The Family
been delighted when his daily poem and his “uplift”
editorials first proved successful, because that en¬
abled him to marry. Now he could sell as many
good-cheer articles as he had time to write, on any
subject, and he loathed doing them. Scott had
early picked himself out to do something very fine,
and he felt that he was wasting his life and his talents. The new group of poets made him angry.
When a new novel was discussed seriously by his
friends, he was perfectly miserable. St. Peter knew
that the poor boy had seasons of desperate unhappiness. His disappointed vanity ate away at his
vitals like the Spartan boy’s wolf, and only the deep
lines in his young forehead and the twitching at the
corners of his mouth showed that he suffered.
Not long ago, when the students were giving an historical pageant to commemorate the deeds of an early French explorer among the Great Lakes, they asked St. Peter to do a picture for them, and he had arranged one which amused him very much, though it had nothing to do with the subject. He posed his two sons-in-law in a tapestry-hung tent, for a conference between Richard Plantagenet and the Saladin, before the walls of Jerusalem. Marsellus, in a green dressing-gown and turban, was seated at a table with a chart, his hands extended in reasonable, patient argument. The Plantagenet was standing, his plumed helmet in his hand, his square yellow head haughtily erect, his unthoughtful
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