Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

An Apology for Idlers 119
they were paralysed or alienated ; and yet
very possibly they are hard workers in their
own way, and have good eyesight for a flaw
in a deed or a turn of the market. They
have been to school and college, but all the
time they had their eye on the medal ; they
have gone about in the world and mixed
with clever people, but all the time they
were thinking of their own affairs. As if
a man's soul were not too small to begin
with, they have dwarfed and narrowed theirs
by a life of all work and no play ; until
here they are at forty, with a listless atten-
tion, a mind vacant of all material of
amusement, and not one thought to rub
against another, while they wait for the
train. Before he was breeched, he might
have clambered on the boxes ; when he was
twenty, he would have stared at the girls ;
but now the pipe is smoked out, the snuff-
box empty, and my gentleman sits bolt
upright upon a bench, with lamentable eyes.
This does not appeal to me as being Success
in Life.