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Mountains, Rivers, and the Great Earth
SUNY series in Environmental Philosophy and Ethics
J. Baird Callicott and John van Buren, editors
Mountains, Rivers,
and the
Great Earth
Reading Gary Snyder and Dōgen
in an Age of Ecological Crisis

Jason M. Wirth

SUNY
P R E S S
 Cover image courtesy of Nathan Wirth.

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2017 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic,
magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY

www.sunypress.edu

Production, Jenn Bennett

Marketing, Anne M. Valentine

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data

Names: Wirth, Jason M., 1963– author.
Title: Mountains, rivers, and the great earth : reading Gary Snyder and Dōgen
in an age of ecological crisis / by Jason M. Wirth.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2017. | Series:
SUNY series in environmental philosophy and ethics | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016031502 (print) | LCCN 2016050289 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781438465432 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438465449 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Snyder, Gary, 1930—Criticism and interpretation. | Dōgen,
1200–1253—Criticism and interpretation. | Ecocriticism.
Classification: LCC PS3569.N88 Z965 2017 (print) | LCC PS3569.N88 (ebook) |
DDC 811/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031502

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 山河大地
[senga daichi—mountains, rivers, great earth]

Here, everywhere, right now is mountains, river, and earth.

—Dōgen, “Baika [Plum Blossoms]” (S, 585)

The mountains, rivers, and the great earth are all the ocean of buddha nature.
—Dōgen, “Busshō [Buddha Nature]” (S, 238)

Clear and bright are mountains, rivers, and earth—an eyeball.

—Dōgen, “Ganzei [Eyeball]” (S, 616)

Ancient masters [Yangshan and Guishan] said to each other, “What is the wondrous
clear mind?” “I say it is mountains, rivers, and the earth; it is the sun, the moon,
and stars.”
—Dōgen, “Sokushin Zebutsu [The Mind Itself
is Buddha]” (S, 46)

When you move mountains, rivers, and earth, as well as the sun, the moon, and stars
to practice, they in turn move you to practice. This is not the open eye of just one
time, but the vital eye of all times.
—Dōgen, “Shoaku Makusa [Refrain from
Unwholesome Action]” (S, 97)

Saying that the self returns to the self is not contradicted by saying that the self is
mountains, rivers, and the great earth.
—Dōgen, “Keisei Sanshoku [Valley Sounds,
Mountain Colors]” (S, 89)

Avalokiteśvaras . . . all work together with buddhas, mountains, rivers, and earth.
—Dōgen, “Avalokiteśvara” (S, 403)

Walking on walking,
under foot earth turns.
Streams and mountains never stay the same.
—Gary Snyder (MR, 9, 145–146, 154)

great
earth
saṅgha
—Gary Snyder (“O Waters,” TI, 73)
 For Elizabeth Myōen Sikes,
embodiment of the emptiness of the three wheels:
giver, receiver, and gift
 Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Abbreviations xi

Preface (Milarepa’s Stone Tower) xiii

Part I The Great Earth

1 Mountains, Rivers, and the Great Earth 3

2 Geology (Poetic Word) 25

Part II Turtle Island

3 Place (Land and Sea, Earth and Sky) 57

4 Bears (The Many Palaces of the Earth) 71

Part III Earth Democracy

5 The Great Potlatch 87

6 Seeds of Earth Democracy 103

Notes 117

Bibliography 133

Index 143
 Acknowledgments

I would like first of all to thank Gary Snyder who, despite the countless de-
mands upon his schedule, made the time to read this manuscript and to offer
generous words of encouragement and support. I would also like to extend
my whole-­hearted gratitude to my brother Nathan Wirth, whose photogra-
phy is a great inspiration and teacher; to my Dharma brother Carl Kakuzen
Mountain who early on read the manuscript and shared his wisdom with me;
to my Sōtō Zen teacher Kōshō Itagaki, abbot of the Eishoji Zen training and
practice facility in South Seattle; to my beloved Dharma sisters and brothers
of CoZen, especially Brian Shūdō Schroeder, Bret Kanpū Davis, and Erin Jien
McCarthy; to my companions at PACT (The Pacific Association for the Con-
tinental Tradition), especially Gerard Kuperus, Marjolein Oele, Tim Freeman,
Chris Lauer, and Brian Treanor, all of whom have offered much support and
guidance on this project; to my companions at CCPC (The Comparative and
Continental Philosophy Circle), especially David Jones, Michael Schwartz,
and Andrew Whitehead, all of whom teach me both with their wisdom and
their friendship; to my friend Josh Hayes, whose own work on Gary Snyder has
been instructive; to the poet Samuel Green, who teaches me with both word
and deed from his home on Waldron Island; to the incomparable Bill Porter
(Red Pine); to the many members of the Seattle University EcoSangha; to my
friends Don Castro and Mark Unno, who manifest the Pure Land in deed and
word; to Andrew Kenyon, my thoughtful and gracious acquisitions editor; and
to my former students and current friends Jennifer Luo, Caity Orellana, Maura
McCreight, Sonya Ekstrom, Emily Ingram, Brigid Scannell, Lia Perroud, and
Dominique Walmsley. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Elizabeth Myōen
Sikes, the great alchemist who turns each day of our life together into gold.
Some parts of the first chapter appeared in a much different and shorter
form as “Painting Mountains and Rivers: Gary Snyder, Dōgen, and the El-
emental Sutra of the Wild,” Research in Phenomenology, vol. 44 (2014),
240–261. Some parts of the second chapter appeared in a much different
x Acknowledgments

form in “Never Paint What Cannot Be Painted: Master Dōgen and the Zen of
the Brush,” Diaphany: A Journal & Nocturne, volume 1, ed. Aaron Cheak,
Sabrina dalla Valle, and Jennifer Zahrt (Auckland and Seattle: Rubedo Press,
2015), 38–65.

Hard to stack wood & live

in the moment. The body knows
the picking & spacing & wedging
to make the stack right. The mind is in
December by a good fire, soup
simmering on the back of the stove, coffee dark
as winter nights, & the sound
of a six-­day rain on tarps
over the woodpile.
—Samuel Green, one of a series of “Small Noticings,”
All That Might Be Done (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon
Press, 2014), 52.

(Used with the author’s permission)

 Abbreviations

AH Axe Handles. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1983.

BF Back on the Fire: Essays. Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007.
DP Danger on Peaks: Poems. Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004.
EHH Earth House Hold: Technical Notes and Queries to Fellow Dharma
Revolutionaries. New York: New Directions, 1969.
GC The Great Clod: Notes and Memoirs on Nature and History in East
Asia. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2016.
GSR The Gary Snyder Reader: Prose, Poetry and Translations, 1952–1998.
Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1999.
HWH He Who Hunted Birds in His Father’s Village: The Dimensions of a
Haida Myth (1951). Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007.
LR Left Out in the Rain: New Poems 1947–1985. San Francisco: North
Point Press, 1986.
MHM “Mountains Hidden in Mountains: Dōgen-­zenji and the Mind of
Ecology.” In: Dōgen Zen and Its Relevance for Our Time. Edited by Shōhaku
OKUMURA. San Francisco: Sōtō Zen Buddhism International Center, 2003.
MR Mountains and Rivers without End. Washington, DC: Counterpoint,
1996.
NH (in conversation with Julia Martin). Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism,
and Living in Places. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2014.
OW The Old Ways: Six Essays. San Francisco: City Lights, 1977.
PM This Present Moment: New Poems. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2015.
xii Abbreviations

PS A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds: New and Selected

Prose. Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1995.
PW The Practice of the Wild (1990). Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2010.
RW The Real Work: Interviews & Talks 1964–1979. Edited by William
Scott McLean. New York: New Directions, 1980.
S Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō: Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. Edited by ­Kazuaki
TANAHASHI. Boston and London: Shambhala, 2010.
TI Turtle Island. New York: New Directions, 1974.
 Preface
(Milarepa’s Stone Tower)

