III.

The natural end of a tutor is to perish by starvation. It is only a

question of time, just as with the burning of college libraries. These

all burn up sooner or later, provided they are not housed in brick or

stone and iron. I don’t mean that you will see in the registry of deaths

that this or that particular tutor died of well-marked, uncomplicated

starvation. They _may_, even, in extreme cases, be carried off by a

thin, watery kind of apoplexy, which sounds very well in the returns,

but means little to those who know that it is only debility settling on

the head. Generally, however, they fade and waste away under various

pretexts,——calling it dyspepsia, consumption, and so on, to put a decent

appearance upon the case and keep up the credit of the family and the

institution where they have passed through the successive stages of

inanition.

In some cases it takes a great many years to kill a tutor by the

process in question. You see, they do get food and clothes and fuel,

in appreciable quantities, such as they are. You will even notice rows

of books in their rooms, and a picture or two,——things that look as

if they had surplus money; but these superfluities are the _water of

crystallization_ to scholars, and you can never get them away till

the poor fellows effloresce into dust. Do not be deceived. The tutor

breakfasts on coffee made of beans, edulcorated with milk watered to the

verge of transparency; his mutton is tough and elastic, up to the moment

when it becomes tired out and tasteless; his coal is a sullen, sulphurous

anthracite, which rusts into ashes, rather than burns, in the shallow

grate; his flimsy broadcloth is too thin for winter and too thick for

summer. The greedy lungs of fifty hot-blooded boys suck the oxygen from

the air he breathes in his recitation-room. In short, he undergoes a

process of gentle and gradual starvation.

——The mother of little Iris was not called Electra, like hers of the old

story, neither was her grandfather Oceanus. Her blood-name, which she

gave away with her heart to the Latin tutor, was a plain old English

one, and her water-name was Hannah, beautiful as recalling the mother of

Samuel, and admirable as reading equally well from the initial letter

forwards and from the terminal letter backwards. The poor lady, seated

with her companion at the chess-board of matrimony, had but just pushed

forward her one little white pawn upon an empty square, when the Black

Knight, that cares nothing for castles or kings or queens, swooped down

upon her and swept her from the larger board of life.

The old Latin tutor put a modest blue stone at the head of his late

companion, with her name and age and _Eheu!_ upon it,——a smaller one

at her feet, with initials; and left her by herself, to be rained and

snowed on,——which is a hard thing to do for those whom we have cherished

tenderly.

About the time that the lichens, falling on the stone, like drops of

water, had spread into fair, round rosettes, the tutor had starved into a

slight cough. Then he began to draw the buckle of his black pantaloons a

little tighter, and took another reef in his never-ample waistcoat. His

temples got a little hollow, and the contrasts of color in his cheeks

more vivid than of old. After a while his walks fatigued him, and he

was tired, and breathed hard after going up a flight or two of stairs.

Then came on other marks of inward trouble and general waste, which he

spoke of to his physician as peculiar, and doubtless owing to accidental

causes; to all which the doctor listened with deference, as if it had

not been the old story that one in five or six of mankind in temperate

climates tells, or has told for him, as if it were something new. As the

doctor went out, he said to himself,——“On the rail at last. Accommodation

train. A good many stops, but will get to the station by and by.” So the

doctor wrote a recipe with the astrological sign of Jupiter before it

(just as your own physician does, inestimable reader, as you will see,

if you look at his next prescription), and departed, saying he would

look in occasionally. After this, the Latin tutor began the usual course

of “getting better,” until he got so much better that his face was very

sharp, and when he smiled, three crescent lines showed at each side

of his lips, and when he spoke, it was in a muffled whisper, and the

white of his eye glistened as pearly as the purest porcelain,——so much

better, that he hoped——by spring——he——might be able——to——attend——to his

class again.——But he was recommended not to expose himself, and so kept

his chamber, and occasionally, not having anything to do, his bed. The

unmarried sister with whom he lived took care of him; and the child, now

old enough to be manageable, and even useful in trifling offices, sat in

the chamber, or played about.

