LOGIC OF THE GODS.
"Doctor," said Barton, in the little office of the latter, "I've
called to borrow your Euclid; may I have it? I have never tried
Euclid, really."
"Oh, yes, you can have it, and welcome. Do you want to try yourself on
the _pons asinorum?_"
"What is that; another bridge of sighs? for I suppose they can be
found out of Venice."
"It is a place over which asses have to be carried. It is, indeed, a
bridge of sighs, and a bridge of size."
"Oh, Doctor, don't you do that! Well, let me try it! I want more
work; and especially I want a wrestle with Euclid."
"Work! what are you doing, that you call work?"
"Well, hoeing beans, pulling up weeds, harvesting oats, with
recreations in Latin Grammar, Dabol, Algebra, Watts on the Mind,
Butler's Analogy, and other trifles."
"All at one time?"
"No, not more than three at the same time. Don't lecture me, Doctor, I
am incorrigible. When I work, I don't play."
"And when you don't play you work, occasionally; well, I think Euclid
will do you good."
"I won't take it as a prescription, Doctor!"
"A thorough course of mathematics would do more for one of your
flighty mind, than anything else; you want chaining down to the severe
logic of lines and angles."
"To the solution of such profound problems as, that the whole of a
thing is more than a fraction of it; and things that are exactly alike
resemble each other, for instance, eh?"
"Pshaw! you will make fun of everything. Will you ever reach
discretion, and deal with things seriously?"
"I was never more serious in my life, and could cry with mortification
over my lost, idled-away hours, you never believed in me, and are not
to blame for that, nor have I any promises to make. I am not thought
to be at all promising, I believe."
"Bart," said the Doctor, seriously, "you don't lack capacity; but you
are too quick and impulsive, and all imagination and fancy."
"Well, Doctor, you flatter me; but really is not the imagination one
of the highest elements of the human mind? In the wide world's history
was it not a crowning, and one of the most useful qualities of many of
the greatest men?"
"Great men have had imagination. I presume, and achieved great things
in spite of it; but through it, never."
"Why, Doctor! the mere mathematician is the most servile of mortals.
He is useful, but cannot create, or even discover. He weighs and
measures. Project one of his angles into space, and, though it may
reach within ten feet of a blazing star that dazzles men with eyes,
yet he will neither see nor know of its existence. His foot-rule won't
reach it, and he has no eyes. Imagination! it was the logic of the
gods--the power to create; and among men it abolishes the impossible.
By its force and strength one may strike fire from hidden flints in
darkened worlds, and beat new windows in the blind sides of the ages.
Columbus imagined another continent, and sailed to it; and so of all
great discoverers."
The Doctor listened with some surprise. "Did it ever occur to you,
Bart, that you might be an orator of some sort?"
"Such an orator as Brutus is--cold, formal, and dead? I'd rather
not be an orator at all, 'but talk right on,' like plain, blunt Mark
Antony."
"And yet Brutus has been quoted and held up by poets and orators as a
sublime example of virtue and patriotism, young man!"
"And yet he never made murder the fashion;" and--striking an
attitude--"Caesar had his Brutus! Charles had his Cromwell! and George
III. had--what the devil did George have? He was stupid enough to have
been a mathematician, though I never heard that he was."
"Oh dear, Bart!" said the Doctor, with a sigh, "for God's sake, and
your own, do study Euclid if you can! Don't you see that your mind is
always sky-rocketing and chasing thistle-down through the air?"
"'The downy thistle-seed my fare,
My strain forever new,'"
said Bart, laughing, and preparing to go.
"By the way," asked the Doctor, "wouldn't you like to go fishing one
of these nights? We haven't been but once or twice this summer. Jonah,
and Theodore, and 'Brother Young' and I have been talking about it
for some days. We will rig up a fire-jack, if you will go, and use the
spear."
"I am afraid I would be sky-rocketing, Doctor; but send me word when
you are ready."
* * * * *
Barton had now entered upon something like a regular course. He had
one of those intense nervous temperaments that did not require or
permit excessive sleep. He arose with the first light, and took up at
once the severest study he had until breakfast, and then worked with
the boys, or alone, the most of the forenoon, at whatever on the farm,
or about the house, seemed most to want his hand; the afternoons and
evenings were given to unremitting study or reading. His tone of mind
and new habit of introspection induced him to take long walks in the
woods and secluded places, and after his work for the day was done;
he imposed upon himself a regular and systematic course, and compelled
himself to adhere to it. He saw few, went nowhere; and among that busy
people, after the little buzz occasioned by his return had subsided,
he ceased to be an object of interest or comment.
It was remarked among them that they did not hear his rifle in the
forests, and nobody had presents of wild turkeys and venison, as they
sometimes had, and he was in his own silent way shaping out his own
destiny.
He received a letter from Henry in reply to his own, full of kindness,
with such hints as the elder could give as to his course of study. His
observing mother saw at once a marked change in his manner and
words. Thoughtful and forbearing, his arrogance disappeared, and his
impetuous, dashing way evidently toned down, while he was more tender
towards her, and seemed to fall naturally into the place of an elder
brother--careful and gentle to the young boys.