CHAPTER XI

So long as we do not know that we are performing any remarkable feat, we may walk upon the narrowest of planks between precipices with perfect security; but when we suffer our minds to eye the chasm underneath, we begin to be in danger, and we are in very great fear of losing our equal balance the moment we admit the insidious reflection that other men, placed as we are, would probably topple headlong over.  Anthony Hackbut, of Boyne’s Bank, had been giving himself up latterly to this fatal comparison.  The hour when gold was entrusted to his charge found him feverish and irritable.  He asked himself whether he was a mere machine to transfer money from spot to spot, and he spurned at the pittance bestowed upon honesty in this life.  Where could Boyne’s Bank discover again such an honest man as he?  And because he was honest he was poor!  The consideration that we alone are capable of doing the unparalleled thing may sometimes inspire us with fortitude; but this will depend largely upon the antecedent moral trials of a man.  It is a temptation when we look on what we accomplish at all in that light.  The temptation being inbred, is commonly a proof of internal corruption.  “If I take a step, suppose now, to the right, or to the left,” Anthony had got into the habit of saying, while he made his course, and after he had deposited his charge he would wipe his moist forehead, in a state of wretched exultation over his renowned trustworthiness.

He had done the thing for years.  And what did the people in the streets know about him?  Formerly, he had used to regard the people in the streets, and their opinions, with a voluptuous contempt; but he was no longer wrapped in sweet calculations of his savings, and his chances, and his connection with a mighty Bank.  The virtue had gone out of him.  Yet he had not the slightest appetite for other men’s money; no hunger, nor any definite notion of enjoyment to be derived from money not his own.  Imagination misled the old man.  There have been spotless reputations gained in the service of virtue before now; and chaste and beautiful persons have walked the narrow plank, envied and admired; and they have ultimately tottered and all but fallen; or they have quite fallen, from no worse an incitement than curiosity.  Cold curiosity, as the directors of our human constitution tell us, is, in the colder condition of our blood, a betraying vice, leading to sin at a period when the fruits of sin afford the smallest satisfaction.  It is, in fact, our last probation, and one of our latest delusions.  If that is passed successfully, we may really be pronounced as of some worth.  Anthony wished to give a light indulgence to his curiosity; say, by running away and over London Bridge on one side, and back on the other, hugging the money.  For two weeks, he thought of this absurd performance as a comical and agreeable diversion.  How would