HENRY.
The principal event of the spring among the Ridgeleys, was the return
home of Henry. He had closed his novitiate, and was awaiting
his examination for admission to the bar. He had already, on the
recommendation of his friend and instructor, Wade, formed a favorable
business connection with the younger Hitchcock, at Painesville; and
now, after a year's absence, he came back to his mother and brothers,
for a few days of relaxation and visiting. Less strong than the Major,
of grave, thoughtful, but cheerful face and mien, heavy-browed and
deep-eyed, with plain, marked face, and finished manners, he was well
calculated to impress favorably, and win confidence and respect. His
mind was solid, but lacked the sparkle and vivacity of Bart's, and
compensatingly was believed to be deep. He was the pride and hope of
the family: around him gathered all its expectations of distinction,
and no one shared all these more intensely than Bart, who had awaited
his coming with hope and fear. He was accompanied by a fellow-student
named Ranney, of about his own age, and like him, above the usual
height, broad and heavy-shouldered, with a massive head and strong
face, a high narrow forehead; rather shy in manner, and taciturn.
They came one night while Bart was in the sugar-camp, where he spent
many nights, and he met them the next morning at the breakfast-table.
No one could be gladder than he to meet his brother, but, like his
mother, he was struck by his emaciated form and languor of manner.
Bart had heard of Ranney as a man of strong, profound, ingenious mind,
with much power of sarcasm, and who had formed a partnership with
Wade, on the retirement of Mr. Giddings from the bar. He stood a
little in awe of him, whose good opinion he would have gladly secured,
but who, he had a presentiment, would not understand him. Indeed, he
was quite certain he did not understand himself.
The young men had been fellow-students for two years, had many things
in common, and were strong friends.
Bart soon found that they had a slender view of his law reading,
and spoke slightingly of Ford as a lawyer. They had both diligently
studied to the lower depths of the law, had a fair appreciation of
their acquisitions, and would not overestimate the few months of
solitary reading of a boy in the country.
Bart did not mention his studies, and only answered modestly his
brother's inquiries, who closed the subject for the time by saying
that if he was serious in his desire to study law, "he would either
arrange to take him to Painesville in the Fall, or have his friend
Ranney take him in hand." Bart was pleased with the idea of being with
either; and possibly he may have wondered whether whoever took him in
hand would not have that hand full.
The young men strolled off to his sugar-camp during the forenoon,
lounged learnedly about, evincing little interest in the camp and
surroundings, although the deepening season had filled the woods with
flowers and birds; and Bart wondered whether "Coke on Littleton," and
executory devises, and contingent remainders, had produced in them
their natural consequences. He watched to see whether new maple sugar
was sweet to them, and on full reflection doubted if it was.
They did not interfere with his work, and sauntered back to an early
dinner, and Bart saw no more of them until night.
He closed out his work early for the day, and spent the evening with
them and his mother.
Henry naturally inquired about his old acquaintances, and Bart
answered graphically. He was in a mood of reckless gayety. He took
them up, one after another, and in a few happy strokes presented
them in ludicrous caricature, irresistible for its hits of humor,
and sometimes for wit, and sometimes sarcasm--a stream of sparkle
and glitter, with queer quotations of history, poetry, and Scripture,
always apt, and the latter not always irreverent. Ranney had a
capacity to enjoy a medley, and both of the young men abandoned
themselves to uncontrollable laughter; and even the good mother, who
tried in vain to stop her reckless son, surprised herself with tears
streaming down her cheeks. Bart, for the most part, remained
grave, and occasionally Edward helped him out with a suggestion, or
contributed a dry and pungent word of his own.
As the fit subsided, Henry, half serious and half laughing, turned to
him: "Oh, Bart, I thought you had reformed, and become considerate and
thoughtful, and I find that you are worse than ever."
"But, Henry, what's the use of having neighbors and acquaintances and
friends, if one cannot serve them up to his guests; and only think,
I've gone about for six months with the odds and ends of 'flat, stale
and unprofitable' things accumulating in and about him--the said
Bart--until, as a sanitary measure, I had to utter them."
"How do you feel after it?" inquired Henry.
"Rather depressed, though I hope to tone up again."
"Bart," said Henry, gravely, "I haven't seen much of you for two or
three years; I used to get queer glimpses of you in your letters, and
I must look through your mental and moral make-up some time."
"You will find me like the sterile, stony glebe, which, when the
priest reached in his career of invocation and blessing--'Here,' said
the holy father, 'prayers and supplications are of no avail. This
must have manure.' Grace would, I fear, be wasted on me, and our good
mother would willingly see me under your subsoiling and fertilizing
hand."
"Do you ever seriously think?"
"I? oh yes! such thoughts as I can think. I think of the wondrously
beautiful in nature, and am glad. I think of the wretched race of men,
and am sad. I think of my shallow self, and am mad."
Henry, with unchanged gravity: "Do you believe in anything?"
"Yes, I believe fully in our mother; a good deal in you, though my
faith is shaken a little just now; and am inclined to great faith in
your friend Mr. Ranney."
