Caleb made no rejoinder, but presently lowered his spectacles, drew up
his chair to the desk, and said, "Deuce take the bill--I wish it was
at Hanover! These things are a sad interruption to business!"
The first part of this speech comprised his whole store of maledictory
expression, and was uttered with a slight snarl easy to imagine. But
it would be difficult to convey to those who never heard him utter the
word "business," the peculiar tone of fervid veneration, of religious
regard, in which he wrapped it, as a consecrated symbol is wrapped in
its gold-fringed linen.
Caleb Garth often shook his head in meditation on the value, the
indispensable might of that myriad-headed, myriad-handed labor by which
the social body is fed, clothed, and housed. It had laid hold of his
imagination in boyhood. The echoes of the great hammer where roof or
keel were a-making, the signal-shouts of the workmen, the roar of the
furnace, the thunder and plash of the engine, were a sublime music to
him; the felling and lading of timber, and the huge trunk vibrating
star-like in the distance along the highway, the crane at work on the
wharf, the piled-up produce in warehouses, the precision and variety of
muscular effort wherever exact work had to be turned out,--all these
sights of his youth had acted on him as poetry without the aid of the
poets, had made a philosophy for him without the aid of philosophers,
a religion without the aid of theology. His early ambition had been to
have as effective a share as possible in this sublime labor, which was
peculiarly dignified by him with the name of "business;" and though he
had only been a short time under a surveyor, and had been chiefly his
own teacher, he knew more of land, building, and mining than most of
the special men in the county.
His classification of human employments was rather crude, and, like the
categories of more celebrated men, would not be acceptable in these
advanced times. He divided them into "business, politics, preaching,
learning, and amusement." He had nothing to say against the last four;
but he regarded them as a reverential pagan regarded other gods than
his own. In the same way, he thought very well of all ranks, but he
would not himself have liked to be of any rank in which he had not such
close contact with "business" as to get often honorably decorated with
marks of dust and mortar, the damp of the engine, or the sweet soil of
the woods and fields. Though he had never regarded himself as other
than an orthodox Christian, and would argue on prevenient grace if the
subject were proposed to him, I think his virtual divinities were good
practical schemes, accurate work, and the faithful completion of
undertakings: his prince of darkness was a slack workman. But there
was no spirit of denial in Caleb, and the world seemed so wondrous to
him that he was ready to accept any number of systems, like any number
of firmaments, if they did not obviously interfere with the best
land-drainage, solid building, correct measuring, and judicious boring
(for coal). In fact, he had a reverential soul with a strong practical
intelligence. But he could not manage finance: he knew values well,
but he had no keenness of imagination for monetary results in the shape
of profit and loss: and having ascertained this to his cost, he
determined to give up all forms of his beloved "business" which
required that talent. He gave himself up entirely to the many kinds of
work which he could do without handling capital, and was one of those
precious men within his own district whom everybody would choose to
work for them, because he did his work well, charged very little, and
often declined to charge at all. It is no wonder, then, that the
Garths were poor, and "lived in a small way." However, they did not
mind it.