XI

I suppose there would have been even more remarks upon the growing

intimacy of the Young Astronomer and his pupil, if the curiosity of the

boarders had not in the mean time been so much excited at the apparently

close relation which had sprung up between the Register of Deeds and

the Lady. It was really hard to tell what to make of it. The Register

appeared at the table in a new coat. Suspicious. The Lady was evidently

deeply interested in him, if we could judge by the frequency and the

length of their interviews. On at least one occasion he has brought a

lawyer with him, which naturally suggested the idea that there were

some property arrangements to be attended to, in case, as seems probable

against all reasons to the contrary, these two estimable persons, so

utterly unfitted, as one would say, to each other, contemplated an

alliance. It is no pleasure to me to record an arrangement of this kind.

I frankly confess I do not know what to make of it. With her tastes

and breeding, it is the last thing that I should have thought of,--her

uniting herself with this most commonplace and mechanical person, who

cannot even offer her the elegances and luxuries to which she might seem

entitled on changing her condition.

While I was thus interested and puzzled I received an unexpected visit

from our Landlady. She was evidently excited, and by some event which

was of a happy nature, for her countenance was beaming and she seemed

impatient to communicate what she had to tell. Impatient or not, she

must wait a moment, while I say a word about her. Our Landlady is as

good a creature as ever lived. She is a little negligent of grammar

at times, and will get a wrong word now and then; she is garrulous,

circumstantial, associates facts by their accidental cohesion rather

than by their vital affinities, is given to choking and tears on slight

occasions, but she has a warm heart, and feels to her boarders as if

they were her blood-relations. She began her conversation abruptly.--I

expect I'm a going to lose one of my boarders,--she said.

--You don't seem very unhappy about it, madam,--I answered.--We all

took it easily when the person who sat on our side of the table quitted

us in such a hurry, but I do not think there is anybody left that either

you or the boarders want to get rid of--unless it is myself,--I added

modestly.

--You! said the Landlady--you! No indeed. When I have a quiet boarder

that 's a small eater, I don't want to lose him. You don't make trouble,

you don't find fault with your vit--[Dr. Benjamin had schooled his

parent on this point and she altered the word] with your food, and you

know when you 've had enough.

--I really felt proud of this eulogy, which embraces the most desirable

excellences of a human being in the capacity of boarder.

The Landlady began again.--I'm going to lose--at least, I suppose I

shall--one of the best boarders I ever had,--that Lady that's been with

me so long.

--I thought there was something going on between her and the

Register,--I said.

--Something! I should think there was! About three months ago he began

making her acquaintance. I thought there was something particular. I did

n't quite like to watch 'em very close; but I could n't help overbearing

some of the things he said to her, for, you see, he used to follow her

up into the parlor, they talked pretty low, but I could catch a word now

and then. I heard him say something to her one day about “bettering

her condition,” and she seemed to be thinking very hard about it, and

turning of it over in her mind, and I said to myself, She does n't want

to take up with him, but she feels dreadful poor, and perhaps he has

been saving and has got money in the bank, and she does n't want to

throw away a chance of bettering herself without thinking it over. But

dear me,--says I to myself,--to think of her walking up the broad aisle

into meeting alongside of such a homely, rusty-looking creatur' as that!

But there 's no telling what folks will do when poverty has got hold of

'em.

--Well, so I thought she was waiting to make up her mind, and he was

hanging on in hopes she'd come round at last, as women do half the time,

for they don't know their own minds and the wind blows both ways at once

with 'em as the smoke blows out of the tall chimlies,--east out of this

one and west out of that,--so it's no use looking at 'em to know what

the weather is.

--But yesterday she comes up to me after breakfast, and asks me to go up

with her into her little room. Now, says I to myself, I shall hear all

about it. I saw she looked as if she'd got some of her trouble off her

mind, and I guessed that it was settled, and so, says I to myself, I

must wish her joy and hope it's all for the best, whatever I think about

it.