Things could not go on so forever, of course. One morning his face was

sunken and his hands were very, very cold. He was “better,” he whispered,

but sadly and faintly. After a while he grew restless and seemed a little

wandering. His mind ran on his classics, and fell back on the Latin

grammar.

“Iris!” he said,——“_filiola mea!_”——The child knew this meant _my dear

little daughter_ as well as if it had been English.——“Rainbow!”——for he

would translate her name at times,——“come to me,——_veni_”——and his lips

went on automatically, and murmured, “_vel venito!_”——The child came

and sat by his bedside and took his hand, which she could not warm, but

which shot its rays of cold all through her slender frame. But there she

sat, looking steadily at him. Presently he opened his lips feebly, and

whispered, “_Moribundus_.” She did not know what that meant, but she saw

that there was something new and sad. So she began to cry; but presently

remembering an old book that seemed to comfort him at times, got up and

brought a Bible in the Latin version, called the Vulgate. “Open it,” he

said,——“I will read,——_segnius irritant_,——don’t put the light out,——ah!

_hæret lateri_,——I am going,——_vale, vale, vale_, good by, good by,——the

Lord take care of my child!——_Domine, audi——vel audito!_” His face

whitened suddenly, and he lay still, with open eyes and mouth. He had

taken his last degree.

——Little Miss Iris could not be said to begin life with a very brilliant

rainbow over her, in a worldly point of view. A limited wardrobe of

man’s attire, such as poor tutors wear,——a few good books, principally

classics,——a print or two, and a plaster model of the Pantheon, with

some pieces of furniture which had seen service,——these, and a child’s

heart full of tearful recollections and strange doubts and questions,

alternating with the cheap pleasures which are the anodynes of

childish grief; such were the treasures she inherited.——No,——I forgot.

With that kindly sentiment which all of us feel for old men’s first

children,——frost-flowers of the early winter season,——the old tutor’s

students had remembered him at a time when he was laughing and crying

with his new parental emotions, and running to the side of the plain crib

in which his _alter ego_, as he used to say, was swinging, to hang over

the little heap of stirring clothes, from which looked the minute, red,

downy, still, round face, with unfixed eyes and working lips,——in that

unearthly gravity which has never yet been broken by a smile, and which

gives to the earliest moon-year or two of an infant’s life the character

of a _first old age_, to counterpoise that _second childhood_ which there

is one chance in a dozen it may reach by and by. The boys had remembered

the old man and young father at that tender period of his hard, dry life.

There came to him a fair, silver goblet, embossed with classical figures,

and bearing on a shield the graven words, _Ex dono pupillorum_. The

handle on its side showed what use the boys had meant it for, and a kind

letter in it, written with the best of feeling, in the worst of Latin,

pointed delicately to its destination. Out of this silver vessel, after a

long, desperate, strangling cry, which marked her first great lesson in

the realities of life, the child took the blue milk, such as poor tutors

and their children get, tempered with water, and sweetened a little, so

as to bring it nearer the standard established by the touching indulgence

and partiality of Nature,——who has mingled an extra allowance of sugar in

the blameless food of the child at its mother’s breast, as compared with

that of its infant brothers and sisters of the bovine race.

But a willow will grow in baked sand wet with rainwater. An air-plant

will grow by feeding on the winds. Nay, those huge forests that

overspread great continents have built themselves up mainly from the

air-currents with which they are always battling. The oak is but a

foliated atmospheric crystal deposited from the aerial ocean that holds

the future vegetable world in solution. The storm that tears its leaves

has paid tribute to its strength, and it breasts the tornado clad in the

spoils of a hundred hurricanes.

Poor little Iris! What had she in common with the great oak in the shadow

of which we are losing sight of her?——She lived and grew like that,——this

was all. The blue milk ran into her veins and filled them with thin,

pure blood. Her skin was fair, with a faint tinge, such as the white

rosebud shows before it opens. The doctor who had attended her father

was afraid her aunt would hardly be able to “raise” her,——“delicate

child,”——hoped she was not consumptive,——thought there was a fair chance

she would take after her father.

