Chapter 4 - Page 2

arrangements, very good attendants; altogether a remarkable place.'

'And what did you see there?' asked Mr. Idle, adapting Hamlet's
advice to the occasion, and assuming the virtue of interest, though
he had it not.

'The usual thing,' said Francis Goodchild, with a sigh. 'Long
groves of blighted men-and-women-trees; interminable avenues of
hopeless faces; numbers, without the slightest power of really
combining for any earthly purpose; a society of human creatures who
have nothing in common but that they have all lost the power of
being humanly social with one another.'

'Take a glass of wine with me,' said Thomas Idle, 'and let US be
social.'

'In one gallery, Tom,' pursued Francis Goodchild, 'which looked to
me about the length of the Long Walk at Windsor, more or less--'

'Probably less,' observed Thomas Idle.

'In one gallery, which was otherwise clear of patients (for they
were all out), there was a poor little dark-chinned, meagre man,
with a perplexed brow and a pensive face, stooping low over the
matting on the floor, and picking out with his thumb and forefinger
the course of its fibres. The afternoon sun was slanting in at the
large end-window, and there were cross patches of light and shade
all down the vista, made by the unseen windows and the open doors
of the little sleeping-cells on either side. In about the centre
of the perspective, under an arch, regardless of the pleasant
weather, regardless of the solitude, regardless of approaching
footsteps, was the poor little dark-chinned, meagre man, poring
over the matting. "What are you doing there?" said my conductor,
when we came to him. He looked up, and pointed to the matting. "I
wouldn't do that, I think," said my conductor, kindly; "if I were
you, I would go and read, or I would lie down if I felt tired; but
I wouldn't do that." The patient considered a moment, and vacantly
answered, "No, sir, I won't; I'll--I'll go and read," and so he
lamely shuffled away into one of the little rooms. I turned my
head before we had gone many paces. He had already come out again,
and was again poring over the matting, and tracking out its fibres
with his thumb and forefinger. I stopped to look at him, and it
came into my mind, that probably the course of those fibres as they
plaited in and out, over and under, was the only course of things
in the whole wide world that it was left to him to understand--that
his darkening intellect had narrowed down to the small cleft of
light which showed him, "This piece was twisted this way, went in
here, passed under, came out there, was carried on away here to the
right where I now put my finger on it, and in this progress of
events, the thing was