Please
walk again, my liege. There--it is better--it is the best yet;
but not perfect. The shoulders have known no ignobler burden
than iron mail, and they will not stoop."
"Give me, then, the bag. I will learn the spirit that goeth
with burdens that have not honor. It is the spirit that stoopeth
the shoulders, I ween, and not the weight; for armor is heavy,
yet it is a proud burden, and a man standeth straight in it....
Nay, but me no buts, offer me no objections. I will have the thing.
Strap it upon my back."
He was complete now with that knapsack on, and looked as little
like a king as any man I had ever seen. But it was an obstinate
pair of shoulders; they could not seem to learn the trick of
stooping with any sort of deceptive naturalness. The drill went on,
I prompting and correcting:
"Now, make believe you are in debt, and eaten up by relentless
creditors; you are out of work--which is horse-shoeing, let us
say--and can get none; and your wife is sick, your children are
crying because they are hungry--"
And so on, and so on. I drilled him as representing in turn all
sorts of people out of luck and suffering dire privations and
misfortunes. But lord, it was only just words, words--they meant
nothing in the world to him, I might just as well have whistled.
Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have
suffered in your own person the thing which the words try to
describe.
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