NOBODY'S STORY
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
knowledge had rescued him and his children from terrific and
disfiguring disease, whose boldness had raised his forefathers from
the condition of serfs, whose wise fancy had opened a new and high
existence to the humblest, whose skill had filled the working man's
world with accumulated wonders. Whereas, he did find others whom he
knew no good of, and even others whom he knew much ill of.
"Humph!" said he. "I don't quite understand it."
So, he went home, and sat down by his fireside to get it out of his
mind.
Now, his fireside was a bare one, all hemmed in by blackened
streets; but it was a precious place to him. The hands of his wife
were hardened with toil, and she was old before her time; but she
was dear to him. His children, stunted in their growth, bore traces
of unwholesome nurture; but they had beauty in his sight. Above all
other things, it was an earnest desire of this man's soul that his
children should be taught. "If I am sometimes misled," said he,
"for want of knowledge, at least let them know better, and avoid my
mistakes. If it is hard to me to reap the harvest of pleasure and
instruction that is stored in books, let it be easier to them."
But, the Bigwig family broke out into violent family quarrels
concerning what it was lawful to teach to this man's children. Some
of the family insisted on such a thing being primary and
indispensable above all other things; and others of the family
insisted on such another thing being primary and indispensable above
all other things; and the Bigwig family, rent into factions, wrote
pamphlets, held convocations, delivered charges, orations, and all
varieties of discourses; impounded one another in courts Lay and
courts Ecclesiastical; threw dirt, exchanged pummelings, and fell
together by the ears in unintelligible animosity. Meanwhile, this
man, in his short evening snatches at his fireside, saw the demon
Ignorance arise there, and take his children to itself. He saw his
daughter perverted into a heavy, slatternly drudge; he saw his son
go moping down the ways of low sensuality, to brutality and crime;
he saw the dawning light of intelligence in the eyes of his babies
so changing into cunning and suspicion, that he could have rather
wished them idiots.
"I don't understand this any the better," said he; "but I think it
cannot be right. Nay, by the clouded Heaven above me, I protest
against this as my wrong!"
Becoming peaceable again (for his passion was usually short-lived,
and his nature kind), he looked about him on his Sundays and
holidays, and he saw how much monotony and weariness there was, and
thence how drunkenness arose with all its train of ruin. Then he
appealed to the Bigwig family, and said, "We are a labouring people,
and I have a glimmering suspicion in me that labouring people of
whatever condition were made--by a higher intelligence than yours,
as I poorly understand it--to be in need of mental refreshment and
recreation. See what we fall into, when we rest without it. Come!
Amuse me harmlessly, show me something, give me an escape!"
But, here the Bigwig family fell into a state of uproar absolutely
deafening. When some few voices were faintly heard, proposing to
show him the wonders of the world, the greatness of creation, the
mighty changes of time, the workings of nature and the beauties of
art--to show him these things, that is to say, at any period of his
life when he could look upon them--there arose among the Bigwigs
such roaring and raving, such pulpiting and petitioning, such
maundering and memorialising, such name-calling and dirt-throwing,
such a shrill wind of parliamentary questioning and feeble replying-
-where "I dare not" waited on "I would"--that the poor fellow stood
aghast, staring wildly around.
"Have I provoked all this," said he, with his hands to his
affrighted ears, "by what was meant to be an innocent request,
plainly arising out of my familiar experience, and the common
knowledge of all men who choose to open their eyes? I don't
understand, and I am not understood. What is to come of such a
state of things!"
He was bending over his work, often asking himself the question,
when the news began to spread that a pestilence had appeared among
the labourers, and was slaying them by thousands. Going forth to
look about him, he soon found this to be true. The dying and the
dead were mingled in the close and tainted houses among which his
life was passed. New poison was distilled into the always murky,
always sickening air. The robust and the weak, old age and infancy,
the father and the mother, all were stricken down alike.
