A CHILD-MAN.
Eliab Hill had from the first greatly interested the teachers
at Red Wing. The necessities of the school and the desire of the
charitable Board having it in charge, to accustom the colored people
to see those of their own race trusted and advanced, had induced
them to employ him as an assistant teacher, even before he was
really competent for such service. It is true he was given charge
of only the most rudimentary work, but that fact, while it inspired
his ambition, showed him also the need of improvement and made him
a most diligent student.
Lucy Ellison, as being the most expert in housewifely accomplishments,
had naturally taken charge of the domestic arrangements at the
Ordinary, and as a consequence had cast a larger share of the
school duties upon her "superior officer," as she delighted to call
Mollie Ainslie. This division of labor suited well the characteristics
of both. To plan, direct, and manage the school came as naturally
and easily to the stirring Yankee "school-marm" as did the ordering
of their little household to the New York farmer's daughter. Among
the extra duties thus devolved upon the former was the supervision
and direction of the studies of Eliab Hill. As he could not
consistently with the requisite discipline be included in any of the
regular classes that had been formed, and his affliction prevented
him from coming to them in the evening for private instruction,
she arranged to teach him at the school-house after school hours.
So that every day she remained after the school was dismissed to
give him an hour's instruction. His careful attention and rapid
progress amply repaid her for this sacrifice, and she looked
forward with much pleasure to the time when, after her departure,
he should be able to conduct the school with credit to himself and
profit to his fellows.
Then, for the first time, she realized how great is the momentum
which centuries of intelligence and freedom give to the mind of
the learner--how unconscious is the acquisition of the great bulk
of that knowledge which goes to make up the Caucasian manhood of
the nineteenth century.
Eliab's desire to acquire was insatiable, his application was
tireless, but what he achieved seemed always to lack a certain
flavor of completeness. It was without that substratum of general
intelligence which the free white student has partly inherited and
partly acquired by observation and experience, without the labor
or the consciousness of study. The whole world of life, business,
society, was a sealed book to him, which no other hand might open
for him; while the field of literature was but a bright tangled
thicket before him.
That unconscious familiarity with the past which is as the
small-change of daily thought to us was a strange currency to his
mind. He had, indeed, the key to the value of each piece, and could,
with difficulty, determine its power when used by another, but he
did not give or receive the currency with instinctive readiness.
Two things had made him clearly the intellectual superior of his
fellows--the advantages of his early years by which he learned to
read, and the habit of meditation which the solitude of his stricken
life induced. This had made him a thinker, a philosopher far more
profound than his general attainments would naturally produce. With
the super-sensitiveness which always characterizes the afflicted,
also, he had become a most acute and subtle observer of the human
countenance, and read its infinite variety of expression with
ease and certainty. In two things he might be said to be profoundly
versed--the spirit of the Scriptures, and the workings of the
human heart. With regard to these his powers of expression were
commensurate with his knowledge. The Psalms of David were more
comprehensible to him than the simplest formulas of arithmetic.
Mollie Ainslie was not unfrequently amazed at this inequality of
nature in her favorite pupil. On one side he seemed a full-grown
man of grand proportions; on the other, a pigmy-child. She had heard
him pour forth torrents of eloquence on the Sabbath, and felt the
force of a nature exceptionally rich and strong in its conception
of religious truths and human needs, only to find him on the
morrow floundering hopelessly in the mire of rudimentary science,
or getting, by repeated perusals, but an imperfect idea of some
author's words, which it seemed to her he ought to have grasped
at a glance.
He had always been a man of thought, and now for two years he had
been studying after the manner of the schools, and his tasks were
yet but rudimentary. It is true, he had read much and had learned
not a little in a thousand directions which he did not appreciate,
but yet he was discouraged and despondent, and it is no wonder that
he was so. The mountain which stood in his pathway could not be
climbed over nor passed by, but pebble by pebble and grain by grain
must be removed, until a broad, smooth highway showed instead. And
all this he must do before he could comprehend the works of those
writers whose pages glow with light to _our_ eyes from the
very first. He read and re-read these, and groped his way to their
meaning with doubt and difficulty.
Being a woman, Mollie Ainslie was not speculative. She could not
solve this problem of strength and weakness. In power of thought,
breadth of reasoning, and keenness of analysis she felt that
he was her master; in knowledge--the power of acquiring and using
scientific facts--she could but laugh at his weakness. It puzzled
her. She wondered at it; but she had never sought to assign a reason
for it. It remained for the learner himself to do this. One day,
after weeks of despondency, he changed places with his teacher
during the hour devoted to his lessons, and taught her why it was
that he, Eliab Hill, with all his desire to learn and his ceaseless
application to his tasks, yet made so little progress in the
acquisition of knowledge.
