The Minister's Charge; Or, The Apprenticeship of Lemuel BarkerHowells, William Dean
General
The Minister's Charge; Or, The Apprenticeship of Lemuel Barker
Howells, William Dean
Boston (Mass.) -- Fiction; Clergy -- Fiction; Poets -- Fiction
Barker walked away from the minister's door without knowing where he
was going, and with a heart full of hot pain. He burned with a confused
sense of shame and disappointment and anger. It had turned out just as
his mother had said: Mr. Sewell would be mighty different in Boston from
what he was that day at Willoughby Pastures. There he made Barker think
everything of his poetry, and now he pretended to tell him that it was
not worth anything; and he kept hinting round that Barker had better go
back home and stay there. Did he think he would have left home if there
had been anything for him to do there? Had not he as much as told him
that he was obliged to find something to make a living by, and help the
rest? What was he afraid of? Was he afraid that Barker wanted to come
and live off _him_? He could show him that there was no great danger. If
he had known how, he would have refused even to stay to dinner.
What made him keep the pictures of these people who had got along, if he
thought no one else ought to try? Barker guessed to himself that if that
Mr. Agassiz had had to get a living off the farm at Willoughby Pastures,
he would have _found_ time to make money. What did Mr. Sewell mean by
speaking of that Nilsson lady by her surname, without any Miss or Mrs.?
Was that the way people talked in Boston?
Mr. Sewell had talked to him as if he were a baby, and did not know
anything; and Barker was mad at himself for having stayed half a minute
after the minister had owned up that he had got the letter he wrote
him. He wished he had said, “Well, that's all I want of _you_, sir,” and
walked right out; but he had not known how to do it. Did they think it
was very polite to go on talking with that woman who laughed so much,
and forget all about him? Pretty poor sort of manners to eat with her
bonnet on, and tell them she hated their victuals.
Barker tried to rage against them in these thoughts, but at the bottom
of all was a simple grief that he should have lost the friend whom he
thought he had in the minister; the friend he had talked of and dreamed
of ever since he had seen and heard him speak those cordial words; the
friend he had trusted through all, and had come down to Boston counting
upon so much. The tears came into his eyes as he stumbled and scuffled
along the brick pavements with his uncouth country walk.
He was walking up a straight, long street, with houses just alike on
both sides and bits of grass before them, that sometimes were gay with
late autumn flowers. A horse-car track ran up the middle, and the cars
seemed to be tinkling by all the time, and people getting on and off.
They were mostly ladies and children, and they were very well dressed.
Sometimes they stared at Barker, as they crossed his way in entering or
issuing from the houses, but generally no one appeared to notice him.
In some of the windows there were flowers in painted pots, and in others
little marble images on stands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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