He came down from his high perch to which he had climbed unwittingly, for it was dead against his theory and practice to talk above the heads of his boys. He thereupon diluted the prior statement with a simply worded illustration, and Louis was glad to find his own feet still on the ground. Then Louis put the two aspects of the statement side by side again, and “culture” became for him a living word—a sheer veil through which, at first, he could but dimly see; but living word and sheer living veil had come from without to abide with him. It seemed indeed as though Moses Woolson had passed on to him a wand of enchantment which he must learn to use to unveil the face of things. Thus Louis dreamed.
By the end of the school year Moses Woolson through genius as a teacher, had turned a crudely promising boy into, so to speak, a mental athlete. He had brought order out of disorder, definition out of what was vague, superb alertness out of mere boyish ardor; had nurtured and concentrated all that was best in the boy; had made him consciously courageous and independent; had focused his powers of thought, feeling and action; had confirmed Louis’s love of the great out of doors, as a source of inspiration; and had climaxed all by parting a great veil which opened to the view of this same boy, the wonderland of Poetry.
Thus with great skill he made of Louis a compacted personality, ready to act on his own initiative, in an intelligent purposeful way. Louis had the same capacity to absorb, and to value discipline, that Moses Woolson had to impart it, and Louis was not a brilliant or showy scholar. He stood well up in his class and that was enough. His purpose was not to give out, but to receive, to acquire. He was adept in the art of listening and was therefore rather silent of mood. His object was to get every ounce of treasure out of Moses Woolson. And yet for Moses Woolson, the master and the man, he felt neither love nor affection, and it is quite likely that the master felt much the same toward him. What he felt toward the man was a vast admiration, he felt the power and the vigor of his intense and prodigal personality. It is scarcely likely that the master really knew, to the full extent, what he was doing for this boy, but Louis knew it; and there came gradually over him a cumulative reciprocity which, at the end, when he had fully realized the nature of the gift, burst forth into a sense of obligation and of gratitude so heartfelt, so profound, that it has remained with him in constancy throughout the years. There may have been teachers and teachers, but for Louis Sullivan there was and could be only one. And now, in all too feeble utterance he pleads this token, remembrance, to the memory of that one long since passed on.
Meanwhile a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand arose into the clear blue above the horizon of Henri List’s placid life. Early in 1871 Anna List, his wife, his prop, his anchor, his life’s mainstay, was taken with her first and last illness. Louis was forbidden her room. All was quiet; furtive comings and goings; whispered anxious words. The cloud arose, darkened the world and passed on. One morning, it was told that he, Louis, might see her. He went directly to her room, opened the door, and entered. The white shades were down and all was light within. On the bed he saw extended an object fully covered by a sheet. He advanced, drew aside the sheet, rashly pressed his lips upon the cold forehead, drew back as though stung.
Standing erect he gazed steadfastly down upon rigid features that seemed of unearthly ivory.
Grandmamma had vanished!
What signified this cold menace he now scanned? This stranger in the house—whence Grandmamma had gone forever?
What meant this effigy, this ivory simulacrum that had come here in her stead?
It could not see, it could not hear, it could not feel, it could not move, it could not speak, it could not love!
Grandmamma had vanished!
She had passed on with a great cloud that had cast its shadow.
And here, now before him lay a counterfeit, where once she was.
An object, a nothing, a something and a nothing, which Louis could not think or name; an ivory mask which repelled, which instantly he rejected, as a ghastly intrusion.
And they had said that he would see his Grandmamma!
Ah! then, was this petrified illusion his Grandmamma?
They lied!
His true Grandmamma was in his heart and would remain there till his own end should come. Whatever this object before him might be, it was not Gran’ma!
His Grandmamma had vanished!
He replaced the shroud. Dry-eyed, and as one filled with a cold light, he left the room.
Never before had Louis seen what Death, the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, leaves behind it as it passes overhead and vanishes.
An upright white marble slab, in the cemetery, at the point of the promontory that juts into Lake Quannapowitt, says to the stranger wandering therein, that Anna, wife of Henri List died 2 April, 1871, aged sixty-six years.
In this laconic statement the cynic hand of Henri List is clearly seen, even as at the funeral service in the “spare room” he was prostrate in an overwhelming flood of
