THE ROUND OF THE WORLD.
Birds when they leave the nest carry, I presume, their hearts with them;
not a few humans leave their hearts behind them--too often, alas! to be
sent for afterward. The whole round of the world, many a cloud-rack on
the ridge of it, and many a mist on the top of that, rises between them
and the eyes and hearts which gave their very life that they might live.
Some as they approach middle age, some only when they are old, wake up
to understand that they have parents. To some the perception comes with
their children; to others with the pang of seeing them walk away
light-hearted out into the world, as they themselves turned their backs
on their parents: they had been all their own, and now they have done
with them! Less or more, have we not all thus taken our journey into a
far country? But many a man of sixty is more of a son to the father gone
from the earth, than he was while under his roof. What a disintegrated
mass were the world, what a lump of half-baked brick, if death were
indeed the end of affection! if there were no chance more of setting
right what was so wrong in the loveliest relations! How gladly would
many a son who once thought it a weariness to serve his parents,
minister now to their lightest need! and in the boundless eternity is
there no help?
Walter was not a prodigal; he was a well-behaved youth. He was _only_
proud, _only_ thought much of himself; was _only_ pharisaical, not
hypocritical; was _only_ neglectful of those nearest him, always polite
to those comparatively nothing to him! Compassionate and generous to
necessity, he let his father and his sister-cousin starve for the only
real food a man can give, that is, _himself_. As to him who thought his
very thoughts into him, he heeded him not at all, or mocked him by
merest ceremony. There are who refuse God the draught of water He
desires, on the ground that their vessel is not fit for Him to drink
from: Walter thought his too good to fill with the water fit for God to
drink.
He had the feeling, far from worded, not even formed, but certainly in
him, that he was a superior man to his father. But it is a fundamental
necessity of the kingdom of heaven, impossible as it must seem to all
outside it, that each shall count other better than himself; it is the
natural condition of the man God made, in relation to the other men God
has made. Man is made, not to contemplate himself, but to behold in
others the beauty of the Father. A man who lives to meditate upon and
worship himself, is in the slime of hell. Walter knew his father a
reading man, but because he had not been to a university, placed no
value on his reading. Yet this father was a man who had intercourse with
high countries, intercourse in which his son would not have perceived
the presence of an idea.
In like manner, Richard’s carriage of mind, and the expression of the
same in his modes and behavior, must have been far other than
objectionable to the ushers of those high countries; his was a certain
quiet, simply, direct way, reminding one of Nathanael, in whom was no
guile. In another man Walter would have called it bucolic; in his father
he shut his eyes to it as well as he could, and was ashamed of it. He
would scarcely, in his circle, be regarded as a gentleman! he would look
odd! He therefore had not encouraged the idea of his coming to see him.
He was not satisfied with the father by whom the Father of fathers had
sent him into the world! But Richard was the truest of gentlemen even in
his outward carriage, for he was not only courteous and humble, but that
rare thing--natural; and the natural, be it old as the Greek, must be
beautiful. The natural dwells deep, and is not the careless, any more
than the studied or assumed.
Walter loved his father, but the root of his love did not go deep enough
to send aloft a fine flower: deep in is high out. He seldom wrote, and
wrote briefly. He did not make a confidant of his father. He did not
even tell him what he was doing, or what he hoped to do. He might
mention a success, but of hopes, fears, aspirations, or defeats, or
thoughts or desires, he said nothing. As to his theories, he never
imagined his father entering into such things as occupied _his_ mind!
The ordinary young man takes it for granted that he and the world are
far ahead of “the governor;” the father may have left behind him, as
nebulae sinking below the horizon of youth, questions the world is but
just waking to put.
The blame, however, may lie in part at the parent’s door. The hearts of
the fathers need turning to the children, as much as the hearts of the
children need turning to the fathers. Few men open up to their children;
and where a man does not, the schism, the separation begins with him,
for all his love be deep and true. That it is unmanly to show one’s
feelings, is a superstition prevalent with all English-speaking people.
Now, wherever feeling means weakness, falsehood, or excitement, it ought
not merely not be shown, but not to exist; but for a man to hide from
his son his loving and his loathing, is to refuse him the divinest
fashion of teaching. Richard read the best things, and loved best the
best writers: never once had he read a poem with his son, or talked to
him about any poet! If Walter had even suspected his father’s insight
into certain things, he would have loved him more. Closely bound as they
were, neither knew the other. Each would have been astonished at what he
might have found in the other. The father might have discovered many
handles by which to lay hold of his son; the son might have seen the
lamp bright in his father’s chamber which he was but trimming in his.