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Austin Dobson

(429) T The World's Indifference.

HE world can pry out everything about us which it has a mind to know. But there is this consolation, which men will never accept in their own cases, that the world doesn't care. Consider the amount of scandal it has been forced to hear in its time, and how weary and blasé it must be of that kind of intelligence. You are taken to prison, and fancy yourself indelibly disgraced! You are bankrupt under odd circumstances! You drive a queer bargain with your friends, and are found out, and imagine the world will punish you! Pshaw! Your shame is only vanity. Go and talk to the world as if nothing had happened, and nothing has happened. Tumble down; brush the mud off your clothes; appear with a smiling countenance, and nobody cares. Do you suppose society is going to take out its pocket-handkerchief and be inconsolable when you die? Why should it care very much, then, whether your worship graces yourself or disgraces yourself? Whatever happens, it talks, meets, jokes, yarns, has its dinner pretty much as before.