 Mr. Tulliver would never
have asked for anything from so poor-spirited a fellow for himself, but Bessy
might do so if she liked.
    It is precisely the proudest and most obstinate men who are the most liable
to shift their position and contradict themselves in this sudden manner:
everything is easier to them than to face the simple fact that they have been
thoroughly defeated, and must begin life anew. And Mr. Tulliver, you perceive,
though nothing more than a superior miller and maltster, was as proud and
obstinate as if he had been a very lofty personage, in whom such dispositions
might be a source of that conspicuous, far-echoing tragedy, which sweeps the
stage in regal robes and makes the dullest chronicler sublime. The pride and
obstinacy of millers, and other insignificant people, whom you pass unnoticingly
on the road every day, have their tragedy too; but it is of that unwept, hidden
sort, that goes on from generation to generation, and leaves no record - such
tragedy, perhaps, as lies in the conflicts of young souls, hungry for joy, under
a lot made suddenly hard to them, under the dreariness of a home where the
morning brings no promise with it, and where the unexpectant discontent of worn
and disappointed parents weighs on the children like a damp, thick air, in which
all the functions of life are depressed; or such tragedy as lies in the slow or
sudden death that follows on a bruised passion, though it may be a death that
finds only a parish funeral. There are certain animals to which tenacity of
position is a law of life - they can never flourish again, after a single
wrench: and there are certain human beings to whom predominance is a law of life
- they can only sustain humiliation so long as they can refuse to believe in it,
and, in their own conception, predominate still.
    Mr. Tulliver was still predominating in his own imagination as he approached
St Ogg's, through which he had to pass on his way homeward. But what was it that
suggested to him, as he saw the Laceham coach entering the town, to follow it to
the coach-office, and get the clerk there to write a letter, requiring Maggie to
come home the very next day? Mr. Tulliver's own hand shook too much under his
excitement for him to write himself, and he wanted the letter to be given to the
coachman to deliver at Miss Firniss's school in the morning. There was a craving
which he would not account for to himself, to have Maggie near him
