第71章

"From the spectacle of this great man thus bearing the great burdens of his great life, a new standard of what is possible to human nature has been raised within me.I have seen with my own eyes a man whom the adverse forces of the world have not been able to wreck--a lover of perfection, who has so wrought it out in his character that to know him is to be awed into reverence of his virtues.I shall go away from him with nobler hopes of what a man may do and be.

"It is to you soley that I owe the honour of having enjoyed the personal consideration of the President.His reception of me had been in the highest degree ceremonious and distant; but upon my mentioning the names of father and brother, his manner grew warm: I had touched that trait of affectionate faithfulness with which he has always held on to every tie of kin and friendship.That your father should have fought against him and your brother under him made no difference in his memory.He had many questions to ask regarding you--your happiness, your family--to some of which I could return the answers that gave him pleasure or left him thoughtful.Upon my setting out from Mount Vernon, his last words made me the bearer of his message to you, the child of an old comrade and the sister or a gallant young soldier."Beyond this there was nothing personal in his letter and nothing as to his return.

When she next heard, he was in Philadelphia, giving his attention to the choosing and shipment of the books.One piece of news, imparted in perfect calmness by him, occasioned her acute disappointment.His expectation of coming into possession of some ten thousand dollars had not quite been realized.An appeal had been taken and the case was yet pending.He was pleased neither with the good faith nor with the good sense of the counsel engaged; and he would remain on the spot himself during the trial.He added that he was lodging with a pleasant family.Then followed the long winter during which all communication between the frontier and the seaboard was interrupted.When spring returned at last and the earliest travel was resumed, other letters came, announcing that the case had gone against him, and that he had nothing.

She sold at once all the new linen that had been woven, got together all the money she otherwise could and despatched it with Major Falconer's consent, begging him to make use of it for the sake of their friendship--not to be foolish and proud: there were lawyers' fees it could help to pay, or other plain practical needs it might cover.But when the post-rider returned, he brought it all back with a letter of gratitude: only, he couldn't accept it.

And the messenger had been warned not to let it be known that he was in prison for debt on account of these same suit expenses; for having from the first formed a low opinion of his counsel's honour and ability and having later expressed this opinion at the door of the court-room with a good deal of fire and a good deal of contempt, and being furthermore unable and unwilling to pay the exorbitant fee, he had been promptly clapped into jail by the incensed attorney, as well for his poverty and for his temper and his pride.

In jail he spent that spring and summer and autumn.Then an important turn was given to his history.It seems that among the commissions with which he was charged on leaving Lexington was one from Edward West, the watchmaker and inventor, who some time before, and long before Fulton, had made trial of steam navigation with a small boat on the Town Fork of the Elkhorn, and who desired to have his invention brought before the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia.He had therefore placed a full description of his steamboat in John's hands with the request that he would enforce this with the testimony of an eye-witness as to its having moved through water.At this time, through Franklin's influence, the Society was keenly interested in the work of inventors, having received also some years previous from Hyacinthe de Magellan two hundred guineas to be used for rewarding the authors of improvements and discoveries.Accordingly it took up the subject of West's invention but desired to hear more regarding the success of the experiment; and so requested John to appear before it at one of its meetings.But upon looking for this obscure John and finding him in jail, the committee were under the necessity of appearing before him.Whereupon, grown interested in him and made acquainted with the ground of his unreasonable imprisonment, some of the members effected his release--by recourse to the attorney with certain well-direct threats that he could easily be put into jail for his own debts.Not only this; but soon afterwards the young Westerner was taken into the law-office of one of these gentlemen, binding himself for a term of years.

It was not until spring that he wrote he humorously of his days in jail; but when it came to telling her of the other matter, the words refused to form themselves before his will or his hand to shape them on the paper.He would do this in the next letter, he said to himself mournfully.

But early that winter Major Falconer had died, and his next letter was but a short hurried reply to one from her, bringing him this intelligence.And before he wrote again, certain grave events had happened that led him still further to defer acquainting her with his new situation, new duties, new plans.

That same spring, then, during which he was entering upon his career in Philadelphia, she too began really to live.And beginning to live, she began to build--inwardly and outwardly; for what is all life but ceaseless inner and outer building?