"It ain't so much the words, Miss Mollie," he said, as he threw
down a book in which he had asked her to explain some passage she
had never read before, but the meaning of which came to her at a
glance--"it ain't so much the words as it is the ideas that trouble
me. These men who write seem to think and feel differently from
those I have known. I can learn the words, but when I have them
all right I am by no means sure that I know just what they mean,"
"Why, you must," said the positive little Yankee woman; "when one
has the words and knows the meaning of all of them, he cannot help
knowing what the writer means."
"Perhaps I do not put it as I should," said he sadly. "What I want
to say is, that there are thoughts and bearings that I can never
gather from books alone. They come to you, Miss Ainslie, and to
those like you, from those who were before you in the world, and
from things about you. It is the part of knowledge that can't be
put into books. Now I have none of that. My people cannot give
it to me. I catch a sight of it here and there. Now and then,
a conversation I heard years ago between some white men will come
up and make plain something that I am puzzling over, but it is not
easy for me to learn."
"I do not think I understand you," she replied; "but if I do, I
am sure you are mistaken. How can you know the meanings of words,
and yet not apprehend the thought conveyed?"
"I do not know _how_," he replied. "I only know that while
thought seems to come from the printed page to your mind like
a flash of light, to mine it only comes with difficulty and after
many readings, though I may know every word. For instance," he
continued, taking up a voiume of Tennyson which lay upon her table,
"take any passage. Here is one: 'Tears, idle tears, I know not what
they mean!' I have no doubt that brings a distinct idea to your
mind."
"Yes," she replied, hesitatingly; "I never thought of it before,
but I think it does."
"Well, it does not to mine. I cannot make out what is meant by
'idle' tears, nor whether the author means to say that he does not
know what 'tears' mean, or only 'idle' tears, or whether he does
not understand such a display of grief because it _is_ idle."
"Might he not have meant any or all of these?" she asked.
"That is it," he replied. "I want to know what he _did_ mean.
Of course, if I knew all about his life and ways, and the like,
I could tell pretty fully his meaning. You know them because his
thoughts are your thoughts, his life has been your life. You belong
to the same race and class. I am cut off from this, and can only
stumble slowly along the path of knowledge."
Thus the simple-minded colored man, taught to meditate by the
solitude which his affliction enforced upon him, speculated in
regard to the _leges non scripta_ which control the action of
the human mind and condition its progress.
"What has put you in this strange mood, Eliab?" asked the teacher
wonderingly.
His face flushed, and the mobile mouth twitched with emotion as
he glanced earnestly toward her, and then, with an air of sudden
resolution, said:
"Well, you see, that matter of the election--you took it all in
in a minute, when the horse came back. You knew the white folks
would feel aggravated by that procession, and there would be
trouble. Now, I never thought of that. I just thought it was nice
to be free, and have our own music and march under that dear old
flag to do the work of free men and citizens. That was all."
"But Nimbus thought of it, and that was why he sent back the horse,"
she answered.
"Not at all. He only thought they might pester the horse to plague
him, and the horse might get away and be hurt. We didn't, none of
us, think what the white folks would feel, because we didn't know.
You did."
"But why should this affect you?"
"Just because it shows that education is something more that I
had thought--something so large and difficult that one of my age,
raised as I have been, can only get a taste of it at the best."
"Well, what then? You are not discouraged?"
"Not for myself--no. The pleasure of learning is reward enough to
me. But my people, Miss Mollie, I must think of them. I am only
a poor withered branch. They are the straight young tree. I must
think of them and not of Eliab. You have taught me--this affair,
everything, teaches me--that they can only be made free by knowledge.
I begin to see that the law can only give us an opportunity to make
ourselves freemen. Liberty must be earned; it cannot be given."
"That is very true," said the practical girl, whose mind recognized
at once the fact which she had never formulated to herself. But
as she looked into his face, working with intense feeling and so
lighted with the glory of a noble purpose as to make her forget
the stricken frame to which it was chained, she was puzzled at what
seemed inconsequence in his words. So she added, wonderingly, "But
I don't see why this should depress you. Only think how much you
have done toward the end you have in view. Just think what you have
accomplished--what strides you have made toward a full and complete
manhood. You ought to be proud rather than discouraged."
"Ah!" said he, "that has been for myself, Miss Mollie, not for my
people. What am I to my race? Aye," he continued, with a glance
at his withered limbs, "to the least one of them not--not--" He
covered his face with his hands and bowed his head in the self-abasement
which hopeless affliction so often brings.
"Eliab," said the teacher soothingly, as if her pupil were a child
instead of a man older than herself, "you should not give way to
such thoughts. You should rise above them, and by using the powers
you have, become an honor to your race."
"No, Miss Mollie," he replied, with a sigh, as he raised his head
and gazed into her face earnestly. "There ain't nothing in this
world for me to look forward to only to help my people. I am only
the dust on the Lord's chariot-wheels--only the dust, which must be
brushed out of the way in order that their glory may shine forth.
And that," he continued impetuously, paying no attention to her
gesture of remonstrance, "is what I wanted to speak to you about
this evening. It is hard to say, but I must say it--must say it
now. I have been taking too much of your time and attention, Miss
Mollie."
