No More Learning

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.

I often thought that myself. It is a pity the stock of the Hearnes to
be asked to do any work at all.

THOMAS.

Rouse yourself, Martin, and don't be talking the way a fool talks.
You
started making that golden coach, and you were set upon it, and you had
me tormented about it. You have yourself wore out working at it, and
planning it, and thinking of it, and at the end of the race, when you
have the winning-post in sight, and horses hired for to bring it to
Dublin Castle, you go falling into sleeps and blathering about dreams,
and we run to a great danger of letting the profit and the sale go by.
Sit down on the bench now, and lay your hands to the work.

MARTIN [_sitting down_].

I will try. I wonder why I ever wanted to make it; it was no good dream
set me doing that. [_He takes up wheel. _] What is there in a wooden
wheel to take pleasure in it? Gilding it outside makes it no different.

THOMAS.

That is right, now. You had some good plan for making the axle run
smooth.

MARTIN.

[_Letting wheel fall and putting his hands to his
head. _]

It is no use. [_Angrily.