BART.
Bart devoted himself unselfishly and unsparingly to his school, to all
its duties and to all his scholars, and especially to the children
of the poor, and the backward pupils. He went early to the house, and
remained late. He was the tender, considerate, elder brother of the
scholars, and was astonished at his power to win regard, and maintain
order. Order maintained itself after one memorable occasion--one to
which he never referred, and of which he did not like to hear. It made
his school famous, and drew to it many visitors, and to himself no
little curiosity and attention.
He endeavored to carry on his law-reading; but beyond reviewing--and
not very thoroughly--Blackstone, he could do little. As usual, he was
homesick; and whenever a week was ended he left the school-house for
his mother's, and never returned until the following Monday morning.
His kind patrons noticed with surprise that he seemed sad and
depressed after the expulsion of Grid, and that this gloominess was
deepened about the time of Snow's ball.
Barton came to take a real pleasure in his school. Formed to love
everything, and without the power of hating, or of long retaining a
resentment, he became attached to his little flock, especially the
younger ones, and was loved in return by them, without reserve or
doubt. He did much to improve, not alone the minds of the older
pupils, but to soften and refine the manners of the young men under
his charge; while the young women, always inclined to idealize, found
how pleasant it was to receive little acts of gentlemanly attention
from him.
In the afternoon of a long, bright, March day--one of those wondrous
days, glorious above with sky and sun, and joyous with the first note
of the blue-bird--the little red school-house by the margin of the
maple-woods was filled with the pupils and their parents, assembled
for the last time. Bart, in a low voice, tremulous with emotion, bade
them all good-by, and most of them forever, and taking his little
valise, walked with a saddened heart back to his mother. This time he
had not failed, and he never was to fail again.
How many events and occurrences linked in an endless series unite to
form the sum-total of ordinary human life! Incident to it, they are
in fact all ordinary. If any appear extraordinary, it is because
they occur in the life of an extraordinary individual, or remarkable
consequences flow from them. Like all parts of human life, in and of
themselves they are always fragmentary: springing from what precedes
them, they have no beginning proper; causing and flowing into others,
they have no ending, in effect; and as the dramatic in actual life is
never framed with reference to the unities, so results are constantly
being produced and worked out by accidents, and the prominent events
often contribute nothing to any supposed final catastrophe. Strangers
interlope for a moment, and change destinies, coming out for a
day, from nothing, and going to nowhere, but marring and misshaping
everything.
No plot is to develop as this sketch of old-time life continues, and
incidents will be of value only as they tend to mould and develop
the character and powers of one, and little will be noticed save that
which concerns him. It is, perhaps, already apparent that he is very
impressible, that slight forces which would produce little effect on
different natures, are capable of changing his shape, will beat him
flat, roll him round, or convert him into a cube or triangle, and yet,
that certain strong, always acting forces will restore him, with more
or less of the mark or impress of the disturbing cause upon him. He
has a strong, tenacious nature, unstained with the semblance of a
vice. He forms quick resolutions, but can adhere to them. He is tender
to weakness, and fanciful to phantasy. His aptitude for sarcasm and
ridicule, unsparingly as it had been turned upon everybody, brought
upon him general dislike. His indecision and vacillation in adopting
and pursuing a scheme in life, lost him the confidence of his
acquaintances--ready to believe anything of one who had dealt them
so many sharp thrusts. He was sensitive to a fault, and a slight word
would have driven him forever from Julia Markham, and turned him back
upon himself, as a dissolving and transforming fire. Mentally, he was
quick as a flash, with a strong grasp, and a power of ready analysis;
and so little did his mental achievements cost him, that his
acquirements were doubted. He already paid the penalty of a nervous
and brilliant intellect--that of being adjudged not profound. Men
are always being deceived as to the real value of things, by their
apparent cost.
We see this illustrated in the case of some grave and ponderous
weakling, who has nothing really in him, and yet who creaks, and
groans, and labors, and toils, to get under way, until our sympathy
with his painful effort leads us so to rejoice over his final delivery
that we have lost all power or disposition to weigh or estimate his
half-strangled, commonplace bantling, when it is finally born, and
we are rather inclined to wonder over it as a prodigy. No doubt the
generation of men who witnessed the mountain in labor, regarded
the sickly, hairy little mouse, finally brought forth, as a genuine
wonder.
Great is mediocrity! It is the average world, and the majority
conspires to do it reverence. Genius, if such a thing there is, may be
appreciated by school-boys; the average grown world count it as of no
value. If a man has a brilliant intellect, let him bewail it on the
mountains, as the daughter of Jephtha did her virginity. If he has
wit, let him become Brutus.
Readiness and genius are apt to be arrogant; and, when joined with a
lively temper, with an ardent, impetuous nature, they render a young
man an object of dread, dislike, or worse. Bart had grave doubts
of his being a genius, but it had been abundantly manifest to his
sensitive perceptions that he was disliked; and he had in part arrived
at the probable cause, and was now very persistently endeavoring to
correct it by holding his tongue and temper.
Like all young men bent upon a pursuit where his success must depend
upon intellect, he was most anxious to ascertain the quality and
extent of his brain-power--a matter of which a young man can form
no proper idea. Later in life a man is informed by the estimate of
others, and can judge somewhat by what he has done. The youth has
done nothing. He has made no manifestation by which an observer can
determine; when he looks at himself, he can examine his head and face;
but the mind, turned in upon itself, with no mirror, weight, count or
measure, feels the hopelessness of the effort.
If some one would only tell him of his capacity and power, of his
mental weakness and deficiency, it would not, perhaps, change his
course, but might teach him how best to pursue it.