Bressant

"Well, but I don't want to think about that just now; I can be a farmer,

or a clerk; I can make a living with my body, if I can't with my mind;

and I can write to Mrs. Vanderplanck, some time, and find out just how

things are."

"Very well--very well! or perhaps I'd better write to her

myself--well--and as long as you are on your back, there'll be no use in

troubling you with business--that's certain! And perhaps things may turn

out better than they look, in the end."

As Professor Valeyon pronounced this latter sentence, he smiled to

himself pleasantly and mysteriously. He seemed to fancy he had stronger

grounds for believing in a happy issue, than, for some reason, he was at

liberty to disclose. And the smile lingered about the corners of his

mouth and eyes, as if the issue in question were to be of that

peculiarly harmonious kind usually supposed to be reserved for the

themes of poems, or the conclusions of novels.

"I never was interested to hear of the every-day lives of men who have

loved, and wanted to make their way in the world; for I never expected I

should be such a man. Now, I'm sorry; it would have been useful to me,

wouldn't it?"

"Perhaps it might," responded the old gentleman, musing at the change in

the attitude of the young man's mind--once so self-sufficient and

assertive, now so dependent and inexperienced. "Very few lives are bare

and empty enough not to teach one something worth knowing. I know the

events of one man's life," he added, after a few moments of thoughtful

consideration; "perhaps it might lead to some good, if I were to tell

them to yon."

"Did he marry a woman he loved?" demanded Bressant.

"You can judge better of that when you hear what happened before his

marriage," returned the professor, apparently a little put out by the

abruptness of the question. "He made several mistakes in life; most of

them because he didn't pay respect enough to circumstances; thought that

to adhere to fixed principles was the whole duty of a man: nothing to be

allowed to the accidents of life, or to the various and unaccountable

natures of men, their uncertainty, fallibility, and so on. One of the

first resolutions he made--and he's never broken it, for when he grew

wise enough to do so, the opportunity had gone by forever--was never to

leave his native country. He wanted to prove to himself, and to

everybody else whom it might concern, that a man of fair abilities might

become learned and wise, without ever helping himself to the good things

that lay beyond the shadow of his native flag. 'The majority of people

have to live where they are born,' was his argument; 'I'll be their

representative.' Well, that would seem all well enough; but it stood in

his way twice--each time lost him an opportunity that has never come

again--the opportunity to be distinguished, and perhaps great; and the

opportunity to have a happy home, and a luxurious one. It was better for

him, no doubt, that his life was a hard and disappointed one, instead

of--as it might have been; he's had blessings enough, that's certain;

but he has much to regret, too; the more, because the ill effects of a

man's folly and willfulness fall upon his friends quite as often, and

sometimes more heavily, than upon himself.