WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?
'Do but grasp into the thick of human life! Every one lives it—to not many is it known; and seize it where you will, it is interesting.'—Goethe.
'SUCCESSFUL.—Terminating in accomplishing what is wished or intended.'—Webster's Dictionary.
CHAPTER III.
The people are anxious for the detail of sentiments, not for general results.'—Lamartine.
Hiram exhibited almost from his boyhood a fondness for female society. Even when at the district-school, he preferred spending 'noon-time' among the girls to racing around with the boys, pitching quoits, wrestling at 'arm's-end,' 'back-hold,' or playing base-ball and goal. His mother was careful to encourage Hiram's predilections. She remarked that nothing was so well calculated to keep a young man from going astray as for him to frequent the society of virtuous females.
Before Hiram had got into his teens, he appeared to be smitten with at least half a score of little girls of his own age. As he grew older, his fondness for the sex increased. I do not record this, as any thing extraordinary, except that in his case a characteristic selfishness seemed to be at the bottom even of these manifestations. Hiram was not influenced by those natural emotions and impulses which belong to youth, and which, unless kept under proper restraint, are apt frequently to lead to indiscretions. For there ran a vein of calculation through all he did, whose prudent office it was to minister to his safety.
After Hiram joined the church he was regular in his attendance on the evening meetings. He always went to these meetings with some young girl, whom, of course, he accompanied home after the services were over. As I have said, he was a handsome fellow, and bestowed particular care on his dress and his appearance generally. He was good-natured and obliging, and withal sensible, so that the young men who envied him and might be inclined to call him a fop or a dandy, could not prefix 'brainless' to these epithets and thus ridicule on him. The fact is, he was shrewder than any of them, and he knew it. They soon discovered it, and so did the girls, to the utter discomfiture of his rivals.