“It won’t be all standing at windows and looking at sunsets,” added Doddridge. “Has it ever occurred to you that, before entering on a life of self-denial and devotion to rather vague ideals, a man ought to be mighty sure of himself? Can you keep up the culture business without growing in on yourself unhealthily, and then getting sick of inaction? Don’t you think there will be times of disappointment and doubt when you look around and see fellows without half your talents getting ahead of you in the world?”
“Of course,” answered Clay, “I shall have to make sacrifices, and I shall have to stick to them when made. But there have always been plenty of people willing to make similar sacrifices for similar compensations. Men have gone out into the wilderness or shut themselves up in the cloister for opportunities of study or self-communion, or for other objects which were perhaps at bottom no more truly devotional than mine. Nowadays such opportunities may be had by any man who will keep himself free from the servitude of a bread-winning profession. It is not necessary now to cry Ecce in deserto or Ecce in penetralibus. Oh, I shall have my dark days; but whenever the blue devils get thick I shall take to the woods and return to sanity.”
“You mean to live in the country, then?” I inquired.
“Yes; most of the time, at any rate. Nature is fully half of life to me.”
Again there was a pause.
“Well, you next, Polisson,” said Armstrong, finally. “Let’s hear what your programme is.”
“Oh, nothing in the least interesting,” I replied. “My future is all cut and dried. I shall spend the next two years in the south of France—mainly at Lyons—to learn the details of the silk manufacture. Then I shall come home to go into my father’s store for a year as a clerk in the importing department. At the close of that year the governor will take me in as junior partner, and I shall marry my second cousin. We shall live with my parents, and I am going to be very domestic, though, as a matter of form, I shall join one or two clubs. I shall go down town every morning at nine, and come up at five.”
“Quite a neat little destiny,” said Armstrong. “I wish I had your backing. Come, Dodd, what’s yours? You’re the only man left.”