I became a poet that I might give voice to the songs I heard in na-
ture and my inner ear, and that also, by the power of song, I might
contribute to the downfall of the technological-­industrial world, its
total destruction, in favor of a world based on closer knowledge of
nature in man himself.
—Gary Snyder in 19701

This is a book about reading Gary Snyder (b. 1930) and, to a lesser extent,
the great Kamakura period Zen Master Eihei Dōgen (1200–1253),2 during
the ongoing ecological crisis, what Snyder has called “this time of New World
Disorder” (BF, 25). Every poem may have its “Twentieth of January” as the
great Romanian poet Paul Celan insisted, in his case referring to the date of
the Wannsee Conference that resulted in the Final Solution. Our Twentieth of
January—and Gary Snyder’s Twentieth of January—is our rapidly accelerat-
ing and explosive war against the Great Earth.3 For this reason, this is not a
general study of either Snyder or Dōgen. I do not attempt to chart the devel-
opment of their respective ideas or to elaborate every facet of their thinking
and writing. This is rather a meditation and philosophical engagement that
seeks to read, think, and practice along with both of them in a manner that
is mindful of the place from where one reads them today. It seeks to express
something of the place from which Snyder and Dōgen practice, think, and
write. In this sense, this is also a book from and about the Dharma.
Plenty of good books have already been written on both Snyder and
Dōgen, respectively. Although this study embraces the scholarly and has
gratefully and indispensably benefited from it, it is not my intention just to
add to the stockpile of scholarship. I hope also to attend, for want of a better
xiv Preface

word, to the spiritual dimension of both what Dōgen called the Great Earth
and our prevailing ecological crisis. This spiritual dimension is currently en-
dangered, that is, it is becoming harder and harder even to appreciate the
spiritual as a problem or question. The spiritual seems increasingly irrelevant
to anything that matters, but given our current sorrowful state of human habi-
tation, never has it been more urgent.
I confess some distaste for the word spiritual. It has become so broadly
applied so as to mean little, if anything; it has a long and philosophically
dubious history, a history that often reinforces the kind of thinking that I
am trying to get beyond; it often proposes an otherworldly perspective when
the problem is that we have not been present to the earth;4 it often vaguely
expresses a dissatisfaction with the prevailing institutional forms of religion,
while hoping, somehow, some way, to satiate the needs that traditional reli-
gion seems to have betrayed; and it is often a disavowal of the rigor and intel-
ligence, as well as the compassion and the wisdom, that the current ecological
crisis demands. I use this word cautiously and temporarily as a sort of down
payment on a more nuanced manner of speaking to this dimension of the
problem: the current crisis is not so much a failure of rationality, but a symp-
tom of the poverty of our practice. We—and by that I mean both humans and
the earth with its myriad forms of shared life—are as good as our practice.
In the face of our folly and stinginess, practice is the cultivation of wisdom
and compassion within our interdependent becoming with, through, and, in
some way, as all other forms of life.5 Or as Snyder translates the famous open-
ing line of the Dao De Jing: “The way that can be followed (‘wayed’) is not the
constant way,” which for Snyder says: “A path that can be followed is not a
spiritual path” (PW, 161). Snyder calls this the path that cannot be followed—
because it is not in the end a path at all—the “wilderness. There is a ‘going’
but no goer, no destination, only the whole field” (PW, 162). Zen “turns you
inward rather than giving you a rule book to live by” (RW, 153). It is the hope
of the present book to make this sensibility clear and to show how it matters.

II

The news about the human relationship to the Earth continues to be dim
and often feels like it is growing ever dimmer. As I write these words, I feel
the weight of some of this year’s bad ecological news: 2015 has completely
shattered the record (2014) for the warmest year officially recorded; we have
 Preface xv

learned that ExxonMobil, one of the most profitable enterprises in the history
of enterprise, knew for decades of the “catastrophic” externalities of its busi-
ness model, but considered them acceptable; indeed, they invested millions
of dollars in confusing a generally gullible public about the science that they
personally knew was true.6 Meanwhile, rather than having sober public dis-
cussions about these kinds of events, Donald Trump—the archetype of the
American huckster—gluttonously consumes the media’s attention, proffering
an alarming program of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, thuggish violence,
rabid militarism, and capitalist voracity. Unsurprisingly, he dismisses climate
change as a hoax. It is with mourning as deep and sorrowful as the sudden
death of a loved one that as this book enters the world, Trump assumes the
presidency. This book is my unrepentant defiance.
During the last energy crisis in the early 1970s, Snyder argued that
every­body “thought it was money that counted before. Now it turns out that
the only real wealth is oil” (RW, 51). That either oil or money would count
as wealth is a symptom of profound spiritual poverty, a clear indication of
ruinous practice and poor etiquette. The desire to acquire obscenely large
amounts of things (fossil fuels, money, consumer goods, power, fame, etc.)
is endless. As Snyder quotes Gandhi: “For greed, all of nature is insufficient”
(BF, 35). More is never enough. The nub of our spiritual poverty is that we
think that the massive accumulation of goods counts as wealth. For Snyder,
the “actual ‘real wealth’ is knowing how to get along ‘without’ . . . ‘Do more
with less,’ as the slogan goes” (RW, 51).
The ecological crisis therefore brings us to a great crossroad. “This is a
marvelous time in which the nations of the world may get a new balance and
a perspective on themselves—if it doesn’t degenerate into hysteria and short
range crisis thinking” (RW, 51). Never has there been a better time for “cre-
ative people, poets, religious people” to speak (RW, 51). Yet the challenges
only seem to grow deeper and more daunting and short-­range crisis thinking
has so far generally prevailed. It is a time of war, not just against each other,
but also more deeply against the imagination and creativity as well as the
earth. “What is happening now to nature worldwide, to plant life and wildlife,
in ocean, grassland, forest, savannah, and desert in all spaces and habitat can
be likened to a war against nature” (BF, 62). Although poor treatment of the
Earth is not new, its magnitude—its elevation to a condition of total war—
seems unprecedented.
Tellingly, nowhere in the current bizarre media carnival can one find due
attention being paid to the ongoing Sixth Great Extinction event. Regardless
xvi Preface

of how one comes down on the science supporting the nature and extent of
this event, the ongoing onslaught on biodiversity is undeniable and its ravages
are grievous and mournful. As Snyder reflects in The Practice of the Wild, ex-
tinction is not the problem that we kill our fellow creatures—death belongs to
the way of all life; it is rather an assault on natality, the elimination of lineages
of birth that have evolved over billions of years.

The extinction of a species, each one a pilgrim of four billion years

of evolution, is an irreversible loss. The ending of the lines of so
many creatures with whom we have travelled this far is an occasion
of profound sorrow and grief. Death can be accepted and to some
degree transformed. But the loss of lineages and all their future
young is not something to accept. It must be rigorously and intel-
ligently resisted. (PW, 188)

Ecosystems and the myriad life forms they sustain will likely eventually
recover from the onslaught of our contemporary mode of being, but it will take
many millions of years to replenish biodiversity to its preindustrial levels. “Hun-
dreds of millions of years might elapse before the equivalent of a whale or an
elephant is seen again, if ever” (PW, 188). The devastation of biodiversity since
the end of World War II has been especially explosive. Furthermore, the loss of
an individual species is not just a loss of that species, but a wound to the ecosys-
tem of which it was once an integral part. “It isn’t just a case of unique lineages
but the lives of overall ecosystems (a larger sort of almost-­organism) that are
at stake” (PW, 188). The Buddhist teaching of anitya or nonpermanence is not
resignation to and indifference about the destruction of life. Because all life
has life without owning life, because to be is to be contingently and interdepen-
dently, and because birth and death—(shōji or saṃsāra)—are inseparable, “all
the more reason to move gently and cause less harm” (PW, 188).
The crisis nonetheless continues to accelerate. The best time to act was
in the 1970s when Snyder and many others were asking us to do so; with each
year of inaction, counteraction or, at best, insanely insufficient action, we dig
ourselves and our companion creatures deeper in a hole. It is in this context that
I think of the following words, written by Snyder more than four decades ago:

A war against the earth.

