She colored consciously, for she knew that he also
recollected, then said with a smile, "Ah, Harry, but between such
aspirations and their achievement there stretches so often a weary long
day. You will tire with looking forward if you look so far. Are you not
tiring now?"
"No, no. You must not take any notice of my mother's solemn prognostics.
She does not admire what she calls the smoky color I bring home from
London. Some remote ancestor of my father died there of decline, and she
has taken up a notion that I ought to throw the study of the law to the
winds, come home, and turn farmer. Of what avail, I ask her, would my
scholarship be then?"
"You would enjoy it, Harry. In combination with a country life it would
make you the pleasantest life a man can live."
Harry shook his head: "What do you know about it, Bessie? It is
dreadfully hard on an ambitious fellow to be forced to turn his back on
all his fine visions of usefulness and distinction for the paltry fear
that death may cut him short."
"Oh, if you regard it in that light! I should not call it a paltry fear.
There are more ways than one to distinction--this, for instance,"
dropping her hand on Harry's paper in the review. "Winged words fly far,
and influence you never know what minds. I should be proud of the
distinction of a public writer."
"Literature by itself is not enough to depend on unless one draws a
great prize of popularity.
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