These hours
yielded impulses, wove webs, such as life will not again afford.
Returning to the boarding house, which was also a boarding school, we
were sure to be greeted by gay laughter.
This school was conducted by two girls of nineteen and seventeen years;
their pupils were nearly as old as themselves; the relation seemed very
pleasant between them. The only superiority--that of superior
knowledge--was sufficient to maintain authority--all the authority that
was needed to keep daily life in good order.
In the West, people are not respected merely because they are old in
years; people there have not time to keep up appearances in that way;
when they cease to have a real advantage in wisdom, knowledge, or
enterprise, they must stand back, and let those who are oldest in
character "go ahead," however few years they may count. There are no
banks of established respectability in which to bury the talent there;
no napkin of precedent in which to wrap it. What cannot be made to pass
current, is not esteemed coin of the realm.
To the windows of this house, where the daughter of a famous "Indian
fighter," i.e. fighter against the Indians, was learning French and the
piano, came wild, tawny figures, offering for sale their baskets of
berries. The boys now, instead of brandishing the tomahawk, tame their
hands to pick raspberries.
Here the evenings were much lightened by the gay chat of one of the
party, who, with the excellent practical sense of mature experience, and
the kindest heart, united a naivete and innocence such as I never saw in
any other who had walked so long life's tangled path.
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