The Courage of the Commonplace | Page 7

he wanted the athletic
tendency, he wanted the plus-strength, he wanted the unmade
reputation which would look for its making to hard work in the mine.
The letter was produced and read to the shamefaced Johnny. "Gosh!"
he remarked at intervals and remarked practically nothing else. There
was no need. They were so proud and so glad that it was almost too
much for the boy who had been a failure three years ago.
On the urgent insistence of every one he made a speech. He got to his
six-feet-two slowly, and his hands went into his trousers pockets as
usual. "Holy mackerel," he began--"I don't call it decent to knock the
wind out of a man and then hold him up for remarks. They all said in
college that I talked the darnedest hash in the class, anyway. But you
will have it, will you? I haven't got anything to say, so's you'd notice it,
except that I'll be blamed if I see how this is true. Of course I'm keen
for it--Keen! I should say I was! And what makes me keenest, I believe,

is that I know it's satisfactory to Henry McLean." He turned his bright
face to his father. "Any little plugging I've done seems like thirty cents
compared to that. You're all peaches to take such an interest, and I
thank you a lot. Me, the superintendent of the Oriel mine! Holy
mackerel!" gasped Johnny, and sat down.
The proportion of fighting in the battle of life outweighs the "beer and
skittles"; as does the interest. Johnny McLean found interest in masses,
in the drab-and-dun village on the prairie. He found pleasure, too, and
as far as he could reach he tried to share it; buoyancy and generosity
were born in him; strenuousness he had painfully acquired, and like
most converts was a fanatic about it. He was splendidly fit; he was the
best and last output of the best institution in the country; he went at his
work like a joyful locomotive. Yet more goes to explain what he was
and what he did. He developed a faculty for leading men. The cold bath
of failure, the fire of success had tempered the young steel of him to an
excellent quality; bright and sharp, it cut cobwebs in the Oriel mine
where cobwebs had been thickening for months. The boy, normal
enough, quite unphenomenal, was growing strong by virtue of his one
strong quality: he did what he resolved to do. For such a character to
make a vital decision rightly is a career. On the night of the Tap Day
which had so shaken him, he had struck the key-note. He had resolved
to use his life as if it were a tool in his hand to do work, and he had so
used it. The habit of bigness, once caught, possesses one as quickly as
the habit of drink; Johnny McLean was as unhampered by the net of
smallnesses which tangle most of us as a hermit; the freedom gave him
a power which was fast making a marked man of him.
There was dissatisfaction among the miners; a strike was probable; the
popularity of the new superintendent warded it off from month to
month, which counted unto him for righteousness in the mind of the
president, of which Johnny himself was unaware. Yet the cobwebs
grew; there was an element not reached by, resentful of, the atmosphere
of Johnny's friendliness--"Terence O'Hara's gang." By the old road of
music he had found his way to the hearts of many. There were good
voices among the thousand odd workmen, and Johnny McLean could
not well live without music. He heard Dennis Mulligan's lovely
baritone and Jack Dennison's rolling bass, as they sang at work in the
dim tunnels of the coal-mine, and it seemed quite simple to him that

they and he and others should meet when work hours were over and do
some singing. Soon it was a club--then a big club; it kept men out of
saloons, which Johnny was glad of, but had not planned. A small
kindliness seems often to be watered and fertilized by magic. Johnny's
music-club grew to be a spell to quiet wild beasts. Yet Terence O'Hara
and his gang had a strong hold; there was storm in the air and the
distant thunder was heard almost continually.
Johnny, as he swung up the main street of the flat little town, the brick
school-house and the two churches at one end, many saloons en route,
and the gray rock dump and the chimneys and shaft-towers of the mine
at the other, carried a ribbon of brightness through the sordid place.
Women came to the doors to smile at the handsome young gentleman
who took his hat off as