The era had not yet dawned when every scribbler is
consumed with the vain ambition of being recognized, not, indeed, as
what he is, but as what he pictures himself in his secret sessions of
thought. That disease could hardly attack him while yet his very
imaginations recoiled from the thought of the inimical presence of a
stranger consciousness. Whether this was modesty, or had its hidden base
in conceit, I am, with the few insights I have had into his mind, unable
to determine.
That he had leisure for the indulgence of his bent was the result of his
peculiar position. He lived in the house of his father, and was in his
father's employment, so that he was able both to accommodate himself to
his father's requirements and at the same time fully indulge his own
especial taste. The elder Macintosh was a banker in one of the larger
county towns of Scotland--at least, such is the profession and position
there accorded by popular consent to one who is, in fact, only a
bank-agent, for it is a post involving a good deal of influence and a
yet greater responsibility. Of this responsibility, however, he had
allowed his son to feel nothing, merely using him as a clerk, and
leaving him, as soon as the stated hour for his office-work expired,
free in mind as well as body, until the new day should make a fresh
claim upon his time and attention. His mother seldom saw him except at
meals, and, indeed, although he always behaved dutifully to her, there
was literally no intercommunion of thought or feeling between them--a
fact which probably had a good deal to do with the undeveloped condition
in which Hector found, or rather, did not find himself.
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