He had not skimmed so many books as we have, but I fear he had sucked
more. However, his main strength did not lie there. He was not a paper
man, and this--oh! men of paper and oh! C. R. in particular--gave him
a tremendous advantage over you that Sunday evening.
The man whose knowledge all comes from reading accumulates a great
number of what?--facts? No, of the shadows of facts; shadows often so
thin, indistinct and featureless, that, when one of the facts
themselves runs against him in real life, he does not know his old
friend, round about which he has written a smart leader in a journal
and a ponderous trifle in the Polysyllabic Review.
But this sailor had stowed into his mental hold not fact-shadows, but
the glowing facts all alive, O. For thirteen years, man and boy, he
had beat about the globe, with real eyes, real ears, and real brains
ever at work. He had drunk living knowledge like a fish, and at
fountainheads.
Yet, to utter intellectual wealth nobly, two things more are
indispensable the gift of language and a tunable voice, which last
does not always come by talking with tempests.
Well, David Dodd had sucked in a good deal of language from books and
tongues; not, indeed, the Norman-French and demi-Latin and jargon of
the schools, printed for English in impotent old trimestrials for the
further fogification of cliques, but he had laid by a fair store of
the best--of the monosyllables--the Saxon--the soul and vestal fire of
the great English tongue.
Pages:
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55