Bart Ridgeley. A. G. Riddle
woman's heart. Like her father, she disliked him; and if, like her father, she would openly let him see and hear it—but doesn't she? What had he to offer her? How could he overcome her father's dislike? He felt in his soul what would come to him finally, but then, in the lapsing time? And she avoided him now!
He returned to his algebraic problem, with a desperate plunge at its solution. The unknown quantity remained unknown; and, a moment later, he was gratified to see how he had finally caught and expressed, with his pencil, a look of Julia, that had always eluded him before. But was he to be overcome by a girl? Was life and its ambitions to be crushed out and brought to nought by one small hand? He would see. It would be inexpressible luxury to tell her once—but just once—all his passion and worship, and then, of course, remain silent forever, and go out of her presence. He wished her to know it all, so that, as she would hear and know of him in the coming years, she would know that he was worthy, not of her love, but worthy to love her, whatever that may mean, or whatever of comfort it might bring to either. What precious logic the heart of a young man in his twenty-second year is capable of!
CHAPTER VII.
LOGIC OF THE GODS.
"Doctor," said Barton, in the little office of the latter, "I've called to borrow your Euclid; may I have it? I have never tried Euclid, really."
"Oh, yes, you can have it, and welcome. Do you want to try yourself on the pons asinorum?"
"What is that; another bridge of sighs? for I suppose they can be found out of Venice."
"It is a place over which asses have to be carried. It is, indeed, a bridge of sighs, and a bridge of size."
"Oh, Doctor, don't you do that! Well, let me try it! I want more work; and especially I want a wrestle with Euclid."
"Work! what are you doing, that you call work?"
"Well, hoeing beans, pulling up weeds, harvesting oats, with recreations in Latin Grammar, Dabol, Algebra, Watts on the Mind, Butler's Analogy, and other trifles."
"All at one time?"
"No, not more than three at the same time. Don't lecture me, Doctor, I am incorrigible. When I work, I don't play."
"And when you don't play you work, occasionally; well, I think Euclid will do you good."
"I won't take it as a prescription, Doctor!"
"A thorough course of mathematics would do more for one of your flighty mind, than anything else; you want chaining down to the severe logic of lines and angles."
"To the solution of such profound problems as, that the whole of a thing is more than a fraction of it; and things that are exactly alike resemble each other, for instance, eh?"
"Pshaw! you will make fun of everything. Will you ever reach discretion, and deal with things seriously?"
"I was never more serious in my life, and could cry with mortification over my lost, idled-away hours, you never believed in me, and are not to blame for that, nor have I any promises to make. I am not thought to be at all promising, I believe."
"Bart," said the Doctor, seriously, "you don't lack capacity; but you are too quick and impulsive, and all imagination and fancy."
"Well, Doctor, you flatter me; but really is not the imagination one of the highest elements of the human mind? In the wide world's history was it not a crowning, and one of the most useful qualities of many of the greatest men?"
"Great men have had imagination. I presume, and achieved great things in spite of it; but through it, never."
"Why, Doctor! the mere mathematician is the most servile of mortals. He is useful, but cannot create, or even discover. He weighs and measures. Project one of his angles into space, and, though it may reach within ten feet of a blazing star that dazzles men with eyes, yet he will neither see nor know of its existence. His foot-rule won't reach it, and he has no eyes. Imagination! it was the logic of the gods—the power to create; and among men it abolishes the impossible. By its force and strength one may strike fire from hidden flints in darkened worlds, and beat new windows in the blind sides of the ages. Columbus imagined another continent, and sailed to it; and so of all great discoverers."
The Doctor listened with some surprise. "Did it ever occur to you,
Bart, that you might be an orator of some sort?"
"Such an orator as Brutus is—cold, formal, and dead? I'd rather not be an orator at all, 'but talk right on,' like plain, blunt Mark Antony."
"And yet Brutus has been quoted and held up by poets and orators as a sublime example of virtue and patriotism, young man!"
"And yet he never made murder the fashion;" and—striking an attitude—"Caesar had his Brutus! Charles had his Cromwell! and George III. had—what the devil did George have? He was stupid enough to have been a mathematician, though I never heard that he was."
"Oh dear, Bart!" said the Doctor, with a sigh, "for God's sake, and your own, do study Euclid if you can! Don't you see that your mind is always sky-rocketing and chasing thistle-down through the air?"
"'The downy thistle-seed my fare,
My strain forever new,'"
said Bart, laughing, and preparing to go.
"By the way," asked the Doctor, "wouldn't you like to go fishing one of these nights? We haven't been but once or twice this summer. Jonah, and Theodore, and 'Brother Young' and I have been talking about it for some days. We will rig up a fire-jack, if you will go, and use the spear."
"I am afraid I would be sky-rocketing, Doctor; but send me word when you are ready."
* * * * *
Barton had now entered upon something like a regular course. He had one of those intense nervous temperaments that did not require or permit excessive sleep. He arose with the first light, and took up at once the severest study he had until breakfast, and then worked with the boys, or alone, the most of the forenoon, at whatever on the farm, or about the house, seemed most to want his hand; the afternoons and evenings were given to unremitting study or reading. His tone of mind and new habit of introspection induced him to take long walks in the woods and secluded places, and after his work for the day was done; he imposed upon himself a regular and systematic course, and compelled himself to adhere to it. He saw few, went nowhere; and among that busy people, after the little buzz occasioned by his return had subsided, he ceased to be an object of interest or comment.
It was remarked among them that they did not hear his rifle in the forests, and nobody had presents of wild turkeys and venison, as they sometimes had, and he was in his own silent way shaping out his own destiny.
He received a letter from Henry in reply to his own, full of kindness, with such hints as the elder could give as to his course of study. His observing mother saw at once a marked change in his manner and words. Thoughtful and forbearing, his arrogance disappeared, and his impetuous, dashing way evidently toned down, while he was more tender towards her, and seemed to fall naturally into the place of an elder brother—careful and gentle to the young boys.
CHAPTER VIII.
A RAMBLE IN THE WOODS, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.
Already the summer had deepened and ripened into autumn. The sky had a darker tint, and the breeze had a plaintive note in its voice; and here and there the footprints of change were in the tree-tops.
On one of those serene, deep afternoons, Barton, who had been importuned by the boys to go into