The Caxtons — Volume 12 eBook

those two quartos, with the prospect of two others, at his own expense.  Now, I had earnestly hoped that my father, for the sake of mankind, would be persuaded to risk some portion—­and that, I own, not a small one—­of his remaining capital on the conclusion of an undertaking so elaborately begun.  But there my father was obdurate.  No big words about mankind, and the advantage to unborn generations, could stir him an inch.  “Stuff!” said Mr. Caxton, peevishly.  “A man’s duties to mankind and posterity begin with his own son; and having wasted half your patrimony, I will not take another huge slice out of the poor remainder to gratify my vanity, for that is the plain truth of it.  Man must atone for sin by expiation.  By the book I have sinned, and the book must expiate it.  Pile the sheets up in the lobby, so that at least one man may be wiser and humbler by the sight of Human Error every time he walks by so stupendous a monument of it.”

Verily, I know not how my father could bear to look at those dumb fragments of himself,—­strata of the Caxtonian conformation lying layer upon layer, as if packed up and disposed for the inquisitive genius of some moral Murchison or Mantell.  But for my part, I never glanced at their repose in the dark lobby without thinking, “Courage, Pisistratus! courage!  There’s something worth living for; work hard, grow rich, and the Great Book shall come out at last!”

Meanwhile, I wandered over the country and made acquaintance with the farmers and with Trevanion’s steward,—­an able man and a great agriculturist,—­and I learned from them a better notion of the nature of my uncle’s domains.  Those domains covered an immense acreage, which, save a small farm, was of no value at present.  But land of the same sort had been lately redeemed by a simple kind of draining, now well known in Cumberland; and, with capital, Roland’s barren moors might become a noble property.  But capital, where was that to come from?  Nature gives us all, except the means to turn her into marketable account.  As old Plautus saith so wittily, “Day, night, water, sun, and moon, are to be had gratis; for everything else—­down with your dust!”

CHAPTER II.

Nothing has been heard of Uncle Jack.  Before we left the brick house the Captain gave him an invitation to the Tower,—­more, I suspect, out of compliment to my mother than from the unbidden impulse of his own inclinations.  But Mr. Tibbets politely declined it.  During his stay at the brick house he had received and written a vast number of letters,—­ some of those he received, indeed, were left at the village post-office, under the alphabetical addresses of A. B. or X. Y.; for no misfortune ever paralyzed the energies of Uncle Jack.  In the winter of adversity he vanished, it is true; but even in vanishing, he vegetated still.  He resembled those algae, termed the Prolococcus nivales, which give a rose-color