On board the train for Wakefield, Louis took account of himself; he viewed the long, loop-like journey he had but recently completed, still fresh and free in memory’s hold. He had gathered in, as though he had flung and drawn a huge lassoo, the Berkshires, the Mohawk and its valley, Little Falls, the Black River, the Moose River, the primeval forest, and the Falls, the Hudson, the Catskills, the Palisades, New York Harbor, Long Island Sound; he had voyaged by rail, by river, and by sea. All these things, these acts, with their inspiring thoughts and emotions and reveries he had drawn into himself and shaped as one single imposing drama, ushering in a new and greater life. Or, in a sense reversed, his “child-domain,” holding, within the encircling woods, his ravine, his rivulet, his dam, his lovely marsh, his great green field, his tall, beauteous, slender elm; land of his delight, paradise of his earth-love, sequestered temple of his nature-worship, sanctuary of his visions and his dreams, had seemed at first, and hopefully, to extend itself progressively into a larger world as far as Newburyport and Boston, there, however, to stop, to remain fixed and bound up for seven long years, held as by a sinister unseen dam, the larger, urgently growing Louis, held also back within it, impatient, repressed, confined, dreaming of power, storing up ambition, searching for what lies behind the face of things, agitated and at times morose, malignant. When, of a sudden, the dam gives way, the child-domain so far enlarged, rushes forth, spreading over the earth, carrying with it the invisible living presence of Louis’s ardent soul, pouring its power of giving and receiving far and wide over land and sea, encompassing mountains and broad valleys, great rivers, turbulent waterfalls, a solemn boundless forest enfolding a lustrous lake, and again a noble river mountain-banked, an amazing harbor, and the great salt waves of the sea itself.
Thus were the boundaries extended; thus were the power and splendor of Mother Earth revealed in part; thus was provided deep and sound foundation for the masterful free spirit, striding in power, in the open, as the genius of the race of purblind, groping, striving, ever hoping, ever dreaming, illusioned mankind.
And thus it seemed to Louis that he was becoming stronger and surer of himself. Reverting to the words of the master, he dared affirm that this very power was within him, as a ward in his charge; that he must accept that charge as sacred; that he must accept the responsibility involved as a high exacting duty he owed to himself and equally to it; that he must give to it his all, to insure that it might give to him its all.
And Louis now saw clearly and in wonder, that a whim of his Grandpa, not the Rice Grammar School, had prepared him to meet Moses Woolson on fair terms. With confident assurance he awaited the beginning of what he foresaw was to be a long and arduous disciplinary training, which he knew he needed, and now welcomed.
That evening he told Grandpa what he thought of Moses Woolson and his plan; and Grandpa, with inward seeing eyes, smiled indulgence at his grandson seated on his knee, one hand about his neck, as he mused aloud: “My dear child, allowing for the rosy mist of romance through which an adolescent like yourself sees all things glorified, I will say that in the whole wide world it is true there may be found a few such men as you portray; but as a venerable and prudent Grandpa I shall reserve the right to wait awhile that we may see how the ideal and the real agree. But you go at it just the same, regardless of what may be passing in the back of my bald head.” And Louis laughed, and kissed and hugged his Grandpa, and settled to his lessons, as grandma knitted by the student lamp, as uncle Julius thrummed away on a helpless guitar and sang the melancholy sentimental ditties of the day, and as Grandpa, in slippers, gazed with incredulity at a boy on the floor oblivious of them all.
As it has but little import in this story, we shall pass over the breaking-in period of Moses Woolson’s class, and begin an exposition of Moses Woolson’s plan and method, and Louis’s responses thereto at that period the master himself had forecast as “when I have you firmly in hand at the most spirited pace you can go.” Suffice it to say that with great skill in intensive training he had brought them to this point within three months.
The ground work of his plan was set forth in his opening address, and is now to be revealed in its workings in detail.
The studies on which Louis set the highest value were Algebra, Geometry, English Literature, Botany, Mineralogy and French language. All these subjects were to him revelations. Algebra had startled him; for, through its portal he entered an unsuspected world of symbols. To him the symbol × flashed at once as a key to the unknown but ascertainable. Standing alone, he viewed this × in surprise as a mystic spirit in a land of enchantment, opening vistas so deep he could not see the end, and his vivid imagination saw at once that this ×, expanded in its latent power, might prove the key to turn a lock in a door within a wall which shut out the truth he was seeking—the truth which might dissolve for him the mystery that lay behind appearances. For this ×, he saw, was manipulated by means of things unknown.
Thus he saw far ahead; looking toward the time when he would
