The Professors House
the barytone in Brahms’ Requiem, attending the
words, “He heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall scatter them!” The vehemence of this passage had seemed to him uncalled for until he read it by the light of the history of his own family.
St. Peter thought he had fared well with fate. He wouldn’t choose to live his life over—he might not have such good luck again. He had had two romances: one of the heart, which had filled his life for many years, and a second of the mind—of the imagination. Just when the morning brightness of the world was wearing off for him, along came Outland and brought him a kind of second youth.
Through Outland’s studies, long after they had ceased to be pupil and master, he had been able to experience afresh things that had grown dull with use. The boy’s mind had the superabundance of heat which is always present where there is rich germination. To share his thoughts was to see old perspectives transformed by new effects of light. If the last four volumes of “The Spanish Adventurers” were more simple and inevitable than those that went before, it was largely because of
Outland. When St. Peter first began his work, he realized that his great drawback was the lack of early association, the fact that he had not spent his youth in the great dazzling South-west country which was the scene of his explorers’ adventures. By the time he had got as far as the third volume,
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