Adventures in Contentment - David Grayson (best books to read for beginners .txt) 📗
- Author: David Grayson
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"Baxter, why do you spend so much time on that table? Who's going to know whether or not the last touch has been put on the under side of it?"
Baxter straightened up and looked at the Doctor in surprise.
"Why, I will," he said.
How the Doctor loved to tell that story! I warrant there is no boy who ever grew up in this country who hasn't heard it.
It was a part of his pride in finding reality that made the Doctor such a lover of true sentiment and such a hater of sentimentality. I prize one memory of him which illustrates this point. The district school gave a "speaking" and we all went. One boy with a fresh young voice spoke a "soldier piece"—the soliloquy of a one-armed veteran who sits at a window and sees the troops go by with dancing banners and glittering bayonets, and the people cheering and shouting. And the refrain went something like this:
"Never again call 'Comrade' To the men who were comrades for years;
Never again call 'Brother' To the men we think of with tears."
I happened to look around while the boy was speaking, and there sat the old Doctor with the tears rolling unheeded down his ruddy face; he was thinking, no doubt, of his war time and the comrades he knew.
On the other hand, how he despised fustian and bombast. His "Bah!" delivered explosively, was often like a breath of fresh air in a stuffy room. Several years ago, before I came here—and it is one of the historic stories of the county—there was a semi-political Fourth of July celebration with a number of ambitious orators. One of them, a young fellow of small worth who wanted to be elected to the legislature, made an impassioned address on "Patriotism." The Doctor was present, for he liked gatherings: he liked people. But he did not like the young orator, and did not want him to be elected. In the midst of the speech, while the audience was being carried through the clouds of oratory, the Doctor was seen to be growing more and more uneasy. Finally he burst out:
"Bah!"
The orator caught himself, and then swept on again.
"Bah!" said the Doctor.
By this time the audience was really interested. The orator stopped. He knew the Doctor, and he should have known better than to say what he did. But he was very young and he knew the Doctor was opposing him.
"Perhaps," he remarked sarcastically, "the Doctor can make a better speech than I can."
The Doctor rose instantly, to his full height—and he was an impressive-looking man.
"Perhaps," he said, "I can, and what is more, I will." He stood up on a chair and gave them a talk on Patriotism—real patriotism—the patriotism of duty done in the small concerns of life. That speech, which ended the political career of the orator, is not forgotten to-day.
One thing I heard to-day about the old Doctor impressed me deeply. I have been thinking about it ever since: it illuminates his character more than anything I have heard. It is singular, too, that I should not have known the story before. I don't believe it was because it all happened so long ago; it rather remained untold out of deference to a sort of neighbourhood delicacy.
I had, indeed, wondered why a man of such capacities, so many qualities of real greatness and power, should have escaped a city career. I said something to this effect to a group of men with whom I was talking this morning. I thought they exchanged glances; one said:
"When he first came out of the army he'd made such a fine record as a surgeon that everyone-urged him to go to the city and practice----"
A pause followed which no one seemed inclined to fill.
"But he didn't go," I said.
"No, he didn't go. He was a brilliant young fellow. He knew a lot, and he was popular, too. He'd have had a great success----"
Another pause.
"But he didn't go?" I asked promptingly.
"No; he staid here. He was better educated than any man in this county. Why, I've seen him more'n once pick up a book of Latin and read it for pleasure."
I could see that all this was purposely irrelevant, and I liked them for it. But walking home from the cemetery Horace gave me the story; the community knew it to the last detail. I suppose it is a story not uncommon among men, but this morning, told of the old Doctor we had just laid away, it struck me with a tragic poignancy difficult to describe.
"Yes," said Horace, "he was to have been married, forty years ago, and the match was broken off because he was a drunkard."
"A drunkard!" I exclaimed, with a shock I cannot convey.
"Yes, sir," said Horace, "one o' the worst you ever see. He got it in the army. Handsome, wild, brilliant—that was the Doctor. I was a little boy but I remember it mighty well."
He told me the whole distressing story. It was all a long time ago and the details do not matter now. It was to be expected that a man like the old Doctor should love, love once, and love as few men do. And that is what he did—and the girl left him because he was a drunkard!
"They all thought," said Horace, "that he'd up an' kill himself. He said he would, but he didn't. Instid o' that he put an open bottle on his table and he looked at it and said: 'Which is stronger, now, you or John North? We'll make that the test,' he said, 'we'll live or die by that.' Them was his exact words. He couldn't sleep nights and he got haggard like a sick man, but he left the bottle there and never touched it."
