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Just as Mr. Champ Effingham left Williamsburg, by the
western road—his splendid animal careering at full gallop in
obedience to his rider's spur—a young man entered the
town from the south on foot, and directed his steps toward
the Raleigh Tavern. He soon reached the long platform in
front of the inn, and entered the ordinary.

He was about to address some question to the portly
landlord, when turning his eyes to the opposite side of the
room, he saw seated in one of the large leathern chairs, a
man whose face seemed to excite some slumbering thought
in his mind, for he passed his hand over his brow, and seemed
to question his memory. This man, who was reading the
last issue of the “Virginia Gazette” with some interest,
seemed to be verging on thirty, and did not appear to be
above the rank of what then were called yeomen. His
crisp hair was curled up beneath the ears, outwardly: his
mouth had in it a world of character, though it was rather
stern: and his forehead, very broad and high, was tanned
and freckled. He was clad in coarse leather breeches, leggings,
a long fustian waistcoat, and coat of shaggy cloth,
without a particle of ornament, then almost universal in the
costume of gentlemen. Over his shoulders was hung loosely
an old red cloak, and his slouch hat lay by him on the rude
pine table.

The new comer took in all these details with a single
glance, and was about to turn away, when, raising his eyes,
the stranger saw him looking at him.

He rose, and extended a hard, brown hand, saying:

“Ah, sir! good-day, I believe we are acquaintances,
though I fear you have forgotten me.”

“No sir,” said the new comer, “I recognized you at
once.”

“Because you found me an agitator of ideas, like yourself
on our last meeting—which I believe was also our first.
You will recollect we met some days since near the Capitol,
when Parson Tag took politely from your hand the `

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Gazette,' you had just purchased `to look at it,' he said:
in return for which courtesy you gave him some original
ideas.”

“I did not obtrude them,” said his companion, calmly,
“he questioned me, and I replied.”

“Yes, and he treated your crudities, as he called them,
with well-bred contempt, when he found an opportunity to
turn his back on you.”

“I was not offended, sir. He had a perfect right to
turn to those gentlemen who bowed to him.”

“Offended! I should say that would be a loss of time
with a parson, not to mention the deadly sin.” As he uttered
these words, a grim curl of the lip betrayed the irony
of the speaker.

“The fact is,” he added, “you gave him, as I said,
some original views on the subject of education; and he did
not seem to relish them from a gentleman clad, like yourself,
in drab and fustian.”

“Well, well, sir,” said the other, “perhaps he was
right. Men of my class are not generally worth listening
to on matters of policy, as I feel I am not—he is a cultivated
scholar.”

“Bah!” said the man in the red cloak, good-humoredly,
“mind is mind, sir, and it matters little whether the
frame be covered with fustian or cut velvet, the head with
a gold-laced hat or a slouch, like mine there; the man,
weak or strong, remains.”

His companion felt again the strange influence of that
voice, at once careless and earnest, laughing and grave; a
singular sympathy seemed to have already sprung up between
these two men, spite of their acquaintance of yesterday.

“Now,” said the stranger, wrapping his old cloak about
his shoulders, “I find in you a thinking man—you scarcely
reflect about classes and dresses, I venture to say. You
have walked far this morning?” he added.

“Yes, that is, some miles,” replied the young man,
somewhat at a loss to understand this abrupt question.

“You are dusty.”

“Yes; the sand is dry.”

“Well, did you think of that dust as you came along?”

“I believe not, my thoughts were elsewhere.”

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“Good, that is what I mean. The squire riding in his
coach has his book, or takes his nap; you can't read or
nap walking—the consequence? why you must think.”

The young man sat down to rest; that coarse yet musical
voice drew him in spite of himself.

“It remains to tell me what you were thinking of as
you came along, friend,” added the stranger; “come, let
us talk unreservedly. Let us clash our minds together, and
see if some sparks do not spring forth. What were you
thinking of?”

“Well, I can tell you easily,” said his companion; “I
was reflecting upon the system of education we spoke of
some days since.”

“Oh, I recollect. Your free school ideas?”

“Yes.”

