The Day of His Youth

								

Ernest Hume, he had bound himself the more irrevocably to right living
by renouncing artificial bonds. He had removed his son from the world,
and he had thereby taken upon himself the necessity of becoming a
better world. Therefore he did not allow himself in any sense to rust
out. He did a colossal amount of mental burnishing; and, a gentleman by
nature, he adopted a daily purity of speech and courtesy of manner
which were less like civilized life than the efflorescence of chivalry
at its best. He had chosen for himself a part; by his will, a Round
Table sprang up in the woods, though two knights only were to hold
counsel there.
The conclusion of the story--so far as a story is ever concluded--must
be found in the words of Francis Hume. Before he was twenty, his
strength began stirring within him, and he awoke, not to any definite
discontent, but to that fever of unrest which has no name. Possibly a
lad of different temperament might not have kept housed so long; but he
was apparently dreamy, reflective, in love with simple pleasures, and,
though a splendid young animal, inspired and subdued by a thrilling
quality of soul. And he woke up. How he awoke may be learned only from
his letters.
These papers have, by one of the incredible chances of life, come into
my hands. I see no possible wrong in their publication, for now the
Humes are dead, father and son; nay, even the name adopted here was not
their own. They were two slight bubbles of being, destined to rise, to
float for a time, and to be again resolved into the unknown sea. Yet
while they lived, they were iridescent; the colors of a far-away sun
played upon them, and they sent him back his gleams. To lose them
wholly out of life were some pain to those of us who have been
privileged to love them through their own written confessions. So here
are they given back to the world which in no other way could adequately
know them.
[Sidenote: Francis Hume to the Unknown Friend[1]]



      [1] This title is adopted by the editor that the narrative may be

      at least approximately clear. The paragraphs headed thus were

      scribblings on loose sheets: a sort of desultory journal.
I never had a friend! Did any human creature twenty years old ever
write that before, unless he did it in a spirit of bitterness because
he was out of humor with his world? Yet I can say it, knowing it to be
the truth. My father and I are one, the oak and its branch, the fern
and its fruitage; but for somebody to be the mirror of my own thoughts,
tantalizingly strange, intoxicatingly new, where shall I look? Ah, but
I know! I will create him from my own longings. He shall be born of the
blood and sinew of my brain and heart. Stand forth, beautiful one, made
in the image of my fancy, and I will tell thee all--all I am ashamed to
tell my father, and tired of imprisoning in my own soul. What shall I
call thee? Friend: that will be enough, all-comprehending and rich in