The Allen House; Or, Twenty Years Ago and Now. Arthur Timothy Shay
for a day or two. The law is your proper calling, and you must not give it up, if you can be sustained in it.”
On that very day, Judge Bigelow saw Squire Floyd, and talked the matter over with him. They had but one sentiment in the matter, and that was favorable to Henry’s remaining where he was.
“Can he be of any service to you, in your office, Judge—such as copying deeds and papers, hunting up cases, and the like?” asked the Squire.
“Yes, he can be of service to me in that way; and is of service now.”
“You can afford to pay him something?” suggested Squire Floyd.
“It is usual,” replied the Judge, “to get this kind of service in return for instruction and office privileges.”
“I know; but this case is peculiar. The death of Henry’s father has left him without a support, and he is too independent to burden his mother. Unless he can earn something, therefore, he must abandon the law.”
“I understand that, Squire, and have already decided to compensate him,” said the Judge. “But what I can offer will not be enough.”
“How much can you offer?”
“Not over a hundred dollars for the first year.”
“Call it two hundred, Judge,” was the ready answer.
The two men looked for a moment into each other’s faces.
“His father and I were friends from boyhood,” said Squire Floyd. “He was a warm-hearted man; but always making mistakes. He would have ruined me two or three times over, if I had been weak enough to enter into his plans, or to yield to his importunities in the way of risks and securities. It often went hard for me to refuse him; but duty to those dependent on me was stronger than friendship. But I can spare a hundred dollars for his son, and will do it cheerfully. Only, I must not be known in the matter; for it would lay on Henry’s mind a weight of obligation, not pleasant for one of his sensitive disposition to bear.”
“I see, Squire,” answered Judge Bigelow to this; “but then it won’t place me in the right position. I shall receive credit for your benevolence.”
“Don’t trouble yourself on that score,” answered the Squire, laughing. “It may be that I shall want some law business done—though heaven forbid! In that case, I will call on you, and you can let Henry do the work. Thus the equilibrium of benefits will be restored. Let the salary be two hundred.”
And so this matter being settled, Henry Wallingford remained in the office of Judge Bigelow. The fact of being salaried by the Judge, stimulated him to new efforts, and made him forward to relieve his kind preceptor of all duties within the range of his ability. There came, during the next year, an unusually large amount of office practice—preparing deeds, making searches, and drawing up papers of various kinds. In doing this work, Henry was rapid and reliable. So, when Squire Floyd tendered his proportion of the young man’s salary to his neighbor, the Judge declined receiving it. The Squire urged; but the Judge said—
“No; Henry has earned his salary, and I must pay it, in simple justice. I did not think there was so much in him. Business has increased, and without so valuable an assistant, I could not get along.”
So the way had opened before Henry Wallingford, and he was on the road to a successful manhood. At the time of his introduction to the reader, he was in his twenty-third year. On attaining his majority, he had become so indispensable to Judge Bigelow, who had the largest practice in the county, that no course was left for him but to offer the young man a share in his business. It was accepted; and the name of Henry Wallingford was thenceforth displayed in gilt letters, in the office window of his preceptor.
From that time, his mind never rested with anything like care or anxiety on the future. His daily life consisted in an almost absorbed devotion to his professional duties, which grew steadily on his hands. His affection was in them, and so the balance of his mind was fully sustained. Ah, if we could all thus rest, without anxiety, on the right performance of our allotted work! If we would be content to wait patiently for that success which comes as the orderly result of well-doing in our business, trades, or professions, what a different adjustment would there be in our social condition and relations! There would not be all around us so many eager, care-worn faces—so many heads bowed with anxious thought—so many shoulders bent with burdens, destined, sooner or later, to prove too great for the strength which now sustains them. But how few, like Henry Wallingford, enter with anything like pleasure into their work! It is, in most cases, held as drudgery, and regarded only as the means to cherished ends in life wholly removed from the calling itself. Impatience comes as a natural result. The hand reaches forth to pluck the growing fruit ere it is half ripened. No wonder that its taste is bitter to so many thousands. No wonder that true success comes to so small a number—that to so many life proves but a miserable failure.
CHAPTER VII
The morning which broke after that night of storm was serene and beautiful. The air had a crystal clearness, and as you looked away up into the cloudless azure, it seemed as if the eye could penetrate to an immeasurable distance. The act of breathing was a luxury. You drew in draught after draught of the rich air, feeling, with every inhalation, that a new vitality was absorbed through the lungs, giving to the heart a nobler beat, and to the brain a fresh activity. With what a different feeling did I take up my round of duties for the day! Yesterday I went creeping forth like a reluctant school boy; to-day, with an uplifted countenance and a willing step.
Having a few near calls to make, I did not order my horse, as both health and inclination were better served by walking. Soon after breakfast I started out, and was going in the direction of Judge Bigelow’s office, when, hearing a step behind me that had in it a familiar sound, I turned to find myself face to face with Henry Wallingford! He could hardly have failed to see the look of surprise in my face.
“Good morning, Henry,” I said, giving him my hand, and trying to speak with that cheerful interest in the young man which I had always endeavored to show.
He smiled in his usual quiet way as he took my hand and said in return,
“Good-morning, Doctor.”
“You were not out, I believe, yesterday,” I remarked, as we moved on together.
“I didn’t feel very well,” he answered, in a voice pitched to a lower key than usual; “and, the day being a stormy one, I shut myself up at home.”
“Ah,” said I, in a cheerful way, “you lawyers have the advantage of us knights of the pill box and lancet. Rain or shine, sick or well, we must travel round our parish.”
“All have their share of the good as well as the evil things of life,” he replied, a little soberly. “Doctors and lawyers included.”
I did not observe any marked change in the young man, except that he was paler, and had a different look out of his eyes from any that I had hitherto noticed; a more matured look, which not only indicated deeper feeling, but gave signs of will and endurance. I carried that new expression away with me as we parted at the door of his office, and studied it as a new revelation of the man. It was very certain that profounder depths had been opened in his nature—opened to his own consciousness—than had ever seen the light before. That he was more a man than he had ever been, and more worthy to be mated with a true woman. Up to this time I had thought of him more as a boy than as a man, for the years had glided by so quietly that bore him onward with the rest, that he had not arisen in my thought to the full mental stature which the word manhood includes.
“Ah,” said I, as I walked on, “what a mistake in Delia Floyd! She is just as capable of high development as a woman as he is as a man. How admirably would they have mated. In him, self-reliance, reason, judgment, and deep feeling would have found in her all the qualities they seek—taste, perception, tenderness and love. They would have grown upwards into higher ideas of life, not downwards into sensualism and mere worldliness, like the many. Alas! This mistake on her part may ruin them both; for a man of deep, reserved feelings, who suffers a disappointment in love, is often warped in his appreciation of the sex, and grows one-sided in his character as he advances through