Turkey was now doing a man’s work on the farm, and stood as high as ever in the estimation of my father and everyone who knew him. He was as great a favourite with Allister and Davie as with myself, and took very much the same place with the former as he had taken with me. I had lost nothing of my regard for him, and he talked to me with the same familiarity as before, urging me to diligence and thoroughness in my studies, pressing upon me that no one had ever done lasting work, “that is,” Turkey would say—“work that goes to the making of the world,” without being in earnest as to the what and conscientious as to the how.
“I don’t want you to try to be a great man,” he said once. “You might succeed, and then find out you had failed altogether.”
“How could that be, Turkey?” I objected. “A body can’t succeed and fail both at once.”
“A body might succeed,” he replied, “in doing what he wanted to do, and then find out that it was not in the least what he had thought it.”
“What rule are you to follow, then, Turkey?” I asked.
“Just the rule of duty,” he replied. “What you ought to do, that you must do. Then when a choice comes, not involving duty, you know, choose what you like best.”
This is the substance of what he said. If anyone thinks it pedantic, I can only say, he would not have thought so if he had heard it as it was uttered—in the homely forms and sounds of the Scottish tongue.
“Aren’t you fit for something better than farm-work yourself, Turkey?” I ventured to suggest, foolishly impelled, I suppose, to try whether I could not give advice too.
“It’s my work,” said Turkey, in a decisive tone, which left me no room for rejoinder.
This conversation took place in the barn, where Turkey happened to be thrashing alone that morning. In turning the sheaf, or in laying a fresh one, there was always a moment’s pause in the din, and then only we talked, so that our conversation was a good deal broken. I had buried myself in the straw, as in days of old, to keep myself warm, and there I lay and looked at Turkey while he thrashed, and thought with myself that his face had grown much more solemn than it used to be. But when he smiled, which was seldom, all the old merry sweetness dawned again. This was the last long talk I ever had with him. The next day I returned for the examination, was happy enough to gain a small scholarship, and entered on my first winter at college.