For to
no mere onlooker will Life any more than Fairy-land open its secret. A
man must become an actor before he can be a true spectator.
Weary of standing at the window, he went and wandered about the
streets. To his country-bred eyes they were full of marvels--which
would soon be as common to those eyes as one of the furrowed fields on
his father's farm. The youth who thinks the world his oyster, and opens
it forthwith, finds no pearl therein.
What is this _nimbus_ about the new? Is the marvel a mockery? Is the
shine that of demon-gold? No. It is a winged glory that alights beside
the youth; and, having gathered his eyes to itself, flits away to a
further perch; there alights, there shines, thither entices. With
outstretched hands the child of earth follows, to fall weeping at the
foot of the gray disenchanted thing. But beyond, and again beyond,
shines the lapwing of heaven--not, as a faithless generation thinks, to
delude like them, but to lead the seeker home to the nest of the glory.
Last of all, Alec was forced to take refuge in his books.
_The competition_ fell on the next day, and he gained a small bursary.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
As it happened, no one but Alec had come up from Glamerton that year.
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