sullen taciturnity, which will not open its own
lips to speak, and forbids you to open yours;
contrariwise, the screw of chattering, which
cannot let you keep silent, not if it went with
your life or reputation; are not all these screws
of hundred horse-power, whence no human soul
can issue in rightful form, or with due
proportion of numbers? The screw takes the life-
blood out of them.

I have seen a great deal of screw pressure,
in life; and felt it too. It works with
marvellous force in the schoolroom and
nursery, where tiny tyrants try their hands at
miniature coercion, and act small dramas like
the larger ones of outside life, with none of the
elements of oppression wanting. We can all,
I am sure, look back to days of childhood
when we suffered martyrdom under the screw of
the elder and stronger: or, if we were those elder
and stronger ourselves, when we tyrannously
inflicted an amount of pain and suffering, the
remembrance of which makes us incline to
the theory of incarnate demonhood, and the
innate depravity of the human heart. Oh! that
screw of the childish tormentors! It is not a
thing to be despised by the authorities, seeing
that it often crushes the soul out of all shape
and substance, and leaves the mark of mutilation
for ever on the mind. Then again, our
very affections put the screw on us, and force
us into ways and walks uncongenial to every
inner impulse. So does the love of others,
which is a mighty tyrannical matter, generally,
though the victim is wreathed with flowers, and
the screw-handle works noiselessly, being well
oiled. That love of others is such an unanswerable
power! It binds us down with links lighter
than silk and stronger than steel. Love is a
mighty screw on the world, and few escape
whole from under its vice; it makes the proud
humble, the mean generous, the merciful unjust,
and the patient cruel; it changes all thoughts,
all complexions, all hopes, all minds; it is a
screw press, an alembic, a crucible, a dyeing
vat; it is the Proteus of the moral world,
and transmutes all things, like the philosopher's
stone or the universal solvent. Because of this,
because we are loved and it is expected of us,
we will cast our skins like renewing snakes; we
will forswear the nature which our mothers gave
us, and deny the instincts inherited like the
three per cents, from our fathers; we will do all
and be all that is most foreign to our original
selves; and when we have done all this, perhaps
the screw breaks, and we are mangled and
smashed and discarded like damaged goods, by
the screw turner.

Sickness, too, puts on the screw pretty tightly.
We do all sorts of things for a patient, which
it would be utterly impossible to us to do for
one sane and well. We run up and down
stairs twenty times a day, and never count
the steps, even though we be fat, plethoric,
gouty, or indolent; we accept peevish tempers,
though ourselves constitutionally irritable and
intolerant of foolishness; we are patient when
naturally arbitrary; we soothe the wayward
child to whom, by uncoerced force of instinct,
we should apply the small ends of a bunch of
birch; we tenderly persuade the wilful girl
whom else, but for this screw, we should shake
by the two shoulders, and perhaps box soundly
on her ears—all this we do for sickness,
sacrificing ourselves for the good of others: and I
should like to know if this is not being under
the screw? A baby is a notorious screw-press;
the moral nature of every one that handles long
clothes, being more or less coerced. It is a
marvellous sight to see the giddy woman become
the thoughtful mother, and the selfish man
transformed into the tender nurse: all
because of a certain little bit of humanity, which
does not know its right hand from its left, and
has neither consciousness nor gratitude for the
trouble it gives.

Pity in any shape is also a screw-press of
exceeding power. Those of us who have much
sympathy, or whose compassionateness is keen
and active, are always being worked up into
foreign shapes, with a big screw-press. Indeed,
are not all our emotions and affections, screws,
which strain and squeeze and press us as they
like, and force us to the right or left, into square
moulds or round, as is most convenient to the
occasion? I know one pitiful loving-hearted
woman, who has never been her true self since
she was born, because she has always been
under the screw of some other person's
distresses and afflictions—always worked upon by
her pity and sympathies, and never by any chance
left to stand upright on her two feet, to assert
her own rights, and live up to her natural claims.
If she wants to go one way, a friend's need
drags her another; if she desires cold mutton,
some one else demands roast beef; if she asks
for sherry, it is absolutely necessary to some
foreign salvation that she have port instead. And,
because she does not like to give pain, she lets
herself be manipulated at the pleasure of every
amateur mould-maker, and is always ready to
sacrifice herself, in order that any one else
may be the gainer. Gentle, sympathetic, self-
bestowing, she is a notable example of the screw
under which the affectionate constantly live. I
often wonder what she would be like, if left to
herself, without any pressure put upon her, and
if her real nature were suffered to expand or
grow in the direction best suited to it. Her
nearest friends would not know her.

On all men in high places, the screw is put
with tremendous force; clerical fathers and
dignitaries turn it with extra pressure on their
curates and subordinates—in fact, the clerical
screw is one of the largest power known, the
Court of Arches being worked with supplementary
donkey engines, warranted to crush
anything. Public opinion, too, turns a tolerably-
sized screw, and the "tyrannous majority"
works the handle: the twist nowhere driven
tighter than in the localised form of vestry
resolutions, where half a dozen men vote away
the pence of a parish, as arbitrarily as so many
Olympians disposing of a few demigods and
their properties. The tax-gatherer carries a screw