“But he calls it an infirmity, and such a bad infirmity, apparently, that it is the hardest of all to get rid of!”
The fact was that Walter wanted to be—thought he was a poet, but was far from certain—feared indeed it might not be so, therefore desired greatly the verdict of men in his favor, if but for his own satisfaction. Fame was precious to him as determining, he thought, his position in the world of letters—his kingdom of heaven. Well read, he had not used his reading practically enough to perceive that the praise of one generation may be the contempt of another, perhaps of the very next, so that the repute of his time could assure him of nothing. He did not know the worthlessness of the opinion that either grants or withholds fame.
He looked through the dark at his cousin, thinking, “What sets her talking of such things? How can a girl understand a man with his career before him!”
She read him through the night and his silence.
“I know what you are thinking, Walter!” she said. “You are thinking women can’t think. But I should be ashamed not to have common sense, and I can not see the sense of doing anything for a praise that can help nothing and settle nothing.”
“Why then should all men have the desire for it?”
“That they may get rid of it Why have all men vanity? Where would the world be on the way to now, if Jesus Christ had sought the praise of men?”
“But He has it!”
“Not much of it yet, I suspect. He does not care for the praise that comes before obedience!—that’s what I have heard your father say.”
“I never heard him!”