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Lida Brown McMurry - "Fifty Famous Fables"

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Georg Ebers - "Homo Sum, Volume 3."

Charlemont

W >> W. Gilmore Simms >> Charlemont




"I would rather not heed him, William. The passions of persons so
young as yourself are seldom of a permanent character. The attractions
which win the boy seldom compensate the man. There is time enough
for this, ten years hence, and love then will be far more rational."

"Ah, lud!--wait ten years at twenty. I can believe a great deal
in the doctrine of young men's folly, but I can't go that. I'm in
love myself."

"You!"

"Yes! I!--I'm hit too--and if you don't like it, why did you teach
us Ovid and the rest? As for rational love, that's a new sort of
thing that we never heard about before. Love was never expected
to be rational. He's known the contrary. I've heard so ever since
I was knee-high to the great picture of your Cupid that you showed
us in your famous Dutch edition of Apuleius. The young unmarried
men feel that it's irrational; the old married people tell us so
in a grunt that proves the truth of what they say. But that don't
alter the case. It's a sort of natural madness that makes one attack
in every person's lifetime. I don't believe in repeated attacks.
Some are bit worse than others; and some think themselves bit,
and are mistaken. That's the case with William, and it's that that
keeps him from your law-books and my fiddle. That makes him thin.
He has a notion of Margaret Cooper, and she has none of him; and
love that's all of one side is neither real nor rational. I don't
believe it."

William Hinkley muttered something angrily in the ears of the
speaker.

"Well, well!" said the impetuous cousin, "I don't want to make you
vexed, and still less do I come here to talk such politics with
you. What do you say to tickling a trout this afternoon? That's
what I come for."

"It's too cool," said the old man.

"Not a bit. There's a wind from the south, and a cast of cloud
is constantly growing between us and the sun. I think we shall do
something--something better than talking about love, and law, where
nobody's agreed. You, gran'pa, won't take the love; Bill Hinkley
can't stomach the law, and the trout alone can bring about a
reconciliation. Come, gran'pa, I'm resolved on getting your supper
to-night, and you must go and see me do it."

"On one condition only, Ned."

"What's that, gran'pa?"

"That you both sup with me."

"Done for myself. What say you, Bill?"

The youth gave a sad assent, and the rattling youth proceeded:--

"The best cure of grief is eating. Love is a sort of pleasant grief.
Many a case of affliction have I seen mended by a beefsteak. Fish
is better. Get a lover to eat, rouse up his appetites, and, to the
same extent, you lessen his affections. Hot suppers keep down the
sensibilities; and, gran'pa, after ours, to-night, you shall have
the fiddle. If I don't make her speak to you to-night, my name's
Brag, and you need never again believe me."

And the good-humored youth, gathering up his canes, led the way to
the hills, slowly followed by his two less elastic companions.






CHAPTER XIII.

THE HISTORY OF A FAILURE.





The route, which conducted them--over a range of gently-ascending
hills, through groves tolerably thick, an uncleared woodland tract
comprising every variety of pleasant foliage, at length brought them
to a lonely tarn or lake, about a mile in circumference, nestled
and crouching in the hollow of the hills, which, in some places
sloped gently down to its margin, at others hung abruptly over its
deep and pensive waters. A thick fringe of shrubs, water-grasses,
and wild flowers, girdled its edges, and gave a dark and mysterious
expression to its face. There were many beaten tracks, narrow paths
for individual wayfarers on foot, which conducted down to favorite
fishing-spots. These were found chiefly on those sides of the lake
where the rocks were precipitous. Perched on a jutting eminence, and
half shrouded in the bushes which clothed it, the silent fisherman
took his place, while his fly was made to kiss the water in capricious
evolutions, such as the experienced angler knows how to employ to
beguile the wary victim from close cove, or gloomy hollow, or from
beneath those decaying trunks of overthrown trees which have given
his brood a shelter from immemorial time.

