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Hawthorne, Julian, 1846-1934

"Bressant"

The fact was, his mind was restless and disturbed, and
produced a fever in his blood. Large and powerful as he was, his
physical was largely dependent on his mental well-being, as must always
be the case with persons well organized throughout. He would never have
been so muscular and healthy had his life not been an undisturbed and
self-complacent one. These questions of the heart and emotions were not
salutary to his body, however beneficial otherwise.
At the same time, no one is quite himself who is ill, and doubtless
Bressant would have escaped many of his difficulties, and solved others
with comparatively little trouble, if his faculties had not been untuned
by illness. While he was more open to the influx of all these novel
ideas and problems, he was less able to deal with and dispose of them.
So the professor, while encouraged by the observation of his apparent
progress in the direction of human feeling and emotional warmth, was
concerned to find him falling off in recuperative power.
Sophie was largely to blame for it. Bressant was getting to depend too
much upon her society. He brightened when she came in, and was gloomy
when she went out. He liked to talk and argue with her; to dash waves
of logic, impetuous but subtle, against the rock of her pure intuitions
and steady consistency.


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