"Better late than never," said Aunt Phebe; "live and learn; it takes one life to teach us how to prize it, but the days to come will be full of fruit to our children, I hope."
"Wall ef we sow the wind we reap the whirlwind sure, Miss Dayton."
Aunt Phebe was very desirous that John should see Mr. Dayton, which he did, and an offer to study with him the higher mathematics was gladly accepted, and between these two men sprang a friendship which was enduring.
Uncle Dayton had helped many a one through the tangled maze of Euclid problems and their like, and when John walked along by his side in ease and pleasure, Mr. Dayton was delighted; and when he came to see us, he said:
"The fellow is a man, he's a man clear through.
"Why," said he, "I was just the one to carry him along all right. I was the first man to take a colored boy into a private school, and I did it under protest, losing some of the white boys, whose parents would not let them stay; not much of a loss either," he added, "though they behaved nearly as well as the colored boys I took. I belonged at the time to the Baptist Church; the colored woman, whose two sons I received into my school, was a member of the same church; three boys, whose parents were my brothers and sisters in the faith, were withdrawn, and the minister who had baptized us all, and declared us to be one in the name of the humble Nazarene, also withdrew his son from my school, being unwilling to have him recite in the class with these two boys, whose skin was almost as white as his own. The natural inference was, that he considered himself of more consequence than the Almighty, for he certainly had given us all to him, and I had verily thought the man meant to help God do part of his work, but this proved conclusively that the Lord had it all to do—at any rate that which was not nice enough for the parson—and it took a large piece of comfort out of my heart. I was honest in trying to do my duty, and it grieved me to think he was not. Another young colored boy whom I took, is a physician in our city to-day, and another who came to my house to be instructed has been graduated at the Normal School of our State with high honors, being chosen as the valedictorian of the class, and he is to-day principal of a Philadelphia school.
"I tell you this truth has always been before me, and I have run the risk of my life almost daily in practising upon it. My school was really injured for a time, and dwindled down to a few scholars, but I kept right along, and the seed which was self-sowing, sprang up around me, and to-day I have more than I can do, and the people know I am right."
The blue eyes of Mr. Dayton sparkled as he paused in his recital, running his fingers through his hair, and for a time evidently wandering in the labyrinthine walks of the soul's mathematics, whose beautifully defined laws might make all things straight, and it was only the sight of John's towering form in the doorway that roused him, and he said:
"I have brought to you Davies' Legendre. I thought he would receive more thanks in the years to come than now, for is it not always so? Are not those who move beyond the prescribed limits of the circle of to-day, unappreciated, and must we not often wait for the grave to cover their bodies, and their lives to be written, ere we realize what their hearts tried to do for us? It is a sad fact, and one which shapes itself in the mould of a selfish ignorance, which covers as a crust the tender growing beauty of our inner natures.
It was a cold day in December, 1856, when we were startled to see Jane coming over the hill in such a hurried way that we feared something was the matter with the children. These children were dear to me. Hal and Mary had a beautiful boy two and a half years old, but no bud had as yet nestled against my heart.