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Complete Works of Thomas Carlyle: Sartor Resartus, heroes and hero-worship
Complete Works of Thomas Carlyle Sartor Resartus heroes and heroworship Author:Thomas Carlyle Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VL APRONS. Ove of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole Volume L that 011 Apruns. What though stout old Gao, the Persian Blacksmith, " whos... more »e Apron, now indeed hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt which proved successful, is still the royal standard of that country;" what though J ohn Knox's Daughter, "who threatened Sovereign Majesty that she would atch her husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should if and be a bishop;" what though the Landgravine Elizabeth, with many other Apron worthies,—figure here? An idle iire-drawing spirit, sometimes even a tone of levity, approaching to conventional satire, is too clearly discernible. What, for -sample, are we to make of such sentences as the following ? " Aprons are Defences; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, to modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip -t' notched silk (as it were, the emblem and beatified ghost of an Apron), which some highest-bred housewife, sitting at Xiirnberg Work-boxes and Toy-boxes, has gracefully fastened on; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the Builder builds, and at evening sticks his trowel; or to those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise half-naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt- furnace, — is there not range enough in the fashion and uses of this Vestment ? How much has been concealed, how much has been defended in Aprons! Nay, rightly considered, what is your whole Military and Police Establishment, charged at um-alculated millions, but a huge scarlet-colored, iron-fastened Apron, wherein Society works (uneasily enough); guarding itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this Devil's-smithy (Trvfels-schmledr) of a world? P,ut of all Aprons the most puzzling to me hitherto has been the Episcopal o...« less