But I had never taken them home to me or
represented these distresses livingly to my imagination.
A turn of the market may be a calamity as disastrous as the French
retreat from Moscow; but it hardly lends itself to lively treatment,
and makes a trifling figure in the morning papers. We may struggle
as we please, we are not born economists. The individual is more
affecting than the mass. It is by the scenic accidents, and the
appeal to the carnal eye, that for the most part we grasp the
significance of tragedies. Thus it was only now, when I found myself
involved in the rout, that I began to appreciate how sharp had been
the battle. We were a company of the rejected; the drunken, the
incompetent, the weak, the prodigal, all who had been unable to
prevail against circumstances in the one land, were now fleeing
pitifully to another; and though one or two might still succeed, all
had already failed. We were a shipful of failures, the broken men of
England. Yet it must not be supposed that these people exhibited
depression. The scene, on the contrary, was cheerful. Not a tear
was shed on board the vessel.
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