When its done there’ll be
no place
A Coyote could hide. (TI, 23)
 Preface xvii

Of course, we should not flatter ourselves that the survival of the Earth
depends on our actions. Despite its human inflicted wounds against bio­
diversity and the systems that foster it, it will survive us, although it is not
presently clear that we will survive ourselves. Snyder has a clear sense of the
“dark” side of the Wild and both he and this book reject any kind of New
Age fantasy about an original, pristine, harmonious Wild. This is not a call
to somehow become “one” with nature. Both the fossil record and the exis-
tence of fossil fuels testify to the earth’s capacity to undergo unimaginable
ruin. There is ample evidence that in the extreme long view, the earth and
biodiversity ultimately profit from the earth’s catastrophic, game-­changing
events. We need only remember that the current crisis has been preceded by
five other extinction events, including the almost unfathomable scale of the
demise of the great reptiles. Although the image of nature as in an abiding
steady state ignores the geological record of catastrophe, there tends to be
very long periods between such cataclysmic alterations, which contributes to
the inductive fallacy of a permanent homeostatic system. This may never have
been true, but the climate emergency dramatically reverses this assumption:
tipping points and rapid change are becoming normal events. Nonetheless,
our unhinged relationship to the earth is a question of etiquette, of ethics,
of finding a more sacred manner of wayfaring, of clear-­eyed compassion for
who and where we are.