“Broached to the parson?”

“Yes.”

“They were striking, I confess, but wholly out of the
question.”

“Out of the question?”

“Certainly; is it possible that a man of your clearness
of head—let us speak like friends, and as roughly and honestly
as we can—is it possible that you could for a moment be in
favor of such a doctrine as you stated, that the men of property
should put their hands into their pockets to take out money
for people they know nothing of, to support free schools;
to give a premium for idleness? That, I think, is what you
said they were bound to do, the other day.”

“Well, sir,” said the young man, looking at his interlocutor
with some surprise, “I am still of that opinion.”

“It is Utopian!”

“Utopian?”

“Yes, as impossible as it is unjust,” said the stranger.

“You are then of the past, instead of the future,” said
his companion, with noble simplicity, “I am sorry that I
misunderstood you so completely.”

“Of the future? Oh, yes, I understand you. Well, I
did take your part, as was natural:” the speaker pronounced
this word, nat'ral, “but my only end was to draw out the
parson. Do not think that, on that account, I a am reformer,
as you are, sir.”

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“Yes, sir: had I the power to make my words felt I
would be a reformer.”

“Take care, reform is often merely change: and change
for the worse. You would reform, what?”

“Nearly every thing; but originate more.”

“Ah, we return to the question of education.”

“A paramount question.”

“Your darling Utopia—above all the rest.”

“My thought always—yes.”

“Nothing was ever more visionary,” said the man in the
red cloak, “excuse my plainness: but I do not even see any
necessity for such a system, leaving the possibility of founding
it entirely out of the question.”

“No necessity, sir!”

“There is very little popular ignorance in Virginia—”

“Very little!” interrupted the other with animated
looks, “you deceive yourself! It is immense! From the
indented servant who drives his master's coach, to the yeoman
who toils with the sweat running from his brow, all is
ignorance, darkness and gloom. The children grow up like
wild beasts, the animal cultivated in place of the soul—the
man is but the larger child—as ignorant and more dangerous.”

“Dangerous, did you say?”

“Yes, dangerous! dangerous as a wild animal is dangerous
to approach: dangerous as a marsh is to tread upon!
This mind, which holds so much of richness and God-given,
inherent capability of improvement, is a mere morass; tread
on it, it will ingulf you!—a morass covered with poisonous
flowers, festering with decayed vegetation, lit up only by
dancing fires—a dance of death! But, clear this morass:—
drain it, expose it to light, and it will fecundate. Light, light
is what it wants, what it cries for despairingly; and no answer
is vouchsafed to it.”

“You wish government to answer it, eh?”

“Yes, I would have government to change the animal into
a human being, the wolf into a civilized man.”

“Now you make us all wolves,” said the man in the red
cloak, “how are men animals, sir?”

“Why, who that has opened the records of the world, for
an instant even, could controvert it? The normal condition

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is animal—the spirit is there, God be thanked! but it flickers,
glimmers, burns faintly in the poisonous miasma. Still
environed by a thousand foes it lives on. Encourage it never
so little and it flames aloft in clear heavenly radiance!
what a noble field for those who love the race, and have the
power to benefit these souls steeped in gloom. For this
poor feeble existence is a soul—it will never die!—the responsibility
of leaving that soul to struggle alone and unaided
against its foes seems to me dreadful, sir! It seems to
me that God will some day ask of those men who had the
power and did not use it, what he asked of Cain: `Where is
thy brother?' If they have not struck the blow themselves,
they have allowed the better part of men to be overcome
within them, and this spiritual murder will lie at their doors.
That better part moans and mutters its inarticulate despair,
the very life-blood arrested in the veins by this nightmare of
ignorance and darkness, which, squatting upon its breast,
makes it writhe and groan and toss, in the deep darkness.
The more I reflect upon this thing, the more dreadful does it
seem to me. There are thousands who have never known
the means of salvation—pagans in this Virginia of to-day.
Christ has wept tears of blood for them in vain: his hands
were not pierced for them, they never heard of him—mere
heathen men—there within a stone's throw of us. Is it not
dreadful?”

