The judgment of the wise world is not always correct.
It assumes that these strange folk never hear the call of the blood.
When John C. Calhoun was a student at Yale, his comrades, returning
at midnight from a wild time, found him at his books. "Why don't you
come out, John, and be a man? You'll never be young again."
"I regard my work as more important," said John quietly. Milton's
bitter cry
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?
shows that it was not the absence of temptation, but a tremendously
powerful will, that kept him at his desk. When a spineless milksop
becomes a missionary, when a gawk sticks to his books, when an ugly
woman becomes a nun, the world makes no objection; but when a
socially prominent man goes in for missions or scholarship, when a
lovely girl takes the veil, the wise world says, "Ah, what a pity!"
Browning's Grammarian did not take up scholarship as a last resort.
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