| 269THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH
A ROMANCE OF THE SUPERNATURAL
By Mrs. Elia W Peattie.
CHAPTER I
I am no dreamer. I am not sentimental. I have been educated to be severely accurate. My grandfather was a professor of higher mathematics in a well known eastern university. My father was also an instructor in the exact sciences. I was educated in the west, and, having been graduated with-out honors, calmly faced the fact that there was very little use in the world for a dull young man who had chosen to call himself an ethnographer - or at least a student of ethnography. My friends wanted me to write a book on this subject in which I thought I was interested. As I had no knowledge which was not second hand, and no theories which were not some other man's, this was completely absurd.
Living in St. Paul as I did, I found no lack of opportunity for pursuing my favorite [reflections?], for there are races of men in plenty at that place, but ethnography like many other subjects, is a study which is pleasantest confined to the leaves of a book in a quiet library. What cause had I to be practically interested in the origin of my laundryman, of my bookmaker, and of my waiter? None. Abstractly, the [race?] question was interesting. Concretely it was stupid. In short, I was a fool. I was in earnest about nothing. My boasted common sense and accuracy, my power of concentrating my mind on one thing to the exclusion of others which had been thought so fine an attribute at college and my disdain of the pleasures of other young men, began to seem very [pool?] things indeed.
I got so last that I would have bartered that huge library left me by my scientific and lugubrious ancestors, and all the learnings which I was supposed to have accumulated, for the cheap ability to enjoy myself for one hour in the hearty way that other young fellows enjoyed themselves. In my desperation I even thought of throwing ancestral precedent to the winds, and engaging myself as a salesmen in a dry goods store and experimenting with the simple pleasures of half holidays and lunches in the corner restaurant. | 269THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH
A ROMANCE OF THE SUPERNATURAL
By Mrs. Elia W Peattie.
CHAPTER I
I am no dreamer. I am not sentimental. I have been educated to be severely accurate. My grandfather was a professor of higher mathematics in a well known eastern university. My father was also an instructor in the exact sciences. I was educated in the west, and, having been graduated with-out honors, calmly faced the fact that there was very little use in the world for a dull young man who had chosen to call himself an ethnographer - or at least a student of ethnography. My friends wanted me to write a book on this subject in which I thought I was interested. As I had no knowledge which was not second hand, and no theories which were not some other man's, this was completely absurd.
Living in St. Paul as I did, I found no lack of opportunity for pursuing my favorite [reflections?], for there are races of men in plenty at that place, but ethnography like many other subjects, is a study which is pleasantest confined to the leaves of a book in a quiet library. What cause had I to be practically interested in the origin of my laundryman, of my bookmaker, and of my waiter? None. Abstractly, the [race?] question was interesting. Concretely it was stupid. In short, I was a fool. I was in earnest about nothing. My boasted common sense and accuracy, my power of concentrating my mind on one thing to the exclusion of others which had been thought so fine an attribute at college and my disdain of the pleasures of other young men, began to seem very [pool?] things indeed. |
