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Pontiac Directory 01
Page 06
The truth is that the man of letters forgets that this is exactly the same thought as that which haunts the busy man after, let us say, a day of looking over examination-papers or attending committees. The busy man, if he reflects at all, is only too apt to say to himself, "Here have I been slaving away like a stonebreaker, reading endless scripts, discussing an infinity of petty details, and what on earth is the use of it all?" Yet Sir Alfred Lyall once said that if a man had once taken a hand in big public affairs, he thought of literature much as a man who had crossed the Atlantic in a sailing-yacht might think of sculling a boat upon the Thames. One of the things that moved Dr. Johnson to a tempest of wrath was when on the death of Lord Lichfield, the Lord Chancellor, Boswell said to him that if he had taken to the law as a profession, he might have been Lord Chancellor, and with the same title. Johnson was extremely angry, and said that it was unfriendly to remind a man of such things when it was too late.
From La Merced there was a trail from one to three metres wide, cut out in the solid rock and skirting all along the foaming river, which flowed in the opposite direction from that in which we were travelling. In several places narrow tunnels had been excavated in the rock, through which the trail proceeded. These tunnels were dangerous when you encountered caravans of pack animals coming through from the opposite direction. The animals often got jammed in the middle of the tunnel, tearing their loads to pieces in their attempts to disentangle themselves. Once I got jammed myself, and came out minus a patch of skin several inches long from my left shin and knee.
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