Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

Fantasy Football Challenge - Library of Books for Football Fanatics

Fantasy Football Challenge presents
The Mettle of the Pasture

66 of 69

umbrella--her own--and in the other a pair of rubbers. As she sat down and drew these over her coarse walking shoes, she talked in the cheery tone of one who has on hand some congenial business. "I may get back late and I may not get back at all; it depends upon how the child is. But I wish it would not rain when poor little children are sick at night--it is the one thing that gives me the blues. And I wish infants could speak out and tell their symptoms. When I see grown people getting well as soon as they can minutely narrate to you all their ailments, my heart goes out to babies. Think how they would crow and gurgle, if they could only say what it is all about. But I don't see why people at large should not be licensed to bring in a bill when their friends insist upon describing their maladies to them: doctors do. But I must be going. Good night." She rose and stamped her feet into the rubbers to make them fit securely; and then she came across to the lamp-lit table beside which he sat watching her fondly--his book dropped the while upon his lap. He grasped her large strong hand in his large strong hand; and she leaned her side against his shoulder and put her arm around his neck. "You are getting younger, Anna," he said, looking up into her face and drawing her closer. "Why not?" she answered with a voice of splendid joy. "Harriet is married; what troubles have I, then? And she patronizes--or matronizes--me and tyrannizes over Ambrose: so the world is really succeeding at last. But I wish her husband had not asked me _first_; that is her thorn." "And the thorn will grow!" "Now, don't sit up late!" she pleaded. "I turned your bed down and arranged the pillows wrong end out as you will have them; and I put out your favorite night-shirt--the one with the sleeves torn off above the elbows and the ravellings hanging down just as you require. Aren't you tired of books yet? Are you never going to get tired? And the same books! Why, I get fresh babies every few years--a complete change." "How many generations of babies do you suppose there have been since this immortal infant was born?" he asked, laying his hand reverently over the book on his lap as if upon the head of a divine child. "I don't know and I don't care," she replied. "I wish the immortal infant would let you alone." She stooped and kissed his brow, and wrung his hand silently, and went out into the storm. He heard her close the street door and heard the rusty click of her cotton umbrella as she raised it. Then he turned to the table at his elbow and kindled his deep-bowled pipe and drew over his legs the skirts of his long gown, coarse, austere, sombre. He looked comfortable. A rainy night may depress a woman nursing a sick child that is not her own--a child already fighting for its feeble, unclaimed, repudiated life, in a world of weeping clouds; but such a night diffuses cheer when the raindrops are heard tapping the roof above beloved bookshelves, tapping the window-panes; when there is low music in the gutter on the back porch; when a student lamp, throwing its shadow over the ceiling and the walls, reserves its exclusive lustre for lustrous pages--pages over which men for centuries have gladly burnt out the oil of their brief lamps, their iron and bronze, their silver and gold and jewelled lamps--many-colored eyes of the nights of ages. It was now middle September of another year and Professor Hardage had entered upon the work of another session. The interval had left no outward mark on him. The mind stays young a long time when nourished by a body such as his; and the body stays young a long time when mastered by such a mind. Day by day faithfully to do one's work and to be restless for no more; without bitterness to accept obscurity for ambition; to possess all vital passions and to govern them; to stand on the world's thoroughfare and see the young generations hurrying by, and to put into the hands of a youth here and there a light which will burn long after our own personal taper is extinguished; to look back upon the years already gone as not without usefulness and honor, and forward to what may remain as safe at least from failure or any form of shame, and thus for one's self to feel the humility of the part before the greatness of the whole of life, and yet the privileges and duties of the individual to the race--this brings blessedness if it does not always bring happiness, and it had brought both to him. He sat at peace beside his lamp. The interval had brought changes to his towns-people. As he had walked home this afternoon, he had paused and looked across at some windows of the second story of a familiar corner. The green shutters, tightly closed, were gray with cobweb and with dust. One sagged from a loosened hinge and flapped in the rising autumn wind, showing inside a window sash also dust-covered and with a newspaper crammed through a broken pane. Where did Ravenel Morris live now? Did he live at all? Accustomed as he was to look through the distances of human history, to traverse the areas of its religions and see how its great conflicting faiths have each claimed the unique name of revelation for itself, he could not anywhere discover what to him was clear proof either of the separate existence of the soul or of its immortal life hereafter. The security of that belief was denied him. He had wished for it, had tried to make it his. But while it never became a conviction, it remained a force. Under all that reason could affirm or could deny, there dwelt unaccountable confidence that the light of human life, leaping from headland to headland,--the long transmitted radiance of thought,--was not to go out with the inevitable physical extinction of the species on this planet. Somewhere in the universe he expected to meet his own, all whom he had loved, and to see this friend. Meantime, he accepted the fact of death in the world with that uncomplaining submission to nature which is in the strength and sanity of genius. As acquaintances left him, one after another, memory but kindled another lamp; hope but disclosed another white flower on its mysterious stem. He sat at peace. The walls of the library showed their changes. There were valuable maps on Caesar's campaigns which had been sent

66 of 69 pages. Go to page:

Go to this Book's Directory Page