the unworldly old farmer, who had inherited, not in vain,
the spiritualities and finer influences of his possession, the Perdu. He
desired, first of all, his girl's happiness. He rebuked Reuben's pride
with a sternness unusual for him. But Reuben went.

He went down the great river. Not many miles from the quiet region of
the Perdu there was a little riverside landing, where Reuben took the
steamer and passed at once into another atmosphere, another world. The
change was a spiritual shock to him, making him gasp as if he had fallen
into a tumultuous sea. There was the same chill, there was a like
difficulty in getting his balance. But this was not for long. His innate
self-reliance steadied him rapidly. His long-established habit of
superiority helped him to avoid betraying his first sense of ignorance
and unfitness. His receptiveness led him to assimilate swiftly the
innumerable and novel facts of life with which he came all at once in
contact; and he soon realized that the stirring, capable crowd, whose
ready handling of affairs had at first overawed him, was really inferior
in true insight to the peculiar people whom he had left about the Perdu.
He found that presently he himself could handle the facts of life with
the light dexterity which had so amazed him; but through it all he
preserved (as he could see that those about him did not) his sense of
the relativity of things. He perceived, always, the dependence of the
facts of life upon the ideas underlying them, and thrusting them forward
as manifestations or utterances. With his undissipated energy, his
curious frugality in the matter of self-revelation, and his instinctive
knowledge of men, he made his way from the first, and the roaring port
at the mouth of the great river yielded him of its treasures for the
asking. This was in a quiet enough way, indeed, but a way that more than
fulfilled his expectations; and in the height of the blossoming time of
his fifth summer in the world he found himself rich enough to go back to
the Perdu and claim Celia. He resolved that he would buy property near
the Perdu and settle there. He had no wish to live in the world; but to
the world he would return often, for the sake of the beneficence of its
friction,--as a needle, he thought, is the keener for being thrust often
amid the grinding particles of the emery-bag. He resigned his situation
and went aboard an up-river boat,--a small boat that would stop at every
petty landing,