Bressant

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."