I've done a good many things in my
time, but I've never had to work."
"That is a great pity!" sighed Barnabas.
"Oh! is it, b'gad! And why?"
"Because hard work ennobles a man," said Barnabas.
"Always heard it was a deuce of a bore!" murmured the Captain.
"Exertion," Barnabas continued, growing a little didactic perhaps,
"exertion is--life. By idleness come degeneration and death."
"Sounds cursed unpleasant, b'gad!" said the Captain.
"The work a man does lives on after him," Barnabas continued,
"it is his monument when he is no more, far better than your
high-sounding epitaphs and stately tombs, yes, even though it be
only the furrow he has ploughed, or the earth his spade has turned."
"But,--my dear fellow, you surely wouldn't suggest that I should
take up--digging?"
"You might do worse," said Barnabas, "but--"
"Ha!" said the Captain, "well now, supposing I was a--deuced good
digger,--a regular rasper, b'gad! I don't know what a digger earns,
but let's be moderate and say five or six pounds a week. Well, what
the deuce good d'you suppose that would be to me? Why, I still owe
Gaunt, as far as I can figure it up, about eighty thousand pounds,
which is a deuced lot more than it sounds.
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