There & Back by MacDonald, George, 1824-1905

"You don't see what I'm drivin' at, sonny!--When an old tale comes to me from the far-away time, I don't pitch it into the road, any more'n I would an old key or an old shoe--a horse-shoe, I mean: it was something once, and it may be something again! I hang the one up, and turn the other over. An' if you be strong set on throwin' either away, lad, I misdoubt me you an' me won't blaze together like _one_ flamin' sword!"

Richard held his peace. The old man had already somehow impressed him. If he had not, like his father, bid good-bye to superstition, there was in him a power that was not in his father--a power like that he found in his favourite books.

"Mind what he says, and do what he tells you, and you'll get on splendid!" his mother had said as he came away.

"Don't be afraid of him, but speak up: he'll like you the better for it," his father had counselled. "I should never have married your mother if I'd been afraid of him."

Richard, trying to follow both counsels, got on with his grandfather better than fairly.

CHAPTER VII.

_COMPARISONS._

All things belong to every man who yields his selfishness, which is his one impoverishment, and draws near to his wealth, which is humanity--not humanity in the abstract, but the humanity of friends and neighbours and all men. Selfishness, I repeat, whether in the form of vanity or greed, is our poverty. John Tuke, being a clever man without a spark of genius, worshipped _faculty_ as he called it--worshipped it where he was most familiar with it--that is, in his own mind and its operations, in his own hands and their handiwork. His natural atmosphere, however, was, happily, goodwill and kindliness: else the scorn of helplessness which sprang from his worship, would have supplied the other pole to his selfishness.