University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.
The Stranger undertakes the reformation of our Hero.

Sybrandt remained with the stranger, whose character
and mode of life he admired more and more
every day. Of the thousand little peevish trammels of
civilized life, which, like the invisible ropes and pegs
of the Lilliputians, keep the mighty Gulliver, man,
bound to the earth, or, albeit, chained within a certain
routine of prescriptive restraints, none were found
in the establishment of the stranger but those of the
simplest form. There was every thing necessary to
the gratification of a wholesome appetite, sound sleep,
and rural exercise. There were none of those fretting
and factitious wants which, under the disguise
of domestic comforts or embellishments, make human
beings, that call themselves enlightened, the
slaves of that wealth they acquire by the sacrifice of
health, pleasure, and liberty. An air of happy freedom
from restraint reigned every where around; and
though every thing seemed to arrange itself into an
easy regularity, it was without effort, without noise,
and without the slightest appearance of coercion or
authority. The Indian wife had always a smile on
her face; the children, freed from the soul-harrowing,
soul-subduing surveillance of eternal nursing and
restraint, gambolled about, the happiest of all God's
creatures, and spent those days which Nature has
allotted as the period when her offspring shall be free
from chains, in all the luxury of playful hilarity. In

short, Sybrandt could not help observing, that while
there appeared to be no restraint, there was, at the
same time, a perfect decorum, an unstudied decency,
which answered all the ends of the most fashionable
fastidiousness.

Every day when the weather permitted, and indeed
often when a dandy sportsman would have
shrunk from the war of the elements, they pursued
the manly, exciting sport of hunting. The image of
war, most especially in this empire of savages and
beasts of prey—this course of life gradually awakened
the sleeping energies of Sybrandt's nature, that had
been so long dozing under the scholastic rubbish of
the good Dominie Stettinius, of whose hapless fate
he as yet remained ignorant. He acquired an active
vigour of body, together with a quickness of
perception and keen attention to what was passing
before him, that by degrees encroached deeply
on his habit of indolent abstraction. He caught
from the stranger something of his fearless, independent
carriage, lofty bearing, and impatience of
idleness or inaction. In short, he acquired a confidence
in himself, a self-possession, and self-respect,
such as he had never felt before, and which freed
him from the leaden fetters of that awkward restraint
which had hitherto been the bane of his life.
Still, however, the cure was not complete; the disease
had been deep-seated, and occasional relapses
indicated pretty clearly that a return to old scenes
and modes of life would assuredly produce a return
of the old infirmity.

One stormy day, when the wind blew such a
gale as made it dangerous to pursue their daily
sport, the stranger found Sybrandt buried in the
confused rubbish of what is known among the

simple ones as a brown study, but which among the
better sort is dignified with the more lofty epithet of
abstraction.

“Westbrook,” said he, with his usual brief frankness,
“the time we have spent together, and the
circumstances under which we met, ought to have
made us friends by this time. It seems to me
that you are getting homesick. If so, say so. You
can leave me here as factor for your merchandise,
and I pledge myself to render you a true account of
the proceeds, the first good opportunity that occurs.
How say you, am I right?”

Sybrandt was actually thinking of home, but not
with that strange, inexplicable feeling which sickens
us of a paradise, and makes us turn with tears of
bitter longing to the barren sands or arid mountains
consecrated to memory under the name of
home. He had but few, very few pleasurable recollections
stored there, and these were buried under
a thousand self-inflicted pangs of self-love and mortification.
He replied to the stranger in a tone of
bitter depression:

“I was, indeed, thinking of home; but I have no
wish to go there just now.”

“Were you not happy there?”

“Not very.”

“Whose fault was that?”

Sybrandt paused, and a few moments of rapid
retrospection convinced him how difficult it was to
answer this simple question.

“I don't know,” at length he said; “sometimes
I think my own, sometimes the fault of others.”

“Westbrook,” said the stranger, kindly, “did you
ever hear the story of the king who was playing at
tennis in the midst of his courtiers?”

“I don't recollect,” replied he, somewhat surprised.

