We spin our tops as in an enchanted circle, and no one sees or heeds save ourselves,--as how should they with their own tops to spin?
Happy indeed is he, who has his top and cares still to spin it; for to be tired of our tops is to be tired of life, saith the preacher.
As the young gipsy's little holiday came to an end, I turned with a sigh upon my way; and here, while still on the subject, may I remark on the curious fact that probably Borrow has lived and died without a single gipsy having heard of him, just as the expertest anglers know nothing of Izaak Walton.
Has the British soldier, one wonders, yet discovered Rudyard Kipling, or is the Wessex peasant aware of Thomas Hardy?
It is odd to think that the last people to read such authors are the very people they most concern.

For you might spend your life, say, in studying the London street boy, and write never so movingly and humourously about him, yet would he never know your name; and though Whitechapel makes novelists, it does so without knowing it,--makes them to be read in Mayfair,--just as it never wears the dainty hats and gowns its weary little milliners and seamstresses make through the day and night.

It is Capital and Labour over again, for in literature also we reap in gladness what others have sown in tears.
And now, after these admirable reflections, I am about to make such "art" as I can of another man's tragedy, as will appear in the next chapter..