"
"Ay; but where are the stories of those who have not risen--of all the
noble geniuses who have ended in desperation, drunkenness, starvation,
suicide, because no one would take the trouble of lifting them up, and
enabling them to walk in the path which Nature had marked out for them?
Dead men tell no tales; and this old whited sepulchre, society, ain't going
to turn informer against itself."
"I trust and hope," I said, sadly, "that if God intends me to rise, He
will open the way for me; perhaps the very struggles and sorrows of a poor
genius may teach him more than ever wealth and prosperity could."
"True, Alton, my boy! and that's my only comfort. It does make men of us,
this bitter battle of life. We working men, when we do come out of the
furnace, come out, not tinsel and papier mache, like those fops of red-tape
statesmen, but steel and granite, Alton, my boy--that has been seven times
tried in the fire: and woe to the papier mache gentleman that runs against
us! But," he went on, sadly, "for one who comes safe through the furnace,
there are a hundred who crack in the burning.
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