"Deep thought oft seemed to fix his infant eye;
Silent when glad, affectionate, though shy:
And now his look was most demurely sad,
And now he laughed aloud, yet none knew why.
The neighbors stared and sighed, yet blessed the lad;
Some deemed him wondrous wise, and some believed him mad."
Beattie.
Our young student retired to his garret, a small room in the roof of the
cottage, heated by the summer sun resting on its roof almost to the heat
of a furnace. One small window looking towards the east admitted the
evening breeze.
In the remotest corner was a low and narrow pallet, by the side of which
hung the indispensable articles of a man's apparel.
A small table, covered with ink spots, and a solitary chair stood in the
centre of the little apartment. A few deal shelves contained the odd and
worn volumes of the student's library. A Greek Testament, several
lexicons, half a volume of Horace, lay scattered on the table. Virgil
was the book he had brought with him from the pine-knot torch, and it
was the old Grecian, Homer that he was so anxious to possess.
The uncarpeted floor was thickly strewn with sheets half written over,
and torn manuscripts were scattered about. Wherever the floor was
visible, the frequent ink spots indicated that it was not without mental
agitation that these manuscripts had been produced.
It was not to repose from the labors of the day that the young man
entered his little chamber: to bodily labor must now succeed mental
toil.
He cast a wistful look towards his little pallet; he longed to rest his
limbs, aching with the labor of the day; but no; his lamp was on the
table, and, resolutely throwing off his coarse frock, he sat down to
think and to write.
Wearied by a long day of labor, the student in vain tried to collect his
thoughts, to calm his weakened nerves. He rose and walked his chamber
with rapid steps, the drops of heat and anguish resting on his brow.
"Oh!" said he, "that I had been content to remain the clod, the
toil-worn slave that I am!"
Little do they know, who have leisure and wealth, and all the
appurtenances of literary ease--the lolling study-chair, the convenient
apartment, the brilliant light--how much those suffer who indulge in
aspirations beyond their lowly fortune.
The student sat down again to write. His hands were icy cold, while his
eyes and brow were burning hot. He was engaged on a translation from the
Greek. His efforts to collect and concentrate his thoughts on his work,
exhausted as he was with toil, were vain and unavailing. At length he
threw down his pen.
"Oh God!" thought he, "is this madness? am I losing my memory, my mind?"
Again he walked his little room, but with gentler steps; for he would
not disturb his aged relatives, who slept beneath.
"Have I deceived myself?" he said; "were all my aspirations only
delusions, when, yet a boy, I followed the setting sun, and the rainbow
hues of the evening clouds, with a full heart that could only find
relief in tears?--when I believed myself destined to be other than a
hewer of wood and a drawer of water, because I felt an immeasurable pity
for my fellow-men, groping, as I did myself, under all the evils of
ignorance and sin? Was it only vanity, when I hoped to rise above the
clods of the earth, and aspired to have my lips, as Isaiah's, touched by
a coal from the holy altar? Was it only impatience at my lot which
destined me to inexorable poverty?"
"Let me not despair of myself;" and he took from his table a manuscript
of two or three sheets, and began to read it.
As he went on, his dissatisfaction seemed to increase. With the
sensitiveness and humility of true genius, when under the influence of
despondency, every line seemed to him feeble or exaggerated; all the
faults glared out in bold relief; while the real beauty of the
composition escaped his jaded and toil-worn attention.
"Oh Heaven!" he said, "I have deceived myself; I am no genius, able to
rise above the lowliness of my station. The bitter cup of poverty is at
my lips. I have not even the power to purchase a single book. Shall I go
again to my good friend at C----? Shall I appear as a beggar, or a
peasant, to beg the trifling pittance of a book?"
A burning blush for a moment passed over his pale countenance. "Will
they not say, and justly, 'Go back to your plough; it is your destiny
and proper vocation to labor?'"
He sat down on the side of his little pallet, and burst into tears. He
wept long, and, as he wept, his mind became more calm. The short
summer's night, in its progress, had bathed the earth in darkness, and
cooled the heated roof of his little apartment. The night breeze, as it
came in at his window, chilled him, and he rose to close it.
As he looked from his little window, the dawn was just appearing in the
east, and the planet Venus, shining with the soft light of a crescent
moon, was full before him.
"O beautiful star!" he thought, "the same that went before the sages of
the East, and guided them to the manger of the Savior! I aspire only to
be a teacher of the sublime wisdom of that humble manger. Let me but
lift up my weak voice in his cause, and let all worldly ambition die
within me.
'---- Thou, O Spirit! who dost prefer,
Before all temples, th' upright heart and pure,'
I consecrate my powers to thee."
The morning breeze, as it blew on his temples, refreshed him. The young
birds began to make those faint twitterings beneath the downy breast of
the mother, the first faint sound that breaks the mysterious silence of
early dawn.
He turned from the window; the rush-light was just expiring in its rude
candlestick. He threw himself on his bed, and was soon lost in deep and
dreamless slumbers.