“Then I wandered to a famous spot.—It was where, in the olden time, the great grim men in power—who wore authority, as though authority should have the look and manners of an ogre, not of a sage—set up the pillory wherein men were punished for having souls with more than the proper daring and stubbornness of souls. Souls that would have their own opinions, as their masters had their own teeth; to digest for themselves, and not take in the spoon’s-meat of power, with thankful looks for what was given them. And the bodies corrupted with these wicked and rebellious souls were placed in the pillory—and approaching the spot, I bowed to the place; the martyr-field of opinion. And—perhaps, it was that I was hungry, and with empty stomachs, men, they say, have sometimes wandering heads, but my son”—(the reader, we trust, has not forgotten that Basil is all the while talking in this page by anticipation—compelled to do so by the tyranny of the quill, to his unborn boy Basil, junior)—“but my son, I winked, and when I looked again, there, indeed, was the pillory: but not the pillory of punishment; not the dry, meagre wood; the hungry flesh-devouring timber.—No: the blood that had run about it carried strange virtue with it; a strange excellence, under the brooding wings of time. The naked wood imbibed the stream; and the bare pillory became leafy as laurel, and fruitful as the vine: the leaves of a strange sort, but undying; and filled with a sweet perfume that scented far around. And the fruit was of a curious, a delicious kind; bite and bite as you would, the lovely pulp returned, the wound healed; now bitten, and now whole. Well, my boy, having had my day-dream—my vision of the pillory—I learned to strive to look backward with thankful looks: I learned to read the suffering of the man by the light of his time, and—with all love for the living—to have gratitude for the dead. We are too apt to bury our accounts along with our benefactors; to enjoy the triumphs of others, as though they were the just property of ourselves. Now, to think against this, was another lesson—a lesson learned in the Place of Pillory—of my birth-day.
“And then I looked into a Court of Law—then into a Church—then went upon ’Change,—and in every place tried to divide man from his double or false man—from the artificial twin-self that so often walks about the world with him in profane places, and sometimes in sacred temples.
“And I went into miserable lanes, where human creatures styed like swine, had little beyond the swine’s instinct,—to eat and drink, and gabble brutishly. And even here, I learnt to reverence the human heart, for, in some foul place, some very nest of misery,—there, it would flourish in its best beauty, giving out even in such an atmosphere the sweets of love, and charity, and resignation. It was in one of these places, I took a crust for my dinner; and tried to swallow a life-long lesson of patience, and contentment with the meal.
“And this and these were the lessons I tried to learn on my twenty-first birth-day. Coming to man’s estate, I lost no time, you see, but set out to contemplate for that day what it was that lay about me.”
The reader, who has advanced somewhat more than eighteen years, to read the foregoing confession, will be pleased to turn back on the road, it is to be hoped satisfied with the employment of Basil, whom we left at early morn setting out for his birth-day work. We take it there are few who thus upon the threshold of manhood welcome one-and-twenty. Who knows? The example of Basil may beget followers.
Early the next morning, Basil took his road to Primrose Place. He had resolved at once to ask Bessy of her father. He would not accept a shilling of Jericho; he would not compromise his conscience by submitting to the poorest obligation at his hands; nevertheless, he felt in his heart such a spring-tide of hope and happiness, that the worst worldly difficulties were but as a hedge of thorns, to be thrust aside by an arm of resolution.
Mr. Carraways was alone: deep in his book; and more and more assured that he was securing a stock of knowledge that should make him flourish at the antipodes. It was a little late, as poor Mrs. Carraways would meekly, sadly suggest, for such removal; but the old man with every day and hour, assured his wife—assured Bessy, who though she tried to smile and look content, pined and withered beneath the sentence—that it was the only place for broken men to grow whole again. They would yet see him in the fulness of fortune; and he would yet leave his girl with the dowry of a lady.
“Good morning, Basil,” said the old man, with somewhat forced politeness; for though he had a true regard for the youth he cared not to see him so often at Primrose Place as in old times at Jogtrot Lodge. However, the ship would sail soon, and, with this thought, Carraways called up his old look of cordiality, and gave his old grasp of the hand. “Why, you are out early for a reveller, eh? After your doings, last night?”
Basil stared. He then remembered: Carraways doubtless spoke of the festival held at Jericho House, in honour of the absent. He would not explain this. He merely said—“I take but little sleep, sir.”