A Final Pause [pp. 469-476]

A FINAL PA USE.
of any one being hung or placed in durance vile for his offenses, though there
was no one who offended but was made
to feel that he ought to be very much
ashamed of himself for having perpetrated some act greatly unworthy of his
manhood; and was sent away with wonder in his mind that his offense, so trifling to his sober sense, should appear
so great when dwelt upon by this outraged "Uncle."
I never knew whether or not his nature was really cold, hard, and unsympathetic. There were some three hundred of us; and he could scarcely have
shown partiality to any without the quick
jealousy of the rest displaying itself in
the certain designation of "Toady" to
the favored one. Perhaps he knew the
sensitiveness of youth. He certainly
never excited it; and was so ultra in his
caution, that I never knew of his uttering one single friendly phrase to any one
of us, or letting the light of a smile encourage and cheer the timorous. You
felt all the time how distant was his life
from yours, leaving room for a suspicion
that if he was virtuous, it might be because his nature could not be tempted,
and that if virtue ever came easily, it
was only in a cold nature to be as "pure
as ice, as chaste as snow." It is hard
to be tropical of nature, and frigid of
virtue.
Our intercourse with him was almost
entirely professional and brief. Not until our last year before graduation did
we come under him as instructor. It
was then that we found him to be the
greatest of teachers. Our race with him
over the course of classic lore was not a
lengthy one. Yet I can remember how
we sat for an hour and three quarters,
many a time, and dwelt with real interest
and entertainment during all that time
over five lines of the "_/Eneid," or over
two lines of the "Iliad." When forty of
us sat on three sides of a square in old
Number Nine, with our venerable "Un
cle" at his elevated desk in our midst,
he taught Latin and Greek, it seemed to
me, as no one had ever taught it before,
or ever would again. How intent and
earnest was he, as he took up the first
line of Homer, with all the freshness
and curiosity of a new seeker for light,
as if he had not gone wearisomely over
and over it again, now for the thousandth
time. How lovingly he took it up, syllable by syllable, and word by word,
tending each word as carefully as a sweet
babe, turning it one side and another,
with evident affection, warning us of the
curious beauty of its interpretation, the
fine philosophy of its derivation, the wise
peculiarity of its composition, its singular increment, its unique terminal ending, its quaint and apt office in its place,
and the happy burden of its meaning.
How fondly did he dwell upon the significance of the aorist, the felicitous
adaptation of the infinitive, the peculiar
force of kaligar, the exuberant opulence
of verbs in izi! How affectionately did
he watch the gayly dancing feet, the
sweet, whirling waltz, of spondee and
dactyl, day after day, in numbered cotillions of hexameter verse! Shame upon
us for dreaming he cared for no one,
when we saw him daily in sweet and
tender alliance with those heroes of elder
days, and heard him never so happy of
phrase as when he was in the society of
pious /Eneas; the aged Anchises, old
Fidus Achates, the swift-footed Achlilles,
the matchless Agamemnon, or the wandering Ulysses! What vivid interest
did he display in delving amid the undeveloped mines of Virgil's and Homer's
lore! How he excited us, who were
overdull, to a curiosity for searching
there, for what unknown wealth! With
what a fine alchemy did he weave the
gold of interest and pleasure into those
hard, cold lines of languages, dead, and
as yet untranslated! We studied more
and harder then than ever before. We
stole hours from our hitherto listless
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