To one of these selected spots, Ned Hinkley proceeded, leaving his
companions above, where, in shade themselves, and lying at ease
upon the smooth turf, they could watch his successes, and at the
same time enjoy the coup d'oeil, which was singularly beautiful,
afforded by the whole surrounding expanse. The tarn, like the dark
mysterious dwelling of an Undine, was spread out before them with
the smoothness of glass, though untransparent, and shining beneath
their eyes like a vast basin of the richest jet. A thousand pretty
changes along the upland slopes, or abrupt hills which hemmed it
in, gave it a singular aspect of variety which is seldom afforded
by any scene very remarkable for its stillness and seclusion.
Opposite to the rock on which Ned Hinkley was already crouching,
the hill-slope to the lake was singularly unbroken, and so gradual
was the ascent from the margin, that one was scarcely conscious
of his upward movement, until looking behind him, he saw how far
below lay the waters which he had lately left.

The pathway, which had been often trodden, was very distinctly
marked to the eyes of our two friends on the opposite elevation,
and they could also perceive where the same footpath extended on
either hand a few yards from the lake, so as to enable the wanderer
to prolong his rambles, on either side, until reaching the foot of
the abrupt masses of rock which distinguished the opposite margin
of the basin. To ascend these, on that side, was a work of toil,
which none but the lover of the picturesque is often found willing
to encounter. Above, even to the eyes of our friends, though
they occupied an eminence, the skies seemed circumscribed to the
circumference of the lake and the hills by which it was surrounded;
and the appearance of the whole region, therefore, was that of
a complete amphitheatre, the lake being the floor, the hills the
mighty pillars, and the roof, the blue, bright, fretted canopy of
heaven.

"I have missed you, my son, for some time past, and the beauty of
the picture reminds me of what your seeming neglect has made me
lose. When I was a young man I would have preferred to visit such
a spot as this alone. But the sense of desolation presses heavily
upon an old man under any circumstances; and he seeks for the
company of the young, as if to freshen, with sympathy and memory,
the cheerlessness and decay which attends all his own thoughts
and fancies. To come alone into the woods, even though the scene
I look on be as fair as this, makes me moody and awakens gloomy
imaginations; and since you have been so long absent, I have taken
to my books again, and given up the woods. Ah! books, alone, never
desert us; never prove unfaithful; never chide us; never mock us,
as even these woods do, with the memory of baffled hopes, and dreams
of youth, gone, never to return again.

"I trust, my dear sir, you do not think me ungrateful. I have not
wilfully neglected you. More than once I set out to visit you; but
my heart was so full--I was so very unhappy--that I had not the
spirit for it. I felt that I should not be any company for you,
and feared that I would only affect you with some of my own dullness."

"Nay, that should be no fear with you, my dear boy, for you should
know that the very sorrows of youth, as they awaken the sympathies
of age, provide it with the means of excitement. It is the misfortune
of age that its interest is slow to kindle. Whatever excites the
pulse, if not violently, is beneficial to the heart of the old man.
But these sorrows of yours, my son--do you not call them by too
strong a name? I suspect they are nothing more than the discontents,
the vague yearnings of the young and ardent nature, such as prompt
enterprise and lead to nobleness. If you had them not, you would
think of little else than how to squat with your cousin there,
seeking to entrap your dinner; nay, not so much--you would think
only of the modes of cooking and the delight of eating the fish,
and shrink from the toil of taking it. Do not deceive yourself.
This sorrow which distresses you is possibly a beneficial sorrow.
It is the hope which is in you to be something--to DO something--for
this DOING is after all, and before all, the great object of
living. The hope of the heart is always a discontent--most generally
a wholesome discontent--sometimes a noble discontent leading to
nobleness. It is to be satisfied rather than nursed. You must do
what it requires."

"I know not what it requires."

"Your DOING then must be confined at present to finding out what
that is."

"Alas! sir, it seems to me as if I could no more THINK than I can
DO"

"Very likely;--that is the case at present; and there are several
reasons for this feebleness. The energies which have not yet been
tasked, do not know well how to begin. You have been a favored boy.
Your wants have been well provided for. Your parents have loved
you only too much."

"Too much! Why, even now, I am met with cold looks and reproachful
words, on account of this stranger, of whom nobody knows anything."

"Even so: suppose that to be the case, my son; still it does not
alter the truth of what I say. You can not imagine that your parents
prefer this stranger to yourself, unless you imagine them to have
undergone a very sudden change of character. They have always
treated you tenderly--too tenderly."

"Too tenderly, sir?"

