But Aleko never failed him; every day he would bring the newspaper and read it all through to the blind man. When the heat was intense, and the white light in the streets was blinding, they would sit indoors behind closed shutters, and when it became cooler, late in the afternoon, the old man’s chair would be placed outside the house, and Aleko sat on the step below him, and asked all the questions that crowded into his mind. He had more time now, for examinations were over and school was closed until September again. One evening, when the sounds of passing guitars and men’s voices singing, floated up to the narrow little street, mingled with the cries of boys racing and calling to each other, the old man asked him:—
“Do you not want to run with the other lads, Aleko?”
And Aleko answered:—
“I run all day; now it is good to sit. Tell me about some great men, Kyr Themistocli.”
And the old schoolmaster, well content, tilted his chair back against the sun-baked wall of the house, and told him many things.
He told him of the old, old times even before the ancients, when men were almost like brutes, but with something manlike in them which set them apart from the wild beasts; when they made weapons of stones, and lighted fires by the rubbing of sticks; when they crossed over the barrier of water by hollowing boats out of trees. He told him of the terrible wild animals which existed in those days, so monstrous that the heads of some would reach up to the third floor windows of a house; and how they would long ago have devoured all the men if these had not used their brains to defend themselves. How men followed men through the centuries and how, little by little, their brains grew cleverer and cleverer through much using, until at last, from those wild men sprang the minds, and the hearts, and the hands, of Socrates and Plato, and Aristotle, the philosophers, and Leonidas, the warrior, and Pericles, the statesman, and Phidias and Praxiteles, the sculptors. Then, he went on to tell him of all the poor boys through many ages who had the spirit of the old cave dwellers in them—who would not stay as they had been born. He told him of Æsop, who was only a poor slave boy, so ugly and deformed that people laughed and jeered at him; and yet his fables have been translated into all languages of Europe, and even into Arabic and Chinese; of Christopher Columbus, the son of a poor comber of wool in Genoa, who discovered America; of the shepherd boy Giotto, who drew pictures on stones whilst watching the sheep, and who grew up to be a celebrated painter; of Lully, the musician, who was a cook-boy; of Metastasio the Italian poet, who as a boy recited verses in the streets of Rome; and to come to our own days, he told him all he had read before he lost his sight, of Edison, the American, who was a poor boy, and—like Aleko—had at one time sold newspapers to earn his bread, and of what wonderful things he had invented, and how there were few in the world who were not indebted to him; he told him of others—of all he could remember; then he tried to explain to him, a little, how hard all these men had worked, each in his own way, and how they had not only wished to do great things, but had willed it very hard, and had gone on willing it every moment of their lives, and how it was this great will that had made them conquer all obstacles, and all discouragement. He told him also how it was not enough to work, and to be brave, in order to grow up into a great man, or even simply into a good and just one, but how he must think as well; how he must always look for the cause, always ask himself the why and the wherefore, of everything ….
“Of course,” interrupted Aleko, “I know that. If you do not you are stupid. Yesterday, the drawer of a boy’s box would not open; you know the drawer, where all the shoe-polishes and rags are kept; and this boy—Dino—he pulled, and he pulled, and he could not get it open, and he was very angry, because a man got tired of waiting for him to clean his boots and went to another boy’s stand. Then I looked at Dino’s box, and I pulled a little, and it was one side only of the drawer which stuck, so I turned it to the light, and I found that a little nail had fallen between the side of the box and the drawer, and jammed it, and when I pulled it out with a bit of wire it opened as before.”
“And Dino was glad?”
“He was glad, but he did not look why the drawer had stuck, and when another nail falls in he will be stupid again; he will not know how to open it. His head is stuffed with straw!”
Then Aleko got up from the step, and gathered his remaining newspapers under his arm.