Thyrsis saw that a partial explanation lay in the fact that in
connection with the university there existed a great theological
seminary. Some of these future ministers came also to the
boarding-house, and Thyrsis listened to their shop-talk--about the
difference between “transubstantiation” and “consubstantiation”, and
the status of the controversy over the St. John Gospel. He heard one man
cite arguments from Paley’s “Moral Philosophy”; and another making
bold to state that he was uncertain about the verbal inspiration of the
Pentateuch!
To Thyrsis, as he listened to these discussions, it was as if he felt
a black shadow stealing across his soul. He wondered why he should hate
these men with a personal hatred; he tried to argue with himself that
they must be well-meaning and earnest. The truth was that they seemed to
him just like the law-students, men moved by sordid and low ideals; the
only difference was that their minds were not so keen as the lawyers’.
Thyrsis was coming little by little to understand the economic causes
of things, and he perceived that this theological world represented a
stagnant place in the stream of national culture; it being a subsidized
world, maintained half by charity, vital men turned from it; it drew
to itself the feebler minds, or such as wished to live at ease, and not
inquire too closely into the difference between truth and falsehood.
Section 15. A few miles out from the town Thyrsis found a farm with
an abundance of wild woodland, where the farmer gave him permission to
camp. And so he went back and got some lumber, and loaded his tent and
supplies on a wagon, and wrote Corydon that he would meet her the next
afternoon. With the help of the farmer’s boy he labored the rest of the
day at building the platform, and putting up the tent, and getting their
belongings in order. The next day he was up at dawn, constructing tables
and stands; and later on he hired the farmer’s “jagger-wagon”, and drove
in for Corydon and Cedric and the trunks.
It was a glorious spring day, of turquoise sky and glinting sunshine;
and later, when the sun was low, the woods were flushed with a glow of
scarlet and purple. It lent a glory to the scene, shedding a halo about
the commonest tasks; the unpacking of blankets and dishes, the ranging
of groceries upon shelves. They were free from all the world at
last--they were setting out upon the journey of their lives together!
So it was with singing and laughter that they went at their work. The
baby crawled about on the tent-floor and got into everybody’s way, and
crowed with delight at the novel surroundings; and later on his mother
gave him his supper and put him to bed; and then she spread a feast of
bread and butter, and fresh milk and eggs and a can of fruit, and they
sat down to the first meal they had eaten together in many a long, long
month.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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