"All in time, mother! I am to stay here with you until I am fitted to go higher. You know what Mr. Jefferson has said to me. I am for Washington, mother, one of these days--for I hold it sure that Mr. Jefferson will go there in some still higher place. He was my father's friend, and is ours still."
"It may be that you will go to Washington, my son," said his mother; "I do not know. But will you stay there? The forest will call to you all your life--all your life! Do I not know you, then? Can I not see your life--all your life--as plainly as if it were written? Do I not know--your mother? Why should not your mother know?"
He looked around at her rather gravely once again, unsmilingly, for he rarely smiled.
"How do you know, mother? What do you know? Tell me--about myself! Then I will tell you also. We shall see how we agree as to what I am and what I ought to do!"
"My son, it is no question of what you ought to do, for that blends too closely in fate with what you surely will do--must do--because it was written for you. Yonder forest will always call to you." She turned now toward the sun, sinking across the red-leaved forest lands. "The wilderness is your home. You will go out into it and return--often; and then at last you will go and not come back again--not to me--not to anyone will you come back."
The youth did not move as she sat, her hands on his head. Her voice went on, even and steady.
"You are old, Meriwether Lewis! It is time, now. You are a man. You always were a man! You were born old. You never have been a boy, and never can be one. You never were a child, but always a man. When you were a baby, you did not smile; when you were a boy, you always had your way. My boy, a long time ago I ceased to oppose that will of yours--I knew that it was useless. But, ah, how I have loved that will when I felt it was behind your promise! I knew you would do what you had set for yourself to do. I knew you would come back with deeds in your hand, my boy--gained through that will which never would bend for me or for anyone else in the world!"
He remained motionless, apparently unaffected, as his mother went on.
"You were always old, always grown up, always resolved, always your own master--always Meriwether Lewis. When you were born, you were not a child. When the old nurse brought you to me--I can see her black face grinning now--she carried you held by the feet instead of lying on her arm. You stood, you were so strong! Your hair was dark and full even then. You were old! In two weeks you turned where you heard a sound--you recognized sight and sound together, as no child usually does for months. You were beautiful, my boy, so strong, so straight--ah, yes!--but you never were a boy at all. When you should have been a baby, you did not weep and you did not smile. I never knew you to do so. From the first, you always were a man."