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But he was now a young man, stoutly and cognizantly on the climb, with a good aim overhead, axed green youth's enthusiasms a step below his heels: one of the lovers of life, beautiful to behold, when we spy into them; generally their aspect is an enlivenment, whatever may be the carving of their features.
To the opportunity offered by health may be added the years lying in front of the young heart like a great estate, as yet unincumbered. Powerful enthusiasms, too, are the inheritance of youth. Noble feelings, fine aspirations then pass through the mind, as in May the perfumed winds from the South pass over the fields. These motives beat upon the mind as steam upon the iron piston.
How wonderful, it seems to us, to have been alive then, as we are alive now, to have shared in those vast national enthusiasms, "in those great deeds to have had some little part"; and is it not a sort of poor anti-climax for a world that has gone through such noble excitement to have sunk back to this level of every day!
But if we have allowed the thought that any of these sacred books might become a substitute for our fathers' Bible, we may correct our crude enthusiasms by the authority of the greatest living master in Comparative Religion. Our own Bible, as I have frankly owned, holds the truth as the gold is held in the ore.
She was great in battle we all know that; great in foresight; great in loyalty and patriotism; great in persuading discontented chiefs and reconciling conflicting interests and passions; great in the ability to discover merit and genius wherever it lay hidden; great in picturesque and eloquent speech; supremely great in the gift of firing the hearts of hopeless men and noble enthusiasms, the gift of turning hares into heroes, slaves and skulkers into battalions that march to death with songs on their lips.
Every one in whom aspiration is still alive, who longs for some new light, and all who vaguely grope after a higher life, hear his voice and become pliant to his will. "Great historic movements," says Grimke, "are born not in whirlwinds, in earthquakes, and pomps of human splendor and power, but in the agonies and enthusiasms of grand, heroic spirits."
"And Miss Kent is hoping we'll give the whole sum to her to spend for another telescope," added Babe, whose specialty, if one might dignify her unscholarly enthusiasms by that name, was astronomy. "Every one of the faculty wants it for something," said Christy. "Naturally.
He, a man of reason, had only known how to ridicule the generous and disinterested enthusiasms of other men, detecting at once their weak points and lack of adaptation to the reality of the moment.... What right had he to laugh at his mate who was a believer, dreaming, with the pure-mindedness of a child, of a free and happy humanity?... Aside from his stupid jeers, what could he oppose to that faith?...
And I have one of this great, unhappy, suffering class in my own family, one who may yet be transformed into an Elizabeth Browning or a Joan of Arc! Mistress Mary sighed in her heart. She learned more of Mrs. Grubb with every interview, and she knew that her enthusiasms were as discouraging as her apathies. 'How unlucky that I mentioned Napoleon, Caesar, and Mohammed! she thought.
'Am I such a changeable creature, then? said Miss Bretherton, smiling at him. 'Do you generally find my enthusiasms cool down? 'You are as constant as you are kind, said Forbes, bowing to her; 'I am only like a child who sighs to see a pleasure nearing its highest point, lest there should be nothing so good afterwards.
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