No More Learning

MARTIN.

Not just now. I want to think--to try and remember what I saw, something
that I heard, that I was told to do.

THOMAS.

No, but put it out of your mind. There is no man doing business that
can keep two things in his head. A Sunday or a holy-day, now, you might
go see a good hurling or a thing of the kind, but to be spreading out
your mind on anything outside of the workshop on common days, all
coachbuilding would come to an end.

MARTIN.

I don't think it is building I want to do. I don't think that is what
was in the command.

THOMAS.

It is too late to be saying that, the time you have put the most of
your fortune in the business. Set yourself now to finish your job, and
when it is ended maybe I won't begrudge you going with the coach as far
as Dublin.

ANDREW.

That is it, that will satisfy him.
I had a great desire myself, and
I young, to go travelling the roads as far as Dublin. The roads are
the great things, they never come to an end. They are the same as the
serpent having his tail swallowed in his own mouth.

MARTIN.

It was not wandering I was called to. What was it? what was it?

THOMAS.

What you are called to, and what everyone having no great estate is
called to, is to work. Sure the world itself could not go on without
work.

MARTIN.

I wonder if that is the great thing, to make the world go on? No, I
don't think that is the great thing--what does the Munster poet call
it? --'this crowded slippery coach-loving world. ' I don't think I was
told to work for that.

ANDREW.