"Yes, William, too tenderly. Their tenderness has enfeebled you, and
that is the reason you know not in what way to begin to dissipate
your doubts, and apply your energies. If they reproach you, that is
because they have some interest in you, and a right in you, which
constitutes their interest. If they treat the stranger civilly, it
is because he is a stranger."

"Ay, sir, but what if they give this stranger authority to question
and to counsel me? Is not this a cruel indignity?"

"Softly, William, softly! There is something at the bottom of
this which I do not see, and which perhaps you do not see. If your
parents employ a stranger to counsel you, it proves that something
in your conduct leads them to think that you need counsel."

"That may be, sir; but why not give it themselves? why employ a
person of whom nobody knows anything?"

"I infer from your tone, my son, rather than your words, that you
have some dislike to this stranger.

"No, sir--"was the beginning of the young man's reply, but he
stopped short with a guilty consciousness. A warm blush overspread
his cheek, and he remained silent. The old man, without seeming to
perceive the momentary interruption, or the confusion which followed
it, proceeded in his commentary.

"There should be nothing, surely, to anger you in good counsel,
spoken even by a stranger, my son; and even where the counsel be
not good, if the motive be so, it requires our gratitude though it
may not receive our adoption."

"I don't know, sir, but it seems to me very strange, and is very
humiliating, that I should be required to submit to the instructions
of one of whom we know nothing, and who is scarcely older than
myself."

"It may be mortifying to your self-esteem, my son, but self-esteem,
when too active, is compelled constantly to suffer this sort of
mortification. It may be that one man shall not be older in actual
years than another, yet be able to teach that other. Merely living,
days and weeks and months, constitutes no right to wisdom: it is
the crowding events and experience--the indefatigable industry--the
living actively and well--that supply us with the materials for
knowing and teaching. In comparison with millions of your own age,
who have lived among men, and shared in their strifes and troubles,
you would find yourself as feeble a child as ever yet needed the
helping hand of counsel and guardianship; and this brings me back
to what I said before. Your parents have treated you too tenderly.
They have done everything for you. You have done nothing for
yourself. They provide for your wants, hearken to your complaints,
nurture you in sickness, with a diseasing fondness, and so render
you incapable. Hence it is, that, in the toils of manhood, you do
not know how to begin. You lack courage and perseverance."

"Courage and perseverance!" was the surprised exclamation of the
youth.

"Precisely, and lest I should offend you, my son, I must acknowledge
to you beforehand, that this very deficiency was my own."

"Yours, sir? I can not think it. What! lack courage?"

"Exactly so!"

"Why, sir--did I not see you myself, when everybody else looked
on with trembling and with terror, throw yourself in the way of
Drummond's horses and save the poor boy from being dashed to pieces?
There was surely no lack of courage there!"

"No! in that sense, my son, I labor under no deficiency. But
this sort of courage is of the meanest kind. It is the courage of
impulse, not of steadfastness. Hear me, William. You have more than
once allowed the expression of a wonder to escape you, why a man,
having such a passion for books and study, and with the appearance
of mental resources, such as I am supposed to possess, should be
content, retiring from the great city, to set up his habitation in
this remote and obscure region. My chosen profession was the law;
I was no unfaithful student. True, I had no parents to lament my
wanderings and failures; but I did not wander. I studied closely,
with a degree of diligence which seemed to surprise all my companions.
I was ambitious--intensely ambitious. My head ran upon the strifes
of the forum, its exciting contests of mind and soul--its troubles,
its triumphs. This was my leading thought--it was my only passion.
The boy-frenzies for women, which are prompted less by sentiment
or judgment, than by feverish blood, troubled me little. Law was my
mistress--took up all my time--absorbed all my devotion. I believe
that I was a good lawyer--no pettifogger--the merely drilled
creature who toils for his license, and toils for ever after solely
for his petty gains, in the miserably petty arts of making gains
for others, and eluding the snares set for his own feet by kindred
spirits. As far as the teaching of this country could afford me
the means and opportunity, I endeavored to procure a knowledge of
universal law--its sources--its true objects--its just principles--its
legitimate dicta. Mere authorities never satisfied me, unless,
passing behind the black gowns, I could follow up the reasoning
to the first fountains--the small original truths, the nicely
discriminated requisitions of immutable justice--the clearly-defined
and inevitable wants of a superior and prosperous society. Everything
that could illustrate law as well as fortify it; every collateral
aid, in the shape of history or moral truth, I gathered together,
even as the dragoon whose chief agent is his sabre, yet takes care
to provide himself with pistols, that may finish what the other
weapon has begun. Nor did I content myself with the mere acquisition
of the necessary knowledge. Knowing how much depends upon voice,
manner and fluency, in obtaining success before a jury, I addressed
myself to these particulars with equal industry. My voice, even
now, has a compass which your unexercised lungs, though quite as
good originally as mine, would fail entirely to contend with. I
do not deceive myself, as I certainly do not seek to deceive you,
when I say, that I acquired the happiest mastery over my person."

