CHAPTER XXVIII. HOW MR. SCANLAN GIVES SCOPE TO A GENEROUS IMPULSE It is a remark of Wieland's, that although the life of man is measured by the term of fourscore years and ten, yet that his ideal existence or, as he calls it, his “unacted life,” meaning thereby his period of dreamy, projective, and forecasting existence, would occupy a far wider space. And he goes on to say that it is in this same imaginative longevity men differ the most from each other, the poet standing to the ungifted peasant in the ratio of centuries to years. Mr. Maurice Scanlan would not appear a favorable subject by which to test this theory. If not endowed with any of the higher and greater qualities of intellect, he was equally removed from any deficiency on that score. The world called him “a clever fellow,” and the world is rarely in fault in such judgments. Where there is a question of the creative faculties, where it is the divine essence itself is the matter of decision, the world will occasionally be betrayed into mistakes, as fashion and a passing enthusiasm may mislead it; but where it is the practical and the real, the exercise of gifts by which men make themselves rich and powerful, then the world makes no blunders. She knows them as a mother knows her children. They are indeed the “World's own.” We have come to these speculations by contemplating Mr. Scanlan as he sat with Mary Martin's open letter before him. The note was couched in polite terms, requesting Mr. Scanlan to favor the writer with a visit at his earliest convenience, if possible early on the following morning. Had it been a document of suspected authenticity, a forged acceptance, an interpolated article in a deed, a newly discovered codicil to a will, he could not have canvassed every syllable, scrutinized every letter, with more searching zeal. It was hurriedly written; there was, therefore, some emergency. It began, “Dear sir,” a style she had never employed before; the letter “D” was blotted, and seemed to have been originally destined for an “M,” as though she had commenced “Miss Martin requests,” etc., and then suddenly adopted the more familiar address. The tone of command by which he was habitually summoned to Cro' Martin was assuredly not there, and Maurice was not the man to undervalue the smallest particle of evidence. “She has need of me,” cried he to himself; “she sees everything in a state of subversion and chaos around her, and looks to me as the man to restore order. The people are entreating her to stay law proceedings, to give them time, to employ them; the poorest are all importuning her with stories of their sufferings. She is powerless, and, what's worse, she does not know what it is to be powerless to help them. She'll struggle and fret and scheme, and plan fifty things, and when she has failed in them all, fall back upon Maurice Scanlan for advice and counsel.”