--Well, she asked me to set down, and then she begun. She said that she

was expecting to have a change in her condition of life, and had asked

me up so that I might' have the first news of it. I am sure--says

I--I wish you both joy. Merriage is a blessed thing when folks is well

sorted, and it is an honorable thing, and the first meracle was at the

merriage in Canaan. It brings a great sight of happiness with it, as

I've had a chance of knowing, for my hus--

The Landlady showed her usual tendency to “break” from the

conversational pace just at this point, but managed to rein in the

rebellious diaphragm, and resumed her narrative.

--Merriage!--says she,--pray who has said anything about merriage?--I

beg your pardon, ma'am,--says I,--I thought you had spoke of changing

your condition and I--She looked so I stopped right short.

-Don't say another word, says she, but jest listen to what I am going to

tell you.

--My friend, says she, that you have seen with me so often lately, was

hunting among his old Record books, when all at once he come across an

old deed that was made by somebody that had my family name. He took it

into his head to read it over, and he found there was some kind of a

condition that if it was n't kept, the property would all go back to

them that was the heirs of the one that gave the deed, and that he found

out was me. Something or other put it into his head, says she, that the

company that owned the property--it was ever so rich a company and owned

land all round everywhere--hadn't kept to the conditions. So he went to

work, says she, and hunted through his books and he inquired all round,

and he found out pretty much all about it, and at last he come to me--it

's my boarder, you know, that says all this--and says he, Ma'am, says

he, if you have any kind of fancy for being a rich woman you've only got

to say so. I didn't know what he meant, and I began to think, says she,

he must be crazy. But he explained it all to me, how I'd nothing to do

but go to court and I could get a sight of property back. Well, so she

went on telling me--there was ever so much more that I suppose was all

plain enough, but I don't remember it all--only I know my boarder was

a good deal worried at first at the thought of taking money that other

people thought was theirs, and the Register he had to talk to her, and

he brought a lawyer and he talked to her, and her friends they talked to

her, and the upshot of it all was that the company agreed to settle the

business by paying her, well, I don't know just how much, but enough to

make her one of the rich folks again.

I may as well add here that, as I have since learned, this is one of the

most important cases of releasing right of reentry for condition broken

which has been settled by arbitration for a considerable period. If I

am not mistaken the Register of Deeds will get something more than a

new coat out of this business, for the Lady very justly attributes her

change of fortunes to his sagacity and his activity in following up the

hint he had come across by mere accident.

So my supernumerary fellow-boarder, whom I would have dispensed with as

a cumberer of the table, has proved a ministering angel to one of the

personages whom I most cared for.

One would have thought that the most scrupulous person need not have

hesitated in asserting an unquestioned legal and equitable claim simply

because it had lain a certain number of years in abeyance. But before

the Lady could make up her mind to accept her good fortune she had been

kept awake many nights in doubt and inward debate whether she should

avail herself of her rights. If it had been private property, so that

another person must be made poor that she should become rich, she would

have lived and died in want rather than claim her own. I do not think

any of us would like to turn out the possessor of a fine estate enjoyed

for two or three generations on the faith of unquestioned ownership by

making use of some old forgotten instrument, which accident had thrown

in our way.

But it was all nonsense to indulge in any sentiment in a case like this,

where it was not only a right, but a duty which she owed herself and

others in relation with her, to accept what Providence, as it appeared,

had thrust upon her, and when no suffering would be occasioned to

anybody. Common sense told her not to refuse it. So did several of her

rich friends, who remembered about this time that they had not called

upon her for a good while, and among them Mrs. Midas Goldenrod.

Never had that lady's carriage stood before the door of our

boarding-house so long, never had it stopped so often, as since the

revelation which had come from the Registry of Deeds. Mrs. Midas

Goldenrod was not a bad woman, but she loved and hated in too exclusive

and fastidious a way to allow us to consider her as representing the

highest ideal of womanhood. She hated narrow ill-ventilated courts,

where there was nothing to see if one looked out of the window but old

men in dressing-gowns and old women in caps; she hated little dark rooms

with air-tight stoves in them; she hated rusty bombazine gowns and last

year's bonnets; she hated gloves that were not as fresh as new-laid

eggs, and shoes that had grown bulgy and wrinkled in service; she hated

common crockeryware and teaspoons of slight constitution; she hated

second appearances on the dinner-table; she hated coarse napkins and

table-cloths; she hated to ride in the horsecars; she hated to walk

except for short distances, when she was tired of sitting in her

carriage. She loved with sincere and undisguised affection a spacious

city mansion and a charming country villa, with a seaside cottage for

a couple of months or so; she loved a perfectly appointed household, a

cook who was up to all kinds of salmis and vol-au-vents, a French maid,

and a stylish-looking coachman, and the rest of the people necessary to

help one live in a decent manner; she loved pictures that other people

said were first-rate, and which had at least cost first-rate prices;

