The Courage of the Commonplace | Page 5

lip and went and sat down

before the desk again and turned on the electric reading-lamp. Now he
had given in long enough; now he must face the situation; now was the
time to find if there was any backbone in him to "buck up." To fool
those chaps by amounting to something. There was good stuff in this
boy that he applied this caustic and not a salve. His buoyant
lightheartedness whispered that the fellows made mistakes; that he was
only one of many good chaps left; that Dick Harding had a pull and Jim
Stanton had an older brother--excuses came. But the boy checked them.
"That's not the point; I didn't make it; I didn't deserve it; I've been easy
on myself; I've got to change; so some day my people won't be
ashamed of me--maybe." Slowly, painfully, he fought his way to a
tentative self-respect. He might not ever be anything big, a power as his
father was, but he could be a hard worker, he could make a place. A
few days before a famous speaker had given an address on an ethical
subject at Yale. A sentence of it came to the boy's struggling mind.
"The courage of the commonplace is greater than the courage of the
crisis," the orator had said. That was his chance-- "the courage of the
commonplace." No fireworks for him, perhaps, ever, but, by Jove, work
and will could do a lot, and he could prove himself worthy.
"I'm not through yet, but ginger," he said out loud. "I can do my best
anyhow and I'll show if I'm not fit"--the energetic tone trailed off--he
was only a boy of twenty--"not fit to be looked at," he finished
brokenly.
It came to him in a vague, comforting way that probably the best game
a man could play with his life would be to use it as a tool to do work
with; to keep it at its brightest, cleanest, most efficient for the sake of
the work. This boy, of no phenomenal sort, had one marked
quality--when he had made a decision he acted on it. Tonight through
the soreness of a bitter disappointment he put his finger on the highest
note of his character and resolved. All unknown to himself it was a
crisis.
It was long past dinner-time, but he dashed out now and got food, and
when Baby Thomas came in he found his room-mate sleepy, but quite
himself; quite steady in his congratulations as well as normal in his
abuse for "keeping a decent white man awake to this hour."
Three years later the boy graduated from the Boston "Tech." As his
class poured from Huntington Hall, he saw his father waiting for him.

He noted with pride, as he always did, the tall figure, topped with a
wonderful head--a mane of gray hair, a face carved in iron, squared and
cut down to the marrow of brains and force--a man to be seen in any
crowd. With that, as his own met the keen eyes behind the spectacles,
he was aware of a look which startled him. The boy had graduated at
the very head of his class; that light in his father's eyes all at once made
two years of work a small thing.
"I didn't know you were coming, sir. That's mighty nice of you," he
said, as they walked down Boylston Street together, and his father
waited a moment and then spoke in his usual incisive tone.
"I wouldn't have liked to miss it, Johnny," he said. "I don't remember
that anything in my life has ever made me as satisfied as you have
to-day."
With a gasp of astonishment the young man looked at him, looked
away, looked at the tops of the houses, and did not find a word
anywhere. His father had never spoken to him so; never before, perhaps,
had he said anything as intimate to any of his sons. They knew that the
cold manner of the great engineer covered depths, but they never
expected to see the depths uncovered. But here he was, talking of what
he felt, of character, and honor and effort.
"I've appreciated what you've been doing," the even voice went on. "I
talk little about personal affairs. But I'm not uninterested; I watch. I was
anxious about you. You were a more uncertain quantity than Ted and
Harry. Your first three years at Yale were not satisfactory. I was afraid
you lacked manliness. Then came--a disappointment. It was a blow to
us--to family pride. I watched you more closely, and I saw before that
year ended that you were taking your medicine rightly. I wanted to tell
you of my contentment, but being slow of speech I--couldn't. So"--the
iron face broke for a second