"Ah! sir--we see that now--that must have been the case!" said the
youth interrupting him. The other continued, sadly smiling as he
heard the eulogy which the youth meant to speak, the utterance of
which was obviously from the heart.

"My voice was taught by various exercises to be slow or rapid, soft
or strong, harsh or musical, by the most sudden, yet unnoticeable
transitions. I practised all the arts, which are recommended by
elocutionists for this purpose, I rumbled my eloquence standing on
the seashore, up to my middle in the breakers. I ran, roaring up
steep hills--I stretched myself at length by the side of meandering
brooks, or in slumberous forests of pine, and sought, by the merest
whispers, to express myself with distinctness and melody. But there
was something yet more requisite than these, and this was language.
My labors to obtain all the arts of utterance did not seem less
successful. I could dilate with singular fluency, with classical
propriety, and great natural vigor of expression. I studied directness
of expression by a frequent intercourse with men of business, and
examined, with the nicest urgency, the particular characteristics
of those of my own profession who were most remarkable for their
plain, forcible speaking. I say nothing of my studies of such great
masters in discourse and philosophy, as Milton, Sliakspere, Homer,
Lord Bacon, and the great English divines. As a model of pure English
the Bible was a daily study of two hours; and from this noble well
of vernacular eloquence, I gathered--so I fancied--no small portion
of its quaint expressive vigor, its stern emphasis, its golden and
choice phrases of illustration. Never did a young lawyer go into
the forum more thoroughly clad in proof, or with a better armory
as well for defence as attack."

"You did not fail, sir?" exclaimed the youth with a painful expression
of eager anxiety upon his countenance.

"I did fail--fail altogether! In the first effort to speak, I
fainted, and was carried lifeless from the court-room."

The old man covered his face with his hands, for a few moments,
to conceal the expression of pain and mortification which memory
continued to renew in utter despite of time. The young man's hand
rested affectionately on his shoulder. A few moments sufficed to
enable the former to renew his narrative.

"I was stunned but not crushed by this event. I knew my own resources.
I recollected a similar anecdote of Sheridan; of his first attempt
and wretched failure. I, too, felt that 'I had it in me,' and though
I did not express, I made the same resolution, that 'I would bring
it out.' But Sheridan and myself failed from different causes,
though I did not understand this at that time. He had a degree of
hardihood which I had not; and he utterly lacked my sensibilities.
The very intenseness of my ambition; the extent of my expectation;
the elevated estimate which I had made of my own profession; of
its exactions; and, again, of what was expected from me; were all
so many obstacles to my success. I did not so esteem them, then; and
after renewing my studies in private, my exercises of expression and
manner, and going through a harder course of drilling, I repeated
the attempt to suffer a repetition of the failure. I did not
again faint, but I was speechless. I not only lost the power of
utterance, but I lost the corresponding faculty of sight. My eyes
were completely dazed and confounded. The objects of sight around
me were as crowded and confused as the far, dim ranges of figures,
tribes upon tribes, and legions upon legions, which struggle
in obscurity and distance, in any one of the begrimed and blurred
pictures of Martin's Pandemonium. My second failure was a more
enfeebling disaster than the first. The first procured me the
sympathy of my audience, the last exposed me to its ridicule."

Again the old man paused. By this time, the youth had got one of
his arms about the neck of the speaker, and had taken one of his
hands within his grasp.

"Yours is a generous nature, William," said Mr. Calvert, "and I have
not said to you, until to-day, how grateful your boyish sympathies
have been to me from the first day when you became my pupil. It
is my knowledge of these sympathies, and a desire to reward them,
that prompts me to tell a story which still brings its pains to
memory, and which would be given to no other ears than your own.
I see that you are eager for the rest--for the wretched sequel."

