It
was about a foot long, varnished, studded with little brass nails,
and on the lid was fastened a rustic cross stretching from end to
end. The desire to decorate existence in some way or other with more
or less care is nearly universal. The most sensual and the meanest
almost always manifest an indisposition to be content with mere
material satisfaction. I have known selfish, gluttonous, drunken men
spend their leisure moments in trimming a bed of scarlet geraniums,
and the vulgarest and most commonplace of mortals considers it a
necessity to put a picture in the room or an ornament on the
mantelpiece. The instinct, even in its lowest forms, is divine. It
is the commentary on the text that man shall not live by bread alone.
It is evidence of an acknowledged compulsion--of which art is the
highest manifestation--to ESCAPE. In the alleys behind Drury Lane
this instinct, the very salt of life, was dead, crushed out utterly,
a symptom which seemed to me ominous, and even awful to the last
degree. The only house in which it survived was in that of the
undertaker, who displayed the willows, the black horses, and the
coffin. These may have been nothing more than an advertisement, but
from the care with which the cross was elaborated, and the neatness
with which it was made to resemble a natural piece of wood, I am
inclined to believe that the man felt some pleasure in his work for
its own sake, and that he was not utterly submerged.
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