A Hard Road to Travel

"Like to some dear, familiar strain,For which we ask and ask again,Ever, in its melodious store,Finding a spell unheard before."

The flaming sword which once guarded the gates of our youthful paradise is not turned against us preventing, as in the case of our first parents, our return to our early homes, as many persons, by keeping at a distance, appear to believe. One can approach this Eden boldly. The password at the gate is Welcome. Any pilgrim like myself will have his astonishment divided between the disclosure made of his own power of recollection and of the unforeseen suggestiveness of the place, when memory faithful to her task unties her budget.

It was a blessing to me to be well born, yet I was born with neither a gold nor a silver spoon in my mouth. My warfare has been at my own charges. While my classmates and associates were enjoying a winter vacation, I taught a country school. There is a choice spot to me. To revisit the earth without viewing that scene and unclasping, there, the book of memory would be like quitting London before one has stood within the shadowed aisles of Westminster or coming back from Italy without entering the gates of the Eternal City.

I thought I had seen mud before but slow progress to the rural school-house gave me a deep experience of it. Any evidence of road making could not be found. There was a track, we could not lose it, yet you could not make much headway in it. The condition of the road conditioned the opening of the school. The roads were three rods wide and often three feet deep, particularly when the frost was coming out of the ground. They then became yeasty, which heaves the sub-soil, and stirs and mixes the surface loam, in preparation for seed sowing in the spring. It was not a time to be abroad. Traveling was then a very different act from that which it has now become. The conditions were beyond conception and utterance. As memory is the recognizing faculty, it identified, on the way, the same old farmhouse hastening indeed to its ruin, the same old fire which glows upon the ample hearth, the same old well thumbed Bible which lies, as ever, upon the altar, the same "old oaken bucket" which hangs in the well. My heart made me so familiar with the neighborhood that I could have mapped it, from recollection, without other aid. The vividness of everything touched me. It was like an experience of reading snowbound in Whittier's old home. It is like standing in the presence of the Lion of Lucerne after being indebted only to memory for a conception of a strange reality. No words can possibly describe the impression. All the men that lived hereabouts were so well known to me that were my imagination strong enough I might almost have seen their ghosts. Many of those I knew in active life had passed the summit and were going down the hill; indeed some have already gone out of sight. The names and works of some of them are now nearly stranded on the stream of time. But they once exercised a powerful influence on the local life of their day. We plodded our way to school and all carried our dinners. At noon-tide we were brought into a fine intimacy.

I never had such close association with boys and girls. Some of the warm-hearted little creatures would exchange portions of their dinner with each other, not for variety only but as an expression of kindly feeling. The generosity of the little people was a very real and fine thing. They give what they want. They love to bestow. It is to them a pleasure and a luxury. When they met on the first day of school it was pathetic to see the intensity of their pleasure on being again with each other. They lived on scattered farms, miles apart, and were gladder to see one another than anybody should be. No one ought to feel so isolated and detached, or, on the other hand, so yoked up with adults as if on the principle of breaking in a colt with a cart-horse. They love to be with those of their own age and kind. They return to the original meaning of fellowship, fellow in the same ship. Many of their interests are the same. Their destination is identical. A young man's social nature craves the companionship of his mates. He is susceptible most of all to the influences of good or evil from young persons of his own age and tastes and ambitions in life. We are told distinctly what "the fellowship of kindred minds" is like.

