“I don’t want you to try to be a great man,” he said once. “You might succeed, and then find out you had failed altogether.”
“How could that be, Turkey?” I objected. “A body can’t succeed and fail both at once.”
“A body might succeed,” he replied, “in doing what he wanted to do, and then find out that it was not in the least what he had thought it.”
“What rule are you to follow, then, Turkey?” I asked.
“Just the rule of duty,” he replied. “What you ought to do, that you must do. Then when a choice comes, not involving duty, you know, choose what you like best.”
This is the substance of what he said. If anyone thinks it pedantic, I can only say, he would not have thought so if he had heard it as it was uttered--in the homely forms and sounds of the Scottish tongue.
“Aren’t you fit for something better than farm-work yourself, Turkey?” I ventured to suggest, foolishly impelled, I suppose, to try whether I could not give advice too.
“It’s _my_ work,” said Turkey, in a decisive tone, which left me no room for rejoinder.
This conversation took place in the barn, where Turkey happened to be thrashing alone that morning. In turning the sheaf, or in laying a fresh one, there was always a moment’s pause in the din, and then only we talked, so that our conversation was a good deal broken. I had buried myself in the straw, as in days of old, to keep myself warm, and there I lay and looked at Turkey while he thrashed, and thought with myself that his face had grown much more solemn than it used to be. But when he smiled, which was seldom, all the old merry sweetness dawned again. This was the last long talk I ever had with him. The next day I returned for the examination, was happy enough to gain a small scholarship, and entered on my first winter at college.
My father wrote to me once a week or so, and occasionally I had a letter with more ink than matter in it from one of my younger brothers. Tom was now in Edinburgh, in a lawyer’s office. I had no correspondence with Turkey. Mr. Wilson wrote to me sometimes, and along with good advice would occasionally send me some verses, but he told me little or nothing of what was going on.
It was a Saturday morning, very early in April, when I climbed the mail-coach to return to my home for the summer; for so the university year is divided in Scotland. The sky was bright, with great fleecy clouds sailing over it, from which now and then fell a shower in large drops. The wind was keen, and I had to wrap myself well in my cloak. But my heart was light, and full of the pleasure of ended and successful labour, of home-going, and the signs which sun and sky gave that the summer was at hand.