第33章 THE PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY(4)

"The dwellers by Cedar Lake may find it an amusement to compare their own feelings with those of one who has lived by the Atlantic and the Mediterranean,by the Nile and the Tiber,by Lake Leman and by one of the fairest sheets of water that our own North America embosoms in its forests."Miss Lurida Vincent,Secretary of the Pansophian Society,read this paper,and pondered long upon it.She was thinking very seriously of studying medicine,and had been for some time in frequent communication with Dr.Butts,under whose direction she had begun reading certain treatises,which added to such knowledge of the laws of life in health and in disease as she had brought with her from the Corinna Institute.Naturally enough,she carried the anonymous paper to the doctor,to get his opinion about it,and compare it with her own.They both agreed that it was probably,they would not say certainly,the work of the solitary visitor.There was room for doubt,for there were visitors who might well have travelled to all the places mentioned,and resided long enough on the shores of the waters the writer spoke of to have had all the experiences mentioned in the paper.The Terror remembered a young lady,a former schoolmate,who belonged to one of those nomadic families common in this generation,the heads of which,especially the female heads,can never be easy where they are,but keep going between America and Europe,like so many pith-balls in the electrical experiment,alternately attracted and repelled,never in contented equilibrium.

Every few years they pull their families up by the roots,and by the time they have begun to take hold a little with their radicles in the spots to which they have been successively transplanted up they come again,so that they never get a tap-root anywhere.The Terror suspected the daughter of one of these families of sending certain anonymous articles of not dissimilar character to the one she had just received.But she knew the style of composition common among the young girls,and she could hardly believe that it was one of them who had sent this paper.Could a brother of this young lady have written it?Possibly;she knew nothing more than that the young lady had a brother,then a student at the University.All the chances were that Mr.Maurice Kirkwood was the author.So thought Lurida,and so thought Dr.Butts.

Whatever faults there were in this essay,it interested them both.

There was nothing which gave the least reason to suspect insanity on the part of the writer,whoever he or she might be.There were references to suicide,it is true,but they were of a purely speculative nature,and did not look to any practical purpose in that direction.Besides,if the stranger were the author of the paper,he certainly would not choose a sheet of water like Cedar Lake to perform the last offices for him,in case he seriously meditated taking unceremonious leave of life and its accidents.He could find a river easily enough,to say nothing of other methods of effecting his purpose;but he had committed himself as to the impropriety of selecting a lake,so they need not be anxious about the white canoe and its occupant,as they watched it skimming the surface of the deep waters.

The holder of the Portfolio would never have ventured to come before the public if he had not counted among his resources certain papers belonging to the records of the Pansophian Society,which he can make free use of,either for the illustration of the narrative,or for a diversion during those intervals in which the flow of events is languid,or even ceases for the time to manifest any progress.The reader can hardly have failed to notice that the old Anchor Tavern had become the focal point where a good deal of mental activity converged.There were the village people,including a number of cultivated families;there were the visitors,among them many accomplished and widely travelled persons;there was the University,with its learned teachers and aspiring young men;there was the Corinna Institute,with its eager,ambitious,hungry-souled young women,crowding on,class after class coming forward on the broad stream of liberal culture,and rounding the point which,once passed,the boundless possibilities of womanhood opened before them.All this furnished material enough and to spare for the records and the archives of the society.

The new Secretary infused fresh life into the meetings.It may be remembered that the girls had said of her,when she was The Terror,that "she knew everything and didn't believe anything."That was just the kind of person for a secretary of such an association.

Properly interpreted,the saying meant that she knew a great deal,and wanted to know a great deal more,and was consequently always on the lookout for information;that she believed nothing without sufficient proof that it was true,and therefore was perpetually asking for evidence where,others took assertions on trust.