In the towns and in the country through
which he passed he saw the clerks in the stores, the merchants with
worried faces hurrying into banks, the farmers, brutalised by toil,
dragging their weary bodies homeward at the coming of night, and told
himself that all life was abortive, that on all sides of him it wore
itself out in little futile efforts or ran away in side currents, that
nowhere did it move steadily, continuously forward giving point to the
tremendous sacrifice involved in just living and working in the world. He
thought of Christ going about seeing the world and talking to men, and
thought that he too would go and talk to them, not as a teacher, but as
one seeking eagerly to be taught. At times he was filled with longing and
inexpressible hopes and, like the boy of Caxton, would get out of bed, not
now to stand in Miller's pasture watching the rain on the surface of the
water, but to walk endless miles through the darkness getting the blessed
relief of fatigue into his body and often paying for and occupying two
beds in one night.
Sam wanted to go back to Sue; he wanted peace and something like
happiness, but most of all he wanted work, real work, work that would
demand of him day after day the best and finest in him so that he would be
held to the need of renewing constantly the better impulses of his mind.
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