III

Gary Snyder is one of our Elders:7 a Zen teacher and shaman poet8 with his
ear to the ground of the West Coast of Turtle Island, including its indigenous
stories, and who inspires as much by practicing another mode of dwelling on
earth as he does by his powerful poetic-­philosophical-­scientific articulation
of it. His poetic craft stems from the underlying mindfulness that sustains
it (NH, 86). In a way he continues to write as Chōfū, “Listen to the Wind”
or “Listen, Wind,” the Dharma name given him by his teacher ODA Sessō
Rōshi.9 I do not mean this is in any literal sense; in Zen discourse, what mat-
ters is not just what you say (although that, too, is very important), but also
the manner in which what you say allows you to show your mind, to exhibit
your manner of consciousness. “It’s how you contact the basics and the base
of yourself” (RW, 83).
Snyder told Gene Fowler in 1964 that there is not a strictly conscious rea-
son why he holds the “most archaic values on earth,” including “the fertility of
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 "At the Cross-Keys I shall find him, eh?" said Christian, getting off
his stool. "Good-day, Pink—good-day."
Christian went straight from the saddler's to Quorlen's, the Tory
printer's, with whom he had contrived a political spree. Quorlen was
a new man in Treby, who had so reduced the trade of Dow, the old
hereditary printer, that Dow had lapsed to Whiggery and Radicalism
and opinions in general, so far as they were contented to express
themselves in a small stock of types. Quorlen had brought his
Duffield wit with him, and insisted that religion and joking were the
handmaids of politics; on which principle he and Christian undertook
the joking, and left the religion to the rector. The joke at present in
question was a practical one. Christian, turning into the shop, merely
said, "I've found him out—give me the placards"; and, tucking a
thickish flat bundle, wrapped in a black glazed cotton bag, under his
arm, walked out into the dusk again.
"Suppose now," he said to himself, as he strode along—"suppose
there should be some secret to be got out of this old scamp, or
some notion that's as good as a secret to those who know how to
use it? That would be virtue rewarded. But I'm afraid the old tosspot
is not likely to be good for much. There's truth in wine, and there
may be some in gin and muddy beer; but whether it's truth worth
my knowing, is another question. I've got plenty of truth, but never
any that was worth a sixpence to me."
The Cross-Keys was a very old-fashioned "public"; its bar was a
big rambling kitchen, with an undulating brick floor; the small-paned
windows threw an interesting obscurity over the far-off dresser,
garnished with pewter and tin, and with large dishes that seemed to
speak of better times; the two settles were half pushed under the
wide-mouthed chimney; and the grate with its brick hobs, massive
iron crane, and various pothooks, suggested a generous plenty
possibly existent in all moods and tenses except the indicative
present. One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's
miseries is to go and look at their pleasures. The Cross-Keys had a
fungous-featured landlord and a yellow sickly landlady, with a large
white kerchief bound round her cap, as if her head had recently
required surgery; it had doctored ale, an odor of bad tobacco, and
remarkably strong cheese. It was not what Astræa, when come
back, might be expected to approve as the scene of ecstatic
enjoyment for the beings whose special prerogative it is to lift their
sublime faces toward heaven. Still, there was ample space on the
hearth—accommodation for narrative bagmen or boxmen—room for
a man to stretch his legs; his brain was not pressed upon by a white
wall within a yard of him, and the light did not stare in mercilessly
on bare ugliness, turning the fire to ashes. Compared with some
beerhouses of this more advanced period, the Cross-Keys of that day
presented a high standard of pleasure.
But though this venerable "public" had not failed to share in the
recent political excitement of drinking, the pleasures it offered were
not at this hour of the evening sought by a numerous company.
There were only three or four pipes being smoked by the firelight,
but it was enough for Christian when he found that one of these was
being smoked by the bill-sticker, whose large flat basket, stuffed with
placards, leaned near him against the settle. So splendid an
apparition as Christian was not a little startling at the Cross-Keys,
and was gazed at in expectant silence; but he was a stranger in
Pollard's End, and was taken for the highest style of traveller when
he declared that he was deucedly thirsty, ordered sixpenny worth of
gin and a large jug of water, and, putting a few drops of the spirit
into his own glass, invited Tommy Trounsem, who sat next him, to
help himself. Tommy was not slower than a shaking hand obliged
him to be in accepting this invitation. He was a tall, broad-
shouldered old fellow, who had once been good-looking; but his
cheeks and chest were both hollow now, and his limbs were
shrunken.
"You've got some bills there, master, eh?" said Christian, pointing
to the basket. "Is there an auction coming on?"
"Auction? no," said Tommy, with a gruff hoarseness, which was
the remnant of a jovial bass, and with an accent which differed from
the Trebian fitfully, as an early habit is wont to reassert itself. "I've
nought to do wi' auctions; I'm a pol'tical charicter. It's me am getting
Trounsem into Parl'ment."
"Trounsem, said he," the landlord observed, taking out his pipe
with a low laugh. "It's Transome, sir. Maybe you don't belong to this
part. It's the candidate 'ull do most for the workingmen, and's
proved it too, in the way o' being open-handed and wishing 'em to
enjoy themselves. If I'd twenty votes, I'd give one for Transome, and
I don't care who hears me."
The landlord peered out from his fungous cluster of features with
a beery confidence that the high figure of twenty had somehow
raised the hypothetic value of his vote.
"Spilkins, now," said Tommy, waving his hand to the landlord, "you
let one gentelman speak to another, will you? This genelman wants
to know about my bills. Does he, or doesn't he?"
"What then? I spoke according," said the landlord, mildly holding
his own.
"You're all very well, Spilkins," returned Tommy, "but y'aren't me. I
know what the bills are. It's public business. I'm none o' your
common bill-stickers, master; I've left off sticking up ten guineas
reward for a sheep-stealer, or low stuff like that. These are
Trounsem's bills; and I'm the rightful family, and so I give him a lift.
A Trounsem I am, and a Trounsem I'll be buried; and if Old Nick tries
to lay hold on me for poaching, I'll say, 'You be hanged for a lawyer,
Old Nick; every hare and pheasant on the Trounsem's land is mine';
and what rises the family, rises old Tommy; and we're going to get
into Parl'ment—that's the long and the short on't, master. And I'm
the head o' the family, and I stick the bills. There's Johnsons, and
Thomsons, and Jacksons, and Billsons; but I'm a Trounsem, I am.
What do you say to that, master?"
This appeal, accompanied by a blow on the table, while the
landlord winked at the company, was addressed to Christian, who
answered, with severe gravity—
"I say there isn't any work more honorable than bill-sticking."
 "No, no," said Tommy, wagging his head from side to side. "I
thought you'd come in to that. I thought you'd know better than say
contrairy. But I'll shake hands wi' you; I don't want to knock any
man's head off. I'm a good chap—a sound crock—an old family kep'
out o' my rights. I shall go to heaven, for all Old Nick."
As these celestial prospects might imply that a little extra gin was
beginning to tell on the bill-sticker, Christian wanted to lose no time
in arresting his attention. He laid his hand on Tommy's and spoke
emphatically.
"But I'll tell you what you bill-stickers are not up to. You should be
on the look-out when Debarry's side have stuck up fresh bills, and
go and paste yours over them. I know where there's a lot of
Debarry's bills now. Come along with me and I'll show you. We'll
paste them over, and then we'll come back and treat the company."
"Hooray!" said Tommy. "Let's be off then."
He was one of the thoroughly inured, originally hale drunkards,
and did not easily lose his head or legs or the ordinary amount of
method in his talk. Strangers often supposed that Tommy was tipsy
when he had only taken what he called "one blessed pint," chiefly
from that glorious contentment with himself and his adverse
fortunes which is not usually characteristic of the sober Briton. He
knocked the ashes out of his pipe, seized his paste-vessel and his
basket, and prepared to start with a satisfactory promise that he
could know what he was about.
The landlord and some others had confidently concluded that they
understood all about Christian now. He was a Transome's man, come
to see after the bill-sticking in Transome's interest. The landlord,
telling his yellow wife snappishly to open the door for the
gentleman, hoped soon to see him again.
"This is a Transome's house, sir," he observed, "in respect of
entertaining customers of that color. I do my duty as a publican,
which, if I know it, is to turn back no genelman's money. I say, give
every genelman a chance, and the more the merrier, in Parl'ment
and out of it. And if anybody says they want but two Parl'ment men,
I say it 'ud be better for trade if there was six of 'em, and voters
according."
"Ay, ay," said Christian; "you're a sensible man, landlord. You don't
mean to vote for Debarry, then, eh?"
"Not nohow," said the landlord, thinking that where negatives
were good the more you had of them the better.
As soon as the door had closed behind Christian and his new
companion Tommy said—
"Now, master, if you're to be my lantern, don't you be a Jacky
Lantern, which I take to mean one as leads you the wrong way. For
I'll tell you what—if you've had the luck to fall in wi' Tommy
Trounsem, don't you let him drop."
"No, no—to be sure not," said Christian. "Come along here. We'll
go to the Back Brewery wall first."
"No, no; don't you let me drop. Give me a shilling any day you
like, and I'll tell you more nor you'll hear from Spilkins in a week.
There isna many men like me. I carried pots for fifteen year off and
on—what do you think o' that now, for a man as might ha' lived up
