A. G. Riddle

“ Case! Case!" broke in Ransom again, "hold up your infernal gabble."
"I know the importance of first impressions," said Case, with gravity, "and I want you should start favorably; and if you don't come up to my eulogium, something will be pardoned to the partiality of friendship."
"Yes, yes! partiality of friendship!" said Ransom, excitedly; and turning to Bart, "he is a Case, as you see; but if a man should go into Court with such a Case, he would be non-suited; he isn't even prima facie."
"Good!" exclaimed Kennedy.
"Ransom, you are inspired; flattery does you good." ”

“ Imagination! it was the logic of the gods—the power to create; and among men it abolishes the impossible. By its force and strength one may strike fire from hidden flints in darkened worlds, and beat new windows in the blind sides of the ages. Columbus imagined another continent, and sailed to it; and so of all great discoverers."
The Doctor listened with some surprise. "Did it ever occur to you,
Bart, that you might be an orator of some sort?"
"Such an orator as Brutus is—cold, formal, and dead? I'd rather not be an orator at all, 'but talk right on,' like plain, blunt Mark Antony." ”

“ I am not thought to be at all promising, I believe."
"Bart," said the Doctor, seriously, "you don't lack capacity; but you are too quick and impulsive, and all imagination and fancy."
"Well, Doctor, you flatter me; but really is not the imagination one of the highest elements of the human mind? In the wide world's history was it not a crowning, and one of the most useful qualities of many of the greatest men?"
"Great men have had imagination. I presume, and achieved great things in spite of it; but through it, never."
"Why, Doctor! the mere mathematician is the most servile of mortals. ”

“ Bart pushed off across the fields in a right line for home, with the priceless book in his hand; light came to him, and opportunity. Lord! how his heart and soul and brain arose and went out to meet them! As the branches of the young forest-tree that springs up by a river-side shoot out, rank, and strong, and full, to the beautiful light and air, and so, too, as the tree grows one-sided and disfigured, the danger is that this embodiment of young force and energy may develop one-sided. ”

“ I am sad for poor Bart, and I cannot sketch it.
The young lawyers had been there, seen, talked to, got acquainted with, were looked up to, deferred to, admired and flirted with, and had gone, leaving themselves to be talked about.
Two young girls, amid the fading light, with the rich warm blood of young womanhood in their cheeks, and its latent emotions sending a softened light into their eyes, with their arms about each other's waists, were pensively walking out of the dusky woods to the open fields, with a little ripple and murmur of voices, like the liquid pearls of a brook. ”

“ What a world of tender and mournful sweetness this interview opened up to the hungry heart of Bart—the love of a sweet, thoughtful, considerate, intellectual and cultivated sister, unselfish and pure, to which no touch or color of earth or passion could come. How fully and tenderly he wrote of her to his mother, and how the unbidden wish came to his heart to tell another of her, and as if he had the right to do so.
Miss Aikens was a young lady of high mental endowments, and great force of character, cultivated in the true sense of culture, and very accomplished. ”

“ And Bart found himself in a marvellous forest, wandering with Julia, wondrous in her fresh and tender beauty, on through endless glades, amid the gush of bird-songs, and the fragrance of flowers.
And there in the dream land whence I called them, I leave them. Why should I awake them again? For them can another day so bright and happy ever dawn? I who love them, could have kept them for a bright brief space longer. I could have heard the sparkling voice of Bart, and the answering laugh of Julia—and then I should listen and not hear—look anxiously around and not see! ”

“ A new camp had been selected on a dry slope, wood had been cut, the tubs distributed, and they were waiting for Bart and a good day. Both came together; and on the day following the close of his school, at an early hour they hurried off to tap the trees.
Spring and gladness were in the air. The trill of the blue-bird was a thrill; and the first song of the robin was full of lilac and apple blossoms. The softened winds fell to zephyrs, and whispered strange mysterious legends to the brown silent trees, and murmured lovingly over the warming beds of the slumbering flowers. ”

“ Henry got in, and the stage was about to move away, when Bart sprang upon the step, and called out "Henry!" who leaned his face forward, and received Barton's lips fully on his mouth. Men of the Yankee nation never kiss each other, and the impression produced upon Henry was great. Tears fell upon his face as their lips met, and from his eyes, as the heavy coach rolled into the darkness of the night.
Are there really such things as actual presentiments? God alone knows. Is the subtle soul-atmosphere capable of a vibration at the approach and in advance of an event? ”