"I am sure, Mr. Hill--" she began, in some confusion.
"Yes, I have," he went on impetuously, while his face flushed hotly.
"It is the young and strong only who can enter into the Canaan the
Lord has put before our people. I thought for a while that we were
just standing on the banks of Jordan--that the promised land was
right over yon, and the waters piled up like a wall, so that even
poor weak 'Liab might cross over. But I see plainer now. We're
only just past the Red Sea, just coming into the wildnerness, and
if I can only get a glimpse from Horeb, wid my old eyes by and by,
'Liab 'll be satisfied. It'll be enough, an' more'n enough, for
him. He can only help the young ones--the lambs of the flock--a
little, mighty little, p'raps, but it's all there is for him to
do." "Why, Eliab--" began the astonished teacher again.
"Don't! don't! Miss Mollie, if you please," he cried, with a look
of pain. "I'se done tried--I hez, Miss Mollie. God only knows how
I'se tried! But it ain't no use--no use," he continued, with a fierce
gesture, and relapsing unconsciously into the rougher dialect that
he had been training himself to avoid. "I can't do it, an' there's
no use a-tryin'. There ain't nothin' good for me in this worl'--not
in this worl'. It's hard to give it up, Miss Mollie--harder'n you'll
ever dream; but I hain't blind. I knows the brand is on me. It's
on my tongue now, that forgets all I've learned jes ez soon ez the
time of trial comes."
He seemed wild with excitement as he leaned forward on the table
toward her, and accompanied his words with that eloquence of
gesticulation which only the hands that are tied to crippled forms
acquire. He paused suddenly, bowed his head upon his crossed arms,
and his frame shook with sobs. She rose, and would have come around
the table to him. Raising his head quickly, he cried almost fiercely:
"Don't! don't! don't come nigh me, Miss Mollie! I'm going to do
a hard thing, almost too hard for me. I'm going to get off the
chariot-wheel--out of the light of the glory--out of the way of the
young and the strong! Them that's got to fight the Lord's battles
must have the training, and not them that's bound to fall in
the wilderness. The time is precious--precious, and must not be
wasted. You can't afford to spend so much of it on me! The Lord
can't afford ter hev ye, Miss Mollie! I must step aside, an' I'se
gwine ter do it now. If yer's enny time an' strength ter spar'
more'n yer givin' day by day in the school, I want yer should
give it to--to--Winnie an' 'Thusa--they're bright girls, that have
studied hard, and are young and strong. It is through such as them
that we must come up--our people, I mean. I want you to give them
my hour, Miss Mollie--_my_ hour! Don't say you won't do it!"
he cried, seeing a gesture of dissent. "Don't say it! You must do
it! Promise me, Miss Mollie--for my sake! for--promise me--now--quick!
afore I gets too weak to ask it!"
"Why, certainly, Eliab," she said, in amazement, while she half
shrank from him as if in terror. "I will do it if you desire it so
much. But you should not get so excited. Calm yourself! I am sure
I don't see why you should take such a course; but, as you say,
they are two bright girls and will make good teachers, which are
much needed."
"Thank God! thank God!" cried the cripple, as his head fell again
upon his arms. After a moment he half raised it and said, weakly,
"Will you please call Nimbus, Miss Mollie? I must go home now. And
please, Miss Mollie, don't think hard of 'Liab--don't, Miss Mollie,"
he said humbly.
"Why should I?" she asked in surprise. "You have acted nobly, though
I cannot think you have done wisely. You are nervous now. You may
think differently hereafter. If you do, you have only to say so.
I will call Nimbus. Good-by!"
She took her hat and gloves and went down the aisle. Happening
to turn near the door to replace a book her dress had brushed from
a desk, she saw him gazing after her with a look that haunted her
memory long afterward.
As the door closed behind her he slid from his chair and bowed his
head upon it, crying out in a voice of tearful agony, "Thank God!
thank God!" again and again, while his unfinished form shook with
hysteric sobs. "And _she_ said I was not wise!" he half
laughed, as the tears ran down his face and he resumed his invocation
of thankfulness. Thus Nimbus found him and carried him home with
his wonted tenderness, soothing him like a babe, and wondering what
had occurred to discompose his usually sedate and cheerful friend.
"I declare, Lucy," said Mollie Ainslie that evening, to her co-worker,
over their cosy tea, "I don't believe I shall ever get to understand
these people. There is that Eliab Hill, who was getting along
so nicely, has concluded to give up his studies. I believe he is
half crazy anyhow. He raved about it, and glared at me so that I
was half frightened out of my wits. I wonder why it is that cripples
are always so queer, anyhow?"
She would have been still more amazed if she had known that from
that day Eliab Hill devoted himself to his studies with a redoubled
energy, which more than made up for the loss of his teacher's aid.
Had she herself been less a child she would have seen that he whom
she had treated as such was, in truth, a man of rare strength.