Part 72 (1/2)

”Oh, well, he is a boy yet, of course,” he said, ”but there is a man in him if fate doesn't put too many stumbling-blocks in his way.”

”There is such a thing,” said Anderson.

”Undoubtedly,” said Carroll. ”Moral hurdles for the strengthening of the spirit are all very well, but occasionally there is a spirit ruined by them.”

”I think you are right,” said Anderson; ”still, when the spirit does make the hurdles--”

”Oh yes, it is a very superior sort, after that,” said Carroll, laughing; ”but when it doesn't-- Well, I hope the boy will have tasks proportioned to his strength, and I hope he will have a try at them all, anyhow.”

”He seems to me like a boy that would,” Anderson said. ”What do you think of making of him?”

”I hardly know. It depends. His mother has always talked a good deal about Eddy's studying law, but I don't know. Somehow the law has always seemed to me the road of success for the few and a slippery maze to nowhere for the many.”

A sudden thought seemed to strike Carroll; he looked a little disturbed. ”By-the-way,” he said, ”I forgot. You yourself--”

Anderson smiled. ”Yes, I studied law,” said he.

”And gave it up?”

”Yes. I could not make a living with it.”

Carroll regarded the other man with a curious, wistful scrutiny. He looked more and more like Eddy. His next question was as full of naivete as if the boy himself had asked it, and yet the charming, almost courtly state of the man never for one instant failed. ”And so,” he said, ”you tried selling b.u.t.ter and eggs instead of legal wisdom?” The question might have been insolent from its purport, but it was not.

Anderson laughed. ”Yes,” he replied. ”People must eat to live, but they can live without legal wisdom. I found b.u.t.ter and eggs were more salable.”

Carroll continued to regard him with that pathetic, wondering curiosity. ”And you have never regretted the change?” he asked.

”I don't say that, but, regret or not, I had to make it, and--I am not exactly sure that I do regret it.”

”But this--this new occupation of yours cannot be--precisely congenial.”

”That does not disturb me,” Anderson said, a little impatiently.

Carroll looked at him with understanding. ”I see you feel as I do about that,” he said. ”It is rather proving one's self of the common to hold back too strenuously from it, and yet”--he hesitated a moment--”it takes courage, though,” he said. Suddenly his eyes upon the other man became full of admiration. ”My daughter tells me, or, rather, my son told me princ.i.p.ally, that you are interested in entomology?” he said.

”Oh, I dabble a little in it,” Anderson replied, smiling.

Carroll's eyes upon him continued to hold their wistful questioning, admiring expression. Anderson began to wonder what he had come for.

He was puzzled by the whole affair. Carroll, too, seemed to present himself to him under a new guise. He wondered if his reverses had brought about the change.

”I do not wish,” said Carroll, ”to display curiosity about affairs which do not concern me, and I trust you will pardon me and give me information, or not, as you choose; but may I ask how you happened, when you became convinced that you were not to make a success in law, why you chose your present business?”

”I have not the slightest objection to answering,” said Anderson, although he began to wonder if the other had called simply for the purpose of gratifying his curiosity about his affairs--”not the slightest. I simply tried to think of something which I should be sure to sell, because people would be sure to buy, and I thought of--b.u.t.ter and cheese. It all seems exceedingly simple to me, the principle of obtaining enough money wherewith to live and buy the necessaries of life. It is only to look about and possibly within and see what wares you can command, for which people will be willing to give their own earnings. It is all a question of supply and demand.

First you must study the demand, and then your own power of supply.

If you can interpret law like Rufus Choate, why, sell that; if you can edit like Horace Greeley, sell that; if you can act like Booth or sing like Patti, sell that; if you can dance like Carmencita, sell that. It all remains with you, what you can do, sing or dance, or sway a mult.i.tude, or sell b.u.t.ter and eggs; or possibly, rather, it remains with the public and what it decides you can do--that is better for one's vanity.”

”Decidedly,” agreed Carroll, with an odd, reflective expression.

”If the public want your song or your novel or your speech, they will buy it, or your dance, and if they don't they won't, and you cannot make them. You have to sell what the public want to buy, for you yourself are only a unit in a goodly number of millions.”

”And yet how extremely all-pervading that unit can feel sometimes,”