she loved books with handsome backs, in showy cases; she loved heavy

and richly wought plate; fine linen and plenty of it; dresses from

Paris frequently, and as many as could be got in without troubling the

customhouse; Russia sables and Venetian point-lace; diamonds, and good

big ones; and, speaking generally, she loved dear things in distinction

from cheap ones, the real article and not the economical substitute.

For the life of me I cannot see anything Satanic in all this. Tell

me, Beloved, only between ourselves, if some of these things are not

desirable enough in their way, and if you and I could not make up our

minds to put up with some of the least objectionable of them without

any great inward struggle? Even in the matter of ornaments there is

something to be said. Why should we be told that the New Jerusalem is

paved with gold, and that its twelve gates are each of them a pearl, and

that its foundations are garnished with sapphires and emeralds and all

manner of precious stones, if these are not among the most desirable

of objects? And is there anything very strange in the fact that many a

daughter of earth finds it a sweet foretaste of heaven to wear about

her frail earthly tabernacle these glittering reminders of the celestial

city?

Mrs. Midas Goldenrod was not so entirely peculiar and anomalous in

her likes and dislikes; the only trouble was that she mixed up these

accidents of life too much with life itself, which is so often serenely

or actively noble and happy without reference to them. She valued

persons chiefly according to their external conditions, and of course

the very moment her relative, the Lady of our breakfast-table, began

to find herself in a streak of sunshine she came forward with a lighted

candle to show her which way her path lay before her.

The Lady saw all this, how plainly, how painfully! yet she exercised a

true charity for the weakness of her relative. Sensible people have as

much consideration for the frailties of the rich as for those of

the poor. There is a good deal of excuse for them. Even you and I,

philosophers and philanthropists as we may think ourselves, have a

dislike for the enforced economies, proper and honorable though they

certainly are, of those who are two or three degrees below us in the

scale of agreeable living.

--These are very worthy persons you have been living with, my dear,

--said Mrs. Midas--[the “My dear” was an expression which had flowered

out more luxuriantly than ever before in the new streak of sunshine]

--eminently respectable parties, I have no question, but then we shall

want you to move as soon as possible to our quarter of the town, where

we can see more of you than we have been able to in this queer place.

It was not very pleasant to listen to this kind of talk, but the Lady

remembered her annual bouquet, and her occasional visits from the rich

lady, and restrained the inclination to remind her of the humble sphere

from which she herself, the rich and patronizing personage, had worked

her way up (if it was up) into that world which she seemed to think was

the only one where a human being could find life worth having. Her

cheek flushed a little, however, as she said to Mrs. Midas that she felt

attached to the place where she had been living so long. She doubted,

she was pleased to say, whether she should find better company in

any circle she was like to move in than she left behind her at our

boarding-house. I give the old Master the credit of this compliment. If

one does not agree with half of what he says, at any rate he always has

something to say, and entertains and lets out opinions and whims and

notions of one kind and another that one can quarrel with if he is

out of humor, or carry away to think about if he happens to be in the

receptive mood.

But the Lady expressed still more strongly the regret she should feel at

leaving her young friend, our Scheherezade. I cannot wonder at this.

