“He has a battle to fight,” said Miss Andrews, softly, “and I’m certain he’s going to win it.”
The mother understood, and as she looked out across the valley her face grew gray and lined.
CHAPTER XIV
A BOY’S BATTLE
Up on the mountain-side Tommy was indeed fighting the battle of his life. He had made his way mechanically to the top of the ledge of rock from which the spring gushed forth, and had flung himself down upon the grass which crested it. He could see far down the valley, until at last, away in the distance, the purple mountains closed in and cut it off. The trees, which clothed them from foot to brow, had been touched by the first November frosts, and their foliage fused, as if by magic, from sober green to golden yellow and orange and flaming red.
He looked down upon it all, but not upon its beauty. For its beauty formed no part of the lives of the people who worked out their destinies here. The ugly places along the river were typical of their lives. For them it was only to dive deep into the earth and drag forth the black treasure that had been entombed there, to send it forth to warm and light the world and to move the wheels of industry—to do this at the sacrifice of health and strength and happiness, and, worse than all, of intellect. Brains grow atrophied and shrunken where only the muscles are used; for brain, no less than muscle, demands exercise, else it grows weak and flabby. A picture danced before his eyes of a group of stately buildings overlooking a wide and level campus, where men worked, not with their hands, but with their brains, with all the intellectual wealth of the world before them.
Let it not be inferred that there is aught in this to lessen the dignity and merit of manual toil. No man of real attainment ever thought to do that. It is only when that toil makes the man a machine, when it shuts out light from the mind, that it is detestable and a menace to human happiness.
Of all that the broader life meant, Tommy had just begun to understand the meaning. He had taken his first draught of the sweets of study and of intellectual fellowship, and the taste would linger in his mouth forever, making all others stale and insipid by comparison. Must he decide deliberately to turn away from the source of that enjoyment? Was there no other way?
And then, of a sudden, a thought came to him which stung him upright. He owed Jabez Smith three hundred dollars. He must not only provide for father and mother: he must also repay that money. He dropped back again upon the turf with tight-closed lips. What a tremendous sum it seemed! But other boys had done as much, and suddenly remembering his book, he drew it from his pocket and turned over the pages. It was under the name of Horace Greeley he found what he was seeking:
“He could go to school no longer, and must now support himself. From earliest childhood he had determined to be a printer; so, when eleven years of age, he walked nine miles to see the publisher of a newspaper and obtain a situation. The editor looked at the small, tow-headed boy, shook his head, and said, ‘You are too young.’ With a heavy heart, the child walked the long nine miles back again. But he must do something; and, a little later, with seventy-five cents in his pocket, and some food tied in a bundle, which he slung on the end of a stick over his shoulder, he walked one hundred and twenty miles back to New Hampshire, to see his relatives. After some weeks he returned, with a few more cents in his purse than when he started.”
