Adam on a Working Day
- It's a beautiful summer morning, and Adam is on his way to work. He has to help refurbish "a country house about three miles off, which was being put in repair for the son of a neighbouring squire" (19.3). What shall we call this scenario: This Old Mansion? Hayslope Improvement? Bede Eye for the Aristocratic Guy?
- As Adam walks to the job, his mind isn't totally at rest. What if Hetty falls for somebody else? What then? Fortunately, Adam "had confidence in his ability to achieve something in the future" (19.4). His professional life will be in tip-top shape in no time, so why shouldn't marrying Hetty be achievable?
- Besides, Adam has thought up a way to make some money. He intends to start building and selling "a kitchen cupboard of his own contrivance, with an ingenious arrangement of sliding doors" (19.7). Okay, yeah, Adam isn't the next Steve Jobs. Still, Mrs. Poyser sure does think it's a nice cabinet.
- Adam is thinking over this scheme when he arrives at the work site. And when a Bede sets to work, he sets to work! Adam spends the whole day hammering away, lifting beams, and singing at the top of his lungs.
- As Eliot's narrator admits, Adam isn't "properly speaking, a genius" (19.9). He's just a model workman with a few good ideas. But he's also a representative of a breed of decent, vigorous, honest men who seem long gone (by Eliot's time). A boss will often remember such men and ask, "Where shall I find their like?" (19.9).