I had the gratification, as my experiment proceeded, to find that it was by no means unsuccessful.  His austerity appreciably relaxed, and the kindly tone into which his few, but intelligent observations gradually fell, was accompanied by an encouraging smile, when the drift of our talk was light.  Then I spoke of his child, and eagerly praised the beauty, the intelligence, and sweet temper of the lad.  ’Twas strange how little pleasure he seemed to derive from my sincere expressions of admiration; indeed, the slight satisfaction he did permit himself to manifest appeared in his words only, not at all in his looks; for a shade of deep sadness fell at once upon his handsome face, and his expression, so full of sensibility, assumed the cast of anxiety and pain.  “He thanked me for my eloquent praises of the boy, and—­not too partially, he hoped—­believed that he deserved them all.  A prize of beauty and of love had fallen to him in his little Ferdy, for which he would be grieved to seem ungrateful.  But yet—­but yet—­the responsibility, the anxiety, the ceaseless fretting care!  This fierce, unbroken city";—­he spoke of it as though it were a newly-lassoed and untamed mustang,—­I liked the simile; “this lawless, blasphemous, obscene, and dangerous community; these sights of heartlessness and cruelty; these sounds of selfish, greedy contention; the absence of all taste and culture,—­no lines of beauty, no strains of music, no tones of kindness, no gestures of gentleness and grace, no delicate attentions, no ladies’ presence, no social circle, no books, no home, no church;—­Good God! what a heathenish barbarism of coarse instincts, and irreverence, and insulting equalities, and all manner of gracelessnesses, to bring the dangerous impressionability of fine childhood to!  The boy was nervous, sensitive, of a spirit quick to take alarms or hurts,—­physically unprepared to wrestle with arduous toil, privation, and exposure,—­most apt for the teachings of gentleness and taste.  It was cruel to think—­he could wish him dead first—­that his clean, white mind must become smeared and spotted here, his well-tuned ear reconciled to loud discords, and his fine eye at peace with deformity; but there was no help for it.”  And then, as though he had suddenly detected in my face an expression of surprised discovery, he said, “But I am sure I do not know how I came to say so much, or let myself be tedious with sickly egotisms to a polite, but indifferent, stranger.  If you have gathered from them more than I meant should appear, you will at least do me the justice to believe that I have not been boasting of what I regard as a calamity.”

I essayed to reassure him by urging upon his consideration the manifest advantages of courage, self-reliance, ingenuity, quick and economical application of resources, independence, and perseverance, which his son, if well-trained, must derive from even those rude surroundings,—­at the same time granting the necessity of sleepless vigilance and severe restraints.  But he only shook his head sadly, and said, “No doubt, no doubt; and I hope, Sir, the fault is in myself, that I do not appreciate the force and value of all that.”