"Been workin' about four hours, harder'n I ever see a Sunday-school
librarian work, looked tired almost to death, an' yet full to the eyes
with the fun she's goin' to have. Ah, that's what health can do for
human nature. I wonder if you two ever know how to thank Heaven that
you are as you are--both well-built an' healthy? 'Pears to me that if I
was either of you, I'd be wicked enough, about a hundred times a day,
to put up the Pharisee's prayer an' thank Heaven that I was not like
other men."
"No man can be everything, Caleb," said Philip. "I don't doubt that
there are thousands of men who'd gladly exchange their health for your
abilities."
"Well, I s'pose it's human nature, an' p'r'aps divine purpose too, that
folks should hanker most for what they haven't got; if it wa'n't so,
ev'rybody'd be a stick-in-the-mud all his life, an' nobody'd amount to
much; but I do tell you that for a man to spend most of his grown-up
years in makin' of himself as useful a machine as he can, an' not
especially with a view to Number One either, an' all the time bein'
reminded that he hain't got enough steam in his b'iler to work the
machine except by fits an' starts, an' there don't seem to be any way
of gettin' up more steam except by gettin' a new b'iler, which ain't
possible in the circumstances, why, it's powerful tough, an' that's a
fact."
"We can't all run thousand-horse-power engines, Caleb," said Philip,
hoping to console his friend. "If we could, I'm afraid a great lot
of the world's necessary work would go undone. Watches, worked with
what might be called half-mouse-power, are quite as necessary and
useful in their way as big clocks run by ton weights; and a sewing
machine, worked by a woman's foot, can earn quite as much, over running
expenses, as a plough with a big horse in front and a big man behind
it."
"Like enough. But the trouble with me is that the machine I've been
makin' o' myself is the kind that needs an awful lot o' power, an' the
power ain't there an' can't be put there."
"There are plenty more machines with exactly the same defect, old
chap," said Philip, with a sigh, "so you've no end of company in your
trouble. I could tell you of a machine of my own that lacks the proper
power--sufficient steam, as you've expressed it."
"I want to know! An' you the pictur' of health!"
"Oh, yes. Health is invaluable, so far as it goes, but 'tisn't
everything. Going back to steam for the sake of illustration, you
know it comes of several other things--water, a boiler, some fuel,
and draught, each in proper proportion to all the others. I don't
doubt there's a similar combination necessary to human force, and its
application, and that I haven't the secret of it, for I know I've
failed at work I've most wanted to do, and succeeded best at what I
liked least."
"Reckon you must have hated storekeepin' then, for you've made a
powerful go of it."
"Thank you; I'm not ashamed to confess to you that 'tis the last
business in the world that I'd have selected."
"Well, as to that, there's no difference of opinion between us, an'
yet, here I've been storekeepin'--an' not for myself either--'most
twenty year."
"And doing it remarkably well, too. As to not doing it for yourself,
you may change your position and have an interest in the business
whenever you wish it. I'm astonished that my uncle didn't say the same
to you."
"But he did--after his fashion. He meant fair, but I said 'No,' for I
hadn't given up hopes of what I'd wanted to do, so I didn't want to
give the store all my waking hours, as an owner ought to do most of the
time."
"Indeed he ought. If it isn't an impertinent question, what had you
selected as your life's work?"
"The last thing you'd suspect me of, I s'pose. Long ago--before the
war--I set my heart on bein' a great preacher, an' on beginnin' by
gettin' a first-class education. I don't need to tell you that I missed
both of 'em about as far as a man could. I wasn't overconceited about
'em at the start, for about that time there was a powerful movement
in our denomination for an educated ministry. We had a few giants in
the pulpit, but for ev'ry one of 'em there was dozens of dwarfs that
made laughin'-stocks of 'emselves an' the church. Well, I was picked
out as a young man with enough head-piece to take in an education an'
with the proper spirit an' feelin' to use it well after I'd got it.
Just then the war broke out, an' I went to it; when I got back I had a
crippled leg, an' a dull head, an' a heavy heart--afterwards I found
'twas the liver instead of the heart, but that didn't make me any the
less stupid. The upshot was that I was kind o' dropped as a candidate
for the ministry, an' that made me sicker yet, an' I vowed that I'd get
there in the course o' time, if I could get back my health an' senses.
Once in a while, for many years, I had hopes; then again I'd get a
knock-down--an extry hard lot o' chills an' fevers, or some other turn
of malary that made my mind as blank an' flat as a new slate. I tried
to educate myself, bein' rather old to go to school or college, an' I
plodded through lots o' books, but I had to earn my livin' besides,
an'--well, I reckon you can see about how much time a man workin' in a
store has for thinkin' about what he's read."
"Oh, can't I!"
"An' you know, now, what losin' health an' not findin' it again has
been to me."
"Indeed I do, and you've my most hearty sympathy. Perhaps good health
would have seen you through; perhaps not. Your experience is very
like mine, in some respects. I didn't start with the purpose of being
a preacher, but I was going to become educated so well that whenever
I had a message of any sort to give to the world,--for every man
occasionally has one, you know,--I should be able to do it in a manner
that would command attention. I was fortunate enough to get into a
business position in which my duties were almost mechanical, so at
night my mind was fresh enough for reading and study. My wife's tastes
were very like my own, so we read and studied together; but my message
has never come, and here I am where the only writing I'll ever do will
be in account books and business correspondence. As to my art studies--"
"They help you to arrange goods on the shelves in a way that attracts
attention; there can't be any doubt about that," Caleb interrupted.
