Chapter 17

BART.

Bart devoted himself unselfishly and unsparingly to his school, to all its duties and to all his scholars, and especially to the children of the poor, and the backward pupils. He went early to the house, and remained late. He was the tender, considerate, elder brother of the scholars, and was astonished at his power to win regard, and maintain order. Order maintained itself after one memorable occasion--one to which he never referred, and of which he did not like to hear. It made his school famous, and drew to it many visitors, and to himself no little curiosity and attention.

He endeavored to carry on his law-reading; but beyond reviewing--and not very thoroughly--Blackstone, he could do little. As usual, he was homesick; and whenever a week was ended he left the school-house for his mother's, and never returned until the following Monday morning.

His kind patrons noticed with surprise that he seemed sad and depressed after the expulsion of Grid, and that this gloominess was deepened about the time of Snow's ball.

Barton came to take a real pleasure in his school. Formed to love everything, and without the power of hating, or of long retaining a resentment, he became attached to his little flock, especially the younger ones, and was loved in return by them, without reserve or doubt. He did much to improve, not alone the minds of the older pupils, but to soften and refine the manners of the young men under his charge; while the young women, always inclined to idealize, found how pleasant it was to receive little acts of gentlemanly attention from him.

In the afternoon of a long, bright, March day--one of those wondrous days, glorious above with sky and sun, and joyous with the first note of the blue-bird--the little red school-house by the margin of the maple-woods was filled with the pupils and their parents, assembled for the last time. Bart, in a low voice, tremulous with emotion, bade them all good-by, and most of them forever, and taking his little valise, walked with a saddened heart back to his mother. This time he had not failed, and he never was to fail again.

How many events and occurrences linked in an endless series unite to form the sum-total of ordinary human life! Incident to it, they are in fact all ordinary. If any appear extraordinary, it is because they occur in the life of an extraordinary individual, or remarkable consequences flow from them. Like all parts of human life, in and of themselves they are always fragmentary: springing from what precedes them, they have no beginning proper; causing and flowing into others, they have no ending, in effect; and as the dramatic in actual life is never framed with reference to the unities, so results are constantly being produced and worked out by accidents, and the prominent events often contribute nothing to any supposed final catastrophe. Strangers interlope for a moment, and change destinies, coming out for a day, from nothing, and going to nowhere, but marring and misshaping everything.

No plot is to develop as this sketch of old-time life continues, and incidents will be of value only as they tend to mould and develop the character and powers of one, and little will be noticed save that which concerns him. It is, perhaps, already apparent that he is very impressible, that slight forces which would produce little effect on different natures, are capable of changing his shape, will beat him flat, roll him round, or convert him into a cube or triangle, and yet, that certain strong, always acting forces will restore him, with more or less of the mark or impress of the disturbing cause upon him. He has a strong, tenacious nature, unstained with the semblance of a vice. He forms quick resolutions, but can adhere to them. He is tender to weakness, and fanciful to phantasy. His aptitude for sarcasm and ridicule, unsparingly as it had been turned upon everybody, brought upon him general dislike. His indecision and vacillation in adopting and pursuing a scheme in life, lost him the confidence of his acquaintances--ready to believe anything of one who had dealt them so many sharp thrusts. He was sensitive to a fault, and a slight word would have driven him forever from Julia Markham, and turned him back upon himself, as a dissolving and transforming fire. Mentally, he was quick as a flash, with a strong grasp, and a power of ready analysis; and so little did his mental achievements cost him, that his acquirements were doubted. He already paid the penalty of a nervous and brilliant intellect--that of being adjudged not profound. Men are always being deceived as to the real value of things, by their apparent cost.

We see this illustrated in the case of some grave and ponderous weakling, who has nothing really in him, and yet who creaks, and groans, and labors, and toils, to get under way, until our sympathy with his painful effort leads us so to rejoice over his final delivery that we have lost all power or disposition to weigh or estimate his half-strangled, commonplace bantling, when it is finally born, and we are rather inclined to wonder over it as a prodigy. No doubt the generation of men who witnessed the mountain in labor, regarded the sickly, hairy little mouse, finally brought forth, as a genuine wonder.

Great is mediocrity! It is the average world, and the majority conspires to do it reverence. Genius, if such a thing there is, may be appreciated by school-boys; the average grown world count it as of no value. If a man has a brilliant intellect, let him bewail it on the mountains, as the daughter of Jephtha did her virginity. If he has wit, let him become Brutus.

Readiness and genius are apt to be arrogant; and, when joined with a lively temper, with an ardent, impetuous nature, they render a young man an object of dread, dislike, or worse. Bart had grave doubts of his being a genius, but it had been abundantly manifest to his sensitive perceptions that he was disliked; and he had in part arrived at the probable cause, and was now very persistently endeavoring to correct it by holding his tongue and temper.

Like all young men bent upon a pursuit where his success must depend upon intellect, he was most anxious to ascertain the quality and extent of his brain-power--a matter of which a young man can form no proper idea. Later in life a man is informed by the estimate of others, and can judge somewhat by what he has done. The youth has done nothing. He has made no manifestation by which an observer can determine; when he looks at himself, he can examine his head and face; but the mind, turned in upon itself, with no mirror, weight, count or measure, feels the hopelessness of the effort.

If some one would only tell him of his capacity and power, of his mental weakness and deficiency, it would not, perhaps, change his course, but might teach him how best to pursue it.