Young Lives | Page 9

wisdom spoken to me by my
elders," or again Matthew Arnold's
"Tasks in hours of insight willed May be through hours of gloom fulfilled."
James Mesurier knew nothing of all this; but if he had, he might have understood that
after all his children were not so far from the kingdom of heaven.

CHAPTER IV
OF THE PROFESSIONS THAT CHOOSE, AND MIKE LAFLIN
However we may hint at its explanation by theories of inheritance, it still remains curious
with what unerring instinct a child of character will from the first, and when it is so
evidently ignorant of the field of choice, select, out of all life's occupations and
distinctions, one special work it hungers to do, one special distinction that to it seems the
most desirable of earthly honours. That Mary Mesurier loved poetry, and James Mesurier
sermons, in face of the fact that so many mothers and fathers have done the same with no
such result, hardly seems adequate to account for the peculiar glamour which, almost
before he could read, there was for Henry Mesurier in any form of print. While books
were still being read to him, there had already come into his mind, unaccountably, as by
outside suggestion, that there could be nothing so splendid in the world as to write a book
for one's self. To be either a soldier, a sailor, an architect, or an engineer, would,
doubtless, have its fascinations as well; but to make a real printed book, with your name
in gilt letters outside, was real romance.
At that early day, and for a long while after, the boy had no preference for any particular
kind of book. It was an entirely abstract passion for print and paper. To have been the
author of "The Iliad" or of Beeton's "Book of Household Recipes" would have given him
almost the same exaltation of authorship; and the thrill of worship which came over him
when, one early day, a man who had actually had an article on the sugar bounties
accepted by a commercial magazine was pointed out to him in the street, was one he
never forgot; nor in after years did he ever encounter that transfigured contributor without
an involuntary recurrence of that old feeling of awe. No subsequent acquaintance with
editorial rooms ever led him into materialistic explanations of that enchanted piece of
work--a newspaper. The editors might do their best--and succeed surprisingly--in looking
like ordinary mortals, you might even know the leader-writers, and, with the very public,
gaze through gratings into the subterranean printing-rooms,--the mystery none the less
remained. No exposure of editorial staffs or other machinery could destroy the sense of
enchantment, as no amount of anatomy or biology can destroy the mystery of the human
miracle.
So I suppose Nature first makes us in love with the tools we are to use, long before we
have a thought upon what we shall use them. Perhaps the first desire of the born writer is
to be a compositor. Out of the love of mere type quickly evolves a love of mere words for
their own sake; but whether we shall make use of them as a historian, novelist,
philosopher, or poet, is a secondary consideration, a mere afterthought. To Henry
Mesurier had already come the time when the face of life began to Wear a certain aspect,
the peculiar attraction of which for himself he longed to fix, a certain mystical
importance attaching to the commonest every-day objects and circumstances, a certain
ecstatic quality in the simplest experiences; but even so far as it had been revealed, this
dawning vision of the world seemed only to have come to him, not so much to find
expression, as to mock him with his childish incapacity adequately to use the very tools
he loved. He would hang for hours over some scene in nature, caught in a woodland spell,
like a nympholept of old; but when he tried to put in words what he had seen, what a poor

piece of ornamental gardening the thing was! There were trees and birds and grass, to be
sure; but there was nothing of that meaning look which they had worn, that look of being
tiptoe with revelation which is one of the most fascinating tricks of the visible world, and
which even a harsh town full of chimneys can sometimes take on when seen in given
moments and lights. And it was astonishing to see into what lifeless imitative verse his
most original and passionate moments could be transformed.
Still some unreasonably indulgent spirit of the air, that had evidently not read his
manuscripts, whispered him to be of good cheer: the lifeless words would not always be
lifeless, some day the birds would sing in his verses too. This sense of failure