“ Bart, in a low voice, tremulous with emotion, bade them all good-by, and most of them forever, and taking his little valise, walked with a saddened heart back to his mother. This time he had not failed, and he never was to fail again.
How many events and occurrences linked in an endless series unite to form the sum-total of ordinary human life! Incident to it, they are in fact all ordinary. If any appear extraordinary, it is because they occur in the life of an extraordinary individual, or remarkable consequences flow from them. ”

“ A man who will lie to a court or a jury, will lie anywhere—he is a liar."
"Will you submit to that rule?" asked Giddings, laughing.
"I always have," said Wade, "and I wont have any other. Now of all men, a lawyer can the least afford to be dishonest; for a taint, a doubt of his honor, ruins him; and there cannot be a more honorable body of men in the world, and never was, than the fair majority of the bar. The habit of contesting in open court, in the face of the world, engenders an honorable, manly highmindedness, free from the underhanded jealousy and petty wars of the doctors. ”

“ The tempest subsided, the snow ceased, the wind sunk to whispers, and the young morning was rosy in the east.
Barton had kept the fire burning near Julia, and when the new light became decided, approached her, and not without some anxiety: "Miss Markham—Miss Markham—Miss Markham!" raising his voice at each repetition. She did not hear. "Julia!" in a low voice, bending over her. Her eyes opened to the rude roof over her, and she started, turned to him, flushed, and smiled: "Oh, we are still here in the woods! Is it day?"
"Yes; how do you feel? Can you walk?" ”

“ Quick to compassionate others, he had ever been relentless to himself, and refused to regard himself as an object of injustice, or as needing compassion. As he stood for a moment confronting himself, scorned, despised and humiliated, he felt for himself the measureless contempt to which he seemed to have fallen; yet, under it all, and against it all, he arose. "Oh, Bart! Bart! what a poor, abject, grovelling thing you really are," he said bitterly, "when the word of a girl so overcomes you! when the slap of her little hand so benumbs and paralyzes you! ”

“ Cases never will get themselves up for any such occasion; and if the lawyer waits for such a case, he will die unknown. Cases spring out of dry, hard contentions, with nothing but vulgar surroundings; and it is to these, that the real advocate applies himself, breathes upon them the breath of genius and creative power, and clothes them with life, and interest, and beauty, endows them with his own soul and imagination, and lifts them from the level of the common to the height of the remarkable, the unusual, and sometimes of the wonderful ”

“ The Doctor pondered as if there was a matter for thought in what he had heard, and a little ripple of under-talk ran on about the subjects, the everlasting old, old and eternally new problems that men have dreamed and stumbled over, and always will—which Bart had dreamily spoken of as if they were very familiar to his thoughts, and they spoke of him, and wondered if anything had happened, and pulled their boat to a new position, while the overtaxed youth subsided into fitful slumber. ”

“ Suddenly the sound of wheels caught her ear, and she turned as Judge Markham's grays headed up to her gate. She recognized Julia, who, without waiting to be helped, sprang lightly from the carriage, with her face radiant, and bounding to her threw her arms about her neck.
"Oh, mother—my mother now—he is here. I met him in those blessed woods and brought him to you."
Then she made room for him, and for a moment the mother's arms encircled them both. How glad and happy she was, no man may know; as no man understands, and no woman can reveal, the depth and strength of mother love. ”

“ I don't know but there is a man in the world who, without having seen a law book before, has taken up and mastered the first volume of Blackstone in a week, but I never heard of him. What will never do is—it will not do for you to go on in this way; you would read up a library in a year, if you lived, but will die in six months, at this rate."
With tears in his eyes, Bart said: "Do not fear me, General; I am strong and healthy; besides, there are a good many things worse than death." ”

“ Genius, if such a thing there is, may be appreciated by school-boys; the average grown world count it as of no value. If a man has a brilliant intellect, let him bewail it on the mountains, as the daughter of Jephtha did her virginity. If he has wit, let him become Brutus.
Readiness and genius are apt to be arrogant; and, when joined with a lively temper, with an ardent, impetuous nature, they render a young man an object of dread, dislike, or worse. Bart had grave doubts of his being a genius, but it had been abundantly manifest to his sensitive perceptions that he was disliked ”

