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

12 6 An Apology for Idlers
gone to the well, the scythe to the corn, and
the student to his book ; and no one been
any the wiser of the loss. There are not
many works extant, if you look the alter-
native all over, which are worth the price of
a pound of tobacco to a man of limited
means. This is a sobering reflection for the
proudest of our earthly vanities. Even a
tobacconist may, upon consideration, find no
great cause for personal vainglory in the
phrase ; for although tobacco is an admirable
sedative, the qualities necessary for retailing
it are neither rare nor precious in themselves.
Alas and alas ! you may take it how you
will, but the services of no single individual
are indispensable. Atlas was just a gentle-
man with a protracted nightmare ! And yet
you see merchants who go and labour them-
selves into a great fortune and thence into
the bankruptcy court ; scribblers who keep
scribbling at little articles until their temper
is a cross to all who come about them, as
though Pharaoh should set the Israelites to
make a pin instead of a pyramid ; and fine