A hundred years ago
Is there any comfort to be found for those people who are slow in all they think, say, or do, and who are painfully conscious of their own slowness? They need consolation, if it could be discovered anywhere, for it is a most depressing and wearisome consciousness, and the more so because it is continual. From morning to night it underlies all that is said or done, and the certainty of to-morrow's slowness is almost as present with them as the remembrance of the slowness of yesterday or today. Almost, but not quite, for there is a glamour about to-morrow which no experience can entirely dispel. To-day may bring some unexpected pleasure of its own, so that we would arrest the course of time to enjoy it longer, if we could; but for all purposes of work, for anything we ought to do, and for all plans that we make, to-morrow will always be worth far more than to-day. Still, for the people who are weighted with the burden of their slowness, even the working hours of the morrow are diminished, and the shadow lengthens out through days to come.
Spectator, 28 September 1878
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