“Yes,” groaned the poor youth, with a gesture of impatience. “The body must live too, and life cannot be sustained so long upon unvaried food.”
“Listen, my son!” said the patient saint at his head—“listen, and you shall hear what I accomplished on that single loaf of bread. I travelled on with my little bundle on my shoulder, containing the home-spun suit I was to wear when I arrived at school, and my loaf of bread. I travelled on till my clothes were all worn out, and my shoes full of holes, and my feet were so sore and swollen that I was afraid to pull off my shoes, for fear I should not be able to get them on again. So I waded across all the brooks and mountain streams with my clothes on, until, at last, one afternoon, when high up in the mountains, my strength gave out, and I laid me down in the howling wilderness, thinking I must die. The weather was very cold, and my clothes, all wet from crossing the streams, were freezing, and the dreaded sleepiness was coming over me, when a good widow woman, who lived with her children on the mountains, and was out gathering wood, accidentally found me. She took me up in her arms, and carried me to her hut, and laid me on her bed, where I slept all night. In the morning, when I opened my eyes, I saw her breaking the hot Indian-corn bread, and giving it to her children. I told her if she would give me some of her corn bread, I would divide my loaf of white bread with her and her children. She eagerly accepted the offer, for such a luxury as white bread had been long unknown to them, and that was my first speculation! While they ravenously devoured my loaf, I feasted upon her rich hot bread. My soul overflowed with delight as I witnessed their intense enjoyment of the meal I had been thus instrumental in bringing them, and I felt as if the Lord had thus enabled me to fully repay them for their kindness. I rose to depart, and the good woman, filling my bundle with a large piece of her hot bread, sent me, with her blessing, on my way rejoicing. Thus, you see, my dear son, how, through the spiritual strength which faith imparts, and which you so much need, I was enabled to cross the Alleghany mountains alone, at ten years of age, with nothing but my loaf of white bread, and without so much as a bit of cheese, or a cent in my pocket, and attained to the great goal of my ambition, the school; and from whence, by the aid of selling an occasional button from my jacket, I have been able to rise to my present position as professor and patron of struggling genius.”[2]
[2] Incredible as it may seem, we pledge our personal veracity that this bald and silly narration, which appears to be merely a foolish burlesque, is a bona fide, et literatim, et punctuatim, transcript, as close as it is possible for memory to furnish, of stories that were, at least as often as five days out of the seven, related at the dinner-table at which Boanerges presided, to long double lines of gaping women, who, obedient to the irresistible spell he bore, had followed up this maudlin Proteus of Professors, as disciples of water-cure, through his latest metamorphoses, into physician of such an establishment in Boston. It was thus he exhorted them to faith, and encouraged his backsliders.
“Ah!” said the young man, “words, words! Give me to eat—I am starving!” and his head sank back once more.
The Professor again deluged him with water, and, profoundly surprised and alarmed that the honeyed eloquence of his sagacious narrative had proved unavailing in convincing his victim that he could and ought to live upon faith, came to the desperate resolution of being guilty of the extravagance, for once, of a small bowl of soup to resuscitate his victim, and depositing his head upon some books, though the pillow was equally convenient, he hurried off to the nearest eating-house, with his hands upon his pockets, which were overflowing with gold, as he was then in the meridian height of his prosperity.
The sequel to this particular story is a short one. The young man revived with the change of a single nutritious meal, and with it returned the courage of even the trodden worm; for he now stoutly told the Spiritual Professor that, unless he furnished him with ample means to support life, he would not touch an another figure of the immense and complicated calculations on which he had been so long engaged.
The Professor, of course, resisted to the last, and quoted the correspondences upon him, with desperate fluency. But when the young man coolly seized the manuscript on the table before him, and held it over the flickering flame of the miserable dip candle, which had now been of necessity lighted, the Professor sprang forward to arrest his hand, shrieking—
“I will! I will! for God’s sake, stop!—how much do you want?”
“Five dollars a week!” was the cold response, as the flame caught the edges of the paper.