"
"And what is The Cause?" I asked.
"Wud I tell ye? We want no ready-made freens o' The Cause. I dinna hauld
wi' thae French indoctrinating pedants, that took to stick free opinions
into a man as ye'd stick pins into a pincushion, to fa' out again the first
shake. Na--The Cause must find a man, and tak' hauld o' him, willy-nilly,
and grow up in him like an inspiration, till he can see nocht but in the
light o't. Puir bairn!" he went on, looking with a half-sad, half-comic
face at me--"puir bairn--like a young bear, wi' a' your sorrows before ye!
This time seven years ye'll ha' no need to come speering and questioning
what The Cause is, and the Gran' Cause, and the Only Cause worth working
for on the earth o' God. And noo gang your gate, and mak' fine feathers for
foul birds. I'm gaun whar ye'll be ganging too, before lang."
As I went sadly out of the shop, he called me back.
"Stay a wee, bairn; there's the Roman History for ye. There ye'll read what
The Cause is, and how they that seek their ain are no worthy thereof."
I took the book, and found in the legends of Brutus, and Cocles, and
Scaevola, and the retreat to the Mons Sacer, and the Gladiator's war, what
The Cause was, and forgot awhile in those tales of antique heroism and
patriotic self-sacrifice my own selfish longings and sorrows.
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