For we are journeying, like our globe, ever towards the
east. Death and the west are behind us--ever behind us, and
settling into the unchangeable.
It was natural that he should be interested in the fine promise of
Robert, in whom he saw revived the hopes of his own youth, but in a
nature at once more robust and more ideal. Where the doctor was
refined, Robert was strong; where the doctor was firm with a
firmness he had cultivated, Robert was imperious with an
imperiousness time would mellow; where the doctor was generous and
careful at once, Robert gave his mite and forgot it. He was rugged
in the simplicity of his truthfulness, and his speech bewrayed him
as altogether of the people; but the doctor knew the hole of the pit
whence he had been himself digged. All that would fall away as the
spiky shell from the polished chestnut, and be reabsorbed in the
growth of the grand cone-flowering tree, to stand up in the sun and
wind of the years a very altar of incense. It is no wonder, I
repeat, that he loved the boy, and longed to further his plans. But
he was too wise to overwhelm him with a cataract of fortune instead
of blessing him with the merciful dew of progress.
'The fellow will bring me in for no end of expense,' he said,
smiling to himself, as he drove home in his chariot. 'The less he
means it the more unconscionable he will be. There's that
Ericson--but that isn't worth thinking of. I must do something for
that queer prot?g? of his, though--that Shargar.
Pages:
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354