James had the same nervously anxious nature, the same intense feeling of responsibility, the same tendency towards morbid earnestness; and on that day there had come collision.
His father had poured forth upon him his fears and apprehensions in a manner which implied a censure on his son, as being willing to accept a life of scholarly ease while his father and mother were, as he expressed it, "working their lives away." "But I tell you, father, as God is my witness, I _mean_ to pay all; you shall not suffer; interest and principal--all that my work would bring--I engage to pay back." "You!--you'll never have anything! You'll be a poor man as long as you live.

Lost the Academy this Fall--that tells the story!" "But, father, it wasn't my fault that I lost the Academy." "It's no matter whose fault it was--that's neither here nor there--you lost it, and here you are with the vacation before you and nothing to do! There's your mother, she's working herself to death; she never gets any rest.

I expect she'll go off in a consumption one of these days." "There, there, father! that's enough! Please don't say any more.

You'll see I _will_ find something to do!" There are words spoken at times in life that do not sound bitter though they come from a pitiable depth of anguish, and as James turned from his father he had taken a resolution that convulsed him with pain; his strong arms quivered with the repressed agony, and he hastily sought a distant part of the field, and began cutting and stacking corn-stalks with a nervous energy.
"Why, ye work like thunder!" was Biah's comment.

"Book l'arnin' hain't spiled ye yet; your arms are good for suthin'." "Yes, my arms are good for something, and I'll use them for something," said Jim.
There was raging a tempest in his soul.