To show how unripe I was for John Barleycorn, when, at this time, I descended into my slough of despond, I never dreamed of turning to John Barleycorn for a helping hand.
But while I was discovering this one last tie to bind me to life, in my extremity, in the depths of despond, walking in the valley of the shadow, my ears were deaf to John Barleycorn.
Did perhaps their hearts
despond, because lonesomeness had swallowed me like a whale?
"Don't
despond," said Carton, very gently; "don't grieve.
I have an idea that I had some part in rescuing you from the Slough of
Despond in which myself am hopelessly immersed.
Well, you dropped Linton with it into a Slough of
Despond. He was in earnest: in love, really.
Do not let us
despond, but wait at Rueil, for my conviction is that they are at Rueil.
'The Pilgrim's Progress' we had in the house (it was as common a possession as a dresser-head), and so enamoured of it was I that I turned our garden into sloughs of
Despond, with pea-sticks to represent Christian on his travels and a buffet-stool for his burden, but when I dragged my mother out to see my handiwork she was scared, and I felt for days, with a certain elation, that I had been a dark character.
Men and women danced in moccasins, and the place was soon a-roar, Burning Daylight the centre of it and the animating spark, with quip and jest and rough merriment rousing them out of the slough of
despond in which he had found them.
Weak and well-meaning people would have
desponded under these circumstances; but your genuine Rogue is a man of elastic temperament, not easily compressible under any pressure of disaster.
It's now summer and the Slough of
Despond is history.
The prose is as colorful as the narrative: "The East India Docks presented a scene of indescribable confusion; it was as though the Tower of Babel had collapsed alongside the Slough of
Despond" may not rival Herman Melville on New York Harbor but concisely evokes the cacophony-amid-squalor that characterized London's Victorian docklands.