Mr. Caxton.—“I am not so sure of that, Mr. Squills. [Squills falls back with a glassy stare of deprecating horror.] I don’t read the newspapers very often, but the past helps me to judge of the present.”
Therewith my father earnestly recommended to Mr. Squills the careful perusal of certain passages in Thucydides, just previous to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war (Squills hastily nodded the most servile acquiescence), and drew an ingenious parallel between the signs and symptoms foreboding that outbreak and the very apprehension of coming war which was evinced by the recent Io paeans to peace. (2) And after sundry notable and shrewd remarks, tending to show where elements for war were already ripening, amidst clashing opinions and disorganized states, he wound up with saying: “So that, all things considered, I think we had better just keep up enough of the bellicose spirit not to think it a sin if we are called upon to fight for our pestles and mortars, our three-percents, goods, chattels, and liberties. Such a time must come, sooner or later, even though the whole world were spinning cotton and printing sprigged calicoes. We may not see it, Squills, but that young gentleman in the cradle whom you have lately brought into light, may.”
“And if so,” said my uncle, abruptly, speaking for the first time,—“if indeed it be for altar and hearth!” My father suddenly drew in and pished a little, for he saw that he was caught in the web of his own eloquence.
Then Roland took down from the wall his son’s sword. Stealing to the cradle, he laid it in its sheath by the infant’s side, and glanced from my father to us with a beseeching eye. Instinctively Blanche bent over the cradle, as if to protect the Neogilos; but the child, waking, turned from her, and attracted by the glitter of the hilt, laid one hand lustily thereon, and pointed with the other, laughingly, to Roland.
“Only on my uncle’s proviso,” said I, hesitatingly. “For hearth and altar,—nothing less!”
“And even in that case,” said my father, “add the shield to the sword!” and on the other side of the infant he placed Roland’s well-worn Bible, blistered in many a page with secret tears.
There we all stood, grouping round the young centre of so many hopes and fears, in peace or in war, born alike for the Battle of Life. And he, unconscious of all that made our lips silent and our eyes dim, had already left that bright bauble of the sword and thrown both arms round Roland’s bended neck.
“Herbert!” murmured Roland; and Blanche gently drew away the sword—and left the Bible.
(1) Shaftesbury.
(2) When this work was first published, Mr. Caxton was generally deemed a very false prophet in these anticipations, and sundry critics were pleased to consider his apology for war neither seasonable nor philosophical. That Mr. Caxton was right, and the politicians opposed to him have been somewhat ludicrously wrong, may be briefly accounted for,—Mr. Caxton had read history.