“ See to what the perversions of civilization have reduced me."
"Do you propose in thus getting back to nature, to go back to what we call savagery?" asked Bart.
"Not a bit of it. It was the wants and needs of the race that whipped it into what we call civilization. When once men got a start they went, and went in one direction alone, and completely away from Nature, instead of keeping with her and with an unvarying result; an endless series of common catastrophes has overtaken all civilized nations alike, while the savage tribes have alone been perpetual. ”

“ He forms quick resolutions, but can adhere to them. He is tender to weakness, and fanciful to phantasy. His aptitude for sarcasm and ridicule, unsparingly as it had been turned upon everybody, brought upon him general dislike. His indecision and vacillation in adopting and pursuing a scheme in life, lost him the confidence of his acquaintances—ready to believe anything of one who had dealt them so many sharp thrusts. He was sensitive to a fault, and a slight word would have driven him forever from Julia Markham, and turned him back upon himself, as a dissolving and transforming fire. ”

“ And as Bart called up the scene, and looked at the man taking his tea, and conversing carelessly, he thought that a life would be a cheap price for such an opportunity and effort.
Nature had been generous to Wade, and given him a fine, well-balanced, strong, clear intellect, of a manly, direct, and bold cast, as well of mind as temperament. He was not destitute of learning in his profession, but rather despised culture, and had a certain indolence of intellect, that arose in part from undervaluing books, and although later a great reader, he was never a learned man. ”

“ If a score of you were to say to me, that in the forest to-day, you saw a fallen and decayed tree arise and strike down new roots, and shoot out new branches, and unfold new foliage and flowers, I would not believe it: Nor, though five hundred men should swear that they saw a grave heave up, and its tenant come forth to life and beauty, would I believe. The quality of the evidence is not equal to sustain the burthen of the fact to be established, and it does not help the matter, that alleged proofs come to me through uncertain historical media. ”

“ Don't I live on the praises of Henry? and don't I tear every man that utters a doubt of his infallibility? Poor old Dominie Young! I was savage on him last night, for an unnecessary remark about Henry; and I'll go and hear him preach, to show my contrition; and penitence can't go further. Now, mother dear, I probably wanted this, and I am now down on the flat, hard foundation of things. Don't blame this Julia, and don't think of her in connection with me. No girl will ever scorn one of your boys but once. ”

“ Ridgeley, our continent and our life, with our fresh, young, intense natures, seem to me to contain all the elements of poetry, and the highest drama," said Miss Giddings.
"So they seem to us, and yet how much of that is due to our egotism—because it is ours—who can tell? Of course there is any amount of poetry in the raw, and so it will remain until somebody comes to work it up. There are plenty of things to inspire, but the man to be inspired is the thing most needed." ”

“ To Miss Markham and Miss Walters precisely the same, with a little of the chivalrous devotion of a knight to acknowledged beauty.
"The fall and winter style prevails, I presume," he said, in gay banter, as if anticipating that their gloved hands were not to be touched.
"Your memory is good, Mr. Ridgeley," said Julia, with a little laugh and a little flush.
"Forgetfulness is not my weakness," he replied.
"I was not aware you knew Mrs. Ford," said Mrs. Markham, observing the little flutter in Julia's cheeks, and thinking there was a meaning in Bart's persiflage. ”

“ Man easily reverts to savagery and nature; and this tendency was marked in Bart, whom this new recurrence to old habits of wood-life, so dear to him, filled with such pleasant sensations of joyous unrest, that until near the coming dawn he was disinclined to sleep, and when he did, the first note of an old robin from the topmost twig of a giant old maple awoke him fresh to the labor and enjoyment of another resplendent day. ”

“ Is he a lawyer?"
"That," said Case, sadly, "is Sartliff, the most brilliant intellect our region has produced; full of learning, full of genius and strange new thoughts! He is a lawyer, and should equal Daniel Webster."
"What is the matter with him?"
"God only knows! men call him crazy. If he is, the rest of us never had intellect enough to become crazy. Look at his dress; he wears a kind of frock, tied with a hay rope, and is barefoot, I presume. Some strange new or old idea has taken possession of him to get back to nature. If he keeps on he will become crazy. ”

