--Do you mean you can always see the sources from which a man fills his mind,--his feeders, as you call them?
-I don't go quite so far as that,--the Master said.---I've seen men whose minds were always overflowing, and yet they did n't read much nor go much into the world.Sometimes you'll find a bit of a pond-hole in a pasture, and you'll plunge your walking-stick into it and think you are going to touch bottom.But you find you are mistaken.
Some of these little stagnant pond-holes are a good deal deeper than you think; you may tie a stone to a bed-cord and not get soundings in some of 'em.The country boys will tell you they have no bottom, but that only means that they are mighty deep; and so a good many stagnant, stupid-seeming people are a great deal deeper than the length of your intellectual walking-stick, I can tell you.There are hidden springs that keep the little pond-holes full when the mountain brooks are all dried up.You poets ought to know that.
--I can't help thinking you are more tolerant towards the specialists than I thought at first, by the way you seemed to look at our dried-up neighbor and his small pursuits.
--I don't like the word tolerant,--the Master said.---As long as the Lord can tolerate me I think I can stand my fellow-creatures.
Philosophically, I love 'em all; empirically, I don't think I am very fond of all of 'em.It depends on how you look at a man or a woman.
Come here, Youngster, will you? he said to That Boy.
The Boy was trying to catch a blue-bottle to add to his collection, and was indisposed to give up the chase; but he presently saw that the Master had taken out a small coin and laid it on the table, and felt himself drawn in that direction.
Read that,--said the Master.
U-n-i-ni United States of America 5 cents.
The Master turned the coin over.Now read that.
In God is our t-r-u-s-t--trust.1869.
--Is that the same piece of money as the other one?
--There ain't any other one,--said the Boy, there ain't but one, but it's got two sides to it with different reading.
--That 's it, that 's it,--said the Master,--two sides to everybody, as there are to that piece of money.I've seen an old woman that wouldn't fetch five cents if you should put her up for sale at public auction; and yet come to read the other side of her, she had a trust in God Almighty that was like the bow anchor of a three-decker.It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at.I don't think your ant-eating specialist, with his sharp nose and pin-head eyes, is the best every-day companion; but any man who knows one thing well is worth listening to for once; and if you are of the large-brained variety of the race, and want to fill out your programme of the Order of Things in a systematic and exhaustive way, and get all the half-notes and flats and sharps of humanity into your scale, you'd a great deal better shut your front door and open your two side ones when you come across a fellow that has made a real business of doing anything.
--That Boy stood all this time looking hard at the five-cent piece.
--Take it,--said the Master, with a good-natured smile.
--The Boy made a snatch at it and was off for the purpose of investing it.
--A child naturally snaps at a thing as a dog does at his meat,--said the Master.---If you think of it, we've all been quadrupeds.A child that can only crawl has all the instincts of a four-footed beast.It carries things in its mouth just as cats and dogs do.I've seen the little brutes do it over and over again.I suppose a good many children would stay quadrupeds all their lives, if they didn't learn the trick of walking on their hind legs from seeing all the grown people walking in that way.
--Do you accept Mr.Darwin's notions about the origin of the race? --said I.
The Master looked at me with that twinkle in his eye which means that he is going to parry a question.
--Better stick to Blair's Chronology; that settles it.Adam and Eve, created Friday, October 28th, B.C.4004.You've been in a ship for a good while, and here comes Mr.Darwin on deck with an armful of sticks and says, "Let's build a raft, and trust ourselves to that."If your ship springs a leak, what would you do?
He looked me straight in the eyes for about half a minute.---If Iheard the pumps going, I'd look and see whether they were gaining on the leak or not.If they were gaining I'd stay where I was.---Go and find out what's the matter with that young woman.
I had noticed that the Young Girl--the storywriter, our Scheherezade, as I called her--looked as if she had been crying or lying awake half the night.I found on asking her,--for she is an honest little body and is disposed to be confidential with me for some reason or other, --that she had been doing both.
--And what was the matter now, I questioned her in a semi-paternal kind of way, as soon as I got a chance for a few quiet words with her.
She was engaged to write a serial story, it seems, and had only got as far as the second number, and some critic had been jumping upon it, she said, and grinding his heel into it, till she couldn't bear to look at it.He said she did not write half so well as half a dozen other young women.She did n't write half so well as she used to write herself.She hadn't any characters and she had n't any incidents.Then he went to work to show how her story was coming out, trying to anticipate everything she could make of it, so that her readers should have nothing to look forward to, and he should have credit for his sagacity in guessing, which was nothing so very wonderful, she seemed to think.Things she had merely hinted and left the reader to infer, he told right out in the bluntest and coarsest way.It had taken all the life out of her, she said.It was just as if at a dinner-party one of the guests should take a spoonful of soup and get up and say to the company, "Poor stuff, poor stuff; you won't get anything better; let's go somewhere else where things are fit to eat."What do you read such things for, my dear? said I.