In one hand, I hold, as I write, that marvel of creative volumes Webster's spelling book, of which more than a million copies are still sold annually. "The boy that stole the apples," as in "Fable First," is still in a composed attitude in the tree just where he placed himself long years ago waiting for "The old man to try what virtue there was in stones." It is remarkable that every individual in school recited from Webster's spelling-book. If I could choose a picture of myself it would be at the time when I sat in a country school-house and had a little Abecedarian that hung down her head and kept one thumb in her mouth, stand at my knee learning letters beginning with the "perpendicular reading" on the alphabetical page and coming later, in an eventful day, to "horizontal reading" beginning, of course, with the monosyllabic and well-remembered words, "Go on." The wonder that abides with me is how those tiny scholars that had only set foot on the first step of learning's ladder, were kept in school after being taught only in three or four brief intervals during the day to know their letters, by sight, and as some one expressed it also by name, for six wearisome hours with nothing doing to enable them to beguile their time. The Kindergarten was yet to be. The scheme of public transportation by which all scholars are assembled at one central point in a township and graded and given instruction by methods adapted to their years had never then come to the attention of the people not even in their dreams. With no slates, no stationery, no desks in front of them, no attention from anyone, their natures as playful as kittens, accustomed to the sweep of the fields, full of animal spirits and frolic, packed for the day in a box-like room when, to use their expression "school's up," out they would rush tumultuously to enjoy God's great and good out-of-doors. To "keep school" my implements of learning were a ruler, a bell, and a Bible. The "district" supplied a water-pail and tin dipper. About midway to recess after "school's in," as a reward for fine behavior, one envied scholar was designated to pass the water. In this common sacrament we all partook, in beautiful communion of spirit, day after day from the same rusty dipper, microbe, baccilli, and other like organisms not being then invented.

As soon as the school was established civilization was safe. Many of the scholars were almost men and women in size, but they were not as old as their stature indicated. A real responsibility fell upon the teacher, for all the training that some young citizens ever had, was obtained in one of these little crowded school-houses that dot the farming communities of the state. Many began an active useful life without troubling any other school, college, or academy. At their freedom year, came to many of them a point where their education stopped and their adult life began. It gave to my work a peculiar interest, as I tried like John Adams, when teaching in Worcester, to regard the school as the world in miniature, that before me were the country's future jury-men, judges, tradesmen, capitalists, law-makers and office-holders. One only had to imagine, what might prove true, that a certain boy was to go upon the bench of the Superior Court, as proved to be the case in one of my classes, that another was to be a titled clergyman, as came true, that others were to be honored in the high administration of executive offices, it turned out to be a fact, in order to stimulate a teacher to that course of effort, without which youth fitted for those respective offices would be lost. What government we had was never called government. I never happened to find any bad boys. A thorough search in the gallery of memory has been made in vain to discover them. Anyway they did not exist to me. I taught branches that I had never myself taken in school. My mind was let out to its limit to keep one day ahead of my classes.

Life was full orbed in that little "knowledge box" as it was sometimes used for meeting by the Society of Friends and so on "fourth day," for a little space of time, school gave way to a Quaker wedding. The very profound and continued silence that preceded the ceremony made it extremely impressive. I shut my eyes and it all comes before me. The beauty of the bride, and the maxim accords with truth, she that is born of beauty is half married, she needs to borrow nothing of her sisters, gave her that attractiveness which conferred an immediate power over others. This beau ideal of a young Quakeress, her simple, modest, consistent apparel, which was chiefly drab, relieved by the use of dark olive colored material, enlisted everyone's attention. Without the aid of priest or magistrate, without prayer or music, after a fitting quiet interval, they took each other by the hand and in the presence of witnesses, among them all the school, including the teacher, solemnly and calmly promised to take each other for husband and wife, to live together in the fear of God, faithfully, so long as they should live. A record was then produced for signatures. It was signed by the happy company, the bride using her new name. After the relatives had signed, good feeling so prevailed that the scholars down to those of few years added their signatures, which detracted nothing from the legality of the document.

"O! not in the halls of the noble and proud,Where fashion assembles her glittering crowd;Where all is in beauty and splendor arrayed,Were the nuptials perform'd of the meek Quaker maid.'Twas there, all unveil'd, save by modesty, stoodThe Quakeress bride, in her pure satin hood;Her charms unadorned by garland or gem,Yet fair as the lily just pluck'd from its stem.The building was humble, yet sacred to HimBefore whom the pomp of religion is dim;Whose presence is not to the temple confined,But dwells with the contrite and lowly of mind."

"O! not in the halls of the noble and proud,Where fashion assembles her glittering crowd;Where all is in beauty and splendor arrayed,Were the nuptials perform'd of the meek Quaker maid.

'Twas there, all unveil'd, save by modesty, stoodThe Quakeress bride, in her pure satin hood;Her charms unadorned by garland or gem,Yet fair as the lily just pluck'd from its stem.

