So I became a hack-writer, and sorrowfully, but deliberately, "put my
Pegasus into heavy harness," as my betters had done before me. It was
miserable work, there is no denying it--only not worse than tailoring.
To try and serve God and Mammon too; to make miserable compromises daily
between the two great incompatibilities, what was true, and what would
pay; to speak my mind, in fear and trembling, by hints, and halves, and
quarters; to be daily hauling poor Truth just up to the top of the well,
and then, frightened at my own success, let her plump down again to the
bottom; to sit there trying to teach others, while my mind was in a whirl
of doubt; to feed others' intellects while my own were hungering; to grind
on in the Philistine's mill, or occasionally make sport for them, like some
weary-hearted clown grinning in a pantomime in a "light article," as blind
as Samson, but not, alas! as strong, for indeed my Delilah of the West-end
had clipped my locks, and there seemed little chance of their growing
again. That face and that drawing-room flitted before me from morning till
eve, and enervated and distracted my already over-wearied brain.
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