t only the books lent him by the doctor, but those
he bought of Mr. Sprott. As for the bombs and shells against religion
which the tinker carried in his bag, Lenny was not induced to blow
himself up with them. He had been reared from his cradle in simple love
and reverence for the Divine Father, and the tender Saviour, whose life
beyond all records of human goodness, whose death beyond all epics of
mortal heroism, no being whose infancy has been taught to supplicate
the Merciful and adore the Holy, yea, even though his later life may be
entangled amidst the thorns of some desolate pyrrhonism, can ever hear
reviled and scoffed without a shock to the conscience and a revolt of
the heart. As the deer recoils by instinct from the tiger, as the very
look of the scorpion deters you from handling it, though you never saw
a scorpion before, so the very first line in some ribald profanity on
which the tinker put his black finger made Lenny's blood run cold. Safe,
too, was the peasant boy from any temptation in works of a gross and
licentious nature, not only because of the happy ignorance of his rural
life, but because of a more enduring safeguard,--genius! Genius,
that, manly, robust, healthful as it be, is long before it lose its
instinctive Dorian modesty; shamefaced, because so susceptible to
glory,--genius, that loves indeed to dream, but on the violet bank, not
the dunghill. Wherefore, even in the error of the senses, it seeks to
escape from the sensual into worlds of fancy, subtle and refined. But
apart from the passions, true genius is the most practical of all human
gifts. Like the Apollo, whom the Greek worshipped as its type, even
Arcady is its exile, not its home. Soon weary of the dalliance of Tempe,
it ascends to its mission,--the Archer of the silver bow, the guide of
the car of light. Speaking more plainly, genius is the enthusiasm for
self-improvement; it ceases or sleeps the moment it desists from seeking
some object which it believes of value, and by that object it insensibly
connects its self-improvement with the positive advance of the world.
At present Lenny's genius had no bias that was not to the Positive
and Useful. It took the direction natural to its sphere, and the wants
therein,--namely, to the arts which we call mechanical. He wanted to
know about steam-engines and Artesian wells; and to know about them it
was necessary to know something of mechanics and hydrostatics; so he
bought popular elementary w