A very forlorn-looking person, dressed in black, with a white neckcloth,

sent her a memoir of a child who died at the age of two years and eleven

months, after having fully indorsed all the doctrines of the particular

persuasion to which he not only belonged himself, but thought it very

shameful that everybody else did not belong. What with foreboding looks

and dreary death-bed stories, it was a wonder the child made out to live

through it. It saddened her early years, of course,——it distressed her

tender soul with thoughts which, as they cannot be fully taken in, should

be sparingly used as instruments of torture to break down the natural

cheerfulness of a healthy child, or, what is infinitely worse, to cheat

a dying one out of the kind illusions with which the Father of All has

strewed its downward path.

The child would have died, no doubt, and, if properly managed, might have

added another to the long catalogue of wasting children who have been

as cruelly played upon by spiritual physiologists, often with the best

intentions, as ever the subject of a rare disease by the curious students

of science.

Fortunately for her, however, a wise instinct had guided the late Latin

tutor in the selection of the partner of his life, and the future mother

of his child. The deceased tutoress was a tranquil, smooth woman,

easily nourished, as such people are,——a quality which is inestimable in

a tutor’s wife,——and so it happened that the daughter inherited enough

vitality from the mother to live through childhood and infancy and fight

her way towards womanhood, in spite of the tendencies she derived from

her other parent.

——Two and two do not always make four, in this matter of hereditary

descent of qualities. Sometimes they make three, and sometimes five. It

seems as if the parental traits at one time showed separate, at another

blended,——that occasionally the force of two natures is represented in

the derivative one by a diagonal of greater value than either original

line of living movement,——that sometimes there is a loss of vitality

hardly to be accounted for, and again a forward impulse of variable

intensity in some new and unforeseen direction.

So it was with this child. She had glanced off from her parental

probabilities at an unexpected angle. Instead of taking to classical

learning like her father, or sliding quietly into household duties like

her mother, she broke out early in efforts that pointed in the direction

of Art. As soon as she could hold a pencil she began to sketch outlines

of objects round her with a certain air and spirit. Very extraordinary

horses, but their legs looked as if they could move. Birds unknown to

Audubon, yet flying, as it were, with a rush. Men with impossible legs,

which did yet seem to have a vital connection with their most improbable

bodies. By and by the doctor, on his beast,——an old man with a face

looking as if Time had kneaded it like dough with his knuckles, with

a rhubarb tint and flavor pervading himself and his sorrel horse and

all their appurtenances. A dreadful old man! Be sure she did not forget

those saddle-bags that held the detestable bottles out of which he used

to shake those loathsome powders which, to virgin childish palates that

find heaven in strawberries and peaches, are——Well, I suppose I had

better stop. Only she wished she was dead sometimes when she heard him

coming. On the next leaf would figure the gentleman with the black coat

and white cravat, as he looked when he came and entertained her with

stories concerning the death of various little children about her age,

to encourage her, as that wicked Mr. Arouet said about shooting Admiral

Byng. Then she would take her pencil, and with a few scratches there

would be the outline of a child, in which you might notice how one sudden

sweep gave the chubby cheek, and two dots darted at the paper looked like

real eyes.

By and by she went to school, and caricatured the schoolmaster on the

leaves of her grammars and geographies, and drew the faces of her

companions, and, from time to time, heads and figures from her fancy,

with large eyes, far apart, like those of Raffaelle’s mothers and

children, sometimes with wild floating hair, and then with wings and

heads thrown back in ecstasy. This was at about twelve years old, as the

dates of these drawings show, and, therefore, three or four years before

she came among us. Soon after this time, the ideal figures began to take

the place of portraits and caricatures, and a new feature appeared in her

drawing-books in the form of fragments of verse and short poems.