What means of flight had he? He remained there, where he was, and
saw those who were dearest to him die. A kind preacher came to him,
and would have said some prayers to soften his heart in his gloom,
but he replied:
"O what avails it, missionary, to come to me, a man condemned to
residence in this foetid place, where every sense bestowed upon me
for my delight becomes a torment, and where every minute of my
numbered days is new mire added to the heap under which I lie
oppressed! But, give me my first glimpse of Heaven, through a
little of its light and air; give me pure water; help me to be
clean; lighten this heavy atmosphere and heavy life, in which our
spirits sink, and we become the indifferent and callous creatures
you too often see us; gently and kindly take the bodies of those who
die among us, out of the small room where we grow to be so familiar
with the awful change that even its sanctity is lost to us; and,
Teacher, then I will hear--none know better than you, how willingly-
-of Him whose thoughts were so much with the poor, and who had
compassion for all human sorrow!"
He was at work again, solitary and sad, when his Master came and
stood near to him dressed in black. He, also, had suffered heavily.
His young wife, his beautiful and good young wife, was dead; so,
too, his only child.
"Master, 'tis hard to bear--I know it--but be comforted. I would
give you comfort, if I could."
The Master thanked him from his heart, but, said he, "O you
labouring men! The calamity began among you. If you had but lived
more healthily and decently, I should not be the widowed and bereft
mourner that I am this day."
"Master," returned the other, shaking his head, "I have begun to
understand a little that most calamities will come from us, as this
one did, and that none will stop at our poor doors, until we are
united with that great squabbling family yonder, to do the things
that are right. We cannot live healthily and decently, unless they
who undertook to manage us provide the means. We cannot be
instructed unless they will teach us; we cannot be rationally
amused, unless they will amuse us; we cannot but have some false
gods of our own, while they set up so many of theirs in all the
public places. The evil consequences of imperfect instruction, the
evil consequences of pernicious neglect, the evil consequences of
unnatural restraint and the denial of humanising enjoyments, will
all come from us, and none of them will stop with us. They will
spread far and wide. They always do; they always have done--just
like the pestilence. I understand so much, I think, at last."
But the Master said again, "O you labouring men! How seldom do we
ever hear of you, except in connection with some trouble!"
"Master," he replied, "I am Nobody, and little likely to be heard of
(nor yet much wanted to be heard of, perhaps), except when there is
some trouble. But it never begins with me, and it never can end
with me. As sure as Death, it comes down to me, and it goes up from
me."
There was so much reason in what he said, that the Bigwig family,
getting wind of it, and being horribly frightened by the late
desolation, resolved to unite with him to do the things that were
right--at all events, so far as the said things were associated with
the direct prevention, humanly speaking, of another pestilence.
But, as their fear wore off, which it soon began to do, they resumed
their falling out among themselves, and did nothing. Consequently
the scourge appeared again--low down as before--and spread
avengingly upward as before, and carried off vast numbers of the
brawlers. But not a man among them ever admitted, if in the least
degree he ever perceived, that he had anything to do with it.
So Nobody lived and died in the old, old, old way; and this, in the
main, is the whole of Nobody's story.
Had he no name, you ask? Perhaps it was Legion. It matters little
what his name was. Let us call him Legion.
If you were ever in the Belgian villages near the field of Waterloo,
you will have seen, in some quiet little church, a monument erected
by faithful companions in arms to the memory of Colonel A, Major B,
Captains C, D and E, Lieutenants F and G, Ensigns H, I and J, seven
non-commissioned officers, and one hundred and thirty rank and file,
who fell in the discharge of their duty on the memorable day. The
story of Nobody is the story of the rank and file of the earth.
They bear their share of the battle; they have their part in the
victory; they fall; they leave no name but in the mass. The march
of the proudest of us, leads to the dusty way by which they go. O!
Let us think of them this year at the Christmas fire, and not forget
them when it is burnt out.
