Professor Huskins

by Lettie M. Cummings

"When she sees all the other boys walking, will she be ashamed her brother has to be wheeled around?"

William answered promptly:

"No; my son."

But that was the keenest pain he had ever felt, to witness the boy's suffering, who was paying the price or the penalty of his own ignorance and selfishness. The boy suffered keenly, but the father more as he had a larger capacity for suffering. There was one thought that brought a small degree of light; it was that Clarissa was spared this suffering. How his heart ached for the boy, words cannot express.

They had tried in every possible way since Augustus' birth to reconcile him to his infirmity. When he had expressed envy for boys who could run and play, they had told him of the gifts and talents he possessed, and that they were far more estimable and valuable than those the boys whom he envied had. So much care had been taken with him, he had not thought of his inability to walk in the light of shame, until he had thought of what that tiny babe, whom he idolized and whom he wanted to think he was as dear to as she was to him, would think of him, who could not guide her faltering steps, because he could not steady and control his own.

He could not endure the thought that others could do for her what he could not; no one loved her better (he thought, none so well,) yet they could do for her what he could not; following this train of thought, it flashed upon his consciousness she might be ashamed of him because he was not like other boys.

The thought was too strong and horrible for him to bear without giving some sign of suffering. She was his idol; all his plans were made from the point of her supposed pleasure or displeasure; if she pitied him, he could not endure it. He would rather she hated him. He could endure pity from some one he did not care for, but never from Baby Clarissa. He had not realized the enormity of his affliction until now. In the past, he had been petted and loved, indulged and looked up to, and accustomed to this homage from his birth, he had grown to believe it to be only his due; his just deserts. Now there was a new factor and force come into his life, dearer far than himself. He had felt, since the baby's coming, he must watch over her and care for her, and his anxiety for her comfort so far transcended his own, he forgot himself, a thing he had never done before, and probably never would even now were it not for this helpless little stranger who had come into his life.

Never having walked nor played, he did not fully realize the many pleasures from which he was debarred, but it was borne home to his consciousness suddenly and forcibly by the fact that the might of his love would not permit him to do what a common stranger with no personal interest in her might do. It was unbearable. Stinging horror filled his soul at the thought of the comparison she might draw between himself and other boys. He longed so ardently to be her ideal and hero among boys, the same as she was and would always be among girls, that jealousy became a fiery tormentor.

There was a time when his mother had been the principal object of his interest and inspirations. It seemed as though all the force of his nature, disappointed in his mother's loyalty to him as the one point of interest on the earth, had been transplanted to this babe, gaining intensity from the change, rather than losing it. Not even his parents realized the strength of this devotion.

He could not help but partake of all the ardor and enthusiasm of their souls, and this ardor, in the present state of his development, showed itself in the admiration he felt for his baby sister, and as a consequence, his suffering was both keen and loyal.