“ Like all young men bent upon a pursuit where his success must depend upon intellect, he was most anxious to ascertain the quality and extent of his brain-power—a matter of which a young man can form no proper idea. Later in life a man is informed by the estimate of others, and can judge somewhat by what he has done. The youth has done nothing. He has made no manifestation by which an observer can determine; when he looks at himself, he can examine his head and face; but the mind, turned in upon itself, with no mirror, weight, count or measure, feels the hopelessness of the effort. ”

“ And without another word he strode off deeper into the woods, and was lost to the eyes of the young men.
"Is it possible," said Bart, "that this was an educated, strong, and brilliant mind, capable of dealing with difficult questions of law? I fear that he has worn or torn through the filament that divides the workings of the healthy mind from the visions of the dreamer—wrecked on the everlasting old rocks that jut out all about our shores, and always challenging us to dash upon them. Shall we know when we die? Shall we die when we know? ”

“ Ridgeley was easy and gentlemanly; Mr. Ranney a little shy and awkward. I've no doubt one would come to like either of them, when one came to know him."
"Oh, Flora! the beauty of a man is strength and courage, and power and will and ability. When one comes to see these, the outside passes out of sight."
"Do you think that absolute ugliness could be overcome in that way?"
"Yes, even deformity. I should be taken even by beauty, in a man, and should expect conforming beauty of heart and soul. Do you know, I sometimes half feel that I would like to be a man?"
"You, Julia! ”

“ And here was this young Bart Ridgeley, who had been nowhere, had read next to nothing, whom they had esteemed a lazy, shiftless fellow, without capability for useful and thrifty pursuits, and who had in their presence, for the last two days, taken up a hopeless case, and conducted it against a man who, in their hearts, they had supposed was more than a match for Joshua R. Giddings or Chief Justice Hitchcock, beaten and baffled him, and finally thrashed him out of all semblance of an advocate. ”

“ You need not draw on a water-bottle for nectar, or hope to carve marble columns from empty air; genius can't do that. An unformed, undeveloped mind never threw out great things spontaneously, as the cloud throws out lightning. Men are not great without achievement, nor wise without study and reflection. Nor was there ever a genius, however strong and brilliant in the rough, that would not have been stronger and more brilliant by cutting," said Bart, with vehemence. ”

“ Mrs. Markham looked at him several times as if she would go to him, and an expression once or twice came into the sweet and pensive face of Julia, that seemed to mean that she wished she could say to him, "I want so much to thank you for your courage and generosity!" Morris noticed the strange conduct of Barton, and felt an impulse to call to him, and on their way home he spoke to him about it.
"Why, Bart, what is the matter? I thought you and the Markhams were on the best of terms; especially you and Julia and Mrs. Markham."
"Well, Major, you see a shrewd man can be mistaken, don't you?" ”

“ The three in happy tears—tears, that soon vanish, went into the dear old house, into whose every room Bart rushed in a moment, calling for the boys, and asking a thousand unanswered questions, and coming back, with a flood of words, half tears and half laughs.
"So, Bart," said the proud and happy mother, "it is all right," with a look towards Julia. "I knew it would be."
"And, mother, you knew it, too?"
"A woman sees where a man is blind, sometimes," she answered. "And boys must find these things out for themselves. ”

“ You are material, and go by lines and angles; cannot you understand that a God whose existence you would have to prove is no God at all? that if His works and givings out don't declare and proclaim him, He is a sham? You cannot see and hear, Doctor, when you are in one of your material moods. Look up, if you can see no reflection in the waters below."
"Well, when I look into the revealed heaven, for instance, Bart, I see it peopled with things of the earth, reflected into it from the earth; showing that the whole idea is of the earth—earthy." ”

“ She likes to be wooed with music, and flowers, and poetry, and to remain coy and only yield when her full heart had gone long before; and then to be engaged, and wear her ring, and be proud of her affianced, and to be envied—oh, it is a thousand, thousand times more to us than to you. It is our all, and we can enjoy it but once, and think what is lost out of the life of the young girl who has not enjoyed it at all. See, Arthur, what poor, petty, weak things we are, not worth the understanding, and not worth the winning, as we would be won. ”