Aunt Glegg Learns the Breadth of Bobs Thumb
WHILE Maggies life-struggles had lain almost entirely within her own soul, one shadowy army fighting another, and the slain shadows for ever rising again, Tom was engaged in a dustier, noisier warfare, grappling with more substantial obstacles, and gaining more definite quests. So it has been sihe days of Hecuba, and of Hector, Tamer of horses: ihe gates, the women with streaming hair and uplifted hands prayers, watg the worlds bat from afar, filling their loy days with memories and fears: outside, the men in fierce struggle with things divine and human, queng memory irht of purpose, losing the sense of dread and even of wounds in the hurrying ardour of a. From what you have seen of Tom, I think he is not a youth of whom you would prophesy failure in anything he had thhly wished: the wagers are likely to be on his side notwithstanding his small success in the classics. For Tom had never desired success in this field of enterprise: and fetting a fine flourishing growth of stupidity there is nothing like p out on a mind a good amount of subjects in which it feels no i. But now Toms strong will bound together his iy, his pride, his family regrets and his personal ambition, and made them one force, trating his efforts and surmounting discements. His uncle Deane, who watched him closely, soon began to ceive hopes of him, and to be rather proud that he had brought into the employment of the firm a nephew eared to be made of such good ercial stuff. The real kindness of plag him in the warehouse first was soon evident to Tom, in the hints his uncle began to throw out that after a time he might perhaps be trusted to travel at certain seasons, and buy in for the firm various vulgar odities with which I need not shock refined ears in this place; and it was doubtless with a view to this result that Mr Deane, when he expected to take his wine alone, would tell Tom to step in and sit with him an hour, and would pass that hour in much lecturing and catechising ing articles of export and import, with an occasional excursus of more i utility on the relative advao the merts of St Oggs of having goods brought in their own and in fn bottoms - a subje which Mr Deane, as a ship-owner, naturally threw off a few sparks whe warmed with talk and wine. Already, in the sed year, Toms salary was raised; but all except the price of his dinner and clothes went home into the tin box; and he shunned radeship, lest it should lead him into expenses in spite of himself. Not that Tom was moulded on the spooype of the Industrious Apprentice; he had a very strong appetite for pleasure - would have liked to be a Tamer of horses, and to make a distinguished figure in all neighb eyes, dispensing treats and bes to others with well-judged liberality, and being pronounced one of the fi young fellows of those parts; nay, he determio achieve these things sooner or later; but his practical shrewdold him that the means to such achievements could only lie for him i abstinend self-denial: there were certain milestoo be passed and one of the first was the payment of his fathers debts. Having made up his mind on that point, he strode along without swerving, trag some rather saturernness, as a young man is likely to do who has a premature call upon him for self-reliaom felt intehat on cause with his father which springs from family pride, and was bent on being irreproachable as a son; but his growing experience caused him to pass much