The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: muddy with grease and ashes,--and the heart beneath that! And
the soul? God knows.
Then flashed before his vivid poetic sense the man who had left
him,--the pure face, the delicate, sinewy limbs, in harmony with
all he knew of beauty or truth. In his cloudy fancy he had
pictured a Something like this. He had found it in this
Mitchell, even when he idly scoffed at his pain: a Man all-
knowing, all-seeing, crowned by Nature, reigning,--the keen
glance of his eye falling like a sceptre on other men. And yet
his instinct taught him that he too--He! He looked at himself
with sudden loathing, sick, wrung his hands With a cry, and then
 Life in the Iron-Mills |