intellect to mastery? Two steps—to reflect, to reproduce. Observation, imitation, reflection, reproduction. In these stands a mind complete and consummate, fit to cope with all labor, achieve all success.
At the end of the first lesson George Morley felt that his cure was possible. Making an appointment for the next day at the same place, he came thither stealthily, and so on day by day. At the end of a week he felt that the cure was nearly sure; at the end of a month the cure was self-evident. He should live to preach the Word. True, that he practised incessantly in private. Not a moment in his waking hours that the one thought, one object, were absent from his mind; true, that with all his patience, all his toil, the obstacle was yet serious, might never be entirely overcome. Nervous hurry—rapidity of action—vehemence of feeling brought back, might, at unguarded moments, always bring back the gasping breath—the emptied lungs—the struggling utterance. But the relapse—rarer and rarer now with each trial—would be at last scarce a drawback. " Nay," quoth Waife, " instead of a drawback, become but an orator, and you will convert a defect into a beauty."
Thus justly sanguine of the accomplishment of his life's chosen object, the scholar's gratitude to Waife was unspeakable. And seeing the man daily at least in his own cottage—Sophy's health restored to her cheeks, smiles to her lip, and cheered at her light fancy-work beside her grandsire's elbow-chair, with fairy legends instilling perhaps golden truths—seeing Waife thus, the scholar mingled with gratitude a strange tenderness of respect. He knew naught of the vagrant's past—his reason might admit that in a position of life so at variance with the gifts natural and acquired of the singular basket-maker, there was something mysterious and suspicious. But he blushed to think that he had ever ascribed to a flawed or wandering intellect the eccentricities of glorious Humor—abetted an attempt to separate an old age so innocent and genial from a childhood so fostered and so fostering. And sure I am that if the whole world had risen up to point the finger of scorn at the one-eyed cripple, George Morley, the well-born gentleman—the refined scholar—the spotless Churchman—would have given him his arm, to lean upon, and walked by his side unashamed.
