You are a young bear, my
lad, with all your sorrows before you; and you'll find that a working
man's training is like the Red Indian children's. The few who are
strong enough to stand it grow up warriors; but all those who are not
fire-and-water-proof by nature--just die, Alton, my lad, and the tribe
thinks itself well rid of them."
So that conversation ended. But it had implanted in my bosom a new seed of
mingled good and evil, which was destined to bear fruit, precious perhaps
as well as bitter. God knows, it has hung on the tree long enough. Sour
and harsh from the first, it has been many a year in ripening. But the
sweetness of the apple, the potency of the grape, as the chemists tell
us, are born out of acidity--a developed sourness. Will it be so with
my thoughts? Dare I assert, as I sit writing here, with the wild waters
slipping past the cabin windows, backwards and backwards ever, every plunge
of the vessel one forward leap from the old world--worn-out world I had
almost called it, of sham civilization and real penury--dare I hope ever to
return and triumph? Shall I, after all, lay my bones among my own people,
and hear the voices of freemen whisper in my dying ears?
Silence, dreaming heart! Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof--and
the good thereof also.
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