The Young Girl has lost what little playfulness she had in the earlier

months of my acquaintance with her. I often read her stories partly from

my interest in her, and partly because I find merit enough in them to

deserve something, better than the rough handling they got from her

coarse-fibred critic, whoever he was. I see evidence that her thoughts

are wandering from her task, that she has fits of melancholy, and bursts

of tremulous excitement, and that she has as much as she can do to

keep herself at all to her stated, inevitable, and sometimes almost

despairing literary labor. I have had some acquaintance with vital

phenomena of this kind, and know something of the nervous nature of

young women and its “magnetic storms,” if I may borrow an expression

from the physicists, to indicate the perturbations to which they are

liable. She is more in need of friendship and counsel now than ever

before, it seems to me, and I cannot bear to think that the Lady, who

has become like a mother to her, is to leave her to her own guidance.

It is plain enough what is at the bottom of this disturbance. The

astronomical lessons she has been taking have become interesting enough

to absorb too much of her thoughts, and she finds them wandering to the

stars or elsewhere, when they should be working quietly in the editor's

harness.

The Landlady has her own views on this matter which she communicated to

me something as follows:

--I don't quite like to tell folks what a lucky place my boarding-house

is, for fear I should have all sorts of people crowding in to be my

boarders for the sake of their chances. Folks come here poor and they go

away rich. Young women come here without a friend in the world, and the

next thing that happens is a gentleman steps up to 'em and says, “If

you'll take me for your pardner for life, I'll give you a good home and

love you ever so much besides”; and off goes my young lady-boarder

into a fine three-story house, as grand as the governor's wife, with

everything to make her comfortable, and a husband to care for her into

the bargain. That's the way it is with the young ladies that comes to

board with me, ever since the gentleman that wrote the first book that

advertised my establishment (and never charged me a cent for it neither)

merried the Schoolma'am. And I think but that's between you and me--that

it 's going to be the same thing right over again between that young

gentleman and this young girl here--if she doos n't kill herself with

writing for them news papers,--it 's too bad they don't pay her more

for writing her stories, for I read one of 'em that made me cry so the

Doctor--my Doctor Benjamin--said, “Ma, what makes your eyes look so?”

and wanted to rig a machine up and look at 'em, but I told him what the

matter was, and that he needn't fix up his peeking contrivances on

my account,--anyhow she's a nice young woman as ever lived, and

as industrious with that pen of hers as if she was at work with a

sewing-machine,--and there ain't much difference, for that matter,

between sewing on shirts and writing on stories,--one way you work with

your foot, and the other way you work with your fingers, but I rather

guess there's more headache in the stories than there is in the

stitches, because you don't have to think quite so hard while your

foot's going as you do when your fingers is at work, scratch, scratch,

scratch, scribble, scribble, scribble.

It occurred to me that this last suggestion of the Landlady was worth

considering by the soft-handed, broadcloth-clad spouters to the laboring

classes,--so called in distinction from the idle people who only

contrive the machinery and discover the processes and lay out the work

and draw the charts and organize the various movements which keep the

world going and make it tolerable. The organ-blower works harder with

his muscles, for that matter, than the organ player, and may perhaps be

exasperated into thinking himself a downtrodden martyr because he does

not receive the same pay for his services.

I will not pretend that it needed the Landlady's sagacious guess

about the Young Astronomer and his pupil to open my eyes to certain

possibilities, if not probabilities, in that direction. Our Scheherezade

kept on writing her stories according to agreement, so many pages for so

many dollars, but some of her readers began to complain that they could

not always follow her quite so well as in her earlier efforts. It seemed

as if she must have fits of absence. In one instance her heroine began

as a blonde and finished as a brunette; not in consequence of the use

of any cosmetic, but through simple inadvertence. At last it happened in

one of her stories that a prominent character who had been killed in

an early page, not equivocally, but mortally, definitively killed, done

for, and disposed of, reappeared as if nothing had happened towards the

close of her narrative. Her mind was on something else, and she had got

two stories mixed up and sent her manuscript without having looked it

over. She told this mishap to the Lady, as something she was dreadfully

ashamed of and could not possibly account for. It had cost her a sharp

note from the publisher, and would be as good as a dinner to some

half-starved Bohemian of the critical press.

The Lady listened to all this very thoughtfully, looking at her with

great tenderness, and said, “My poor child!” Not another word then, but

her silence meant a good deal.

