"What do you mean?"
"You think that you can stop with enthusiastic dreams and vast ideas. But no vision and no idea is worth a copper cent unless it is brought down to earth, patiently harnessed, painfully trained, and set to work. There is a beautiful analogy that comes often to my mind. We conceive an idea, as a child is conceived, in a transport of joy; but after that there are long months of growth in the close dark warmth of the soul, to which every part of one's personality must contribute, and then there is the painful hour of travail when at last the idea is given to the world. It is a process that cannot be hurried nor borne without suffering. And the punishment of those who stop with the joy of conception, thinking they can skim the delight of life and avoid its pain, is the same in the intellectual and spiritual spheres as it is in the physical—barrenness, Nort, and finally a terrible sense of failure and of loneliness."
I said it with all my soul, as I believe it. When I stopped, Nort did not at once respond, but stood looking off across the river, winding a twig of alder about his finger. Suddenly he looked around at me, smiling:
"I'm every kind of a fool there is, David."
I confess it, my heart gave a bound of triumph. And it seemed to me at that moment that I loved Nort like a son, the son I have never had. I could not help slipping my arm through his, and thus we walked slowly together down the road.
"But Ed Smith——" he expostulated presently.
"Nort," I said, "you aren't the only person in this world, although you are inclined to think so. There are Ed Smiths everywhere—and old Captains and David Graysons—and you may travel where you like and you'll find just about such people as you find at Hempfield, and they'll treat you just about as you deserve. Ed Smith is the test of you, Nort, and of your enthusiasms. You've got to reconcile your ideas with corned beef and cabbage, Nort, for corned beef and cabbage is."
I have been ashamed sometimes since when I think how vaingloriously I preached to Nort that day (after having got him down), for I have never believed much in preaching. It usually grows so serious that I want to laugh—but I could not have helped it that November afternoon.
I see two men, just at evening of a dull day, walking slowly along the road toward Hempfield, two gray figures, half indistinguishable against the barren hillsides. All about them the dead fields and the hedges, and above them the wintry gray of the sky, and crows lifting and calling. Knowing well what is in the hot hearts of those two men—the visions, the love, the pain, the hope, yes, and the evil—I swear I shall never again think of any life as common or unclean. I shall never look to the exceptional events of life for the truth of life.