Only thirty years old,
and only three months a husband, he had already learned renunciation.
There was to be no joy in life? Then he would be satisfied if it
were tolerable, and he strove to dismiss all his dreams and do his
best with what lay before him. Oh my hero! Perhaps somewhere or
other--let us hope it is true--a book is kept in which human worth is
duly appraised, and in that book, if such a volume there be, we shall
find that the divinest heroism is not that of the man who, holding
life cheap, puts his back against a wall, and is shot by Government
soldiers, assured that he will live ever afterwards as a martyr and
saint: a diviner heroism is that of the poor printer, who, in dingy,
smoky Rosoman Street, Clerkenwell, with forty years before him,
determined to live through them, as far as he could, without a
murmur, although there was to be no pleasure in them. A diviner
heroism is this, but divinest of all, is that of him who can in these
days do what Zachariah did, and without Zachariah's faith.
The next evening, just as Zachariah and his wife were sitting down to
tea, there was a tap at the door, and in walked Major Maitland. He
was now in full afternoon costume, and, if not dandyish, was
undeniably well dressed.
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