When a man holds his tongue it does not signify much. But when a woman

dispenses with the office of that mighty member, when she sheathes her

natural weapon at a trying moment, it means that she trusts to still

more formidable enginery; to tears it may be, a solvent more powerful

than that with which Hannibal softened the Alpine rocks, or to the

heaving bosom, the sight of which has subdued so many stout natures,

or, it may be, to a sympathizing, quieting look which says “Peace, be

still!” to the winds and waves of the little inland ocean, in a language

that means more than speech.

While these matters were going on the Master and I had many talks on

many subjects. He had found me a pretty good listener, for I had learned

that the best way of getting at what was worth having from him was to

wind him up with a question and let him run down all of himself. It is

easy to turn a good talker into an insufferable bore by contradicting

him, and putting questions for him to stumble over,--that is, if he

is not a bore already, as “good talkers” are apt to be, except now and

then.

We had been discussing some knotty points one morning when he said all

at once:

--Come into my library with me. I want to read you some new passages

from an interleaved copy of my book. You haven't read the printed part

yet. I gave you a copy of it, but nobody reads a book that is given to

him. Of course not. Nobody but a fool expects him to. He reads a little

in it here and there, perhaps, and he cuts all the leaves if he cares

enough about the writer, who will be sure to call on him some day, and

if he is left alone in his library for five minutes will have hunted

every corner of it until he has found the book he sent,--if it is to be

found at all, which does n't always happen, if there's a penal colony

anywhere in a garret or closet for typographical offenders and vagrants.

--What do you do when you receive a book you don't want, from the

author?--said I.

--Give him a good-natured adjective or two if I can, and thank him, and

tell him I am lying under a sense of obligation to him.

--That is as good an excuse for lying as almost any,--I said.

--Yes, but look out for the fellows that send you a copy of their book

to trap you into writing a bookseller's advertisement for it. I got

caught so once, and never heard the end of it and never shall hear

it.--He took down an elegantly bound volume, on opening which

appeared a flourishing and eminently flattering dedication to

himself.--There,--said he, what could I do less than acknowledge such

a compliment in polite terms, and hope and expect the book would prove

successful, and so forth and so forth? Well, I get a letter every few

months from some new locality where the man that made that book is

covering the fences with his placards, asking me whether I wrote that

letter which he keeps in stereotype and has kept so any time these dozen

or fifteen years. Animus tuus oculus, as the freshmen used to say. If

her Majesty, the Queen of England, sends you a copy of her “Leaves from

the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands,” be sure you mark your letter

of thanks for it Private!

We had got comfortably seated in his library in the mean time, and the

Master had taken up his book. I noticed that every other page was left

blank, and that he had written in a good deal of new matter.

--I tell you what,--he said,--there 's so much intelligence about

nowadays in books and newspapers and talk that it's mighty hard to write

without getting something or other worth listening to into your essay

or your volume. The foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on a sea of

wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow. Every now and then I find

something in my book that seems so good to me, I can't help thinking

it must have leaked in. I suppose other people discover that it came

through a leak, full as soon as I do. You must write a book or two to

find out how much and how little you know and have to say. Then you must

read some notices of it by somebody that loves you and one or two by

somebody that hates you. You 'll find yourself a very odd piece of

property after you 've been through these experiences. They 're trying

to the constitution; I'm always glad to hear that a friend is as well as

can be expected after he 's had a book.

You must n't think there are no better things in these pages of mine

than the ones I'm going to read you, but you may come across something

here that I forgot to say when we were talking over these matters.

He began, reading from the manuscript portion of his book:

--We find it hard to get and to keep any private property in thought.

Other people are all the time saying the same things we are hoarding to

say when we get ready. [He looked up from his book just here and said,

“Don't be afraid, I am not going to quote Pereant.”] One of our old

boarders--the one that called himself “The Professor” I think

it was--said some pretty audacious things about what he called

“pathological piety,” as I remember, in one of his papers. And here

comes along Mr. Galton, and shows in detail from religious biographies

that “there is a frequent correlation between an unusually devout

disposition and a weak constitution.” Neither of them appeared to know

that John Bunyan had got at the same fact long before them. He tells us,

“The more healthy the lusty man is, the more prone he is unto evil.” If

the converse is true, no wonder that good people, according to Bunyan,

are always in trouble and terror, for he says,

“A Christian man is never long at ease;

When one fright is gone, another doth him seize.”

