He lived on the bank of a mighty river, broad and deep, which was always silently rolling
on to a vast undiscovered ocean. It had rolled on, ever since the world began. It had
changed its course sometimes, and turned into new channels, leaving its old ways dry and
barren; but it had ever been upon the flow, and ever was to flow until Time should be no
more. Against its strong, unfathomable stream, nothing made head. No living creature, no
flower, no leaf, no particle of animate or inanimate existence, ever strayed back from the
undiscovered ocean. The tide of the river set resistlessly towards it; and the tide never
stopped, any more than the earth stops in its circling round the sun.
He lived in a busy place, and he worked very hard to live. He had no hope of ever being
rich enough to live a month without hard work, but he was quite content, GOD knows, to
labour with a cheerful will. He was one of an immense family, all of whose sons and
daughters gained their daily bread by daily work, prolonged from their rising up betimes
until their lying down at night. Beyond this destiny he had no prospect, and he sought
none.
There was over-much drumming, trumpeting, and speech-making, in the neighbourhood
where he dwelt; but he had nothing to do with that. Such clash and uproar came from the
Bigwig family, at the unaccountable proceedings of which race, he marvelled much.
They set up the strangest statues, in iron, marble, bronze, and brass, before his door; and
darkened his house with the legs and tails of uncouth images of horses. He wondered
what it all meant, smiled in a rough good-humoured way he had, and kept at his hard
work.
The Bigwig family (composed of all the stateliest people thereabouts, and all the noisiest)
had undertaken to save him the trouble of thinking for himself, and to manage him and
his affairs. "Why truly," said he, "I have little time upon my hands; and if you will be so
good as to take care of me, in return for the money I pay over"--for the Bigwig family
were not above his money--"I shall be relieved and much obliged, considering that you
know best." Hence the drumming, trumpeting, and speech-making, and the ugly images
of horses which he was expected to fall down and worship.
"I don't understand all this," said he, rubbing his furrowed brow confusedly. "But it HAS
a meaning, maybe, if I could find it out."
"It means," returned the Bigwig family, suspecting something of what he said, "honour
and glory in the highest, to the highest merit."
"Oh!" said he. And he was glad to hear that.
But, when he looked among the images in iron, marble, bronze, and brass, he failed to
find a rather meritorious countryman of his, once the son of a Warwickshire wool-dealer,
or any single countryman whomsoever of that kind. He could find none of the men whose
