“Now, don't you go a-persuadin' yourself these are all Yankee notions and such-like. I'm a-talkin' of human natur', and there ain't many as knows more of that article than Leonidas Shaver Quackinboss. All you Old-World folk make one great mistake, and nothing shows so clearly as how you 're a worn-out race, used up and done for. You live too much with your emotions and your feelin's. Have you never remarked that when the tap-root of a tree strikes down too far, it gets into a cold soil? And from that day for'ard you 'll never see fruit or blossom more. That's just the very thing you 're a-doin'. You ain't satisfied to be active and thrivin' and healthful, but you must go a-specu-latin' about why you are this, and why you ain't t' other. Get work to do, sir, and do it.”
“It is what I intend,” said Layton, in a low voice.
“There ain't nothing like labor,” said Quackinboss, with energy; “work keeps the devil out of a man's mind, for somehow there's nothing that black fellow loves like loafing. And whenever I see a great, tall, well-whiskered chap leaning over a balcony in a grand silk dressing-gown, with a gold stitched cap on his head, and he a-yawning, I say to myself, 'Maybe I don't know who 's at your elbow now;' and when I see one of our strapping Western fellows, as he has given the last stroke of his hatchet to a pine-tree, and stands back to let it fall, wiping the honest sweat from his brow, as his eyes turn upward over the tree-tops to something higher than them, I say to my heart, 'All right, there; he knows who it was gave him the strength to lay that sixty-foot stem so low.'”
“You say truly,” muttered Layton.
“I know it, sir; I 've been a-loafing myself these last three years, and I 've run more to seed in that time than in all my previous life; but I mean to give it up.”
“What are your plans?” asked Layton, not sorry to let the conversation turn away from himself and his own affairs.
“My plans! They are ours, I hope,” said Quackinboss. “You're a-coming out with me to the States, sir. We fixed it all t' other night, I reckon ! I 'm a-goin' to make your fortune; or, better still, to show you how to make it for yourself.”
Layton walked on in moody silence, while Quackinboss, with all the zealous warmth of conviction, described the triumphs and success he was to achieve in the New World.
A very few words will suffice to inform our reader of all that he need know on this subject. During Layton's long convalescence poor Quackinboss felt his companionable qualities sorely taxed. At first, indeed, his task was that of consoler, for he had to communicate the death of Alfred's mother, which occurred in the early days of her son's illness. The Rector's letter, in conveying the sad tidings, was everything that kindness and delicacy could dictate, and, with scarcely a reference to his own share in the benevolence, showed that all care and attention had waited upon her last hours. The blow, however, was almost fatal to Layton; and the thought of that forlorn, deserted death-bed clung to him by day, and filled his dreams by night.
Quackinboss did his utmost, not very skilfully nor very adroitly, perhaps, but with a hearty sincerity, to combat this depression. He tried to picture a future of activity and exertion,—a life of sterling labor. He placed before his companion's eyes the objects and ambitions men usually deem the worthiest, and endeavored to give them an interest to him. Met in all his attempts by a dreary, hopeless indifference, the kind-hearted fellow reflected long and deeply over his next resource; and so one day, when Layton's recovered strength suggested a hope for the project, he gave an account of his own neglected youth, how, thrown when a mere boy upon the world, he had never been able to acquire more than a smattering of what others learn at school. “I had three books in the world, sir,—a Bible, Robinson Crusoe, and an old volume of Wheatson's Algebra. And from a-readin' and readin' of 'em over and over, I grew to blend 'em all up in my head together. And there was Friday, just as much a reality to me as Father Abraham; and I thought men kept all their trade reckoning by simple equations. I felt, in fact, as if there was no more than these three books in all creation, and out of them a man had to pick all the wisdom he could. Now, what I 'm a-thinkin' is that though I 'm too old to go to school, maybe as how you 'd not refuse to give me a helpin' hand, by readin' occasionally out of those languages I only know by name? Teachin' an old fellow like me is well-nigh out of the question; but when a man has got a long, hard-earned experience of human natur', it's a main pleasant thing to know that oftentimes the thoughts that he is struggling with have occurred to great minds who know how to utter them; and so many an impression comes to be corrected, or mayhap confirmed, by those clever fellows, with their thoughtful heads.”