"Thank you, Caleb. That is absolutely the first and only commendation
that my art education has ever earned for me, and I assure you that I
shall remember and prize it forever."
"I'm not an art-sharp," said Caleb, "but I shouldn't wonder if I could
show you lots more signs of what you've learned an' think haven't come
to anythin'. Same way with literature; nobody in this town, but you an'
your wife, could an' would have got up that circulatin' library, an'
knowed the names o' three hundred good books for it. Other towns'll
hear of it, an' men there'll take up the idea--"
"Which was yours--not ours."
"Never mind; ideas don't come to anythin' till they're froze into
facts. Other merchants'll hear of the library an' write you for names
o' books an' other p'ints, an' the thing'll go on an' on till it'll
amount to more than most any book that was ever writ. Bein' set
on makin' a hit in literature an' art an' fetchin' up at dressin'
store-shelves an' settin' up a circulatin' library reminds me of Jake
Brockleband's steam engine. You hain't met Jake, I reckon?"
"I don't recall the name."
"He's in the next county below us, near the mouth of the crick. He
goes in these parts by the name of the Great American Traveller, for
he's seen more countries than anybody else about here, an' it all came
through a steam engine. It 'pears that years ago Jake, who was a Yankee
with a knack at anythin' that was mechanical, was picked out by some
New Yorkers to go down to Brazil to preserve pineapples on a large
scale for the American market: he was to have a big salary and some
shares of the company's stock. Part of his outfit was a little steam
engine an' b'iler an' two copper kettles as big as the lard kettles
in your pork-house. Well, he got to work, with the idee o' makin' his
fortune in a year or two, an' pretty soon he started a schooner load
o' canned pineapples up North; but most o' the cans got so het up on
the way that they busted, an' when the company found how bizness was,
why, 'twas the comp'ny's turn to get het up an' bust. Jake couldn't get
his salary, so he 'tached the engine an' kettles, an' looked about for
somethin' to do with 'em. He shipped 'em up to a city in Venezuela,
where there was plenty of cocoanut oil and potash to be had cheap,
and started out big at soap-makin', but pretty soon he found that the
Venezuelans wouldn't buy soap at any price: they hadn't been educated
up to the use of such stuff. But there wa'n't no give-up blood in Jake,
so he packed the engine an' soap over to a big town in Colombia--next
country to Venezuela,--an' started a swell laundry, I b'lieve he called
it,--a place where they wash clothes at wholesale. He 'lowed that as
Colombia was a very hot country, an' the people was said to be of old
Spanish stock an' quite up to date, there'd be a powerful lot o'
stockin's an' underclothes to be washed. Soon after he'd hung out his
shingle, though, he heerd that no Colombians wore underclothes, an'
mighty few of 'em wore socks.
"Well, 'Never say die' was Jake's family brand, so he built a boat
with paddle-wheels an' fitted the steam engine to it, an' started
in the passenger steamboat business on a Colombian river; the big
copper kettles he fixed, one on each side, with awnin's over 'em, to
carry passengers' young ones, so they couldn't crawl about an' tumble
overboard. He did a good business for a spell, but all of a sudden the
revolution season come on an' a gang of the rebels seized his boat, an'
the gov'ment troops fired on 'em an' sunk it.
"But Jake managed to save the engine an' kettles, an' thinkin' 'twas
about time to go north for a change, he got his stuff up to New
Orleans, where he got another little boat built to fit the engine, an'
started up-stream in the tradin'-boat business. He got along an' along,
an' then up the Missouri River; but when he got up near the mouth of
our crick he ran on a snag, close inshore, that ripped the bottom an'
sides off o' the boat an' didn't leave nothin' that could float.
"That might have been a deadener, if Jake had been of the dyin'
kind, but he wasn't; an' as he was wrecked alongside of a town an' a
saw-mill, he kept his eye peeled for business, an' pretty soon he'd
put up a slab shanty, an' got a little circular saw, for his engine to
work, an' turned out the first sawed shingles ever seen in these parts,
an' when folks saw that they didn't curl up like cut shingles, he got
lots o' business an' is keepin' it right along.
"''Tain't makin' me a millionnaire,' he says, 'an' the sight o'
pineapples would make me tired, but at last I've struck a job that me
an' the engine fits to a T, an' an angel couldn't ask more'n that, if
he was in my shoes.'"
"That story, Caleb," said Philip, "is quite appropriate to my case.
But see here, old chap, didn't it ever occur to you to apply it to
yourself?"
"Can't say that it did," Caleb replied. "What put that notion into your
head?"
"Everybody and everything, my own eyes included. You started to be a
preacher--not merely for the sake of talking, but for the good that
your talk would do. I hear from every one that for many years you've
been everybody's friend, doing all sorts of kind, unselfish acts for
the good of other people. Mr. Grateway says that your work does more
good than his preaching, and Doctor Taggess says you cure as many sick
people as he. It seems to me that your disappointments, like Jake
Brockleband's, have resulted in your finding a place that fits you to a
T."
"I want to know! Well, I'm glad to hear it--from you. Kind o' seems,
then, as if you an' me was in the same boat, don't it?"