|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 52
"You're downhearted over deciding to stay in town, to-day?" replied his
tutor pleasantly. "Oh, well, never mind. It will be a good tonic for you
and when you've passed your mid-year's in Greek, you'll never once think
of this trip with the team to-day."
"I'm afraid that's cold comfort just at the present moment. I've just
been hanging on and that's all there is to it."
"Sometimes it's the only thing a fellow can do. It may bring a lot of
other good things with it, though."
"Maybe," replied Will dubiously. "There's one thing I've learned
though, and if I ever come to know my Greek as well as I know that, I'll
pass all right."
"What's that?"
"Never to get behind. I'll keep up and not catch up. When I see what a
fool I made of myself in my 'prep' days, I wonder sometimes that I ever
got into college anyway. I never really worked any except in a part of
the last year."
"You're working now," suggested the senior.
"Yes, I have to. I don't like it though. The descent to Avernus is the
easy trip, if I remember my Virgil correctly. It's the getting back
that's hard."
"Do you know, I never just believed that."
"You didn't? Why not? Why, you can see it every day! It's just as easy
as sliding down hill. It's dragging the sled back up the hill that makes
the trouble."
"That isn't quite a fair illustration. If I'm not mistaken, it seems to
me that somewhere, sometime, some one said that 'The way of the
transgressor is hard.' He didn't seem to agree with Virgil's statement
somehow, did he?"
"But that means it's hard afterward."
"That isn't what it says. I think it means just what it says too."
"I don't see."
"Well, to me it's like this. In every fellow there's a good side and a
bad side. Sort of a Doctor Jekyl and Mr. Hyde in every one of us. I
heard the other day in our laboratory of a man who had taken and grafted
one part of the body of an insect on the body of another. He tried it
both on the chrysalis and on an insect too. I understood that he took
the pupa of a spider and by very careful work grafted upon it the pupa
of a fly. Think of what that monstrosity must have been when it passed
out from the chrysalis and became a full-fledged living being. One part
of it trying to get away from the other. One wanting to fly and the
other to hide. One part wanting to feed on flies and the other part in
mortal terror of all spiders."
"Was that really so?" inquired Will deeply interested.
"I didn't see it myself, but it was told over in the biological
laboratory and I don't think there was any question about it. It struck
me that it was just the way some of us seem to be built, a sort of a
spider and fly combination and not the ordinary combination either, when
the fly is usually inside of the spider and very soon a part of his
majesty. And yet when you've told all that you know, it's a sort of
monstrosity after all, and that the truth is that a fellow really _is_
his best self if he'll only give that part half a chance. That's why I
say the way of the transgressor is hard and not easy. A fellow is going
against the grain of his best side. He throws away his best chances
under protest all the while, and _he_ doesn't want to do it either. No,
Phelps, I believe if a fellow goes down hill it's like a man dragging a
balky horse. It looks easy but it isn't, and he himself is pulling
against it all the time."
"I never thought of it in that way before."
"Then on the other hand this very kind of work you're doing now is the
sort that stirs your blood. I expect that those fellows who live down in
the tropics and about all the work they have to do to feed themselves is
to pick a banana off a tree and go through the exertion of peeling it,
don't really get half the fun out of life that some of us boys had up on
the hillside farms in Vermont. Why, when we'd have to get up winter
mornings, with the weather so cold that we'd have to be all the while on
the lookout that we didn't freeze our ears or noses, and when we'd have
to shovel out the paths through three feet of snow and cut the wood and
carry water to the stock, it did seem at times to be a trifle strenuous;
but really I think the boys in Vermont get more fun out of life than the
poor chaps in the tropics do who plow their fields by just jabbing a
hole in the ground with their heel, and when they plant, all they have
to do is to just stick a slip in the ground. It's the same way here,
Phelps. This sort of thing you're doing is hard, no doubt about that;
but it's the sort of thing that really stirs up a live man, after all."
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|