The keel ploughs ten thousand leagues of
ocean and leaves no trace of its deep-graven furrows. The chisel scars
only a few inches on the face of a rock, but the story it has traced is
read by a hundred generations. The eagle leaves no track of his path, no
memory of the place where he built his nest; but a patient mollusk has
bored a little hole in a marble column of the temple of Serapis, and the
monument of his labor outlasts the altar and the statue of the divinity.
--Whew!--said I to myself,--that sounds a little like what we college
boys used to call a "squirt."--The Master guessed my thought and said,
smiling,
--That is from one of my old lectures. A man's tongue wags along quietly
enough, but his pen begins prancing as soon as it touches paper. I know
what you are thinking--you're thinking this is a squirt. That word has
taken the nonsense out of a good many high-stepping fellows. But it did
a good deal of harm too, and it was a vulgar lot that applied it
oftenest.
I am at last perfectly satisfied that our Landlady has no designs on the
Capitalist, and as well convinced that any fancy of mine that he was like
to make love to her was a mistake. The good woman is too much absorbed
in her children, and more especially in "the Doctor," as she delights to
call her son, to be the prey of any foolish desire of changing her
condition.
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