Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/97

 from our birth weaves such a web around us all, as slowly to take the life of those who have not courage or strength to break it asunder."

She looked up at him with astonishment, and said—

"What do you mean exactly?"

"Oh, I mean that if we were candid, we should be obliged to acknowledge that we all drag about a more or less heavy burden of loathing of life, world weariness, lonesomeness, or whatever we like to call the modern disease which is the bitter fruit of our over-culture. There are some who are strong enough to bear this burden without being entirely crippled; but it is not therefore always the most insignificant or the weakest whose hearts break. You will see, we may perhaps all sink down in the battle—especially we poor caricatures of humanity, who are begotten in the feverish life of the towns, born among chimney pots, telegraph wires, railways and trams—how many generations do you think we shall last?—And that is just the desperate part," he continued, with a changed voice, as he fell back into his old tormenting thoughts. "Can't you see, Miss Ragnhild, how topsy turvey it is that it should be my office to teach others to live and die—I, who need to learn to live my own life rightly—and just of those very people whom I am set to teach? Or is it not true that we ought to envy, with all our hearts, the poor labourer who toils week in week out; happily, and without