Bressant: A Novel

by Julian Hawthorne

"I never was interested to hear of the every-day lives of men who have loved, and wanted to make their way in the world; for I never expected I should be such a man. Now, I'm sorry; it would have been useful to me, wouldn't it?"

"Perhaps it might," responded the old gentleman, musing at the change in the attitude of the young man's mind—once so self-sufficient and assertive, now so dependent and inexperienced. "Very few lives are bare and empty enough not to teach one something worth knowing. I know the events of one man's life," he added, after a few moments of thoughtful consideration; "perhaps it might lead to some good, if I were to tell them to yon."

"Did he marry a woman he loved?" demanded Bressant.

"You can judge better of that when you hear what happened before his marriage," returned the professor, apparently a little put out by the abruptness of the question. "He made several mistakes in life; most of them because he didn't pay respect enough to circumstances; thought that to adhere to fixed principles was the whole duty of a man: nothing to be allowed to the accidents of life, or to the various and unaccountable natures of men, their uncertainty, fallibility, and so on. One of the first resolutions he made—and he's never broken it, for when he grew wise enough to do so, the opportunity had gone by forever—was never to leave his native country. He wanted to prove to himself, and to everybody else whom it might concern, that a man of fair abilities might become learned and wise, without ever helping himself to the good things that lay beyond the shadow of his native flag. 'The majority of people have to live where they are born,' was his argument; 'I'll be their representative.' Well, that would seem all well enough; but it stood in his way twice—each time lost him an opportunity that has never come again—the opportunity to be distinguished, and perhaps great; and the opportunity to have a happy home, and a luxurious one. It was better for him, no doubt, that his life was a hard and disappointed one, instead of—as it might have been; he's had blessings enough, that's certain; but he has much to regret, too; the more, because the ill effects of a man's folly and willfulness fall upon his friends quite as often, and sometimes more heavily, than upon himself.

"He was a poor man in college, and an orphan. The property of his family had been lost in the War of 1812; from then till he was twenty-one, he had followed a dozen trades, and saved a couple of hundred dollars; and he'd picked up book-learning enough to enter the sophomore class. The first thing he did was to make a friend; he loved him with his whole heart; thought nothing was too good for him, and so on. He and his friend led the class for three years; and up to the time of the last examination, he was first and his friend second. In the examination they sat side by side; one question the friend couldn't answer; the other wrote it out for him; after the examination the two papers were found to be alike in the answer to that question, and the friend was summoned before the faculty, and asked if he had copied it. He denied it—said it had been copied from him; so he took the first rank in graduating, and the other was dropped several places."

"What became of their friendship after that?" inquired Bressant.

"He I'm telling you of never knew any thing of what his friend had done till long afterward. Well, the faculty and some of the wealthy patrons of the university determined to send the first scholar abroad, to finish his education: he accepted the offer eagerly, and sailed for Europe, without bidding his friend good-by. Afterward, the faculty made the same offer to him, on the consideration that he had stood so well, during his course, until the examination. But he declined it: it was contrary to his principle of never leaving his country."

"What sort of a man was the friend?" asked Bressant, who was paying close attention, with his hand at his ear.

"Clever, with a winning manner, and fine-looking; had a pleasant, easy voice; never lost his temper that I know of." The professor paused, perhaps to arrange his ideas, ere he went on. "The man I'm telling you of left the college-yard with as much of the world before him as lies between the fifteenth and twenty-fifth parallels of latitude, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. He'd made up his mind to be a physician; and in a year he was qualified to enter the hospital; worked there four years, and, by the time he was twenty-nine, he had an office of his own and a good practice.

"At last, he fell in love with a beautiful woman; she was the daughter of one of his patients—a Southerner with a little Spanish blood in him. The young doctor had—under Providence—saved the man's life; and, since he himself came of a good family—none better—and had a respectable income, there wasn't much difficulty in arranging the match. The only condition was, that the father should never be out of reach of his daughter, as long as he lived."