A pudgy antiquarian is a
thing unheard of since monastic days, when annal making was not deemed
out of place if mingled with the rotund jollity of a Friar Tuck. You
must bear half the blame, for it must be the butter habit that your
Martha Corkle's fresh churned pats inoculated me with, for I always
detested the stuff before.
"Graybeard's stricture, however, struck a deeper chord--'He has material
in plenty for his book, but no vital stimulus.' This, too, is deeply
true, and I have felt it vaguely so for some time, but no more realized
it than I did my pudginess.
"No matter how much material one collects, if the vitalizing spirit is
not there, no matter how realistically the stage may be set if the actors
are mere dummies. The only use of the past is to illuminate and sustain
the present.
"Your own home life and work, the honest questions of little Richard and
Ian waken me from a long sleep, I believe, and set me thinking. What is
a man remembered by the longest? Brain work, memorial building, or heart
touching? Do you recollect once meeting old Moore--Clement Clark
Moore--at my father's? He was a profound scholar in Greek and Hebrew
lexicology, and gave what was once his country house and garden in old
Chelsea Village to the theological seminary of his professorship. How
many people remember this, or his scholarship? But before that old
rooftree was laid low, he wrote beneath it, quite offhand, a little
poem, 'The Night Before Christmas,' that blends with childhood's dreams
anew each Christmas Eve--a few short verses holding more vitality than
all his learning.
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