He must have stood low;
he must have worked hard,--and with tools, moreover, of his own
invention and fashioning. He waved and whistled off ten thousand
strong and importunate temptations; he dashed the dice-box from the
jewelled hand of Chance, the cup from Pleasure's, and trod under
foot the sorceries of each; he ascended steadily the precipices of
Danger, and looked down with intrepidity from the summit; he
overawed Arrogance with Sedateness; he seized by the horn and
overleaped low Violence; and he fairly swung Fortune round.
"'The very high cannot rise much higher; the very low may,--the
truly great must have done it.
"'This is not the doctrine, my friends, of the silkenly and lawnly
religious; it wears the coarse texture of the fisherman, and walks
uprightly and straightforward under it. I am speaking now more
particularly to you among us upon whom God hath laid the
incumbrances of wealth, the sweets whereof bring teazing and
poisonous things about you, not easily sent away. What now are your
pretensions under sacks of money? or your enjoyments under the shade
of genealogical trees? Are they rational? Are they real? Do they
exist at all? Strange inconsistency! to be proud of having as much
gold and silver laid upon you as a mule hath, and yet to carry it
less composedly! The mule is not answerable for the conveyance and
discharge of his burden,--you are.
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