

practical schemes, accurate work, and the faithful completion of

undertakings: his prince of darkness was a slack workman. But there

was no spirit of denial in Caleb, and the world seemed so wondrous to

him that he was ready to accept any number of systems, like any number

of firmaments, if they did not obviously interfere with the best

land-drainage, solid building, correct measuring, and judicious boring

(for coal). In fact, he had a reverential soul with a strong practical

intelligence. But he could not manage finance: he knew values well,

but he had no keenness of imagination for monetary results in the shape

of profit and loss: and having ascertained this to his cost, he

determined to give up all forms of his beloved "business" which

required that talent. He gave himself up entirely to the many kinds of

work which he could do without handling capital, and was one of those

precious men within his own district whom everybody would choose to

work for them, because he did his work well, charged very little, and

often declined to charge at all. It is no wonder, then, that the

Garths were poor, and "lived in a small way." However, they did not

mind it.




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