The building was humble, yet sacred to HimBefore whom the pomp of religion is dim;Whose presence is not to the temple confined,But dwells with the contrite and lowly of mind."

Here I formed my strange liking, to which I have to plead guilty, for country boys. These sturdy little men did not complain of their lot though at times it was hard. They had the ring of the genuine coin. With entire naturalness they assumed that they had their own way to make. Their calculations were not based upon a legacy. A young man in need of money who has expectation from an unmarried aunt looks upon toil in a different way from what he would if she had nothing to bestow. "What is the matter with Kansas?" When this question was raised it was found that she had been helped, and by that act she was done for.

Here is the secret of country boys when they go up to the city. They are not done for. The reflex influence of this is often a hindrance. It is not self help. It overlooks economy, enterprise, personal initiative, and intense application. The young man with money usually takes a young partner from the country to get the practical ability and energy. The country home is like a bee-hive for industry in every profitable way. Farm life looks toward more productiveness. Eight or ten hour limits are not observed in days that are from morn to dusk. The country boy does a lot of unrequited labor. He hitches up, breaks out the road, and takes the whole bunch to the evening singing school. He takes off the wagon body, puts it upon runners, and stows it so full of mortal souls that they had to be cautioned, by their parents, as the sons of Jacob were by their father, "not to fall out by the way." Lay a plank on the ground, someone has truly said, and a million people can walk it without thought of losing balance. Lift it twenty-five feet and only one in a thousand will dare to walk it. Lift it one hundred feet and not more than one in a million will venture upon it. Country boys keep their balance near the ground. As persons grow stilted they lose their poise. If they have a disposition to rise higher it is by the old way of climbing, step by step, making each rise count one. They are not at first familiar with the elevator to carry them up and so suppose that their chance is by the stair-case. "One thing I must observe," says an Englishman, writing from Andover, "that I think wants rectifying, and that is their pluming pride when adjoined to apparent poverty." John G. Brady had not only "apparent poverty," but the real thing when deserted by his father, when he was made a ward of a Children's Aid Society. He became governor of Alaska. Some such boys were ravenous for knowledge. They were awkward and uncouth but possessed minds that were bright, vigorous, susceptible, and retentive. It was a joy to teach them.

"You're a colt," said a farmer, "bye and bye you will grow to be a staid old horse. Till you do steady down and lose your coltish tricks I will enter with you into the spirit of your colthood, for I know you're not vicious. There is not a streak of evil in your nature." I saw a fine picture at one of the world's fairs of the School of Charlemagne, at the moment that Alcuin is informing the emperor that the poor boys have surpassed the rich in scholarship. It is a symbol of the way that things level up in every country. Country boys learn to feel their way, which is the healthiest method, and I have had frequent painful occasions to contrast it with the plunging method that we are frequently called to witness. At no other point, at the same exposition to which I have referred, were gathered so dense a crowd as about the model school for the blind. A poor girl without sight was reading about some boys that came upon a hive of wild bees and honey. When a word seemed difficult to her, she would instinctively apply both hands to the pages. Men coming from all quarters into this presence would unconsciously uncover their head. Feeling one's way excites sympathy. The poor have the gospel preached to them. Have any of the rulers believed on Him? No, no, no, it was the common people that heard Him gladly. City merchants advertising for a clerk often say, "One from the country preferred." I used to see the boys studying the map of the future and laying out work for manhood and age. Their longings were to be men. They were panting to have a part in the great drama of life and would rush in as soon as any door was open. It did not occur to them that the world already owed them a living, that they were to be fed by the raven. The man who calls upon Jupiter was to put his own shoulder to the wheel.

It is a riddle that persons, like the Lawrences, coming from the country, Groton, into the city out-step the natives and become their masters. Country life and country education are at least practical and invigorating to body and mind and hence those who are thus qualified triumph in the race of life. Country training and experience serve as a foothold for progress. Amos Lawrence, the initial genius in Boston in that line of merchant princes that founded Lawrence and the mills in Lowell and Ipswich (when one of the mills of Ipswich was losing one hundred dollars a day, one of the Lawrences was sick and the only comment was "too much Ipswich,") when a clerk in a dry-goods store sold a parcel of goods, promising to have them delivered in Charlestown by twelve o'clock M.,—the porter, who was to take them over, failed to return as soon as was expected,—loaded the goods on a wheelbarrow and trundled them over the long bridge, through the streets thronged with ladies and gentlemen, and had them there on time. It was a natural act of the country boy. A city young man would have felt an inclination to wait. Andrew Carnegie came over from Scotland with only a sovereign in his pocket but with sovereignty in his soul and fired a stationary engine at two dollars and a half a week.

