Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/120

118 swift pace, with a heavy Saratoga trunk on his back; or to meet four laborers rushing through the city streets with a Chickering piano on their shoulders, is a sight to which we are becoming so well used that familiarity robs it of its first painfulness. These brave workers are so surprised and unprepared for either pity or sympathy that we begin to cover both with the negative quality of indifference. Still, to look day after day at street pavers and sweepers, working as if fame or fortune depended on despatch; porters hurrying under the weight of their enormous burdens; farm laborers ploughing, reaping, gathering wood, drawing water, hour after hour, without a turn of the head or lifting of an eye-lash for the world outside, decidedly upsets one's preconceived notions, and leaves one in a maze of reflections. This utter absorption of self in his occupation gives a certain dignity to the man; and one finds here often, amid the most menial surroundings, something of that fine spirit — that in-breathing of purpose into action — that makes Millett's Sower a heroic figure. Think of the men lifted above these by every accident of education and fortune, whom we so often see in the fair