there at Trounsem Park, and snared his own game? Which I'd ha'
done," said Tommy, wagging his head at Christian in the dimness
undisturbed by gas. "None o' your shooting for me—it's two to one
you'll miss. Snaring's more fishing-like. You bait your hook, and if it
isna the fishes' good-will to come, that's nothing again' the sporting
genelman. And that's what I say by snaring."
"But if you'd a right to the Transome estate, how was it you were
kept out of it, old boy? It was some foul shame or other, eh?"
"It's the law—that's what it is. You're a good sort of chap; I don't
mind telling you. There's folks born to property, and there's folks
catch hold on it; and the law's made for them to catch hold. I'm
pretty deep; I see a good deal further than Spilkins. There was Ned
Patch, the peddler, used to say to me, 'You canna read, Tommy,'
says he. 'No; thank you,' says I; 'I'm not going to crack my
headpiece to make myself as big a fool as you.' I was fond o' Ned.
Many's the pot we've had together."
 "I see well enough you're deep, Tommy. How came you to know
you were born to property?"
"It was the regester—the parish regester," said Tommy, with his
knowing wag of the head, "that shows as you was born. I allays felt
it inside me as I was somebody, and I could see other chaps thought
it on me too; and so one day at Littleshaw, where I kep' ferrets and
a little bit of a public, there come a fine man looking after me, and
walking me up and down wi' questions. And I made out from the
clerk as he'd been at the regester; and I gave the clerk a pot or two,
and he got it off our parson as the name o' Trounsem was a great
name hereabout. And I waits a bit for my fine man to come again.
Thinks I, if there's property wants a right owner, I shall be called for;
for I didn't know the law then. And I waited and waited, till I see'd
no fun i' waiting. So I parted with my public and my ferrets—for she
was dead a' ready, my wife was, and I hadn't no cumbrance. And off
I started a pretty long walk to this country-side, for I could walk for
a wager in them days."
"Ah! well, here we are at the Back Brewery wall. Put down your
paste and your basket now, old boy, and I'll help you. You paste, and
I'll give you the bills, and then you can go on talking."
Tommy obeyed automatically, for he was now carried away by the
rare opportunity of talking to a new listener, and was only eager to
go on with his story. As soon as his back was turned, and he was
stooping over his paste-pot, Christian, with quick adroitness,
exchanged the placards in his own bag for those in Tommy's basket.
Christian's placards had not been printed at Treby, but were a new
lot which had been sent from Duffield that very day—"highly spiced,"
Quorlen had said, "coming from a pen that was up to that sort of
thing." Christian had read the first of the sheaf, and supposed they
were all alike. He proceeded to hand one to Tommy and said—
"Here, old boy, paste this over the other. And so, when you got
into this country-side, what did you do?"
"Why, I put up at a good public and ordered the best, for I'd a bit
o' money in my pocket; and I axed about, and they said to me, if it's
Trounsem business you're after, you go to Lawyer Jermyn. And I
went; and says I, going along, he's maybe the fine man as walked
me up and down. But no such thing. I'll tell you what Lawyer Jermyn
was. He stands you there, and holds you away from him wi' a pole
three yard long. He stares at you, and says nothing, till you feel like
a Tomfool; and then he threats you to set the justice on you; and
then he's sorry for you, and hands you money, and preaches you a
sarmint, and tells you you're a poor man, and he'll give you a bit of
advice—and you'd better not be meddling wi' things belonging to the
law, else you be catched up in a big wheel and fly to bits. And I
went of a cold sweat, and I wished I might never come i' sight o'
Lawyer Jermyn again. But he says, if you keep i' this neighborhood,
behave yourself well, and I'll pertect you. I were deep enough, but
it's no use being deep, 'cause you can never know the law. And
there's times when the deepest fellow's most frightened."
"Yes, yes. There! Now for another placard. And so that was all?"
"All?" said Tommy, turning round and holding the paste-brush in
suspense. "Don't you be running too quick. Thinks I, 'I'll meddle no
more. I've got a bit o' money—I'll buy a basket, and be a pot-man.
It's a pleasant life. I shall live at publics and see the world, and pick
'quaintance, and get a chance penny.' But when I'd turned into the
Red Lion, and got myself warm again wi' a drop o' hot, something
jumps into my head. Thinks I, Tommy, you've done finely for
yourself: you're a rat as has broke up your house to take a journey,
and show yourself to a ferret. And then it jumps into my head: I'd
once two ferrets as turned on one another, and the little un killed the
big un. Says I to the landlady, 'Missus, could you tell me of a lawyer,'
says I, 'not very big or fine, but a second-size—a big-potato, like?'
'That I can,' says she; 'there's one now in the bar parlor.' 'Be so kind
as bring us together,' says I. And she cries out—I think I hear her
now—'Mr. Johnson!' And what do you think?"
At this crisis in Tommy's story the gray clouds, which had been
gradually thinning, opened sufficiently to let down the sudden
moonlight, and show his poor battered old figure and face in the
attitude and with the expression of a narrator sure of the coming
effect on his auditor; his body and neck stretched a little on one
side, and his paste-brush held out with an alarming intention of
tapping Christian's coat-sleeve at the right moment. Christian started
to a safe distance, and said—
"It's wonderful. I can't tell what to think."
"Then never do you deny Old Nick," said Tommy, with solemnity.
"I've believed in him more ever since. Who was Johnson? Why,
Johnson was the fine man as had walked me up and down with
questions. And I out with it to him then and there. And he speaks
me civil, and says, 'Come away wi' me, my good fellow.' And he told
me a deal o' law. And he says, 'Whether you're a Tommy Trounsem
or no, it's no good to you, but only to them as have got hold o' the
property. If you was a Tommy Trounsem twenty times over, it 'ud be
no good, for the law's bought you out; and your life's no good, only
to them as have catched hold o' the property. The more you live, the
more they'll stick in. Not as they want you now,' says he—'you're no
good to anybody, and you might howl like a dog foriver, and the law
'ud take no notice on you.' Says Johnson, 'I'm doing a kind thing by
you to tell you. For that's the law.' And if you want to know the law,
master, you ask Johnson. I heard 'em say after, as he was an
understrapper at Jermyn's. I've never forgot it from that day to this.
But I saw clear enough, as if the law hadn't been again' me, the
Trounsem estate 'ud ha' been mine. But folks are fools hereabouts,
and I've left off talking. The more you tell 'em the truth, the more
they'll niver believe you. And I went and bought my basket and the
pots, and——"
"Come then, fire away," said Christian. "Here's another placard."
"I'm getting a bit dry, master."
"Well, then, make haste, and you'll have something to drink all the
sooner."
Tommy turned to his work again, and Christian, continuing his
help, said, "And how long has Mr. Jermyn been employing you?"
"Oh, no particular time—off and on; but a week or two ago he
sees me upo' the road, and speaks to me uncommon civil, and tells
me to go up to his office and he'll give me employ. And I was
noways unwilling to stick the bills to get the family into Parl'ment.
For there's no man can help the law. And the family's the family,
whether you carry pots or no. Master, I'm uncommon dry; my head's
a-turning round; it's talking so long on end."
The unwonted excitement of poor Tommy's memory was
producing a reaction.
"Well, Tommy," said Christian, who had just made a discovery
among the placards which altered the bent of his thoughts, "you
may go back to the Cross-Keys now, if you like; here's a half-crown
for you to spend handsomely. I can't go back there myself just yet;
but you may give my respects to Spilkins, and mind you paste the
rest of the bills early to-morrow morning."
"Ay, ay. But don't you believe too much i' Spilkins," said Tommy,
pocketing the half-crown, and showing his gratitude by giving this
advice—"he's no harm much—but weak. He thinks he's at the
bottom o' things because he scores you up. But I bear him no ill-will.
Tommy Trounsem's a good chap; and any day you like to give me
half-a-crown, I'll tell you the same story over again. Not now; I'm
dry. Come, help me up wi' these things; you're a younger chap than
me. Well, I'll tell Spilkins you'll come again another day."
The moonlight, which had lit up poor Tommy's oratorical attitude,
had served to light up for Christian the print of the placards. He had
expected the copies to be various, and had turned them half over at
different depths of the sheaf before drawing out those he offered to
the bill-sticker. Suddenly the clearer light had shown him on one of
them a name which was just then especially interesting to him, and
all the more when occurring in a placard intended to dissuade the
electors of North Loamshire from voting for the heir of the
Transomes. He hastily turned over the bills that preceded and
succeeded, that he might draw out and carry away all of this
pattern; for it might turn out to be wiser for him not to contribute to
the publicity of handbills which contained allusions to Bycliffe versus
Transome. There were about a dozen of them; he pressed them
together and thrust them into his pocket, returning all the rest to
Tommy's basket. To take away this dozen might not be to prevent
similar bills from being posted up elsewhere, but he had reason to
believe that these were all of the same kind which had been sent to
Treby from Duffield.
Christian's interest in his practical joke had died out like a morning
rushlight. Apart from this discovery in the placards, old Tommy's
story had some indications in it that were worth pondering over.
Where was that well-informed Johnson now? Was he still an
understrapper of Jermyn's?
With this matter in his thoughts, Christian only turned in hastily at
Quorlen's, threw down the black bag which contained the captured
Radical handbills, said he had done the job, and hurried back to the
Manor that he might study his problem.
 CHAPTER XXIX.

