LITMIR.BIZ

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Philip, turning over on his back and looking up into the blue world through the leaves; “go to college, I suppose.” Children are even more reticent than adults about revealing their inner lives, and Philip would not, even to Celia, have confessed the splendid dreams about his career that came to him that day in the hickory-tree, and that occupied him a great deal.

      “Of course,” said this wise child, “but that's nothing. I mean, what are you going to do? My cousin Jim has been all through college, and he doesn't do a thing except wear nice clothes and hang around and talk. He says I'm a little chatter-box. I hate the sight of him.”

      “If he doesn't like you, then I don't like him,” said Philip, as if he were making a general and not a personal assertion. “Oh, I should like to travel.”

      “So should I, and see things and find things. Jim says he's going to be an explorer. He never will. He wouldn't find anything. He twits me, and wants to know what is the good of my reading about Africa and such things. Phil, don't you love to read about Africa, and the desert, and the lions and the snakes, and bananas growing, and palm-trees, and the queerest black men and women, real dwarfs some of them? I just love it.”

      “So do I,” said Philip, “as far as I have read. Alice says it's awful dangerous—fevers and wild beasts and savages and all that. But I shouldn't mind.”

      “Of course you wouldn't. But it costs like everything to go to Africa, or anywhere.”

      “I'd make a book about it, and give lectures, and make lots of money.”

      “I guess,” said Celia, reflecting upon this proposition, “I'd be an engineer or a railroad man, or something like that, and make a heap of money, and then I could go anywhere I liked. I just hate to be poor. There!”

      “Is Jim poor?”

      “No; he can do what he pleases. I asked him, then, why he didn't go to Africa, and he wanted to know what was the good of finding Livingstone, anyway. I'll bet Murad Ault would go to Africa.”

      “I wish he would,” said Philip; and then, having moved so that he could see Celia's face, “Do you like Murad Ault?”

      “No,” replied Celia, promptly; “he's horrid, but he isn't afraid of anything.”

      “Well, I don't care,” said Philip, who was nettled by this implication. And Celia, who had shown her power of irritating, took another tack.

      “You don't think I'd be seen going around with him? Aren't we having a good time up here?”

      “Bully!” replied Philip. And not seeing the way to expand this topic any further, he suddenly said:

      “Celia, the next time I go on our hill I'll get you lots of sassafras.”

      “Oh, I love sassafras, and sweet-flag!”

      “We can get that on the way home. I know a place.” And then there was a pause. “Celia, you didn't tell me what you are going to do when you grow up.”

      “Go to college.”

      “You? Why, girls do, don't they? I never thought of that.”

      “Of course they do. I don't know whether I'll write or be a doctor. I know one thing—I won't teach school. It's the hatefulest thing there is! It's nice to be a doctor and have your own horse, and go round like a man. If it wasn't for seeing so many sick people! I guess I'll write stories and things.”

      “So would I,” Philip confessed, “if I knew any.”

      “Why, you make 'em up. Mamma says they are all made up. I can make 'em in my head any time when I'm alone.”

      “I don't know,” Philip said, reflectively, “but I could make up a story about Murad Ault, and how he got to be a pirate and got in jail and was hanged.”

      “Oh, that wouldn't be a real story. You have got to have different people in it, and have 'em talk, just as they do in books; and somebody is in love and somebody dies, and the like of that.”

      “Well, there are such stories in The Pirate's Own Book, and it's awful interesting.”

      “I'd be ashamed, Philip Burnett, to read such a cruel thing, all about robbers and murders.”

      “I didn't read it through; Alice said she was going to burn it up. I shouldn't wonder if she did.”

      “Boys make me tired!” exclaimed this little piece of presumption; and this attitude of superiority exasperated Philip more than anything else his mentor had said or done, and he asserted his years of seniority by jumping up and saying, decidedly, “It's time to go home. Shall I carry your wreath?”

      “No, I thank you!” replied Celia, with frigid politeness.

      “Down in the meadow,” said Philip, making one more effort at conciliation, “we can get some tigerlilies, and weave them in and make a beautiful wreath for your mother.”

      “She doesn't like things fussed up,” was the gracious reply. And then the children trudged along homeward, each with a distinct sense of injury.

IV

       Table of Contents

      Traits that make a child disagreeable are apt to be perpetuated in the adult. The bumptious, impudent, selfish, “hateful” boy may become a man of force, of learning, of decided capacity, even of polish and good manners, and score success, so that those who know him say how remarkable it is that such a “knurly” lad should have turned out so well. But some exigency in his career, it may be extraordinary prosperity or bitter defeat, may at any moment reveal the radical traits of the boy, the original ignoble nature. The world says that it is a “throwing back”; it is probably only a persistence of the original meanness under all the overlaid cultivation and restraint.

      Without bothering itself about the recondite problems of heredity or the influence of environment, the world wisely makes great account of “stock.” The peasant nature, which may be a very different thing from the peasant condition, persists, and shows itself in business affairs, in literature, even in the artist. No marriage is wisely contracted without consideration of “stock.” The admirable qualities which make a union one of mutual respect and enduring affection—the generosities, the magnanimities, the courage of soul, the crystalline truthfulness, the endurance of ill fortune and of prosperity—are commonly the persistence of the character of the stock.

      We can get on with surface weaknesses and eccentricities, and even disagreeable peculiarities, if the substratum of character is sound. There is no woman or man so difficult—to get on with, whatever his or her graces or accomplishments, as the one “you don't know where to find,” as the phrase is. Indeed, it has come to pass that the highest and final eulogy ever given to a man, either in public or private life, is that he is one “you can tie to.” And when you find a woman of that sort you do not need to explain to the cynical the wisdom of the Creator in making the most attractive and fascinating sex.

      The traits, good and bad, persist; they may be veneered or restrained, they are seldom eradicated. All the traits that made the great Napoleon worshiped, hated, and feared existed in the little Bonaparte, as perfectly as the pea-pod in the flower. The whole of the First Empire was smirched with Corsican vulgarity. The world always reckons with these radical influences that go to make up a family. One of the first questions asked by an old politician, who knew his world thoroughly, about any man becoming prominent, when there was a discussion of his probable action, was, “Whom did he marry?”

      There are exceptions to this general rule, and they are always noticeable when they occur—this deviation from the traits of the earliest years—and offer material fox some of the subtlest and most interesting studies of the novelist.

      It was impossible for those who met Philip

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