Jeremiah says, "Pharaoh King of Egypt" is but a noise. He agitates the atmosphere. He is a clamorous self advertiser. On the other hand a country boy reaching the city is often obliged to raise the simple bread and butter question. Give us this day our daily bread. I used to find these boys extremely capable and very warmly affectionate. City boys gave their mothers what money would buy, while the country boys gave their mothers what money could not buy, and no one was happier than the country mother with a letter from her boy telling her that there was so much love in his letter that he would have trouble in getting it into the envelope. She thought she saw that he was winning a widening way into recognition from his employer, also from his associates. Such a man is likeliest to realize in life all the promise he gave in boyhood. If a country boy lost a step he felt that he must make it up. I could stand before that boy, hat in hand, and pay him honor and respect. He is not top heavy. He is solid. The corner stones of character are laid in place and well laid. Splendid specimens of boyhood, first work hard to supply their needs and then go on to make money to supply their wants. By all the rules of the business world they have earned all that they have gained.

On "first day" there being no school I worshiped with Quakers and never to this hour have departed from their heaven-born doctrines. When George Fox prayed, the spirit bearing witness with his spirit, men trembled, and so were called Quakers because they thus quaked. The wonder is not that they were agitated, but that people do not quake where they sit in profound silence until the spirit moves. When a person rises one's first thought is, There, that's the motion of the spirit, the inner witness. It is the responsive factor in us that makes the Quaker doctrine take hold. They have an Inward Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. A friend, a lady with a serene, intelligent, illumined face, fluent and correct in expression, with most engaging modesty, moved by the spirit, arose and spoke, with a power stronger than human genius, her understanding being opened, her heart enlarged, in a manner wonderful to herself exhorting us to take heed to the light within us. That was reasonable. Who could say nay to such entreaty assuming that there is in us that which of itself responds to it, "as face answers to face in a glass?" In the intense quiet, in the solemn silence, all being retired into the presence chamber of God, the attitude being that of Samuel when he said, "Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth" when an angel voice speaks to us who would not follow whithersoever it leads the way? "Go feel what I have felt" and you will know by experience how Quakers get their name. It is a respectful doctrine; it only urges recognition of what hath shined into our hearts to give us light.

Revisiting the earth I say now, on the site where I taught school, what I felt then, that Quaker doctrines are as honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones. Even the men's manners are gentle and winsome and kindly, and kindly enough to proceed from the spirit. When conducting social affairs I have in uncounted cases asked that we might imitate the Quakers who before leaving their positions, beginning in the high seats, shake hands with those on the right and left who are next to them, it means we are on a level and on good terms, we must be social.

When men were clad in short clothes, wearing knee buckles, laces, and ruffles, and frills, and fringes, and finery, and frippery, the Quakers took strong ground for plain, unaffected simplicity in male attire and they carried the day. Honor to whom honor is due, I am with them as usual. The weather worn, long used, hard used little one room, one story school-house without an entry, is now in declining condition and exceedingly infirm. It seems broken, decrepit, wears a look of great age, seems inclined to melancholy and its dissolution is near. The dear old seminary of letters was not young when I was introduced to it. Change and decay have passed rapidly upon it. There is no making life stand still. I went back to it with my heart in my eyes. Its well worn old threshold and its battered entrance spoke of hospitality to vigorous youngsters who had reached their freedom year, when education stopped, and their adult life began. It was assumed that the door, exposed to the weather, would bind a little at the bottom, and so simultaneously with putting their hands to the latch the children would strike the door at the bottom with one of their heavily shod feet. The act was so unconscious and so natural that no impression was made except on the door.

