Only about a quarter-century ago unlearned men of ability would often
sigh and say, "Ah, if I was only a scholar!" Admirers of a clever and
illiterate workman often said, "Why, if he was a scholar, he would
make a fortune in business for himself!" Women mourned the lack of
learning in the same way, and I have heard good dames deplore the fact
that they could not read. I pity most profoundly those on whom the
light of knowledge has never shone kindly; and yet I have a comic sort
of misgiving lest in a short time a common cry may be, "Ah, if I was
only not a scholar!" The matchless topsy-turvydom which has marked the
passage of the last ten years, the tremendously accelerated velocity
with which labour is moving towards emancipation from all control,
have so confused things in general that an observer must stand back
and get a new focus before he can allow his mind to dwell on the
things that he sees. One day's issue of any good newspaper is enough
to show what a revolution is upon us, for we merely need to run the
eye down columns at random to pick out suggestive little scraps. At
present we cannot get that "larger view" about which Dr.
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