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Aunt Glegg Learns the Breadth of Bob's Thumb
WHILE Maggie's life-struggles had lain almost entirely within her own soul, one shadowy army fighting
another, and the slain shadows for ever rising again, Tom was engaged in a dustier, noisier warfare,
grappling with more substantial obstacles, and gaining more definite conquests. So it has been since
the days of Hecuba, and of Hector, Tamer of horses: inside the gates, the women with streaming hair
and uplifted hands offering prayers, watching the world's combat from afar, filling their long, empty days
with memories and fears: outside, the men in fierce struggle with things divine and human, quenching
memory in the stronger light of purpose, losing the sense of dread and even of wounds in the hurrying
ardour of action. From what you have seen of Tom, I think he is not a youth of whom you would prophesy
failure in anything he had thoroughly wished: the wagers are likely to be on his side notwithstanding his
small success in the classics. For Tom had never desired success in this field of enterprise: and for
getting a fine flourishing growth of stupidity there is nothing like pouring out on a mind a good amount
of subjects in which it feels no interest. But now Tom's strong will bound together his integrity, his pride,
his family regrets and his personal ambition, and made them one force, concentrating his efforts and
surmounting discouragements. His uncle Deane, who watched him closely, soon began to conceive
hopes of him, and to be rather proud that he had brought into the employment of the firm a nephew who
appeared to be made of such good commercial stuff. The real kindness of placing him in the warehouse
first was soon evident to Tom, in the hints his uncle began to throw out that after a time he might perhaps
be trusted to travel at certain seasons, and buy in for the firm various vulgar commodities with which I
need not shock refined ears in this place; and it was doubtless with a view to this result that Mr Deane,
when he expected to take his wine alone, would tell Tom to step in and sit with him an hour, and would
pass that hour in much lecturing and catechising concerning articles of export and import, with an occasional
excursus of more indirect utility on the relative advantages to the merchants of St Ogg's of having goods
brought in their own and in foreign bottoms - a subject on which Mr Deane, as a ship-owner, naturally
threw off a few sparks when he got warmed with talk and wine. Already, in the second year, Tom's salary
was raised; but all except the price of his dinner and clothes went home into the tin box; and he shunned
comradeship, lest it should lead him into expenses in spite of himself. Not that Tom was moulded on
the spooney type of the Industrious Apprentice; he had a very strong appetite for pleasure - would have
liked to be a Tamer of horses, and to make a distinguished figure in all neighbouring eyes, dispensing
treats and benefits to others with well-judged liberality, and being pronounced one of the finest young
fellows of those parts; nay, he determined to achieve these things sooner or later; but his practical shrewdness
told him that the means to such achievements could only lie for him in present abstinence and self-
denial: there were certain milestones to be passed and one of the first was the payment of his father's
debts. Having made up his mind on that point, he strode along without swerving, contracting some rather
saturnine sternness, as a young man is likely to do who has a premature call upon him for self-reliance.
Tom felt intensely that common cause with his father which springs from family pride, and was bent on
being irreproachable as a son; but his growing experience caused him to pass much silent criticism on
the rashness and imprudence of his father's past conduct: their dispositions were not in sympathy, and
Tom's face showed little radiance during his few home hours. Maggie had an awe of him, against which
she struggled, as something unfair to her consciousness of wider thoughts and deeper motives; but it
was of no use to struggle. A character at unity with itself - that performs what it intends, subdues every
counteracting impulse and has no visions beyond the distinctly possible, is strong by its very negations. You may imagine that Tom's more and more obvious unlikeness to his father was well fitted to conciliate
the maternal aunts and uncles; and Mr Deane's favourable reports and predictions to Mr Glegg concerning
Tom's qualifications for business, began to be discussed amongst them with various acceptance. He
was likely, it appeared, to do the family credit, without causing it any expense and trouble. Mrs Pullet
has always thought it strange if Tom's excellent complexion, so entirely that of the Dodsons, did not
argue a certainty that he would turn out well, his juvenile errors of running down the peacock and general
disrespect to his aunts only indicating a tinge of Tulliver blood which he had doubtless outgrown. Mr
Glegg, who had contracted a cautious liking for Tom ever since his spirited and sensible behaviour when
the execution was in the house, was now warming into a resolution to further his prospects actively -
some time, when an opportunity offered of doing so in a prudent manner, without ultimate loss; but Mrs
Glegg observed that she was not given to speak without book, as some people were that those who
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