'Here we go up, up, up;

And here we go down, down, downee!'

NURSERY SONG.

Meanwhile, at Milton the chimneys smoked, the ceaseless roar and

mighty beat, and dizzying whirl of machinery, struggled and

strove perpetually. Senseless and purposeless were wood and iron

and steam in their endless labours; but the persistence of their

monotonous work was rivalled in tireless endurance by the strong

crowds, who, with sense and with purpose, were busy and restless

in seeking after--What? In the streets there were few

loiterers,--none walking for mere pleasure; every man's face was

set in lines of eagerness or anxiety; news was sought for with

fierce avidity; and men jostled each other aside in the Mart and

in the Exchange, as they did in life, in the deep selfishness of

competition.

There was gloom over the town. Few came to buy, and

those who did were looked at suspiciously by the sellers; for

credit was insecure, and the most stable might have their

fortunes affected by the sweep in the great neighbouring port

among the shipping houses. Hitherto there had been no failures in

Milton; but, from the immense speculations that had come to light

in making a bad end in America, and yet nearer home, it was known

that some Milton houses of business must suffer so severely that

every day men's faces asked, if their tongues did not,

'What news? Who is gone? How will it affect me?' And if two or three

spoke together, they dwelt rather on the names of those who were

safe than dared to hint at those likely, in their opinion, to go;

for idle breath may, at such times, cause the downfall of some

who might otherwise weather the storm; and one going down drags

many after. 'Thornton is safe,' say they. 'His business is

large--extending every year; but such a head as he has, and so

prudent with all his daring!'

Then one man draws another aside,

and walks a little apart, and, with head inclined into his

neighbour's ear, he says, 'Thornton's business is large; but he

has spent his profits in extending it; he has no capital laid by;

his machinery is new within these two years, and has cost him--we

won't say what!--a word to the wise!' But that Mr. Harrison was a

croaker,--a man who had succeeded to his father's trade-made

fortune, which he had feared to lose by altering his mode of

business to any having a larger scope; yet he grudged every penny

made by others more daring and far-sighted.

But the truth was, Mr. Thornton was hard pressed. He felt it

acutely in his vulnerable point--his pride in the commercial

character which he had established for himself. Architect of his

own fortunes, he attributed this to no special merit or qualities

of his own, but to the power, which he believed that commerce

gave to every brave, honest, and persevering man, to raise

himself to a level from which he might see and read the great

game of worldly success, and honestly, by such far-sightedness,

command more power and influence than in any other mode of life.

Far away, in the East and in the West, where his person would

never be known, his name was to be regarded, and his wishes to be

fulfilled, and his word pass like gold. That was the idea of

merchant-life with which Mr. Thornton had started. 'Her merchants

be like princes,' said his mother, reading the text aloud, as if

it were a trumpet-call to invite her boy to the struggle. He was

but like many others--men, women, and children--alive to distant,

and dead to near things. He sought to possess the influence of a

name in foreign countries and far-away seas,--to become the head

of a firm that should be known for generations; and it had taken

him long silent years to come even to a glimmering of what he

might be now, to-day, here in his own town, his own factory,

among his own people. He and they had led parallel lives--very

close, but never touching--till the accident (or so it seemed) of

his acquaintance with Higgins. Once brought face to face, man to

man, with an individual of the masses around him, and (take

notice) out of the character of master and workman, in the first

instance, they had each begun to recognise that 'we have all of

us one human heart.' It was the fine point of the wedge; and

until now, when the apprehension of losing his connection with

two or three of the workmen whom he had so lately begun to know

as men,--of having a plan or two, which were experiments lying

very close to his heart, roughly nipped off without trial,--gave

a new poignancy to the subtle fear that came over him from time

to time; until now, he had never recognised how much and how deep

was the interest he had grown of late to feel in his position as

manufacturer, simply because it led him into such close contact,

and gave him the opportunity of so much power, among a race of

people strange, shrewd, ignorant; but, above all, full of

character and strong human feeling.




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