ONE THOUSAND FAMOUS THINGS 185
The Poorest Day
THE poorest day that passes over us Is the conflux of two Eternities ;
it is made up of currents that issue from the remotest Past and
flow onwards into the remotest Future. Carlyle
Two Men Talking
ALFRED TENNYSON: In my old age I should like to get away from
all this tumult and turmoil of civilisation and live on the top of a
tropical mountain. I should, at least, like to see the splendours of the
Brazilian forests before I die.
Thomas Carlyle: I would also like to quit it all.
Alfred Tennyson: If I were a young man I would head a colony
out somewhere or other.
Thomas Carlyle: Oh, ay, so would I, to India or somewhere ;
but the scraggiest bit of heath in Scotland is more to me than all the
forests of Brazil. I am just twinkling away.
A conversation in 1879,
given in Tennyson's Life
The Men of the Village of Dumdrudge
WHAT is the net purport and upshot of war ? There dwell and
toil in the British village of Dumdrudge., usually some five
hundred souls. From these there are successively selected, during
the French war, say thirty able-bodied men.
Dumdrudge at her own expense has suckled and nursed them;
she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood,
and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another
build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty
stone avoirdupois.
Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected;
all dressed in red ; and shipped away, at the public charges, say to the
south of Spain ; and fed there till wanted.
And now to that same spot in the south of Spain, are thirty similar
French artisans, from a French Dumdradge, in like manner wending :
till at length, after infinite effort, Thirty stands fronting Thirty,
each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word Fire ! is given,
and they blow the souls out of one another ; and in place of sixty
brisk, useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it
must bury, and anew shed tears for.
Had these men any quarrel ? Busy as the devil is, not the
smallest ! They lived far enough apart; were the entirest stran-
gers j nay, in so wide a Universe there was even some mutual
helpfulness between them. How then ? Simpleton i their Governors
had fallen out, and instead of shooting one another had the cunning
to make these poor blockheads shoot. Thomas Carlyle