Note 18 — Chapter XIV · THE EXILE OF DAPITAN

Upon such a spirit the horrors of exile must have weighed little. In a region strange, at that time uncouth and, compared with many in “your Oriental Eden Isles,” unattractive, he offers to the world an unaccustomed figure of the outcast. He went without repining to regular and useful work while he understood well enough that he was a sacrificial offering and fated to be so; the hatred and contempt of the reactionary Interests were concentrated upon him; he was victimized for his countrymen. Only two privations seemed poignant to him. He longed for his family; he missed his books. With these, it appears, he would have been content, eying cheerfully the fate that seemed to have at last defined his career; for he had little doubt he should end his days on this lonely shore. For consolation in his spiritual lack, he turned to his arts and modeled assiduously; some of the most marvelous of his sculptures belong to this period. Among them the bust of Father Guerrico18 that was exhibited years afterward at the St. Louis Exposition, and won a gold medal there.19 He was the spontaneous artist that without conscious effort descries beauty in commonplace things. Opposite his dwelling a native woman, bent upon one knee, was cleaning the street for a coming festival. Something in her pose and garmenture struck him as a graceful characteristic; he modeled her as she labored.20 From memory he modeled busts and medallions of men he had known in Europe and Asia; in his sketch-book he preserved effects he noticed in sky, sea, and woods. He returned to poetic composition and produced now some of the most beautiful of his works. More than this in armor of patience the Stoics themselves could demand nothing. How many Highland Scotch have stood upon the sands of France and sighed away their souls northward? And how often have the sympathetic thought with compassion of the English pioneers in early America, of the Pilgrim fathers that first bleak winter, of Hugo in Jersey and Napoleon chained to his rock? This man hunted out the beauties of exile, made them his friends and companions, taught his pupils, made poetry, carved statues, loved his fellows, and thanked God.