More
cartloads than you could count of the best material for filling up a
slough have been shot into it, and yet you would never know that so much
as a single labourer had emptied his barrow here. True, excellent
stepping-stones have been laid across the slough by skilful engineers,
but they are always so slippery with the scum and slime of the slough,
that it is only now and then that a traveller can keep his feet upon
them. Altogether, our author's picture of the Slough of Despond is such
a picture that no one who has seen it can ever forget it. But better
than reading the best description of the slough is to see certain well-
known pilgrims trying to cross it. Mr. Fearing at the Slough of Despond
was a tale often told at the tavern suppers of that country. Never
pilgrim attempted the perilous journey with such a chicken-heart in his
bosom as this Mr. Fearing. He lay above a month on the bank of the
slough, and would not even attempt the steps. Some kind Pilgrims, though
they had enough to do to keep the steps themselves, offered him a hand;
but no. And after they were safely over it made them almost weep to hear
the man still roaring in his horror at the other side.
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