I doe believe that, as the gall has severall receptacles in

several creatures, soe there's scarce any creature but hath that
emunctorye somewhere.—Sir Thomas Browne.

Fancy what a game at chess would be if all the chessmen had

passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning: if you were
not only uncertain about your adversary's men, but a little uncertain
about your own; if your knight could shuffle himself on to a new
square by the sly; if your bishop, in disgust at your castling, could
wheedle your pawns out of their places; and if your pawns, hating
you because they are pawns, could make away from their appointed
posts that you might get checkmate on a sudden. You might be the
longest-headed of deductive reasoners, and yet you might be beaten
by your own pawns. You would be especially likely to be beat, if you
depended arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and
regarded your passionate pieces with contempt.
Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with the game a man
has to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for his
instruments. He thinks himself sagacious, perhaps, because he trusts
no bond except that of self-interest: but the only self-interest he can
safely rely on is what seems to be such to the mind he would use or
govern. Can he ever be sure of knowing this?
Matthew Jermyn was under no misgivings as to the fealty of
Johnson. He had "been the making of Johnson"; and this seems to
many men as a reason for expecting devotion, in spite of the fact
that they themselves, though very fond of their own persons and
lives, are not at all devoted to the Maker they believe in. Johnson
was a most serviceable subordinate. Being a man who aimed at
respectability, a family man, who had a good church-pew, subscribed
for engravings of banquet pictures where there were portraits of
political celebrities, and wished his children to be more
unquestionably genteel than their father, he presented all the more
numerous handles of worldly motive by which a judicious superior
might get a hold on him. But this useful regard to respectability had
its inconvenience in relation to such a superior: it was a mark of
some vanity and some pride, which, if they were not touched just in
the right handling-place, were liable to become raw and sensitive.
Jermyn was aware of Johnson's weaknesses, and thought he had
flattered them sufficiently. But on the point of knowing when we are
disagreeable, our human nature is fallible. Our lavender-water, our
smiles, our compliments, and other polite falsities, are constantly
offensive, when in the very nature of them they can only be meant
to attract admiration and regard. Jermyn had often been
unconsciously disagreeable to Johnson, over and above the constant
offence of being an ostentatious patron. He would never let Johnson
dine with his wife and daughters; he would not himself dine at
Johnson's house when he was in town. He often did what was
equivalent to poohpoohing his conversation by not even appearing
to listen, and by suddenly cutting it short with a query on a new
subject. Jermyn was able and politic enough to have commanded a
great deal of success in his life, but he could not help being
handsome, arrogant, fond of being heard, indisposed to any kind of
comradeship, amorous and bland toward women, cold and self-
contained toward men. You will hear very strong denials that an
attorney's being handsome could enter into the dislike he excited;
but conversation consists a good deal in the denial of what is true.
From the British point of view masculine beauty is regarded very
much as it is in the drapery business:—as good solely for the fancy
department—for young noblemen, artists, poets, and the clergy.
Some one who, like Mr. Lingon, was disposed to revile Jermyn
(perhaps it was Sir Maximus), had called him "a cursed, sleek,
handsome, long-winded, overbearing sycophant"; epithets which
expressed, rather confusedly, the mingled character of the dislike he
excited. And serviceable John Johnson, himself sleek, and mindful
about his broadcloth and his cambric fronts, had what he considered
"spirit" enough within him to feel that dislike of Jermyn gradually
gathering force through years of obligation and subjection, till it had
become an actuating motive disposed to use an opportunity; if it did
not watch for one.
It was not this motive, however, but rather the ordinary course of
business, which accounted for Johnson's playing a double part as an
electioneering agent. What men do in elections is not to be classed
either among sins or marks of grace; it would be profane to include
business in religion, and conscience refers to failure, not to success.
Still, the sense of being galled by Jermyn's harness was an additional
reason for cultivating all relations that were independent of him; and
pique at Harold Transome's behavior to him in Jermyn's office
perhaps gave all the more zest to Johnson's use of his pen and ink
when he wrote a handbill in the service of Garstin, and Garstin's
incomparable agent, Putty, full of innuendoes against Harold
Transome, as a descendant of the Durfey-Transomes. It is a natural
subject of self-congratulation to a man, when special knowledge,
gained long ago without any forecast, turns out to afford a special
inspiration in the present; and Johnson felt a new pleasure in the
consciousness that he of all people in the world next to Jermyn had
the most intimate knowledge of the Transome affairs. Still better—
some of these affairs were secrets of Jermyn's. If in an
uncomplimentary spirit he might have been called Jermyn's "man of
straw," it was a satisfaction to know that the unreality of the man
John Johnson was confined to his appearance in annuity deeds, and
that elsewhere he was solid, locomotive, and capable of
remembering anything for his own pleasure and benefit. To act with
doubleness towards a man whose conduct was double, was so near
an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner
name than diplomacy.
By such causes it came to pass that Christian held in his hands a
bill in which Jermyn was playfully alluded to as Mr. German Cozen,
who won games by clever shuffling and odd tricks without any
honor, and backed Durfey's crib against Bycliffe—in which it was
adroitly implied that the so-called head of the Transomes was only
the tail of the Durfeys—and that some said the Durfeys would have
died out and left their nest empty if it had not been for their German
Cozen.
Johnson had not dared to use any recollections except such as
might credibly exist in other minds besides his own. In the truth of
the case, no one but himself had the prompting to recall these out-
worn scandals; but it was likely enough that such foul-winged things
should be revived by election heats for Johnson to escape all
suspicion.
Christian could gather only dim and uncertain inferences from this
flat irony and heavy joking; but one chief thing was clear to him. He
had been right in his conjecture that Jermyn's interest about Bycliffe
had its source in some claim of Bycliffe's on the Transome property.
And then, there was that story of the old bill-sticker's, which, closely
considered, indicated that the right of the present Transomes
depended, or, at least, had depended on the continuance of some
other lives. Christian in his time had gathered enough legal notions
to be aware that possession by one man sometimes depended on
the life of another; that a man might sell his own interest in
property, and the interest of his descendants, while a claim on that
property would still remain to some one else than the purchaser,
supposing the descendants became extinct, and the interests they
had sold were at an end. But under what conditions the claim might
be valid or void in any particular case, was all darkness to him.
Suppose Bycliffe had any such claim on the Transome estates: how
was Christian to know whether at the present moment it was worth
anything more than a bit of rotten parchment? Old Tommy Trounsem
had said that Johnson knew all about it. But even if Johnson were
still above-ground—and all Johnsons are mortal—he might still be an
understrapper of Jermyn's, in which case his knowledge would be on
the wrong side of the hedge for the purposes of Henry Scaddon. His
immediate care must be to find out all he could about Johnson. He
blamed himself for not having questioned Tommy further while he
had him at command; but on this head the bill-sticker could hardly
know more than the less dilapidated denizens of Treby.
Now it had happened that during the weeks in which Christian had
been at work trying to solve the enigma of Jermyn's interest about
Bycliffe, Johnson's mind also had been somewhat occupied with
suspicion and conjecture as to new information on the subject of the
old Bycliffe claims which Jermyn intended to conceal from him. The
letter which, after his interview with Christian, Jermyn had written
with a sense of perfect safety to his faithful ally Johnson, was, as we
know, written to a Johnson who had found his self-love incompatible
with that faithfulness of which it was supposed to be the foundation.
Anything that the patron felt it inconvenient for his obliged friend
and servant to know, became by that very fact an object of peculiar
curiosity. The obliged friend and servant secretly doted on his
patron's inconvenience, provided that he himself did not share it;
and conjecture naturally became active.
Johnson's legal imagination, being very differently furnished from
Christian's, was at no loss to conceive conditions under which there
might arise a new claim on the Transome estates. He had before him
the whole history of the settlement of those estates made a hundred
years ago by John Justus Transome, entailing them, whilst in his
possession, on his son Thomas and his heirs-male, with remainder to
the Bycliffes in fee. He knew that Thomas, son of John Justus,
proving a prodigal, had, without the knowledge of his father, the
tenant in possession, sold his own and his descendants' rights to a
lawyer-cousin named Durfey; that, therefore, the title of the Durfey-
Transomes, in spite of that old Durfey's tricks to show the contrary,
depended solely on the purchase of the "base fee" thus created by
Thomas Transome; and that the Bycliffes were the "remainder men"
who might fairly oust the Durfey-Transomes if ever the issue of the
prodigal Thomas went clean out of existence, and ceased to
represent a right which he had bargained away from them.
Johnson, as Jermyn's subordinate, had been closely cognizant of
the details concerning the suit instituted by successive Bycliffes, of
whom Maurice Christian Bycliffe was the last, on the plea that the
extinction of Thomas Transome's line had actually come to pass—a
weary suit, which had eaten into the fortunes of two families, and
had only made the cankerworms fat. The suit had closed with the
death of Maurice Christian Bycliffe in prison; but before his death,
Jermyn's exertions to get evidence that there was still issue of
Thomas Transome's line surviving, as a security of the Durfey title,
had issued in the discovery of a Thomas Transome at Littleshaw, in
Stonyshire, who was the representative of the pawned inheritance.
The death of Maurice had made this discovery useless—had made it
seem the wiser part to say nothing about it; and the fact had
remained a secret known only to Jermyn and Johnson. No other
Bycliffe was known or believed to exist, and the Durfey-Transomes
might be considered safe, unless—yes, there was an "unless" which
Johnson could conceive: an heir or heiress of the Bycliffes—if such a
personage turned out to be in existence—might sometime raise a
new and valid claim when once informed that wretched old Tommy
Trounsem the bill-sticker, tottering drunkenly on the edge of the
grave, was the last issue remaining above-ground from that
dissolute Thomas who played his Esau part a century before. While
the poor old bill-sticker breathed, the Durfey-Transomes could legally
keep their possession in spite of a possible Bycliffe proved real; but
not when the parish had buried the bill-sticker.
Still, it is one thing to conceive conditions, and another to see any
chance of proving their existence. Johnson at present had no
glimpse of such a chance; and even if he ever gained the glimpse,
he was not sure that he should ever make any use of it. His
enquiries of Medwin, in obedience to Jermyn's letter, had extracted
only a negative as to any information possessed by the lawyers of
Bycliffe concerning a marriage, or expectation of offspring on his
part. But Johnson felt not the less stung by curiosity to know what
Jermyn had found out: that he had found something in relation to a
possible Bycliffe, Johnson felt pretty sure. And he thought with
satisfaction that Jermyn could not hinder him from knowing what he
already knew about Thomas Transome's issue. Many things might
occur to alter his policy and give a new value to facts. Was it certain
that Jermyn would always be fortunate?
When greed and unscrupulousness exhibit themselves on a grand
historical scale, and there is a question of peace or war or amicable
partition, it often occurs that gentlemen of high diplomatic talents
have their minds bent on the same object from different points of
view. Each, perhaps, is thinking of a certain duchy or province, with
a view to arranging the ownership in such a way as shall best serve
the purposes of the gentleman with high diplomatic talents in whom
each is more especially interested. But these select minds in high
office can never miss their aims from ignorance of each other's
existence or whereabouts. Their high titles may be learned even by
common people from every pocket almanac.
But with meaner diplomats, who might be mutually useful, such
ignorance is often obstructive. Mr. John Johnson and Mr. Christian,
otherwise Mr. Scaddon, might have had a concentration of purpose
and an ingenuity of device fitting them to make a figure in the
parcelling of Europe, and yet they might never have met, simply
because Johnson knew nothing of Christian, and because Christian
did not know where to find Johnson.
 CHAPTER XXX.

