He was very courteous, entirely sincere, and quiet
with fixed principles as a great machine with consistent movement. He
treated children handsomely; harshness was not in him to be subdued,
and scorn of anything that was honestly developing would have seemed
to him blasphemy. He stooped to my intelligence, and rejoiced it. We
were usually a silent couple when off for a walk together, or when we
met by chance in the household. I suppose that we were seeing which
could outdo the other at "holding the tongue." But still, our
intercourse, as I remarked before, might be complete. I knew him very
well indeed,--' his power, his supremacy of honesty, his wealth of
refinement. And he, I was fully aware, could see through me as easily
as if I were a soul in one of his own books.
Even as a child, knowing that he could not think me a remunerative
companion, I realized how remarkable it was that in all his being
there was not an atom of the poison of contempt. If he did not love
stupidity, he forgave it. If he was strong with analysis and the
rejection of all sham and wrong, his hand was ready to grasp s any
hand, because it was a human creature's, whose destiny was a part of
every destiny--even Christ's. This sympathy, which caused the choice
he had made of his character-studies, and brought many confessions to
his judgment from bewildered men and women, was with him so entire
that it showed itself in the little things of existence, as a whole
garden-path is noble with the nature of the rose that stands blooming
there.
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