During this period of mingled gloom and brightness, he was obliged to part with a youth whom for some time he had employed in the office, and of whom, in his journals, he speaks in the highest terms. Since then, by a pleasant coincidence, he became a neighbor to his former employer, in consequence of having been settled as a pastor in the same town. He became religious while engaged in the “Rambler” office, and the fact gave great satisfaction to Walter Aimwell. Let him now testify, with the eloquence of genuine gratitude, what he knew of Walter Aimwell:—
“I remember no man with whom I was ever connected in business relations with stronger feelings of gratitude and love. He was the kindest friend of my early years. He always took a great interest in my then present welfare, and my future happiness. As an evidence of this, I can cite the following: While in the office I was taken sick, and was confined at home for six weeks. During that time he frequently called upon me, and every week my mother received my wages. After I recovered, he ascertained the amount of the doctor’s bill and paid it himself. This, if I remember rightly, was at the time of his own pecuniary losses and embarrassments. It is not necessary for me to say that I loved him. I not only loved, but I pitied him. For at that time he was suffering greatly from the dishonest dealings of his agents. I have seen again and again the tears in his eyes, as he has said to me and others, ‘I cannot pay you this week.’ He felt a hundred times worse than we did at such times. I have known him, after he had thus stated his inability to pay his employees, close the door of his editor’s room, and there, alone, give way to his grief. He always had a word of counsel and advice for me. He seemed to understand and to feel the peculiarities of my condition. He furnished me with books, gave me the privilege of his library, and was always happy to answer any question that I asked him; so that I looked upon him more as a friend, a brother, or father, than an employer. Through his advice and assistance I was thus enabled to make that progress in study of which I had been deprived by my removal from school at an early age; so that I can safely say that to his encouragement and advice, given when I had just left school, I owe much of my success, and much of the literary tastes I have since had. His advice when I left him to go into another business, which was occasioned by a change on his part as well, I have never forgotten. Of all the men I have ever known, my recollections of him are the best.”
CHAPTER X.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END.
Although the subject of our memoir was early taken from the shelter of home and placed outside of the usual sphere of the protecting influence of family love, he did not seem to come into very intimate contact with the world at large; he was in the world, but not of it.
He had a theory, without doubt, that all men are liable to do wrong, both ignorantly and perversely; but he had not what might be called a realizing faith in the fact, if the idea did not debase and contaminate a noble term. That assured confidence in the existence of evil not actually known to exist, which is the dark counterpart of a good man’s faith in good not yet revealed, formed no part of Walter Aimwell’s character.
It was his own way to try to do what he thought was right; and, moreover, to endeavor, to the extent of his ability, to examine a purpose on all sides, and probe it to its central motive, before he acted; and in this manner to do everything possible to make sure that his thought concerning the morality of his act was a correct thought. He was not satisfied to have his act right according to his thought; but he strove to have his thought agree with the eternal thought of God upon the same subject.
He seemed to expect something of the same moral and mental qualities in others, until, in each individual case, it was plainly proved that there was little or nought of these traits in them. He appeared to know comparatively nothing of the blurred moral vision, the hasty, headlong conscience, the flabby, flimsy purpose, which are to be met on every side.
Had he undertaken only such purposes as can be accomplished mainly without the coöperation of others, it is likely he would have easily succeeded, even giving to success the worldly interpretation. But working in connection with, and therefore in some degree of dependence upon, others, he was continually balked; and the object that he could have carried with comparative ease, if he could have carried it alone, almost pulled him to the earth when some, assuming to be helpers, hung upon it as so much dead weight to be also earned along.
Well, it was carried, dead weight and all. The “Rambler” kept an excellent reputation for moral tone, for sprightliness, for intelligence, for literary finish.