10. X.
The bargain had scarcely been struck, and the
terms well adjusted with the Yankee captain, before
Ned Johnson began to question the propriety
of what he had done. He was not so sure that
he had not been hasty, and felt that the pain his
departure would inflict upon Mary Jones, would
certainly be as great in degree, as the pleasure
which his future adventures must bring to himself.
Still, when he looked forward to those adventures,
and remembered the thousand fine stories of Captain
Doolittle, his dreams came back, and with
them came a due forgetfulness of the hum-drum
happiness of domestic life. The life in the woods,
indeed — as if there was life, strictly speaking, in
the eternal monotony of the pine forests, and the
drowsy hum they keep up so ceaselessly. Woodchopping,
too, was his aversion, and when he reflected
upon the acknowledged superiority of his
own over all the minds about him, he felt that his
destiny called upon him for better things, and a
more elevated employment. He gradually began
to think of Mary Jones, as of one of those influences
which had substracted somewhat from the
nature and legitimate exercises of his own genius;
and whose claims, therefore, if acknowledged by
him, as she required, must only be acknowledged
at the expense and sacrifice of the higher pursuits
and purposes for which the discriminating Providence
had designed him. The youth's head was
fairly turned by his ambitious yearnings, and it
was strange how sublimely metaphysical his musings
now made him. He began to analyze closely
the question, since made a standing one among
the phrenologists, as to how far particular heads
were intended for particular pursuits. General principles
were soon applied to special developments in
his own case, and he came to the conclusion, just as
he placed his feet upon the threshold of Father
Jones's cottage, that he should be contending with
the aim of fate, and the original design of the
Deity in his own creation, if he did not go with
Captain Nicodemus Doolittle, of the “Smashing
Nancy.”