The floor of that little edifice wore sundry patches of new white pine boards which were nailed over the crevices and flaws which gave the appearance of new cloth in an old garment. This rickety fabric has ceased forever from the name and form of a seat of learning, but it is tight full of memories and of public favor. A child when going through a museum said he liked the sculpture better than a painting because he could walk around the sculpture. With that feeling of regard for sacred places and times and things which we felt in our childhood, I viewed that building and went round about it, that I might tell it to the generation following. If anyone shall say,

"A bare old house with windows dim,A bare old house is still to him,And it is nothing more,"

I shall still look upon it with reverence. It has performed its office and its pictured form will bring up facts and throng my vacant hours with beautiful visions. Lord Jeffrey speaks fondly of that "dear retired adored little window" where he labored and prepared himself for the arrival of that brighter day which is almost sure to come to those who are careful to fit themselves for the duties that accompany it.

The progress of the allied forces in the German war seemed at first very slow, partly because of the colossal number of men engaged, but chiefly because Germany derived a great advantage at the start. It is a difficult matter to make up for a bad beginning. On revisiting the earth we seemed to be set down upon a commanding eminence, having a panoramic view of occurences which showed distinctly the path we had trodden. If we noticed the milestones, we observed a succession, that was unbroken, that led directly to the place where, with different ways opened to us, we made life's vocational adventure. In the light of that first move we see the way to every subsequent position. Years rise up like the steps of the Pyramids and more and more extensive becomes the review of life. How different a landscape looks when we have simply reversed our steps and are faced the other way. I must always remember it as one of the pleasures of life, that all the invisible lines that connect every later service and place of residence were set vibrating from the desk where I taught my first term of country school when I was seventeen.

Taking deliberately one's position, here, that point in life, of which everyone's personal history has so many examples, the peak Teneriffe, the effect of volcanic action, after much slumbering, fills all the foreground. From such a mount of vision "see thy way in the valley."

"There's a chain of causesLinked to effects,"

that seemed trifles, that, on a review of life, have a new significance. It can be seen at a glance that all subsequent events are a lengthened chain from this early landmark, at which, hat in hand, I stood. The connection is direct, the links are distinctly interlocked. As in the growth of a stalk of corn, each section makes a close jointure with the next below it as well as with the next above it, so is it in any individual career. The same school, the second winter, was needed to give publicity to a situation, which resulted in an invitation to take the school at the community center, an elevation which had not even in dreams and reveries entered my mind. Out of this came an appointment to teach in a college town and so to this hour every stage has brought about the next step which the last one made inevitable. In that first school was struck the medial key-note. It is the C, and the whole melody of life rests upon it. Some people remark upon fruit and flower, as if detached and independent of their seed. Not by God's mercy! Personal history has its teachings, a golden thread runs through it, on which are strung, a series of events in a logical succession, represented in pictures unrivalled for their distinctness, delineated by time's own hand and lifted out into powerful relief. The more widely I looked for connected events the more I saw. It pleased the Father to command the light to shine out of darkness. Dull and unimaginative as I am, even I felt the divinity stir within me, and I found it difficult to suppose otherwise than that, while the public takes no cognizance of such things, yet a look into one's personal biography exhibits a moving picture of Providence. To feel that we are tethered to a place of beginning, though we live on the other side of the world, is not to say that we would like to go back there to reside. We are viewing it only as a factor in our past life. It was like the experience once of reading Whittier's Hampton Beach when there. It made past history realistic. It was like standing in the presence of the Lion of Lucerne after being indebted only to memory for your conception of its vivid character. No words can possibly describe the impression, of thus revisiting the earth and doing our own thinking instead of sending some neighbor to do it for us.

Instead of seeing with their eyes, and hearing with their ears, how much more self-respecting for each of us to himself stand in the actual presence of these silent talkers and perceive the guide marks to all the paths which led us through the tangle of life. Above all else one lesson blazes out in letters of living light. How careful Providence is about beginnings. It is only in looking down upon the battle field that we can clearly discern the maneuvers that lead to victory. We must place ourselves at a given point, not too remote from the causes, that make our history, to justly estimate them, if we could begin again, that tragic wish having been conceded to us, all our activity would be best used at these clearly discerned centers. To gain greater effectiveness opportunity here makes his call upon us and comes unawares and his approach is invariably disguised in humble garb.