All smile but Henry. "Yes, all that of course, but abstract
propositions. Have you faith, in anything?"
"Well, I believe in genius, I believe in poetry--though not much in
poets--music--though that is not for men. I believe in love--for those
who may have it. I believe in woman and in God. When I draw myself
close to Him, I am overcome with a great awe, and dare not pray. It
is only when I seem to push Him off, and coop Him up in a little
crystal-domed palace beyond the stars, and out of hearing, that I
dare tell Him how huge He is, and pipe little serenades of psalmody to
Him."
"Oh, Barton, you are profane!"
"No, mother, men are profane in their gorgeous egotism. We are the
braggarts, and ascribe egotism to God Himself; while we are the sole
objects of interest in the universe. God was and is on our account
only; and when men fancy that they have found a way of running things
without Him, they shove Him out entirely. I put it plainly, and it
sounds bad."
"This is a compendious confession of faith," said Henry; and, pausing,
"why do you put genius first?"
"As the most doubtful, and, at the same time, an interesting article.
I am at the age when a young man queries anxiously about it. Has he
any of it--the least bit?"
"Well, what is your conclusion?"
"Sometimes I fancy I feel faintly its stir and spur and inspiration."
"When it may be only dyspepsia," said Henry.
"It may be. I haven't ranked myself among geniuses."
"Yet you believe in it. What is it?"
"I can't tell. Can you tell what is electricity or life?"
"That is not logical. You answer one question by asking another."
"I am not sure but that is allowable," interrupted Ranney. "You pose
your opponent with an unanswerable question, and he in turn proposes
several, thereby suggesting that there are things unknown, and that if
you will push him to that realm you are equally involved. It may not
be logical, but it usually silences."
"Not quite, in this instance," said Henry, "for we know by their
manifestations that life and electricity are; they manifest themselves
to us."
"And by the same rule genius manifests itself to your brother,
although it may not to you."
"Thank you, Mr. Ranney," said Bart.
"Now I do not suppose," he went on, "that genius is a beneficent
little imp, or genie, lodged in the brain of the fortunate or
unfortunate, who is all-powerful, and always at hand to give strength,
emit a flash of light, or pour inspiration into the faculties, nor
does it consist in anything that answers to that idea. But there are
men endowed with quick, strong intellects, with warm, ardent, intense
temperaments, and with strong imaginations; where these, or their
equivalents, are found happily blended, the result is genius. There
is a working power that can do anything, and with apparent ease. If
it plunges down, it need not remain long; if it mounts up, it alights
again without effort or injury."
"And such a 'working power,' you suppose, would, of itself, be a
constant self-supply, and always equal to emergencies, and of its own
unaided spontaneous inspirations and energies, I suppose," said Henry,
"and has nothing to do but float and plunge about, diving and soaring,
in the amplitude of nature?"
"Well, Henry, you can't get out of a man what isn't in him. You need
not draw on a water-bottle for nectar, or hope to carve marble columns
from empty air; genius can't do that. An unformed, undeveloped mind
never threw out great things spontaneously, as the cloud throws out
lightning. Men are not great without achievement, nor wise without
study and reflection. Nor was there ever a genius, however strong and
brilliant in the rough, that would not have been stronger and more
brilliant by cutting," said Bart, with vehemence. "All I contend for
is, that genius, as I have supposed, can make the most and best of
things, often doing with them what other and commoner minds cannot do
at all."
"This is not the school-boy's idea of genius," said Ranney.
"And," said Bart, a little assertively, "I am not a school-boy."
"So I perceive," said Ranney, coolly.
"The fault I find with you geniuses--"
"We geniuses!!--"
"Is," said Henry, "you perpetually fly and caracol about, and just
because you can, apparently, and for the fun of the thing."
"Eagles fly," said Bart.
"And so do butterflies, and other gilded insects."
"Therefore, flying should be dispensed with, I suppose," said Bart.
"Because things of mere painted wings, all wing and nothing else, can
float in the lower atmosphere, are all winged things to be despised?
Birds of strong flight can light and build on or near the ground, but
your barn-yard fowl can hardly soar to the top of the fence for his
crow."
"But your geniuses, Bart, will not work, will not strip to the long,
patient, delving drudgery necessary to unravel, separate, analyze,
weigh, measure, estimate and count, and come to like work for work's
sake, and so grow to do the best and most work. They deal a few heavy
blows, scatter things, pick up a few glittering pebbles, and--"
"Leave to dullards the riches of the mines they never would have
found," broke in Bart.
"And fly away into upper air," pursued Henry.
"Oh, I know that some chaps rise for want of weight, as you would say;
but mere weight will keep a man always at the surface. Your men who
are always plunging into things, digging and turning up the earth--who
believe with the ancients that truth is in a well--often lose
themselves, and are smothered in their own dirt-holes, and call on men
to see how deep they are. God coins with His image on the outside,
as men mint money, and your deep lookers can't see it; they are for
rushing into the bowels of things."
