There was, indeed, a very pathetic kind of harking back on the
might-have-beens when I talked with him on this subject. He had
reconciled himself in a way to the inevitable, and, like a sensible
man, was now inclined to make the most and the best of it. The
marriage, which, on the report of it, had been but a new
disappointment to him, had, as if by magic, been transformed into a
blessing in his mind and his wife's by personal contact with Fanny
Van der Griff Stevenson, which no one who ever met her could wonder
at; but, nevertheless, his dream of seeing his only son walking in
the pathways of the Stevensons, and adorning a profession in
Edinburgh, and so winning new and welcome laurels for the family
and the name, was still present with him constantly, and by
contrast, he was depressed with contemplation of the real state of
the case, when, as I have said, I pointed out to him, as more than
once I did, what an influence his son was wielding now, not only
over those near to him, but throughout the world, compared with
what could have come to him as a lighthouse engineer, however
successful, or it may be as a briefless advocate or barrister,
walking, hardly in glory and in joy, the Hall of the Edinburgh
Parliament House. And when I pictured the yet greater influence
that was sure to come to him, he only shook his head with that
smile which tells of hopes long-cherished and lost at last, and of
resignation gained, as though at stern duty's call and an honest
desire for the good of those near and dear to him. It moved me
more than I can say, and always in the midst of it he adroitly, and
somewhat abruptly, changed the subject. Such penalties do parents
often pay for the honour of giving geniuses to the world. Here,
again, it may be true, "the individual withers but the world is
more and more."