Page:Earl Canning.djvu/51

Rh just, the fastidious, the scrupulous, are its especial victims. Such a man has a horror of imperfection, of inexactness, of the hardship or mischief which inexactness may easily produce. He will not indite an incorrect sentence, slur over inconvenient difficulty, or pronounce an ill-considered decision. He knows how the thing ought to be done; his conscience forbids him to do it, or to let it be done, in any other fashion. He will not slight it himself; he will not hand it over to another who might be more easily satisfied. One question after another is put aside for further thought, for further knowledge, for the last few touches which an artist loves to give to his work, but which, unhappily, so seldom are the last. Meanwhile, the world does not stand still: the tide of business rolls onward, rude and strong; the impossibility of coping with it becomes obvious; the arrears become so huge that a little more or less is not worth consideration; the offender becomes desperate. The official machine is obstructed at a hundred points; and sturdy workers of the rough and ready order are complaining that, in the research of a too exquisite perfection, the practical work of administration is being brought to a standstill. The offender entrenches himself behind a barricade of office boxes, each of which protests with dumb mouth against the dilatory mood which hinders its contents from disposal. Thence he defies those who preach to him that with statesmen, as with women, hesitation often means ruin.