The Argosy — page 268: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

254 A Secret of the Sea. “One must learn to creep before one can walk,” said Gerald, with a shrug. ‘But some people never get beyond creeping.——If I were a man, I should certainly strive to get into Parliament,” added Eleanor, a minute or two later. ‘‘ How easy it is for a man to have a noble ambition !” “Then you like a man to be ambitious ?” ‘IT could certainly never look up to anyone who was not so.” “T am afraid that you aim your arrow too high for these common- place days. There are many kinds of ambition that a man may occupy himself with, and yet none of them may be really ignoble: Sir Thomas Dudgeon’s, for instance. It is his ambition to breed superior sheep and oxen—and it 1s decidedly for our benefit that he should do so. I have a friend in Paris who has a crippled sister, and the object of his ambition is the invention of an invalid’s chair that shall be superior to any other. These are not large ambitions, but they are cer- tainly very laudable ones.” “Tf you know the object of a man’s ambition, cannot you from that gauge, to a certain extent at least, the quality of his mind?” ‘Undoubtedly you can, to a certain extent, as you say. But there are many men who keep their ambitious dreams to themselves as closely as they do their bank-book. When such aman dies, the general verdict is that he might have succeeded very much better in life if he had only had a little more ambition, whereas the probability is that he suc- - ceeded so ill because he had too much ambition.” ‘¢T hardly follow you,” said Eleanor. ‘‘ Let us say that such a man’s ambition was to stand on the topmost pinnacle of the Jungfrau ; and because he felt that he had neither the strength nor the skill requisite to carve his way step by step to the summit, rather than content himself with any lesser altitude, he pre- ferred to sit quietly down, dumb and disappointed, among the ignoble crowd at the bottom.” They walked on for a little while in silence. Gerald kept feasting himself with little side-glances at Eleanor’s face. And it was a face well worth looking at. A delicate, slightly aquiline nose ; two eyes of the deepest and tenderest blue, that put you in mind of an Apmil sky when the clouds have divided after a shower; and massive coils of rich flaxen hair that seemed full of stolen sunshine. Her upper lip had a chiselled fineness of curve and outline rarely found among English women, and this feature it was that gave a special distinction to the character of her face. But far before everything else was a prevailing sweetness of expression—a sweetness that was without insipidity, that only served to heighten that delicate verve—the outcome of an ardent and generous nature—which shone through everything she said and did. She had a small basket on her arm this morning, for she had her pensioners already, and was returning from visiting two of them: a poor ecomniclooolkks _ (CO)