ordinary child thus awakened within, not only can but
must become an extraordinary man or woman. This has already been proved
for me in the room in which I write. I believe that this very awakening
genius is the thing that has made immortal--shoemakers, blacksmiths and
the humblest men who have brought truth and beauty to our lives from the
past. Moreover the way, although it reverses almost every process of
life and education that now occupies our life and race, is not hard, but
a way of beauty and joyousness, and the way is no secret.

8

THE ABBOT

He was a still boy--the boy who had first shown us the two cottages on
the shore the afternoon his father was ill. You would have thought him
without temperament. I often recalled how little he knew about the
affairs of prospective tenants that afternoon; and how Penelope rescued
me from his silences.... We saw him often, coming down to bathe with
another lad during the afternoons throughout that first summer, but drew
no nearer to acquaintance. Sometimes as I rode to town for mail in the
evening I would see him watching me from his walk or porch; and the
sense that his regard was somehow different, I believe, did impress me
vaguely. It all happened in a leisurely sort of ordained fashion. I
remember his "hello," cheerful but contained, as I would ride by. He was
always still as a gull, and seemed natural with the dusk upon him....
One day his father said to me:

"I have to buy everything you write for him."

"Well, well," said I.

I had not looked for market in the little town, and The Abbot was only
fourteen. (One of the older boys christened him The Abbot afterward,
because he seemed so freshly come from monastic training.) ... Finally I
heard he was interested in the stars and owned a telescope. I called him
over to the Study one day, and we talked star-stuff. He had done all
that I had and more. It appears that in his Sunday School paper when he
was seven or eight, there had been an astronomical clipping of some sort
that awakened him. He had it read to him several times, but his own
reading picked up at that time with an extraordinary leap, as any study
does under driving interest. Presently he was out after the star books
on his own hook. He suggested bringing his telescope to the Study, and
that night I got my first look at the ineffable isolation of Saturn. It
was like some magnetic hand upon my breast. I could not speak. Every
time I shut my eyes