What Will He Do with It? — Complete

CHAPTER III.

   Could we know by what strange circumstances a man’s genius became
   prepared for practical success, we should discover that the most
   serviceable items in his education were never entered in the bills
   which his father paid for it.

At the end of the very first lesson George Morley saw that all the elocution masters to whose skill he had been consigned were blunderers in comparison with the basketmaker.

Waife did not puzzle him with scientific theories. All that the great comedian required of him was to observe and to imitate. Observation, imitation, lo! the groundwork of all art! the primal elements of all genius! Not there, indeed to halt, but there ever to commence. What remains to carry on the intellect to mastery? Two steps,—to reflect, to reproduce. Observation, imitation, reflection, reproduction. In these stands a mind complete and consummate, fit to cope with all labour, achieve all success.

At the end of the first lesson George Morley felt that his cure was possible. Making an appointment for the next day at the same place, he came thither stealthily and so on day by day. At the end of a week he felt that the cure was nearly certain; at the end of a month the cure was self-evident. He should live to preach the Word. True, that he practised incessantly in private. Not a moment in his waking hours that the one thought, one object, was absent from his mind! True, that with all his patience, all his toil, the obstacle was yet serious, might never be entirely overcome. Nervous hurry, rapidity of action, vehemence of feeling, brought back, might at unguarded moments always bring back, the gasping breath, the emptied lungs, the struggling utterance. But the relapse, rarer and rarer now with each trial, would be at last scarce a drawback. “Nay,” quoth Waife, “instead of a drawback, become but an orator, and you will convert a defect into a beauty.”

Thus justly sanguine of the accomplishment of his life’s chosen object, the scholar’s gratitude to Waife was unspeakable. And seeing the man daily at last in his own cottage,—Sophy’s health restored to her cheeks, smiles to her lip, and cheered at her light fancy-work beside her grandsire’s elbow-chair, with fairy legends instilling perhaps golden truths,—seeing Waife thus, the scholar mingled with gratitude a strange tenderness of respect. He knew nought of the vagrant’s past, his reason might admit that in a position of life so at variance with the gifts natural and acquired of the singular basketmaker, there was something mysterious and suspicious. But he blushed to think that he had ever ascribed to a flawed or wandering intellect the eccentricities of glorious Humour,—abetted an attempt to separate an old age so innocent and genial from a childhood so fostered and so fostering. And sure I am that if the whole world had risen up to point the finger of scorn at the one-eyed cripple, George Morley—the well-born gentleman, the refined scholar, the spotless Churchman—would have given him his arm to lean upon, and walked by his side unashamed.