"Master of human destinies am I.Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait;Cities and fields I walk; I penetrateDeserts and seas remote, and passing byHovel, and mart, and palace, soon or lateI knock unbidden once at every gate.Those who doubt or hesitate,Condemned to failure, penury, and woe,Seek me in vain and uselessly implore;I answer not, and I return no more."

When in the company of a citizen, I am reviewing my place of early residence, while he obviously knows the town well, yet I see all that he does and recollection faithful to its office supplies me with an image of the past which he does not perceive. He gets no glimpse of the panorama that is passing in review before me. In looking over an illustrated volume of the place there are two pictures on each page. There is the one I now see, and to my inner sight there is just above it the one I remember. It is a case of what philosophers call Compound Perception. The absence of the object is contrasted with its presence. You imagine it gone, and perceive the blank it would leave. You observe the object, you also consider it as a negative quantity, for a moment thinking it away. There is the depot. I do not need to have it pointed out. Beside this building I instantly see the picture of another station unobserved by the present generation, which was connected with a different route. Before the Rock Island and before the Central of Iowa, we had the underground R. R. In Grinnell that came first. It did a good business. It had a through line. Its chief station still exists. The glamor of the past is upon it. I knew the station master. I am on intimate terms with one of its conductors. When its train was made up any one could compute its horse-power. The place had public spirit enough for a half dozen average towns. There is the church where the college diplomas were awarded. How plainly I also saw the church where I was, at its completion, an habitual hearer of the Word, that stood on the same noble corner. I never could understand how any mortal could be hired to tear down the earlier sacred edifice. It must have been done by aliens. No one could have bribed me to do it. There isn't money enough. I would as soon have lifted my hand against her who gave me being. The fate of Uzza, whom the Lord smote for a smaller impiety, would have given me alarm.

All religious annals will be searched in vain for a better example of the community church. Everybody attended it. All our pleasures were connected with it. Anyone could get the key to hold a meeting. There was always something doing. It had a part in everything that interested the people. When in the Civil War there were victories, the farmers came in, and there sang Praise God, etc., and when we had reverses there was a meeting to appoint a fast. Far away down the gallery of memory hangs a picture. It is a church scene. The figures are the deacons and others, in colors that are fresh and glowing to this hour. The artist that could portray them on canvas would be immortalized in that one act. Extremely fastidious critics would call them old fashioned, but they have at least this merit, they are life-like. It would be becoming in us to honor them as they, in their day, honored the community. I recollect nearly every family that sat under the benign ministry of that church, and could come near to designating each pew they occupied. There was a kind of exaltation about the place, which held the fire, in the old days, on God's altars, and the quaint bare building became as the temple on Mount Zion. Never in the splendid temples, seen in after life, where the wealth of princes had been lavished, to decorate the world famous cathedrals, where stained windows shed an impressive light over the solemn courts, and where the ponderous organ rolls its deep thunders on the ear, have I seemed to be so near the Holy of Holies, as on one or two occasions when my heart was lifted up in that unadorned place of worship. Once the clergyman had pronounced the blessing and the congregation were dispersing when I lingered behind to make a single vow. Tear down that church! I could not have stood it to be present. To some meeting houses they attach a card giving, in plain letters, the church's name and age.

If, as a boy, I had been asked to prepare a tablet to place on that heaven-blessed house of prayer, I should have put up the sign, "The Lord lives here." There was a solemnity, in its very simplicity, and an impressiveness not artificial, which to a religious fanatic might easily seem supernatural.

