There is a true tale of
rogues and a fool--a tale to make one brood and brood until the sense
of fun passes into black melancholy. Five hundred men worked for sixty
hours per week before that money was earned--and think of the value
received for the whole sum when it was spent! Truly the parasite's
exertions are lucrative to himself!
As for the market-price of book-learning or clerkly skill, it is not
worth so much as naming. The clerk was held to be a wondrous person in
times when the "neck-verse" would save a man from the gallows; but
"clerk" has far altered its meaning, and the modern being of that name
is in sorrowful case. So contemptibly cheap are his poor services that
he in person is not looked upon as a man, but rather as a lump of raw
material which is at present on sale in a glutted market. All the
walks of life wherein men proceed as though they belonged to the
leisured class are becoming no fit places for self-respecting people.
Gradually the ornamental sort of workers are being displaced; the idle
rich are too plentiful, but I question whether even the idle rich have
done, so much harm as the genteel poor who are ashamed of labour.
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