His nature is too noble for the world:

He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for his power to thunder. His heart's his
mouth;
What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent;
And, being angry, doth forget that ever
He heard the name of death.—Coriolanus.

Christian and Johnson did meet, however, by means that were

quite incalculable. The incident which brought them into
communication was due to Felix Holt, who of all men in the world
had the least affinity either for the industrious or the idle parasite.
Mr. Lyon had urged Felix to go to Duffield on the fifteenth of
December to witness the nomination of the candidates for North
Loamshire. The minister wished to hear what took place; and the
pleasure of gratifying him helped to outweigh some opposing
reasons.
"I shall get into a rage at something or other," Felix had said. "I've
told you one of my weak points. Where I have any particular
business, I must incur the risks my nature brings. But I've no
particular business at Duffield. However, I'll make a holiday and go.
By dint of seeing folly, I shall get lessons in patience."
The weak point to which Felix referred was his liability to be
carried completely out of his own mastery by indignant anger. His
strong health, his renunciation of selfish claims, his habitual
preoccupation with large thoughts and with purposes independent of
everyday casualties, secured him a fine and even temper, free from
moodiness or irritability. He was full of long-suffering toward his
unwise mother, who "pressed him daily with her words and urged
him, so that his soul was vexed;" he had chosen to fill his days in a
way that required the utmost exertion of patience, that required
those little rill-like outflowings of goodness which in minds of great
energy must be fed from deep sources of thought and passionate
devotedness. In this way his energies served to make him gentle;
and now, in this twenty-sixth year of his life, they had ceased to
make him angry, except in the presence of something that roused
his deep indignation. When once exasperated, the passionateness of
his nature threw off the yoke of a long-trained consciousness in
which thought and emotion had been more and more completely
mingled, and concentrated itself in a rage as ungovernable as that of
boyhood. He was thoroughly aware of the liability, and knew that in
such circumstances he could not answer for himself. Sensitive people
with feeble frames have often the same sort of fury within them; but
they are themselves shattered, and shatter nothing. Felix had a
terrible arm: he knew that he was dangerous; and he avoided the
conditions that might cause him exasperation as he would have
avoided intoxicating drinks if he had been in danger of
intemperance.
The nomination-day was a great epoch of successful trickery, or, to
speak in a more parliamentary manner, of war-stratagem, on the
part of skilful agents. And Mr. Johnson had his share of inward
chuckling and self-approval, as one who might justly expect
increasing renown, and be some day in as general request as the
great Putty himself. To have the pleasure and the praise of
electioneering ingenuity, and also to get paid for it, without too
much anxiety whether the ingenuity will achieve its ultimate end,
perhaps gives to some select persons a sort of satisfaction in their
superiority to their more agitated fellow-men that is worthy to be
classed with those generous enjoyments of having the truth chiefly
to yourself, and of seeing others in danger of drowning while you are
high and dry, which seem to have been regarded as unmixed
privileges by Lucretius and Lord Bacon.
 One of Mr. Johnson's great successes was this. Spratt, the hated
manager of the Sproxton Colliery, in careless confidence that the
colliers and other laborers under him would follow his orders, had
provided carts to carry some loads of voteless enthusiasm to Duffield
on behalf of Garstin; enthusiasm which, being already paid for by
the recognized benefit of Garstin's existence as a capitalist with a
share in the Sproxton mines, was not to cost much in the form of
treating. A capitalist was held worthy of pious honor as the cause
why workingmen existed. But Mr. Spratt did not sufficiently consider
that a cause which was to be proved by argument or testimony is
not an object of passionate devotion to colliers: a visible cause of
beer acts on them much more strongly. And even if there had been
any love of the far-off Garstin, hatred of the too immediate Spratt
would have been the stronger motive. Hence Johnson's calculations,
made long ago with Chubb, the remarkable publican, had been well
founded, and there had been diligent care to supply treating at
Duffield in the name of Transome. After the election was over it was
not improbable that there would be much friendly joking between
Putty and Johnson as to the success of this trick against Putty's
employer, and Johnson would be conscious of rising in the opinion of
his celebrated senior.
For the show of hands and the cheering, the hustling and the
pelting, the roaring and the hissing, the hard hits with small missiles
and the soft hits with small jokes, were strong enough on the side of
Transome to balance the similar "demonstrations" for Garstin, even
with the Debarry interest in his favor. And the inconvenient presence
of Spratt was easily got rid of by a dexterously-managed accident,
which sent him bruised and limping from the scene of action. Mr.
Chubb had never before felt so thoroughly that the occasion was up
to a level with his talents, while the clear daylight in which his virtue
would appear when at the election he voted, as his duty to himself
bound him, for Garstin only, gave him thorough repose of
conscience.
Felix Holt was the only person looking on at the senseless
exhibitions of this nomination-day, who knew from the beginning the
history of the trick with the Sproxton men. He had been aware all
along that the treating at Chubb's had been continued, and that so
far Harold Transome's promise had produced no good fruits; and
what he was observing to-day, as he watched the uproarious crowd,
convinced him that the whole scheme would be carried out just as if
he had never spoken about it. He could be fair enough to Transome
to allow that he might have wished, and yet have been unable, with
his notions of success, to keep his promise; and his bitterness
toward the candidate only took the form of contemptuous pity; for
Felix was not sparing in his contempt for men who put their inward
honor in pawn by seeking the prizes of the world. His scorn fell too
readily on the fortunate. But when he saw Johnson passing to and
fro, and speaking to Jermyn on the hustings, he felt himself getting
angry, and jumped off the wheel of the stationary cart on which he
was mounted, that he might no longer be in sight of this man,
whose vitiating cant had made his blood hot and his fingers tingle on
the first day of encountering him at Sproxton. It was a little too
exasperating to look at this pink-faced rotund specimen of
prosperity, to witness the power for evil that lay in his vulgar cant,
backed by another man's money, and to know that such stupid
iniquity flourished the flags of Reform, and Liberalism, and justice to
the needy. While the roaring and the scuffling were still going on,
Felix, with his thick stick in his hand, made his way through the
crowd, and walked on through the Duffield streets, till he came out
on a grassy suburb, where the houses surrounded a small common.
Here he walked about in the breezy air, and ate his bread and
apples, telling himself that this angry haste of his about evils that
could only be remedied slowly, could be nothing else than
obstructive, and might some day—he saw it so clearly that the
thought seemed like a presentiment—be obstructive of his own
work.
"Not to waste energy, to apply force where it would tell, to do
small work close at hand, not waiting for speculative chances of
heroism, but preparing for them"—these were the rules he had been
constantly urging on himself. But what could be a greater waste than
to beat a scoundrel who had law and opodeldoc at command? After
this meditation, Felix felt cool and wise enough to return into the
town, not, however, intending to deny himself the satisfaction of a
few pungent words wherever there was place for them. Blows are
sarcasms turned stupid: wit is a form of force that leaves the limbs
at rest.
Anything that could be called a crowd was no longer to be seen.
The show of hands having been pronounced to be in favor of
Debarry and Transome, and a poll having been demanded for
Garstin, the business of the day might be considered at an end. But
in the street where the hustings were erected, and where the great
hotels stood, there were many groups, as well as strollers and
steady walkers to and fro. Men in superior greatcoats and well-
brushed hats were awaiting with more or less impatience an
important dinner, either at the Crown, which was Debarry's house, or
at the Three Cranes, which was Garstin's, or at the Fox and Hounds,
which was Transome's. Knots of sober retailers, who had already
dined, were to be seen at some shop-doors; men in very shabby
coats and miscellaneous head-coverings, inhabitants of Duffield and
not county voters, were lounging about in dull silence, or listening,
some to a grimy man in a flannel shirt, hatless and with turbid red
hair, who was insisting on political points with much more ease than
had seemed to belong to the gentlemen speakers on the hustings,
and others to a Scotch vendor of articles useful to sell, whose
unfamiliar accent seemed to have a guarantee of truth in it wanting
