Fifteen Days: An Extract from Edward Colvil's Journal. Mary Lowell Putnam
and his force of character together, he should always find people do what he expects of them."
"You are right—you are quite right."—The Doctor seldom contradicted my mother, and very considerately when he did.—"It is not your generous men that tempt others to overreach, but your uncertain ones. It seems he carries about with him something of the nature of a divining-rod, that makes men's hearts reveal what of gold they have in them. I have known a churlish-looking fellow, who has come to his door on purpose to warn us thirsty wayfarers off from it, soften when his eye met Harry's, urge us in as if he were afraid of losing us, do his best for us, and then try to refuse our money when we went away. Well, if son of mine could bring but one talent into the world with him, let it be that for being loved; it is worth all others put together."
"How many does it not include?" asked my mother.
"Truly, there is perhaps more justice in the world than appears on the outside."
I found this the place to put in a little apology for Tabitha, who had persisted in treating Harry with marked distinction, although I had tried to remind her of the elder guest's claims to precedence by redoubling my attentions to him.
"Oh, I'm used to it, I'm used to it," cried the Doctor, cutting short my apologies very good-humoredly. "Wherever we go, people treat him as if he had done them some great service, or was going to do them one. But I find my account in his good reception. I reap the practical advantages. And then I am something of a fool about Harry myself; so I can hardly blame the rest of the world. Think of his drawing me into complicity in that affair of the negro Orpheus! I made a pretence to myself that I wanted to see a foolish cave at Egerton, just to excuse my weakness in humoring his whims; but, in truth, by the time we were well on the road to Omocqua, I was feeling as if the welfare of the world depended on our getting that poor wretch safely housed there. Well, we shall see what will come of it! I remember, when Harry was a little boy, saying to him once, after seeing him bestow a great deal of labor in accomplishing a work not very important in older eyes, 'Well, Harry, now what have you done, after all?' 'I have done what I meant to do,' said the child. I am so used now to seeing Harry do what he means to do, that even in this case I can't help looking for some result—though, probably, it will be one not so important in my view as in his, nor worth all that may be spent in arriving at it. I want to see him once fairly engaged in some steady career to which he will give himself heart and soul, as he does give himself to what he undertakes; then he'll have no time nor thought for these little extravagances."
"Does Harry intend to take a profession?"
"The law, I hope. He will study it in any case. This makes part of a plan he formed for himself years ago. He considers the study of law as a branch of the study of history, and a necessary preparation for the writing of history—his dream at present. But when he once takes hold of the law, I hope he will stick to it."
"Harry has very little the look of a student."
"Yet he has already learned
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