How my heart throbbed with the thought of that old silent struggle! How much it explained; how near it brought all these people around him! It made him so human. It is the tragic necessity (but the salvation) of many a man that he should come finally to an irretrievable experience, to the assurance that everything is lost. For with that moment, if he be strong, he is saved. I wonder if anyone ever attains real human sympathy who has not passed through the fire of some such experience. Or to humour either! For in the best laughter do we not hear constantly that deep minor note which speaks of the ache in the human heart? It seems to me I can understand Doctor North!
He died Friday morning. He had been lying very quiet all night; suddenly he opened his eyes and said to his sister: "Good-bye, Kate," and shut them again. That was all. The last call had come and he was ready for it. I looked at his face after death. I saw the iron lines of that old struggle in his mouth and chin; and the humour that it brought him in the lines around his deep-set eyes.
----And as I think of him this afternoon, I can see him—curiously, for I can hardly explain it—carrying a banner as in battle right here among our quiet hills. And those he leads seem to be the people we know, the men, and the women, and the boys! He is the hero of a new age. In olden days he might have been a pioneer, carrying the light of civilisation to a new land; here he has been a sort of moral pioneer—a pioneering far more difficult than any we have ever known. There are no heroics connected with it, the name of the pioneer will not go ringing down the ages; for it is a silent leadership and its success is measured by victories in other lives. We see it now, only too dimly, when he is gone. We reflect sadly that we did not stop to thank him. How busy we were with our own affairs when he was among us! I wonder is there anyone here to take up the banner he has laid down!
----I forgot to say that the Scotch Preacher chose the most impressive text in the Bible for his talk at the funeral:
"He that is greatest among you, let him be ... as he that doth serve."
And we came away with a nameless, aching sense of loss, thinking how, perhaps, in a small way, we might do something for somebody else—as the old Doctor did.
"How calm and quiet a delight Is it, alone,
To read and meditate and write, By none offended, and offending none.
To walk, ride, sit or sleep at one's own ease, And, pleasing a man's self, none other to displease."
—Charles Cotton, a friend of Izaak Walton, 1650
During the last few months so many of the real adventures of life have been out of doors and so much of the beauty, too, that I have scarcely written a word about my books. In the summer the days are so long and the work so engrossing that a farmer is quite willing to sit quietly on his porch after supper and watch the long evenings fall—and rest his tired back, and go to bed early. But the winter is the true time for indoor enjoyment!
Days like these! A cold night after a cold day! Well wrapped, you have made arctic explorations to the stable, the chicken-yard and the pig-pen; you have dug your way energetically to the front gate, stopping every few minutes to beat your arms around your shoulders and watch the white plume of your breath in the still air—and you have rushed in gladly to the warmth of the dining-room and the lamp-lit supper. After such a day how sharp your appetite, how good the taste of food! Harriet's brown bread (moist, with thick, sweet, dark crusts) was never quite so delicious, and when the meal is finished you push back your chair feeling like a sort of lord.
"That was a good supper, Harriet," you say expansively.
"Was it?" she asks modestly, but with evident pleasure.
"Cookery," you remark, "is the greatest art in the world----"
"Oh, you were hungry!"
"Next to poetry," you conclude, "and much better appreciated. Think how easy it is to find a poet who will turn you a presentable sonnet, and how very difficult it is to find a cook who will turn you an edible beefsteak----"
I said a good deal more on this subject which I shall not attempt to repeat. Harriet did not listen through it all. She knows what I am capable of when I really get started; and she has her well-defined limits. A practical person, Harriet! When I have gone about so far, she begins clearing the table or takes up her mending—but I don't mind it at all. Having begun talking, it is wonderful how pleasant one's own voice becomes. And think of having a clear field—and no interruptions!
My own particular room, where I am permitted to revel in the desert of my own disorder, opens comfortably off the sitting-room. A lamp with a green shade stands invitingly on the table shedding a circle of light on the books and papers underneath, but leaving all the remainder of the room in dim pleasantness. At one side stands a comfortable big chair with everything in arm's reach, including my note books and ink bottle. Where I sit I can look out through the open doorway and see Harriet near the fireplace rocking and sewing. Sometimes she hums a little tune which I never confess to hearing, lest I miss some of the unconscious cadences. Let the wind blow outside and the snow drift in piles
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