The thinker carried away by his excitement, had risen
from his seat, and now stood erect before the man in the red
cloak, who seemed to regard him with that philosophic interest
which a naturalist takes in a new species of animal.

“Well, well,” he said, “there is much truth in your
views, but they do not convince me. Governments, my
friend, are rather selfish, it seems to me; and though we
common people here discussing them, pride ourselves upon
our fine and noble views, I fancy we should act much after
the same fashion were we in power. Good policy would keep
us from testing these elevated ideas.

“No, never!” said his companion; “I cannot agree
with you. Rather is it a most false and narrow policy to
trample thus on the low.”

“Why, pray?” said the stranger, who seemed to have
no end beyond making the other talk.

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“Because ignorance is the most fatal of all curses to
rulers. The ignorant soul is the prey of demagogues and
false leaders—it is a sea which any wind will lash into foam.
The little history which I have read has been read in vain,
if it has not shown me that an ignorant and uncultivated
people are the most dangerous of all. You see the great
mass every day, and do not look at it from your elevation—
you are ruler! Well, sir, some day, that great ocean will
be agitated by some popular grievance, it will rise in its
might—as strong as it is ignorant—and, with its world of
fury, it will burst your vain dykes, and bury you and your
government for ever.”

The stranger looked at the speaker with the same curious
expression.

“You have thought much upon this subject, sir,” he said.

“Yes,” said the other, “often and deeply. I must have
wearied you, and I shall now permit you to return to your
paper, sir. Free schools—the form in which I would have
this vast evil attacked—are not, to all, the absorbing subject
of thought which they are to myself.”

“Oh, no; you have given me thoughts. I have listened
with attention,” said the stranger; “I do not live in Williamsburg,
and am thankful for the time and society you
give me. I am one of the people myself, and, though I
have a smattering of Latin, and some reading, feel, in my
own person, the truth of many of your remarks.”

“I did not mean, believe me—”

“Come, come, don't let us interchange any compliments,”
said the stranger, with a laugh; “we understand each
other—there is something like sympathy between us.”

“Yes, from our first meeting I have felt it.”

“You are more of a student than myself, doubtless,”
said the stranger; “I recognize in you the patient worker.
For myself, I am very indolent, and would rather play the
violin, or hunt, or fish, than study.”

“But you think—reflect.”

“Yes,” said the stranger, “much.”

And his wandering, careless eye became steadfast, and
full of steady strength. There was wonderful clearness in it,
and that proud and lofty glance peculiar to men born to
lead and rule, did not escape the attention of his companion.

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It was the eye of the eagle looking down from the clouds
upon men and things, the past and present; old things and
new; the glance of fire, which, rejecting petty details, and
piercing the heaviest mist, caught the central idea, the living
fact, then turned to renew itself at the great source of light.
The thinker felt that the stranger was greater than he
seemed, greater than he even knew himself. He felt that
this ungainly man, clad so rudely, and speaking with such a
clownish accent, was a born leader of men—a thinker of
new thoughts.

“Yes,” the stranger added, “I reflect much, and my
conclusions would, perhaps, astound the parsons more than
your own ideas have done, sir. At a more opportune moment,
I hope to interchange thoughts with you upon some
of the vital questions which affect this age and country now.
I recognize in you a spirit which sympathizes with my own—
a nature like my own—for I am a man of the people.
You shall give me your ideas—I will give you my own.
Who knows that from this collision of thought fire may not
dart. You do not know me by name or condition, sir; I
know as little of yourself: still, mind speaks to mind, and
recognizes its co-worker. And if, in future, occasions shall
arise, which require bold hearts and hands, I shall come to
you, and claim your aid, without fear of refusal, as without
dread of the result.”

With which words the man in the red cloak put on his
old slouch hat, made an awkward bow, and with a gait, which
was half stride, half shamble, went out of the Raleigh, and
disappeared. Charles Waters stood, for some moments,
looking thoughtfully after him: then, arousing himself, turned
to the landlord, and asked for Miss Hallam. The landlord
pointed through the door: the young girl was just going
up stairs, having returned from rehearsal, and her visitor followed
her.