imagination--perhaps it is only imagination--somehow groups them as a
pair of confidants. In a way their characteristics were similar. Both
were inscrutable, quiet persons, content to remain in the background.
For all of them the world might wag. In our imaginations at least,
"Mister" O'Neil knew all about Mr. Tatlock. He accepted the other's
peculiar reticences, so like his own, as a matter of course; he knew his
innocent secrets; he even could tell, if he wished, what books he read
there before the fire that burned from September to June. With this
taciturn individual we doubted if Mr. Tatlock was bashful. Possibly
their mutual congeniality of temperament centered about the furnace, for
they both watched it.
"Mister" O'Neil could have revealed, we believe, what the shock was that
we all decided Mr. Tatlock must have received early in life. The girls
were convinced that this shock was emotional--an unhappy love affair,
or the death of some dear friend. The boys, on the other hand, were
inclined to talk about a purely physical catastrophe--a runaway
accident, perhaps, or a blow on the head from a highway robber. For all
of these surmises we had not the slightest foundation, except in fancy,
and mature reflection leads to the conclusion that probably we were
entirely in error. It seems now much more likely that this old
bachelor's oddities were due to life-long frail health.
And yet one can never be sure and somehow one glimpse of Mr. Tatlock
which it was permitted one of the children to catch hinted, inexplicably
and without any particular warrant, at other possibilities. It was the
only out-of-door memory of him that is left. The boy, who still
remembers well that spring day, was in the next yard, hanging over the
fence looking into Mr. Tatlock's garden when he suddenly became aware
that Mr. Tatlock himself was sitting on the bench in the circle the path
made around the old tree. The old gentleman did not see the small
spectator who had been betrayed into an unaccustomed quietness by the
absence of companions and some subtle and unacknowledged influence of
the first warm afternoon of the year.
Nothing whatever happened, Mr. Tatlock sat there, looking up from time
to time at the young leaves above him, tapping his stick on the soft
turf and smiling to himself. Of what long-gone springs was he dreaming?
It was clear that whatever his thoughts were, they were happy ones.
Probably to most boys the ideal life is one that comprises "the joy of
eventful living." Here for the first time it dawned upon this youthful
interloper that one could be happy in quietness and seclusion. There
were, it appeared, certain satisfactions in other careers than those of
the cowboy and the soldier. Up to this time the boy had never been able
to understand why heaven was so often spoken of as a place of rest. He
did not understand wholly now, but a later comprehension had here its
inception.
And so let us remember Mr. Tatlock sitting, lost in meditation, in his
garden. After all he was not without influence in his environment,
unobtrusive soul that he was. He made himself felt in his little world.
He counted. The boy who watched him over the fence that day thought of
him again when he read in a recent essay: "The truth is that a man's
life is the expression of his temperament and that what eventually
matters is his attitude and relation to life . . . . not only his
performance."
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Repeated chapter titles were deleted.
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page 31, "activites" changed to "activities" (activities of their
colleagues)
Page 57, "orginality" changed to "originality" (wit, originality,
sympathy)
Page 71, "Englandler" changed to "Englander" (contributed to "The New
Englander")
Page 73, "Willaims" changed to "Williams" (S. Williams, Deacon Normand)
Page 103, "geolological" changed to "geological" (to make a geological)
Page 228, "abondoned" changed to "abandoned" (and abandoned, the maps)