RAMBLINGS IN CHEAPSIDE 1 



WALKING the other day in Cheapside I saw 

 some turtles in Mr. Sweeting's window, and 

 was tempted to stay and look at them. As I 

 did so I was struck not more by the defences 

 with which they were hedged about, than by 

 the fatuousness of trying to hedge that in at 

 all which, if hedged thoroughly, must die of its 

 own defencefulness. The holes for the head 

 and feet through which the turtle leaks out, 

 as it were, on to the exterior world, and 

 through which it again absorbs the exterior 

 world into itself "catching on" through 

 them to things that are thus both turtle and 

 not turtle at one and the same time these 

 holes stultify the armour, and show it to have 

 been designed by a creature with more of 

 faithfulness to a fixed idea, and hence one- 

 sidedness, than of that quick sense of relative 

 importances and their changes, which is the 

 main factor of good living. 



1 Published in the Universal Review, December 1890. 

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