A Singular Life

There were seven of them at the table that day, and they were talking about heredity. At least they were talking about whatever stood for heredity at the date of our history. The word had penetrated to religious circles at the time; but it was still interpreted with a free personal translation.

Perhaps there is no greater curiosity of its kind than that of a group of theological students (chiefly in their junior year) discussing science. It is not certain that the tendencies of the Seminary club dinner are not in themselves materialistic. The great law of denial belongs to the powerful forces of life, whether the case be one of coolish baked beans, or an unrequited affection. That the thing we have not is the thing we would have, neither you nor I nor the junior may deny; and it is quite probable that these young men set an undue value upon a game dinner and entrées, which was not without its reactionary effect upon their philosophy.

Jaynes, for instance, had been reading Huxley. Jaynes was a stout man, and short, with those round eyeglasses by which oculists delight in deforming round people. He confessed that he was impressed by the argument. He said:--

“Varieties arise, we do not know why; and if it should be probable that the majority of varieties have arisen in a spontaneous manner”--

“A little vinegar, Jaynes, if you please,” interrupted Tompkinton gently. Tompkinton was long and lean. His hair was thin, and scraggled about his ears, which were not small. His hands were thin. His clear blue eye had an absent look. In cold weather he wore an old army cape of his father’s. He studied much without a fire, for the club board at the “short price” cost him two dollars and seventy-five cents a week. His boots were old, and he had no gloves and a cough. He came from the State of New Hampshire.

Then there was Fenton: a snug little fellow, who took honors at Amherst; a man who never spent more than five hundred a year in his life, yet always wore clean linen and a tolerable coat, had a stylish cut to his hair, and went to Boston occasionally to a concert. It was even reported that he had been to see Booth. But the Faculty discredited the report. Besides, he had what was known as “a gift at prayer.”

Fenton was rather a popular man, and when he spoke in answer to Holt (who observed that he considered Huxley’s Descent of Man an infidel book) he was listened to with marked attention.

Holt was in the Special Course. He was a converted brakeman from the Hecla and St. Mary’s, a flourishing Western railway. Holt, being the only student present who had not received any undue measure of collegiate culture, was treated with marked courtesy by his more liberally educated fellow-students.

“We are reading Darwin up at my room, two or three of us, after dinner,” observed Fenton kindly. “We should be happy to have you join us sometimes, Holt.”

Holt blinked at the speaker with that uncertain motion of the eyelids which means half intellectual confusion, and half personal embarrassment. Not a man of these young Christians had smiled; yet the Special Course student, being no natural fool, vaguely perceived that something had gone wrong.

But Fenton was vivaciously discussing last November’s ball games with his vis-à-vis, a middler whose name is unknown to history. It was some time before he said, looking far down the long table:--