as an association with everyday English. Some rough-looking pipe-
smokers, or distinguished cigar-smokers, chose to walk up and down
in isolation and silence. But the majority of those who had shown a
burning interest in the nomination had disappeared, and cockades
no longer studded a close-pressed crowd, like, and also very unlike,
meadow-flowers among the grass. The street pavement was
strangely painted with fragments of perishable missiles ground flat
under heavy feet: but the workers were resting from their toil, and
the buzz and tread and the fitfully discernible voices seemed like
stillness to Felix after the roar with which the wide space had been
filled when he left it.
The group round the speaker in the flannel shirt stood at the
corner of a side-street, and the speaker himself was elevated by the
head and shoulders above his hearers, not because he was tall, but
because he stood on a projecting stone. At the opposite corner of
the turning was the great inn of the Fox and Hounds, and this was
the ultra-Liberal quarter of the High street. Felix was at once
attracted by this group; he liked the look of the speaker, whose bare
arms were powerfully muscular, though he had the pallid complexion
of a man who lives chiefly amidst the heat of furnaces. He was
leaning against the dark stone building behind him with folded arms,
the grimy paleness of his shirt and skin standing out in high relief
against the dark stone building behind him. He lifted up one
forefinger, and marked his emphasis with it as he spoke. His voice
was high and not strong, but Felix recognized the fluency and the
method of an habitual preacher or lecturer.
"It's the fallacy of all monopolists," he was saying. "We know what
monopolists are: men who want to keep a trade all to themselves,
under the pretence that they'll furnish the public with a better
article. We know what that comes to: in some countries a poor man
can't afford to buy a spoonful of salt, and yet there's salt enough in
the world to pickle every living thing in it. That's the sort of benefit
monopolists do to mankind. And these are the men who tell us we're
to let politics alone; they'll govern us better without our knowing
anything about it. We must mind our business; we are ignorant;
we've no time to study great questions. But I tell them this: the
greatest question in the world is, how to give every man a man's
share in what goes on in life——"
"Hear, hear!" said Felix in his sonorous voice, which seemed to
give a new impressiveness to what the speaker had said. Every one
looked at him: the well-washed face and its educated expression
along with a dress more careless than that of most well-to-do
workmen on a holiday, made his appearance strangely arresting.
 "Not a pig's share," the speaker went on, "not a horse's, not the
share of a machine fed with oil only to make it work and nothing
else. It isn't a man's share just to mind your pin-making, or your
glass-blowing, and higgle about your own wages, and bring up your
family to be ignorant sons of ignorant fathers, and no better
prospect; that's a slave's share; we want a freeman's share, and that
is to think and speak and act about what concerns us all, and see
whether these fine gentlemen who undertake to govern us are doing
the best they can for us. They've got the knowledge, say they. Very
well, we've got the wants. There's many a one would be idle if
hunger didn't pinch him; but the stomach sets us to work. There's a
fable told where the nobles are the belly and the people the
members. But I make another sort of fable. I say, we are the belly
that feels the pinches, and we'll set these aristocrats, these great
people who call themselves our brains, to work at some way of
satisfying us a bit better. The aristocrats are pretty sure to try and
govern for their own benefit; but how are we to be sure they'll try
and govern for ours? They must be looked after, I think, like other
workmen. We must have what we call inspectors, to see whether the
work's well done for us. We want to send our inspectors to
Parliament. Well, they say—you've got the Reform Bill; what more
can you want? Send your inspectors. But I say, the Reform Bill is a
trick—it's nothing but swearing-in special constables to keep the
aristocrats safe in their monopoly; it's bribing some of the people
with votes to make them hold their tongues about giving votes to
the rest. I say, if a man doesn't beg or steal, but works for his bread,
the poorer and the more miserable he is, the more he'd need have a
vote to send an inspector to Parliament—else the man who is worst
off is likely to be forgotten; and I say, he's the man who ought to be
first remembered. Else what does their religion mean? Why do they
build churches and endow them that their sons may get paid well for
preaching a Saviour, and making themselves as little like Him as can
be? If I want to believe in Jesus Christ, I must shut my eyes for fear
I should see a parson. And what's a bishop? A bishop's a person
dressed up, who sits in the House of Lords to help and throw out
Reform Bills. And because it's hard to get anything in the shape of a
man to dress himself up like that, and do such work, they have to
give him a palace for it, and plenty of thousands a-year. And then
they cry out—'The Church is in danger,'—'the poor man's Church.'
And why is it the poor man's Church? Because he can have a seat
for nothing. I think it is for nothing; for it would be hard to tell what
he gets by it. If the poor man had a vote in the matter, I think he'd
choose a different sort of Church to what that is. But do you think
the aristocrats will ever alter it, if the belly doesn't pinch them? Not
they. It's part of their monopoly. They'll supply us with our religion
like everything else, and get a profit on it. They'll give us plenty of
heaven. We may have land there. That's the sort of religion they like
—a religion that gives us workingmen heaven, and nothing else. But
we'll offer to change with them. We'll give them back some of their
heaven, and take it out in something for us and our children in this
world. They don't seem to care so much about heaven themselves
till they feel the gout very bad; but you won't get them to give up
anything else, if you don't pinch 'em for it. And to pinch them
enough, we must get the suffrage, we must get votes, that we may
send the men to Parliament who will do our work for us; and we
must have Parliament dissolved every year, that we may change our
man if he doesn't do what we want him to do; and we must have
the country divided so that the little kings of the counties can't do as
they like, but must be shaken up in one bag with us. I say, if we
workingmen are ever to get a man's share, we must have universal
suffrage, and annual Parliaments, and the vote by ballot, and
electoral districts."
"No!—something else before all that," said Felix, again startling
the audience into looking at him. But the speaker glanced coldly at
him and went on.
"That's what Sir Francis Burdett went in for fifteen years ago; and
it's the right thing for us, if it was Tomfool who went in for it. You
must lay hold of such handles as you can. I don't believe much in
Liberal aristocrats; but if there's any fine carved gold-headed stick of
an aristocrat will make a broomstick of himself, I'll lose no time but
I'll sweep with him. And that's what I think about Transome. And if
any of you have acquaintance among county voters, give 'em a hint
that you wish 'em to vote for Transome."
At the last word, the speaker stepped down from his slight
eminence, and walked away rapidly, like a man whose leisure was
exhausted, and who must go about his business. But he had left an
appetite in his audience for further oratory, and one of them seemed
to express a general sentiment as he hurried immediately to Felix,
and said, "Come, sir, what do you say?"
Felix did at once what he would very likely have done without
being asked—he stepped on the stone, and took off his cap by an
instinctive prompting that always led him to speak uncovered. The
effect of his figure in relief against the stone background was unlike
that of the previous speaker. He was considerably taller, his head
and neck were more massive, and the expression of his mouth and
eyes was something very different from the mere acuteness and
rather hard-lipped antagonism of the trades-union man. Felix Holt's
face had the look of habitual meditative abstraction from objects of
mere personal vanity or desire, which is the peculiar stamp of
culture, and makes a very roughly-cut face worthy to be called "the
human face divine." Even lions and dogs know a distinction between
men's glances; and doubtless those Duffield men, in the expectation
with which they looked up at Felix, were unconsciously influenced by
the grandeur of his full yet firm mouth, and the calm clearness of his
gray eyes, which were somehow unlike what they were accustomed
to see along with an old brown velveteen coat, and an absence of
chin-propping. When he began to speak, the contrast of voice was
still stronger than that of appearance. The man in the flannel shirt
had not been heard—had probably not cared to be heard—beyond
the immediate group of listeners. But Felix at once drew the
attention of persons comparatively at a distance.
"In my opinion," he said, almost the moment after he was
addressed, "that was a true word spoken by your friend when he
said the great question was how to give every man a man's share in
life. But I think he expects voting to do more toward it than I do. I
want the workingmen to have power. I'm a workingman myself, and
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