Strong Hearts

Strong Hearts, by George W.
Cable

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Strong Hearts, by George W. Cable
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: Strong Hearts
Author: George W. Cable
Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9838] [Yes, we are more than

one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 23,
2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STRONG
HEARTS ***

Produced by Suzanne Shell, Lazar Liveanu and PG Distributed
Proofreaders

STRONG HEARTS
By George W. Cable
1899

CONTENTS
The Solitary
The Taxidermist
The Entomologist

In magazine form "The Solitary" appeared under the title of "Gregory's
Island."

The Solitary

I
"The dream of Pharaoh is one. The seven kine are seven years; and the
seven good ears are seven years: the dream is one.... And for that the
dream was doubled unto Pharaoh twice, it is because the thing is
established."...
In other words: Behind three or four subtitles and changes of time,
scene, characters, this tale of strong hearts is one. And for that the tale
is tripled or quadrupled unto you three or four times (the number will
depend); it is because in each of its three or four aspects--or separate
stories, if you insist--it sets forth, in heroic natures and poetic fates, a
principle which seems to me so universal that I think Joseph would say
of it also, as he said to the sovereign of Egypt, "The thing is established
of God."
I know no better way to state this principle, being a man, not of letters,
but of commerce (and finance), than to say--what I fear I never should
have learned had I not known the men and women I here tell of--that
religion without poetry is as dead a thing as poetry without religion. In
our practical use of them, I mean; their infusion into all our doing and
being. As dry as a mummy, great Joseph would say.
Shall I be more explicit? Taking that great factor of life which men,
with countless lights, shades, narrownesses and breadths of meaning,
call Religion, and taking it in the largest sense we can give it; in like
manner taking Poetry in the largest sense possible; this cluster of tales
is one, because from each of its parts, with no argument but the souls
and fates they tell of, it illustrates the indivisible twinship of Poetry and
Religion; a oneness of office and of culmination, which, as they reach
their highest plane, merges them into identity. Is that any clearer? You
see I am no scientist or philosopher, and I do not stand at any dizzy
height, even in my regular business of banking and insurance, except
now and then when my colleagues of the clearing-house or board want

something drawn up--"Whereas, the inscrutable wisdom of Providence
has taken from among us"--something like that.
I tell the stories as I saw them occur. I tell them for your entertainment;
the truth they taught me you may do what you please with. It was
exemplified in some of these men and women by their failure to
incarnate it. Others, through the stained glass of their imperfect
humanity, showed it forth alive and alight in their own souls and bodies.
One there was who never dreamed he was a bright example of anything,
in a world which, you shall find him saying, God--or
somebody--whoever is responsible for civilization--had made only too
good and complex and big for him. We may hold that to make life a
perfect, triumphant poem we must keep in beautiful, untyrannous
subordination every impulse of mere self- provision, whether earthly or
heavenly, while at the same time we give life its equatorial
circumference. I know that he so believed. Yet, under no better
conscious motive than an impulse of pure self-preservation, finding his
spiritual breadth and stature too small for half the practical demands of
such large theories, he humbly set to