The Story of a Life

by J. Breckenridge Ellis

Then he would pat one on the head, and say a pleasant word to all. In his presence ill-humor melted away, and evil purposes were corrected. It was not only so with the school boys, but with their fathers. His very presence seemed a rebuke to wrong-doing and wrong-thinking. Sometimes he came to the Academy and addressed the pupils. Oliver stood at the head of the class in mathematics. One day after reciting geometry, "Elder" Scott, as he was called—or "Brother" Scott—said, with that gracious smile which lent the aspect of perennial youth to his wrinkled face,

"Young gentlemen, you have made good progress in Euclid." It was the first time Oliver had ever heard of Euclid, but he knew the enunciation of every proposition in the first five Books, and had drawn the figures with elaborate care on his father's barn door! But he had not studied Latin.

"That language," said his practical father, "is dead!"

The almost daily meeting with Walter Scott was one of those formative influences, unperceived at the time, which help to shape one's ideals. Let us look for a moment at this benign figure with his gentle smile, his keen, penetrating glance, and his still almost raven-black locks. He had brought to the Kentucky village an atmosphere of the great outside world, for he was a man who had not only come in touch with the great and illustrious, but who had himself participated in great affairs.

It meant much to the young mathematician at May's Lick Academy, this daily intercourse with such a man. It inevitably raised his mind above the daily toil, the unstimulating routine of a small town; it gave him a certain outlook upon a wider life, suggesting higher things than had hitherto entered his experience.

This venerable Walter Scott—he who had held little Mattie Myers upon his knee—was a man in whose veins flowed the blood of Wat, of Hardin—most illustrious of Scottish heroes. He was kin to the creator of Ivanhoe and Rebecca; a man who had graduated from the University of Edinburg; who had sailed the seas and traveled in many distant scenes; whose music instructor had been the friend of Sir Ralph Abercrombie; who had been by turn teacher, preacher, editor, author; who had traversed the circular avenues of poplars and pines leading to the mansion-house of Henry Clay, trees "which made me fancy myself once more in Scotia",—and who had sat in Clay's parlor in charming intercourse with the statesman while the portrait of Washington looked down, and the elegant simplicity of the apartments presented nothing "to make poor men afraid, or rich men ashamed;" who had ridden on the steamboat with the distinguished companionship of General Schuyler's daughter, the widow of Alexander Hamilton, then in her eighty-fourth year; who had visited the home of Colonel Richard M. Johnson; and who, finally, had come to May's Lick to pass the remainder of his days.

It was natural enough that the very sight of this man should suggest to the studious youth, thoughts of greatness and of travel. His kinship to Sir Walter Scott and his familiarity with the lands beyond the seas, no doubt lent him a sort of halo, to the imagination of boyhood. But it must have done more than this; it must have suggested that one need not remain poor and unknown; and that, as Walter Scott, when a poor young man had lifted himself above his condition by means of his education, so might Oliver Carr.

The postoffice was in William Carr's hotel. William was the postmaster, and during vacation, or at intervals, Oliver served as deputy. After the arrival of the mail, the distinguished scholar, Walter Scott, would appear at the counter with his benignant smile, and his "Dear—" he called all young people thus—"Dear, is there anything for me, this morning?"

And Oliver was as pleased as he, when there was a Louisville Courier to hand his friend, or a letter from Ohio, or Pittsburg, or New York.

There remains a word to be said as to what this Walter Scott was; for, after all, where one has traveled, or whom one has met, speaks little of the inner self; and it was this personal value of the man that counted most with those he met.