If invalidism and the nervous timidity which is apt to go with it

are elements of spiritual superiority, it follows that pathology and

toxicology should form a most important part of a theological education,

so that a divine might know how to keep a parish in a state of chronic

bad health in order that it might be virtuous.

It is a great mistake to think that a man's religion is going to rid

him of his natural qualities. “Bishop Hall” (as you may remember to have

seen quoted elsewhere) “prefers Nature before Grace in the Election of

a wife, because, saith he, it will be a hard Task, where the Nature is

peevish and froward, for Grace to make an entire conquest while Life

lasteth.”

“Nature” and “Grace” have been contrasted with each other in a way not

very respectful to the Divine omnipotence. Kings and queens reign “by

the Grace of God,” but a sweet, docile, pious disposition, such as is

born in some children and grows up with them,--that congenital gift

which good Bishop Hall would look for in a wife,--is attributed to

“Nature.” In fact “Nature” and “Grace,” as handled by the scholastics,

are nothing more nor less than two hostile Divinities in the Pantheon of

post-classical polytheism.

What is the secret of the profound interest which “Darwinism” has

excited in the minds and hearts of more persons than dare to confess

their doubts and hopes? It is because it restores “Nature” to its place

as a true divine manifestation. It is that it removes the traditional

curse from that helpless infant lying in its mother's arms. It is that

it lifts from the shoulders of man the responsibility for the fact of

death. It is that, if it is true, woman can no longer be taunted with

having brought down on herself the pangs which make her sex a martyrdom.

If development upward is the general law of the race; if we have grown

by natural evolution out of the cave-man, and even less human forms of

life, we have everything to hope from the future. That the question can

be discussed without offence shows that we are entering on a new era, a

Revival greater than that of Letters, the Revival of Humanity.

The prevalent view of “Nature” has been akin to that which long reigned

with reference to disease. This used to be considered as a distinct

entity apart from the processes of life, of which it is one of the

manifestations. It was a kind of demon to be attacked with things of

odious taste and smell; to be fumigated out of the system as the evil

spirit was driven from the bridal-chamber in the story of Tobit. The

Doctor of earlier days, even as I can remember him, used to exorcise the

demon of disease with recipes of odor as potent as that of the

angel's diabolifuge,--the smoke from a fish's heart and liver, duly

burned,--“the which smell when the evil spirit had smelled he fled into

the uttermost parts of Egypt.” The very moment that disease passes into

the category of vital processes, and is recognized as an occurrence

absolutely necessary, inevitable, and as one may say, normal under

certain given conditions of constitution and circumstance, the

medicine-man loses his half-miraculous endowments. The mythical serpent

is untwined from the staff of Esculapius, which thenceforth becomes a

useful walking-stick, and does not pretend to be anything more.

Sin, like disease, is a vital process. It is a function, and not an

entity. It must be studied as a section of anthropology. No preconceived

idea must be allowed to interfere with our investigation of the deranged

spiritual function, any more than the old ideas of demoniacal possession

must be allowed to interfere with our study of epilepsy. Spiritual

pathology is a proper subject for direct observation and analysis, like

any other subject involving a series of living actions.

In these living actions everything is progressive. There are sudden

changes of character in what is called “conversion” which, at first,

hardly seem to come into line with the common laws of evolution. But

these changes have been long preparing, and it is just as much in the

order of nature that certain characters should burst all at once from

the rule of evil propensities, as it is that the evening primrose should

explode, as it were, into bloom with audible sound, as you may read in

Keats's Endymion, or observe in your own garden.

There is a continual tendency in men to fence in themselves and a few of

their neighbors who agree with them in their ideas, as if they were

an exception to their race. We must not allow any creed or religion

whatsoever to confiscate to its own private use and benefit the virtues

which belong to our common humanity. The Good Samaritan helped his

wounded neighbor simply because he was a suffering fellow-creature.

