The Project Gutenberg EBook of That Fortune, by Charles Dudley Warner

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: That Fortune

Author: Charles Dudley Warner

Last Updated: February 22, 2009
Release Date: August 22, 2006 [EBook #3105]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THAT FORTUNE ***

Produced by David Widger

THAT FORTUNE

By Charles Dudley Warner

I

On a summer day, long gone among the summer days that come but to go,
a lad of twelve years was idly and recklessly swinging in the top of a
tall hickory, the advance picket of a mountain forest. The tree was on
the edge of a steep declivity of rocky pasture-land that fell rapidly
down to the stately chestnuts, to the orchard, to the cornfields in
the narrow valley, and the maples on the bank of the amber river, whose
loud, unceasing murmur came to the lad on his aerial perch like the
voice of some tradition of nature that he could not understand.

He had climbed to the topmost branch of the lithe and tough tree in
order to take the full swing of this free creature in its sport with the
western wind. There was something exhilarating in this elemental battle
of the forces that urge and the forces that resist, and the harder
the wind blew, and the wider circles he took in the free air, the more
stirred the boy was in the spring of his life. Nature was taking him
by the hand, and it might be that in that moment ambition was born to
achieve for himself, to conquer.

If you had asked him why he was there, he would very likely have said,
"To see the world." It was a world worth seeing. The prospect might
be limited to a dull eye, but not to this lad, who loved to climb this
height, in order to be with himself and indulge the dreams of youth. Any
pretense would suffice for taking this hour of freedom: to hunt for
the spicy checker-berries and the pungent sassafras; to aggravate the
woodchucks, who made their homes in mysterious passages in this gravelly
hillside; to get a nosegay of columbine for the girl who spelled against
him in school and was his gentle comrade morning and evening along
the river road where grew the sweet-flag and the snap-dragon and the
barberry bush