"But the thing is, we don't want him--a----"

"I know, you don't want an ineffectual. You want some dreams to come
true--even if they are little ones----"

"Yes."

I had my own opinion of a boy who could chart his own constellations,
without meeting for years any one who cared enough about the stars to
follow his processes, but one can't say too much about a boy to his
relatives. Then I had to remember that the little Lake town had only
touched me on terms of trade. They did not know what sort of devil lived
in my heart, and those who were searching my books to find out were in
the main only the more doubtful. Especially, I bewildered these men by
not asking for anything in the way of money.

However, the thing came to be.

My first idea was to take him alone--the little girl coming in the
morning with me, and the boy after dinner, during an hour that I had
been accustomed to read and doze. The first days were hard for us both.
I sat down in a big chair before the fire and talked with him, but there
was no sign. He stared at the stones and stared out of the window, his
eyes sometimes filmy, his body sometimes tense. I seemed to require at
first some sort of recognition that I was talking--but none came,
neither nod of acquiescence, look of mystification nor denial.... They
said as he passed the house farther along the Shore after leaving the
Study, that his head was bowed and that he walked like a man heavy with
years.

I tried afresh each day--feared that I was not reaching him. I told him
the things that had helped me through the darker early years, and some
of the things I had learned afterward that would have helped me had I
known enough. I tried different leads, returning often to the stars, but
couldn't get a visible result. He was writing little things for me at
this time and, though I detected something in the work more than he
showed me, sitting opposite in the Study, his writing was turgid and
unlit--like one playing on an instrument he did not understand; indeed,
it was like a man talking in his sleep. At the end of one of the talks
within the first week, at wit's end as to what I was accomplishing, I
said:

"Write me what you remember of what I said to-day."

I touched upon this earlier. The result shocked me--it came back like a
phonograph, but the thoughts were securely bound by his own
understanding. I once listened to a series of speeches of welcome from
members of the Japanese Imperial cou