low bar my study of a profession, but it rendered me at the same time, though I did not then realize it, that most unfortunate of beings, the semi-dependent son of parents whose overzeal to preserve a boy's life that is precious, causes them to deprive him of the untrammelled manhood that alone makes the life worth living.
"I always had a bent for research, a passion for following the history of my country and city to its fountain heads. I devoured old books, journals, and the precious documents to which my father had ready access, that passed from the attic treasure chests of the old houses in decline to the keeping of the Historical Society. As a lad I besought every gray head at my father's table to tell me a story, so what more natural, under the circumstances, than that my father should make me free of his library, and say: 'I do not expect or desire you to earn your living; I can provide for you. Here are companions, follow your inclinations, live your own life, and do not be troubled by outside affairs.' At first I was too broken in health and disappointed in ambition to rebel, then inertia became a habit.
"As my health unexpectedly improved and energy moved me to reassert myself and step out, a soft hand was laid on mine—the hand of my mother, invalided at my birth, retired at forty from a world where she had shone by force of beauty and wit—and a gentle voice would say: 'Stay with me, my son, my baby. Oh, bear with me a little longer. If you only knew the comfort it is to feel that you are in the house, to hear your voice. You will pen a history some day that will bring you fame, and you will read it to me here—we two, all alone in my chamber, before the world hears it.' So I stayed on. How mother love often blinds the eyes to its own selfishness.
"That fatal twentieth year, the time of my overthrow, brought me one good gift, your father's friendship. It was a strange chance, that meeting, and it was my love of hearing of past events and the questions concerning them that brought it about. Has your father ever told you of it?
"Likely not, for his life work has been the good physician's, to bring forth and keep alive, and mine the antiquarian's, dreaming and groping among ruins for doubtful treasure of fallen walls.
"My mother came of English, not Knickerbocker stock like my father, though both belong distinctly to New York; and female education being in a somewhat chaotic state between the old regime and new, her parents, desirous of having her receive the genteel polish of courtly manners, music, and dancing, sent her, when about fifteen, to Mrs. Rowson's school, then located at Hollis Street, Boston. The fame of this school had travelled far and wide, for not only had the preceptress in her youth, as Susanna Haswell, been governess to the children of the beautiful Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, one of the most accomplished women of her day, and profited by her fine taste, but her own high morals and literary gifts made her tutorship a much sought privilege.
"While there my mother met the little New England girl who was long afterward to become your grandmother. She had also come to study music, for which she had a talent. My mother related to me, when I was a little lad and used to burrow in her carved oak treasure chest and beg for stories of the articles it contained, many fascinating tales of those two school years, a pretty colour coming to her cheeks as she told of the dances learned together, pas-de-deux and minuet, from old 'Doctor' Shaffer, who was at the time second violin of the Boston Theatre, as well as authority in the correct methods of bowing and courtesying for gentlewomen. Your grandmother married first, and the letter telling of it was stored away with others in the oak chest.
"Some months before the steamboat accident that shattered my nerves, and preceded the long illness, I was browsing at a bookstall, on my way up from college homeward, when I came across a copy of Charlotte Temple—one of the dozen later editions—printed in New York by one R. Hobbs, in 1827, its distinguishing interest lying in a frontispiece depicting Charlotte's flight from Portsmouth.
"The story had long been a familiar one, and I, in common with others of many times my age and judgment, had lingered before the slab that bears her name in the graveyard of old Trinity, and sometimes laid a flower on it for sympathy's sake, as I have done many times since.
"On my return home I showed the little book to my mother, and as she held it in her hinds and read a word here and there, she too began to journey backward to her school days, and asked my father to bring out her treasure chest, and from it she took her school relics—a tattered ribbon watch-guard fastened by a flat gold buckle that Mrs. Rowson had given her as a reward for good conduct, and a package of letters. She spent an hour reading these, and old ties strengthened as she read. I can see her now as she sat bolstered by pillows in her reclining chair, a writing tray upon her knees, penning a long letter.
"A few months afterward, as I lay in my bed too weak even to stir, your father stood there, looking across the footboard at me—the answer to that letter. Your father, tall and strong of body and brain, a Harvard graduate drawn to New York to study medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. His eyes of strengthening manly pity looked into mine and drew me slowly back to life with them.
"His long absence as surgeon in the Civil War, the settling down as a country doctor, and even loving the same woman, has not separated us. Never more than a few months passed but our thoughts met on paper, or our hands clasped. His solicitude in a large measure restored my health, so that at sixty-three, physically, I can hold my own with any man of my age, and to-day I walk my ten miles with less ado than many younger men. Because of my intense dislike of the modern means of street transportation, I have kept on walking ever since the time that your father and I footed it from Washington Park to Van Cortlandt Manor, through the muskrat marshes whereon the park plaza now stands, up through the wilds of the future Central Park, McGowan's Pass, and northwestward across the Harlem to our destination. He will recollect. We were two days picking our way in going and two days on the return, for we scorned the 'bus route, and that was only in the later fifties. Never mind, if we ever do get back to small clothes and silk stockings, Martin Cortright can show a rounded calf, if he has been esteemed little more than a crawling bookworm these many years.
"Methinks I hear you yawn and crumple these sheets together in your hand, saying: 'What ails the man—is he grown doity? I thought he was contented, even if sluggishly serene.'
"And so he was, as one grown used to numbness, until last summer one Mistress Barbara visited the man-snail in his shell and exorcised him to come forth for an outing, to feed among fresh green leaves and breathe the perfume of flowers and young lives. When lo and behold, on the snail's return, the shell had grown too small!
"Faithfully,
"M. C."
* * * * *
(To R. R.)
"December 22, 19—.
"So social change has also cast its shadow across even your country pathway, dear Hippocrates? I wish it had spared you, but I feared as much when I heard that your peaceful town had been invaded by an advance guard of those same People of the Whirlpool who keep the social life of their own city in a ferment.
"You ask what is the matter, what the cause of the increasing restlessness that appears on every side, driving the conservative thinking class of moderate means to seek home shelter beyond city limits, and drawing the rest into a swirl that, sooner or later, either casts them forth as wrecks or sucks them wholly down.
"The question is difficult of answer, but there are two things that are potent causes of the third. Money too quickly earned, or rather won, causes an unwise expansion, and a fictitious prosperity that has degraded the life standard. Except in exclusively academic circles, the man is gauged by his power of financial purchase and control, and the dollar is his hall mark. He is forced to buy, not win, his way. Of course, if pedigree and private character correspond in quantity, so much the better, but their importance is strictly held in abeyance.
"Even in the legendary classic shades of learning, the cold pressure of the golden thumb crowds down and chills penniless brains. All students do not have equal chance and equal rights. How can they, when the exclusiveness of many fraternities is not by intellectual gauge or the capability for comradeship, but the power to pay high dues and spend lavishly. Of later years, in several conspicuous cases, even the choice of college officials of high control