“Well, I will tell it you. A dispute arose about
some point of the game the king was playing, on
which a large bet depended. The king appealed to
his courtiers. They were silent. At length one
of his gray-headed ministers came into the tennis-court,
and on hearing these doubts, `Sire,' said he,
`you are wrong.' `What,' said the king, `do you
pronounce me in the wrong without knowing any
thing of the matter?' `Pardon me, sire,' said the
other, `if you had been right, these gentlemen (turning
to the courtiers) would not have doubted.' This
story will apply to all the actions of man. His
self-love and his passions are his courtiers, and
whenever they are doubtful or silent as to the question
of who is to blame, you may depend upon it
he is decidedly wrong. If there was any room for
doubt, his courtiers would not hesitate a moment to
decide in his favour.”

Strange as it may appear, Sybrandt had never
viewed the matter in this light before, nor asked
himself the question of who was to blame for the
anguish of mind which, in truth, he had wilfully inflicted
on himself. Dominie Stettinius was a good
and a learned man, but no philosopher. He had
never yet arrived at the conclusion, that learning
and wisdom, although actually man and wife, were
an arrant fashionable couple, and not always seen
together.

“Come,” said the stranger, after permitting him
to cogitate a reasonable time on his story—“Come,
I have a curiosity, no idle one, to know something
more of a young man who I cannot but see is capable
of acting, yet seems to be prone to think to
no purpose. I have long since told you my story,

now tell me yours. I see your mind is diseased—
sickly—out of tune. Let me know the nature of
the disease, and my life on it, I cure you.”

“I believe I have nothing to tell. My story has
no action; and without action even an epic poem
is dull,” replied the youth, forcing a melancholy
smile to his aid.

“Never mind; I entreat you to tell it. I think
I comprehend the case from the very acknowledgment
you have just made. Your history, as I suspect,
wants action.”

Thus solicited, Sybrandt at length overcame his
shyness, and gave the detail of his causeless miseries.
As he went on, the stranger sometimes smiled,
and at others shook his head. “Strange,” said he, at
length, when the young man had concluded his singular
confession, “strange that a man should pass
his whole life in coining false miseries, which have
no being except in his wayward imagination! Young
man, I feel an interest in you. There is that about
you which I love and respect, let me find it where I
will. I have seen you twice placed in circumstances
to try the nerves of the stoutest, facing death without
winking an eye, and suffering pain without
changing a muscle. Such men I acknowledge for my
fellow-creatures—my equals. And yet,” added he,
smiling, after a momentary pause, “and yet you who
stood before a band of drunken savages, with their
tomahawks and scalping-knives raised to take your
life,—you, who did not even so much as change countenance
during a discussion which was to decide whether
you were to be given up to be tortured at the stake;
why you cannot face a woman with whom you have
associated, with little intermission, from childhood!
You tremble at the idea of entering the parlour of an

honest country gentleman, and that gentleman your
uncle! You can face death in all its forms of horror,
but you cannot face a laugh, or even endure the
mere abstract idea of a laugh conjured up by your
own diseased fancy!”

The face and forehead of Sybrandt gradually
kindled with alternate flushes of pride and shame,
as the stranger proceeded. There was certainly
more honey than gall in his speech, but our youth
had long been in the habit of turning from the sweet
to banquet on the bitter; and the old idea of being
laughed at recurring in full force, caused his heart to
swell and his forehead to moisten with the dew of
strong agonized feeling. He remained dumbfounded,
and if his life had depended upon it, could not have
uttered one word.

“Did you ever,” continued the stranger, in a tone
of banter—“did you ever, in all your classic lore, come
across a hero, or even a person of tolerable reputation,
ashamed or afraid to face his equals, setting aside
his superiors? The modesty we read of there, as
an object of imitation to youth and age, is nothing
more than that dignified self-consciousness which
never asserts its claims to honours or rewards, but
leaves the world to meto them out according to its
own sense of obligation. They never thought of
praising, or of holding up for imitation, that boyish
and unmanly infirmity miscalled modesty, which bespeaks
an internal consciousness of weakness or degradation,
which makes men for ever ridiculous in their
own eyes, even when not so in the eyes of others,
and is the eternal, insurmountable obstacle to great
actions. There is a glorious effrontery about conscious
genius, which causes it to undertake and accomplish
objects which, to timid, bashful cowards
appear beyond the reach of human power.”

