第80章

--If I had not solemnly dedicated myself to the study of the Order of Things,--he said,--I do verily believe I would give what remains to me of life to the investigation of some single point I could utterly eviscerate and leave finally settled for the instruction and, it may be, the admiration of all coming time.The keel ploughs ten thousand leagues of ocean and leaves no trace of its deep-graven furrows.The chisel scars only a few inches on the face of a rock, but the story it has traced is read by a hundred generations.The eagle leaves no track of his path, no memory of the place where he built his nest;but a patient mollusk has bored a little hole in a marble column of the temple of Serapis, and the monument of his labor outlasts the altar and the statue of the divinity.

--Whew!--said I to myself,--that sounds a little like what we college boys used to call a "squirt."-- The Master guessed my thought and said, smiling, --That is from one of my old lectures.A man's tongue wags along quietly enough, but his pen begins prancing as soon as it touches paper.I know what you are thinking--you're thinking this is a squirt.That word has taken the nonsense out of a good many high-stepping fellows.But it did a good deal of harm too, and it was a vulgar lot that applied it oftenest.

I am at last perfectly satisfied that our Landlady has no designs on the Capitalist, and as well convinced that any fancy of mine that he was like to make love to her was a mistake.The good woman is too much absorbed in her children, and more especially in "the Doctor,"as she delights to call her son, to be the prey of any foolish desire of changing her condition.She is doing very well as it is, and if the young man succeeds, as I have little question that he will, Ithink it probable enough that she will retire from her position as the head of a boarding-house.We have all liked the good woman who have lived with her,--I mean we three friends who have put ourselves on record.Her talk, I must confess, is a little diffuse and not always absolutely correct, according to the standard of the great Worcester; she is subject to lachrymose cataclysms and semiconvulsive upheavals when she reverts in memory to her past trials, and especially when she recalls the virtues of her deceased spouse, who was, I suspect, an adjunct such as one finds not rarely annexed to a capable matron in charge of an establishment like hers; that is to say, an easy-going, harmless, fetch-and-carry, carve-and-help, get-out-of-the-way kind of neuter, who comes up three times (as they say drowning people do) every day, namely, at breakfast, dinner, and tea, and disappears, submerged beneath the waves of life, during the intervals of these events.

It is a source of genuine delight to me, who am of a kindly nature enough, according to my own reckoning, to watch the good woman, and see what looks of pride and affection she bestows upon her Benjamin, and how, in spite of herself, the maternal feeling betrays its influence in her dispensations of those delicacies which are the exceptional element in our entertainments.I will not say that Benjamin's mess, like his Scripture namesake's, is five times as large as that of any of the others, for this would imply either an economical distribution to the guests in general or heaping the poor young man's plate in a way that would spoil the appetite of an Esquimau, but you may be sure he fares well if anybody does; and Iwould have you understand that our Landlady knows what is what as well as who is who.

I begin really to entertain very sanguine expectations of young Doctor Benjamin Franklin.He has lately been treating a patient of whose good-will may prove of great importance to him.The Capitalist hurt one of his fingers somehow or other, and requested our young doctor to take a look at it.The young doctor asked nothing better than to take charge of the case, which proved more serious than might have been at first expected, and kept him in attendance more than a week.There was one very odd thing about it.The Capitalist seemed to have an idea that he was like to be ruined in the matter of bandages,--small strips of worn linen which any old woman could have spared him from her rag-bag, but which, with that strange perversity which long habits of economy give to a good many elderly people, he seemed to think were as precious as if they had been turned into paper and stamped with promises to pay in thousands, from the national treasury.It was impossible to get this whim out of him, and the young doctor had tact enough to humor him in it.All this did not look very promising for the state of mind in which the patient was like to receive his bill for attendance when that should be presented.Doctor Benjamin was man enough, however, to come up to the mark, and sent him in such an account as it was becoming to send a man of ample means who had been diligently and skilfully cared for.

He looked forward with some uncertainty as to how it would be received.Perhaps his patient would try to beat him down, and Doctor Benjamin made up his mind to have the whole or nothing.Perhaps he would pay the whole amount, but with a look, and possibly a word, that would make every dollar of it burn like a blister.

Doctor Benjamin's conjectures were not unnatural, but quite remote from the actual fact.As soon as his patient had got entirely well, the young physician sent in his bill.The Capitalist requested him to step into his room with him, and paid the full charge in the handsomest and most gratifying way, thanking him for his skill and attention, and assuring him that he had had great satisfaction in submitting himself to such competent hands, and should certainly apply to him again in case he should have any occasion for a medical adviser.We must not be too sagacious in judging people by the little excrescences of their character.Ex pede Herculem may often prove safe enough, but ex verruca Tullium is liable to mislead a hasty judge of his fellow-men.