"There is force in that, Bart. Men may see God in His works, if they
will; but men don't so stamp their works. At his best, man is weak;
unknowing truth, he puts false brands on his goods, mixes and mingles,
snarls and confuses, covers up, hides and effaces, so far as he can,
God's works, and palms off as His the works of the other. And it is
with these that the lawyer has to do: a work in which your mere genius
would make little headway. He would go to it without preparation; he
would grow weary of the hopelessness of the task, and fly away to some
pleasant perch, and plume his wing for another flight, I fear."
"Might not his lamp of genius aid him somewhat?" put in Bart.
"It might," said Ranney, "and he might be misled by its flare. He
would do better to use the old lights of the law. Some are a little
lurid, and some a little blue, but always the same in tempest or
calm. The law, as you have doubtless discovered, is founded in a few
principles of obvious right. Their application to cases is artificial.
The law, for its own wise purposes, takes care of itself; of its own
force, it embraces everything, investigates everything, construes
itself, and enforces itself, as the sole power in the premises. Its
rules in the text-books read plain enough, and are not difficult
of apprehension. The uncertainty of the law arises in the doubt and
uncertainty of the facts; and hence the doubt about which, of many
rules, ought to govern. A man of genius, as you describe him, ought
to become a good lawyer; he would excel in the investigation and
presentation of facts; but none but a lawyer saturated with the spirit
of the law until he comes to have a legal instinct, can with accuracy
apply it."
This was clear and strong to Barton, and profitable to him.
"Now Barton," said Henry, turning to Ranney, as if Bart were absent,
"went through with Blackstone in a month, and probably would go
through it every month in the year, and then he might be profitably
put to read Blackstone. If I were to shut him up with the
'Institutes,' in four days there might be nothing of poor Coke left
but covers and cords."
"And what would become of Bart?" asked Ranney.
"Go mad--but not from much learning," answered the youth for himself;
"or you would find him like a dried geranium-leaf hid in the leaves of
the year-books,--
'Where thy mates of the garden lie scentless and dead.'"
There was a touch of sarcasm in his mocking voice; and flashing out
with his old sparkle, "Be patient with me, boys, the future works
miracles. There
Are mountains ungrown,
And fountains unflown,
And flowers unblown,
And seed never strown,
And meadows unmown,
And maids all alone,
And lots of things to you unknown,
And every mother's son of us must
Always blow his own--nose, you know."
And while the young men were a little astonished at the run of his
lines, the practical and unexpected climax threw them into another
laugh.
Soon Henry took a candle, and the two young men retired. They paused a
moment in the little parlor.
"Was there ever such a singular and brilliant compound?" said Ranney.
"What a power of expression he has! and I see that he generally knows
where he is going to hit. If you can hold him till he masters the law,
he will be a power before juries."
"I think so too," said Henry; "but he must be a good lawyer before he
can be a good advocate,--though that isn't the popular idea."
"Let him work," said Ranney. "He will shed his flightier notions as a
young bird moults its down."
How kind to have said this to Bart! Oh, what a mistake, that just
praise is injurious! How many weary, fainting, doubting young hearts
have famished and died for a kind word of encouragement!
When Bart returned to the sitting-room, his mother and younger
brothers had retired.
"I am scorned of women and misunderstood of men--even by my own
brother," he said bitterly to himself. "Let me live to change this,
and then let me die."
The old melancholy chords vibrated, and he went to his little attic,
remembering with anguish the stream of nonsense and folly he had
poured forth, and thought of the laughter he had provoked as so much
deserved rebuke; and he determined never to utter another word that
should provoke a smile. He would feed and sleep, and grow stupid and
stolid, heavy and dull, and bring forth emptiness and nothings with
solemn effort and dignified sweatings.
Early on the morrow he was away to the camp, to renew the fires under
his sugar-kettles. The cool, fresh air of the woods refreshed and
restored his spirits somewhat. He placed on the breakfast-table two
bouquets of wood-flowers, and met his guests with the easy grace and
courtesy of an accomplished host; and both felt for the first time
the charm of his manner, and recognized that it sprung from a superior
nature.
As they were about to rise from the breakfast-table, "Gentlemen," said
he, "Miss Kate Fisher gives, this afternoon, a little sugar party, out
at her father's camp. Henry, she sent over an invitation specially for
you two, with one to me, for courtesy. I cannot go; but you must.
You will meet, Mr. Ranney, several young ladies, any one of whom will
convert you to my creed of love and poetry, and two or three young,
men stupid enough to master the law,"--with a bright smile. "I
promised you would both go. The walk is not more than a mile, the day
a marvel right out of Paradise, and you both need the exercise, and to
feel that it is spring."
"And why don't you go, Barton?" asked Henry.
"Well, you are not a stranger to any whom you will meet, and don't
need me. In the first place, I must remain and gather the sap, and
can't go; in the second, I don't want to go, and won't; and in the
third, I have several good reasons for not going,"--all very bright,
and in good humor.
"What do you say, Ranney?"
"Well, I would like to go, and I would like to have Barton go with
us."
"Would you, though?"--brightening. "No, I can't go; though I would be
glad to go with you anywhere."