Curdie and his father were of these: their business was to bring to
light hidden things; they sought silver in the rock and found it,
and carried it out. Of the many other precious things in their
mountain they knew little or nothing. Silver ore was what they
were sent to find, and in darkness and danger they found it. But
oh, how sweet was the air on the mountain face when they came out
at sunset to go home to wife and mother! They did breathe deep
then!
The mines belonged to the king of the country, and the miners were
his servants, working under his overseers and officers. He was a
real king - that is, one who ruled for the good of his people and
not to please himself, and he wanted the silver not to buy rich
things for himself, but to help him to govern the country, and pay
the ones that defended it from certain troublesome neighbours, and
the judges whom he set to portion out righteousness among the
people, that so they might learn it themselves, and come to do
without judges at all. Nothing that could be got from the heart of
the earth could have been put to better purposes than the silver
the king's miners got for him. There were people in the country
who, when it came into their hands, degraded it by locking it up in
a chest, and then it grew diseased and was called mammon, and bred
all sorts of quarrels; but when first it left the king's hands it
never made any but friends, and the air of the world kept it clean.
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