ldren could not but feel that the bequest represented his
unfaltering grasp upon whatever is pure, lofty, and generous in human
life.

Yes, whatever it may cost a man of genius to be all his life a good
man, and to use and develop his genius to the noblest ends only, that my
father's friends cost him, and in that amount am I his debtor; and the
longer I myself live, and the more I see of other men, the higher and
rarer do I esteem the obligation. Moreover, in speaking of his friends,
I was thinking of those who personally knew him; but the world is full
to-day of friends of his who never saw him, to whom his name is my best
and surest introduction. Once, only three years since, in the remote
heart of the Colorado mountains, I chanced to enter the hut of an aged
miner; he sat in a corner of the little family room; on the wall near
his hand was fixed a small bookshelf, filled with a dozen dog-eared
volumes. The man had for years been paralyzed; he could do little more
than to raise to that book-shelf his trembling hand, and take from it
one or other of the volumes. When this helpless veteran learned my name,
he uttered a strange cry, and his face worked with eager emotion; the
wife of his broad-shouldered son brought me to him in his corner; his
old eyes glowed as they perused me. I could not gather the meaning of
his broken, trembling speech; the young woman interpreted for me. Was I
related to the great Hawthorne? "Yes; I am his son." "His son!" Seldom
have I met a gaze harder to sustain than that which the paralytic bent
upon me. Would I might have worn, for the time being, the countenance of
an archangel, so to fill out the lineaments, drawn during so many lonely
years by his imagination and his reverence, of his ideal writer! "The
son of Hawthorne!" He said no more, save by the strengthless pressure of
his hands upon my own; the woman told me how all the books on the little
shelf were my father's books, and for fifteen years the old man had read
no others. Helpless tears of joy, of gratitude, of wonder ran down the
furrows of his cheeks into his white beard. And how could I at whom he
so gazed help being moved: on that desolate, unknown mountain-side, far
from the world, the name which I had inherited was loved and honored!
One does not get one's privileges for nothing. My father gave me power
to make my way, and cast sunshine on the path; but he made the path
arduous, too!

Be that as it may, I now ask who will to