But again, turning his eyes to his pipe, or out of the window, was it
not fancy altogether? Beyond that he was unusually tall and broad across
the shoulders, and of a very intelligent cast of features, what was
there or was there not in this young man different from any other? He
had the muffled irregular voice, and alert yet unimpressible manner,
peculiar to deafness. But was there any thing more? The professor took
another look at him. He was reading, and certainly there were no signs
of any thing strange in his appearance, more than that, at such a time,
he should be reading at all. It was when speaking of his father that
the uncanny expression had been especially noticeable. "Suppose," said
Professor Valeyon to himself, "we try him on another subject."
"You've been educated at home, I understand," began he, from beneath his
heavy eyebrows.
"Oh, yes!" replied Bressant, shutting his book on his knee, and
returning the professor's look with one of exceeding keenness and
comprehensiveness. "Educated to develop faculties of body and mind, not
according to the ordinary school and college system." He drew himself
up, with an air of such marvelous intellectual and physical efficiency,
that it seemed to the professor as if each one of his five senses might
equal the whole capacity of a common man. And then it occurred to him
that he remembered, many years ago, having heard some one mention a
theory of education which aimed rather to give the man power in whatever
direction he chose to exercise it, than to store his mind with greater
or less quantities of particular forms of knowledge. The only faculty to
be left uncultivated, according to this theory, was that of human
love--this being considered destructive, or, at least, greatly
prejudicial, to progress and efficiency in any other direction. The
professor could not at the moment recall who it was had evolved this
scheme, but it became involuntarily connected in his mind with
Bressant's peculiarities.
"According to the letter I received to-day, you come here to be trained
to the ministry," resumed he. "Has all your previous education had this
in view?"
"The education would have been the same, understand, whatever the end
was to be," explained the young man, with a shrewd smile in his sharp
eyes. "I am as well prepared to study theology as if I had been aiming
at it all my life; but I might take up engineering or medicine as well
as that. About a year ago, I decided to become a minister."
"And what led you to do that?" demanded the old gentleman, with rather a
stern frown. He did not like the idea of approaching religion in other
than a reverent and self-searching attitude.
"My father first suggested it," replied Bressant, on whom the frown
produced no sort of impression. "At the time, it surprised me,
especially from him. Afterward, I concluded I could not do better. No
one has such a chance to move the world as a minister. I thought of
Christ, and Paul, and Luther, and many before and since. They were all
ministers, and who had greater power? I felt I had the ability, and I
decided that it was as a minister I could best use it."