"Oh, no! sir--do not tell me any more of it if it brings you pain.
I confess I should like to know all, but--"

"You shall have it all, my son. My purpose would not be answered
unless I finished the narrative. You will gather from it, very
possibly, the moral which I could not. You will comprehend something
better, the woful distinction between courage of the blood and courage
of the brain; between the mere recklessness of brute impulse, and
the steady valor of the soul--that valor, which, though it trembles,
marches forward to the attack--recovers from its fainting, to
retrieve its defeat; and glows with self-indignation because it has
suffered the moment of victory to pass, without employing itself
to secure the boon!--

"Shame, and a natural desire to retrieve myself, operated to make
me renew my efforts. I need not go through the processes by which
I endeavored to acquire the necessary degree of hardihood. In vain
did I recall the fact that my competitors were notoriously persons
far inferior to me in knowledge of the topics; far inferior in the
capacity to analyze them; rude and coarse in expression; unfamiliar
with the language--mere delvers and diggers in a science in which
I secretly felt that I should be a master. In vain did I recall to
mind the fact that I knew the community before which I was likely
to speak; I knew its deficiencies; knew the inferiority of its
idols, and could and should have no sort of fear of its criticism.
But it was myself that I feared. I had mistaken the true censor.
It was my own standards of judgment that distressed and made me
tremble. It was what I expected of myself--what I thought should
be expected of me--that made my weak soul recoil in terror from
the conviction that I must fail in its endeavor to reach the point
which my ambitious soul strove to attain. The fear, in such cases,
produced the very disaster, from the anticipated dread of which
it had arisen. I again failed--failed egregiously--failed utterly
and for ever! I never again attempted the fearful trial. I gave
up the contest, yielded the field to my inferiors, better-nerved,
though inferior, and, with all my learning, all my eloquence, my
voice, my manner; my resources of study, thought, and utterance,
fled from sight--fled here--to bury myself in the wilderness,
and descend to the less ambitious, but less dangerous vocation of
schooling--I trust, to better uses--the minds of others. I had done
nothing with my own."

"Oh, sir, do not say so. Though you may have failed in one department
of human performance, you have succeeded in others. You have lost
none of the knowledge which you then acquired. You possess all the
gifts of eloquence, of manner, of voice, of education, of thought."

"But of what use, my son? Remember, we do not toil for these
possessions to lock them up--to content ourselves, as the miserable
miser, with the consciousness that we possess a treasure known to
ourselves only--useless to all others as to ourselves! Learning,
like love, like money, derives its true value from its circulation."

"And you circulate yours, my dear sir. What do we not owe you in
Charlemont? What do I not owe you, over all?"

"Love, my son--love only. Pay me that. Do not desert me in my old
age. Do not leave me utterly alone!"

"I will not, sir--I never thought to do so."

"But," said the old man, "to resume. Why did I fail is still the
question. Because I had not been taught those lessons of steady
endurance in my youth which would have strengthened me against failure,
and enable me finally to triumph. There is a rich significance in
what we hear of the Spartan boy, who never betrayed his uneasiness
or agony though the fox was tearing out his bowels. There is a
sort of moral roughening which boys should be made to endure from
the beginning, if the hope is ever entertained, to mature their
minds to intellectual manhood. Our American Indians prescribe the
same laws, and in their practice, very much resemble the ancient
Spartans. To bear fatigue, and starvation, and injury--exposure,
wet, privation, blows--but never to complain. Nothing betrays so
decidedly the lack of moral courage as the voice of complaint. It
is properly the language of woman. It must not be your language.
Do you understand me, William?"

"In part, sir, but I do not see how I could have helped being what
I am."

"Perhaps not, because few have control of their own education.
Your parents have been too tender of you. They have not lessoned
you in that proper hardihood which leads to performance. That task
is before yourself, and you have shrunk from the first lessons."

"How, sir?"

"Instead of clinging to your Blackstone, you have allowed yourself
to be seduced from its pages, by such attractions as usually delude
boys. The eye and lip of a pretty woman--a bright eye and a rosy
cheek, have diverted you from your duties."

"But do our duties deny us the indulgence of proper sensibilities?"

"Certainly not--PROPER sensibilities, on the contrary, prescribe
our duties."

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