The word coward grated harshly on Sybrandt's
ear, and was appropriated at once to himself by
that mental process through which he was accustomed
to distil every thing into gall and wormwood.
The stranger saw the workings of his mind, and
went on:—

“Nor is the folly of such timid shrinking girlishness
in man less contemptible than its cowardice.
It is right, therefore, that he should be laughed at for
the one, and despised for the other.”

Sybrandt could stand it no longer. He started
from his seat, without feeling one spark of awkwardness
or timidity in his whole composition.

“Is this language intended for me, sir? because,
if so, it cancels all obligation on my part. If I am
not a man with women, you will find me so with
men. No man shall say, or insinuate, that I am a fool
or a coward. Did you or did you not apply these
epithets to me?”

“As much as falls to your share in your own honest
consciousness, no more,” replied the other, with
a most provoking indifference. Sybrandt surveyed
him leisurely from top to toe, with an eye of unflinching
defiance.

“Farewell, sir, for the present. I am your guest,
and you are my benefactor. I would have been
grateful to the end of my life for the kindness of your
hospitality, and the favour of your example; but
you have left me nothing now but regrets that I ever
accepted the one, or benefited by the other. Farewell,
sir. Judge of the extent of my gratitude by my
forgiveness of the insult you have just passed upon
me. So far the debt is cancelled. Take care, I
entreat you, how you run up a new score.”

He was proceeding to quit the house immediately,

when he was arrested by a hearty laugh from the
stranger.

“Bravo! good! I honour you, Mr. Westbrook.
You have spoken like a high-spirited, honourable
gentleman. From my soul I reverence a man of
courage. It is not without reason that courage is
held the basis of all the virtues, since without it we
may be driven from our best resolves by apprehension
of the consequences. Without the courage to
despise threats, dangers, death, no man can depend
on his other virtues for a single moment. And yet
it seems to me that all education tends to pave the
way for making cowards of us. The nurse begins
by frightening children with stories of ghosts and
hobgoblins, and making them afraid to stir in the
dark; and the priest ends by frightening the man
with horrible pictures of the agonies of death and
the torments of futurity. By heaven! it is a matter
of surprise to me that all civilized men are not arrant
poltroons! But why,” added he, after a pause,
“why not act and speak at all times, and every where,
with the same manly, free spirit you have just displayed?
With such a face, such a figure, such a
heart and mind, who is it that breathes or ever
breathed the breath of life, be it man or woman, you
need be afraid or ashamed to look full in the eye?
Forgive me for thus trying you, or rather for affording
you an opportunity of proving to yourself what
you really are. No one that has seen you as I have
done, in situations to try the nerves of any man,
would ever dream of your being less than consummately
brave; and no one that has conversed with
you as I have done, and heard you, day after
day, uttering the language of learning and good
sense, would suspect you of folly, except he were

himself a fool! On my soul, what I said was but
to aid you to “know thyself”—the most useful of all
lessons to man. Hereafter, when you feel yourself
shrinking from the encounter of a lady's eye, or a
puppy's glance of ridicule, recollect that you have
bearded the lion, called Sir William Johnson, in his
den, and never fear the face of man or woman from
henceforward. Are we friends again?”

Sybrandt grasped the hand of Sir William in
silence, and the incident of that day exercised an
influence over his future fortunes greater, perhaps,
than all the precepts of the worthy Dominie Stettinius
or the illustrious examples of classic lore.
The force of habit being once mastered, the
leaden fetters by which his genius had so long been
held in bondage seemed to have lost their power,
and from this time his deportment became every day
more free and manly, his conversation more frank
and racy. In short, he seemed about to verify the
great truth, that, as by yielding to one temptation
we prepare the way for submission to another, so
an obstacle once surmounted is ever afterward
more easily overcome.