Elsie Venner | Page 7

you may find a spring that
sparkles as no water does which drips through your apparatus of sands
and sponges. So there are families which refine themselves into

intellectual aptitude without having had much opportunity for
intellectual acquirements. A series of felicitous crosses develops an
improved strain of blood, and reaches its maximum perfection at last in
the large uncombed youth who goes to college and startles the
hereditary class-leaders by striding past them all. That is Nature's
republicanism; thank God for it, but do not let it make you illogical.
The race of the hereditary scholar has exchanged a certain portion of its
animal vigor for its new instincts, and it is hard to lead men without a
good deal of animal vigor. The scholar who comes by Nature's special
grace from an unworn stock of broad-chested sires and deep-bosomed
mothers must always overmatch an equal intelligence with a
compromised and lowered vitality. A man's breathing and digestive
apparatus (one is tempted to add muscular) are just as important to him
on the floor of the Senate as his thinking organs. You broke down in
your great speech, did you? Yes, your grandfather had an attack of
dyspepsia in '82, after working too hard on his famous Election Sermon.
All this does not touch the main fact: our scholars come chiefly from a
privileged order, just as our best fruits come from well-known grafts,
though now and then a seedling apple, like the Northern Spy, or a
seedling pear, like the Seckel, springs from a nameless ancestry and
grows to be the pride of all the gardens in the land.
Let me introduce you to a young man who belongs to the Brahmin
caste of New England.

CHAPTER II.
THE STUDENT AND HIS CERTIFICATE.
Bernard C. Langdon, a young man attending Medical Lectures at the
school connected with one of our principal colleges, remained after the
Lecture one day and wished to speak with the Professor. He was a
student of mark,--first favorite of his year, as they say of the Derby
colts. There are in every class half a dozen bright faces to which the
teacher naturally, directs his discourse, and by the intermediation of
whose attention he seems to hold that of the mass of listeners. Among

these some one is pretty sure to take the lead, by virtue of a personal
magnetism, or some peculiarity of expression, which places the face in
quick sympathetic relations with the lecturer. This was a young man
with such a face; and I found,--for you have guessed that I was the
"Professor" above-mentioned,--that, when there was anything difficult
to be explained, or when I was bringing out some favorite illustration
of a nice point, (as, for instance; when I compared the cell-growth, by
which Nature builds up a plant or an animal, to the glassblower's
similar mode of beginning,--always with a hollow sphere, or vesicle,
whatever he is going to make,) I naturally looked in his face and
gauged my success by its expression.
It was a handsome face,--a little too pale, perhaps, and would have
borne something more of fulness without becoming heavy. I put the
organization to which it belongs in Section B of Class 1 of my Anglo-
American Anthropology (unpublished). The jaw in this section is but
slightly narrowed,--just enough to make the width of the forehead tell
more decidedly. The moustache often grows vigorously, but the
whiskers are thin. The skin is like that of Jacob, rather than like Esau's.
One string of the animal nature has been taken away, but this gives
only a greater predominance to the intellectual chords. To see just how
the vital energy has been toned down, you must contrast one of this
section with a specimen of Section A of the same class,--say, for
instance, one of the old-fashioned, full-whiskered, red-faced, roaring,
big Commodores of the last generation, whom you remember, at least
by their portraits, in ruffled shirts, looking as hearty as butchers and as
plucky as bull-terriers, with their hair combed straight up from their
foreheads, which were not commonly very high or broad. The special
form of physical life I have been describing gives you a right to expect
more delicate perceptions and a more reflective, nature than you
commonly find in shaggy-throated men, clad in heavy suits of muscles.
The student lingered in the lecture-room, looking all the time as if he
wanted to say something in private, and waiting for two or three others,
who were still hanging about, to be gone.
Something is wrong!---I said to myself, when I noticed his

expression.--Well, Mr. Langdon,--I said to him, when we were
alone,--can I do anything for you to-day?
You can, Sir,--he said.---I am going to leave the class, for the present,
and keep school.
Why, that