Do you think your charitable act is more acceptable than the Good

Samaritan's, because you do it in the name of Him who made the memory of

that kind man immortal? Do you mean that you would not give the cup

of cold water for the sake simply and solely of the poor, suffering

fellow-mortal, as willingly as you now do, professing to give it for the

sake of Him who is not thirsty or in need of any help of yours? We must

ask questions like this, if we are to claim for our common nature what

belongs to it.

The scientific study of man is the most difficult of all branches of

knowledge. It requires, in the first place, an entire new terminology

to get rid of that enormous load of prejudices with which every term

applied to the malformations, the functional disturbances, and the

organic diseases of the moral nature is at present burdened. Take that

one word Sin, for instance: all those who have studied the subject from

nature and not from books know perfectly well that a certain fraction

of what is so called is nothing more or less than a symptom of hysteria;

that another fraction is the index of a limited degree of insanity; that

still another is the result of a congenital tendency which removes the

act we sit in judgment upon from the sphere of self-determination,

if not entirely, at least to such an extent that the subject of the

tendency cannot be judged by any normal standard.

To study nature without fear is possible, but without reproach,

impossible. The man who worships in the temple of knowledge must carry

his arms with him as our Puritan fathers had to do when they gathered

in their first rude meeting-houses. It is a fearful thing to meddle with

the ark which holds the mysteries of creation. I remember that when I

was a child the tradition was whispered round among us little folks that

if we tried to count the stars we should drop down dead. Nevertheless,

the stars have been counted and the astronomer has survived. This

nursery legend is the child's version of those superstitions which would

have strangled in their cradles the young sciences now adolescent and

able to take care of themselves, and which, no longer daring to

attack these, are watching with hostile aspect the rapid growth of the

comparatively new science of man.

The real difficulty of the student of nature at this time is to

reconcile absolute freedom and perfect fearlessness with that respect

for the past, that reverence, for the spirit of reverence wherever we

find it, that tenderness for the weakest fibres by which the hearts of

our fellow-creatures hold to their religious convictions, which will

make the transition from old belief to a larger light and liberty an

interstitial change and not a violent mutilation.

I remember once going into a little church in a small village some miles

from a great European capital. The special object of adoration in this

humblest of places of worship was a bambino, a holy infant, done in wax,

and covered with cheap ornaments such as a little girl would like to

beautify her doll with. Many a good Protestant of the old Puritan type

would have felt a strong impulse to seize this “idolatrous” figure and

dash it to pieces on the stone floor of the little church. But one must

have lived awhile among simple-minded pious Catholics to know what this

poor waxen image and the whole baby-house of bambinos mean for a humble,

unlettered, unimaginative peasantry. He will find that the true office

of this eidolon is to fix the mind of the worshipper, and that in virtue

of the devotional thoughts it has called forth so often for so many

years in the mind of that poor old woman who is kneeling before it, it

is no longer a wax doll for her, but has undergone a transubstantiation

quite as real as that of the Eucharist. The moral is that we must not

roughly smash other people's idols because we know, or think we know,

that they are of cheap human manufacture.

--Do you think cheap manufactures encourage idleness?--said I.

The Master stared. Well he might, for I had been getting a little

drowsy, and wishing to show that I had been awake and attentive, asked

a question suggested by some words I had caught, but which showed that

I had not been taking the slightest idea from what he was reading me. He

stared, shook his head slowly, smiled good-humoredly, took off his great

round spectacles, and shut up his book.

--Sat prates biberunt,--he said. A sick man that gets talking about

himself, a woman that gets talking about her baby, and an author that

begins reading out of his own book, never know when to stop. You'll

think of some of these things you've been getting half asleep over by

and by. I don't want you to believe anything I say; I only want you to

try to see what makes me believe it.

My young friend, the Astronomer, has, I suspect, been making some

addition to his manuscript. At any rate some of the lines he read us

in the afternoon of this same day had never enjoyed the benefit of my

revision, and I think they had but just been written. I noticed that his

manner was somewhat more excited than usual, and his voice just towards

the close a little tremulous. Perhaps I may attribute his improvement

to the effect of my criticisms, but whatever the reason, I think these

lines are very nearly as correct as they would have been if I had looked

them over.