But I had gained a friend, and that was a sweet recompense, sweeter
to me, by far, than it is found or felt by schoolboys usually. None
could know or comprehend the force of my attachment--my dependence
upon the attachment of which I felt assured!--none but those who,
with an earnest, impetuous nature like my own--doomed to denial
from the first, and treated with injustice and unkindness--has felt
the pang of a worse privation from the beginning;--the privation
of that sustenance, which is the "very be all and end all" of its
desire and its life--and the denial of which chills and repels its
fervor--throws it back in despondency upon itself--fills it with
suspicion, and racks it with a never-ceasing conflict between its
apprehension and its hopes.
Edgerton supplied a vacuum which my bosom had long felt. He was,
however, very unlike, in most respects, to myself. He was rather
phlegmatic than ardent--slow in his fancies, and shy in his
associations from very fastidiousness. He was too much governed
by nice tastes, to be an active or performing youth; and too much
restrained by them also, to be a popular one. This, perhaps, was
the secret influence which brought us together. A mutual sense
of isolation--no matter from what cause--awakened the sympathies
between us. Our ties were formed, on my part, simply because I was
assured that I should have no rival; and on his, possibly, because
he perceived in my haughty reserve of character, a sufficient
security that his fastidious sensibilities would not be likely to
suffer outrage at my hands. In every other respect our moods and
tempers were utterly unlike. I thought him dull, very frequently,
when he was only balancing between jealous and sensitive tastes;--and
ignorant of the actual, when, in fact, his ignorance simply arose
from the decided preference which he gave to the foreign and
abstract. He was contemplative--an idealist; I was impetuous and
devoted to the real and living world around me, in which I was
disposed to mingle with an eagerness which might have been fatal;
but for that restraint to which my own distrust of all things and
persons habitually subjected me.