The large plain room was pervaded, in the evening, by a dim religious light that proceeded from a few reeking kerosene lamps. Any kind of a meeting was opened with prayer and much decorum and orderliness were observed by the citizens, old and young. The church took everything hard that concerned its own folks. The building was our cradle of liberty. Both men and boys rocked that cradle. A large sweetly toned bell, joyously rung by lads at day break on Independence Day, was finer music to our juvenile ears than would be the combined bands of the world. In the capitol at Richmond, a painting is exhibited, representing the Earl of Chatham pointing to a little flame on the altar of liberty. At that flame how many torches have been lighted. Some have held that the church must be opened only to old age, but that was not the view then and there held. I loved the church. I never saw it surpassed. All its ideals are mine today. I have labored and sacrificed to exhibit them and realize them in other places. If the older present resident members were to visit the people that once had their church home with them there, they would find no trouble in recognizing the leaven which had been carried away from that sanctuary. Temperaments were different, all were unlike and individual, with unequal education, with diverse talents, not able to see with each other's spectacles, yet all learned from each other and all united on the big things. I feel myself indebted to those with whom I associated there, some of whom afterward obtained high and merited distinction. Some of them, God has made princes in the earth. There is the place where they grew up and there they had their vision of service. My warmest prayers have always been for their success. A throng of recollections which I can not repress starts from every corner of the old church and attends my walks about the streets.

There is no other such dark day as when a boy parts with his home and his native state for good, to find a home God only knows where, and the old life that meant so much to him is over. There were our friends, there was our home, and there are our graves, my father having given commandment concerning his bones. Pardon me, gentle reader, if for the moment I speak with a personal accent. An individual cannot inherit his experience. It is my feeling that it is well to know some part of the world thoroughly. "He who is everywhere is nowhere." Neither a globe-trotter, running like a wandering Jew all over the world, nor a tramp knows the countries he travels over. Here in my early day was a place without amusements.

The hoe, the hod, the plough, the scythe, the shovel, the woodsaw, and the axe, these are all old friends of mine. It is possible that as things are now viewed our sphere had in it a trifle too much of constraint, that the soul had hardly free play enough to unbend and recreate the mind, that we settled down too early, like well broken horses, to the work of life. A little shadow passes over my mind as I think of the analogy to bitting a horse. But when at sunset all nature rings the Angelus, we all say in our hearts, God bless the town and all its people.

"It would be no unprofitable thing," said Increase Mather, "for you to pass over the several streets and call to mind those who lived here so many years ago." On my approach, the homes of my day, that now survive, seemed to come right out to meet me. The old citizens appeared to start forth from their portrait frames. "They come like shadows and so depart." The old time town was revivified. The dry bones were stirred and made to live. The gates opened their arms widely finding us early residents and bold enough to enter. The same bordered walk led up to the front door. Houses, Say on. You want to speak. Utter your voices. Tell your story. I know its truth. You will not startle me. Many appeared to answer me as I stood, with my greetings, before them. Our old relations are all in my heart. In my day, everybody knew his neighbor and his neighbor was everybody. As is known of ancient Athens, at its best, quoting from an oration writer, "It is impossible for a man in this city to be of good repute or otherwise without all of us knowing it."

Even the most beautiful scenery needs absence to gain its hold upon us, and to unite a new and an old revaluation into something better than either. There is an old proverb, What is ever seen, is never seen. What is always heard, is never heard. The sound of Niagara becomes inaudible to the waiters at the hotels. "To feel the same thing always and not to feel at all, come to the same thing." A man casts his shadow over "A land where all things always seem the same."

As a boy goes zig-zagging along, dilatorily, of a May morning to school, in and out, among and around the byways, where anything unusual is proceeding, he actually knows a town better than many a man who has lived in it longer, and I would not barter the pleasant memories of my early home for treasures of gold. I would not exchange even the impressions made indelibly on my mind for a gift of public office. There is nothing that I care to take in exchange for my soul. Upon the side of Mt. Blanc is a little patch of verdure called Le Jardin. It is always green. In the deserts are oases. In the ocean wastes we find islands of tropical beauty, so here with nature's extreme fertility we have, enameled with flowers, what they call in Evangeline's land a Grand Pre, extending to the horizon's out-most rim.

In boyhood's happy days, in the jocund season of youth, the grass grew quietly in the highways of the town, and bleating sheep and frolicsome calves sported about on the verdant savannas. In the days of which I am writing, cattle and horses were lawful commoners, and roamed at will over much of the town plat. On rising early a boy would find a group of small cattle just in the act of making up its mind that day was breaking. Some would be rising from their hard beds, some had risen and commenced to graze, others were still lying as they had reposed all night, the dew glistening on their hair. Mists were floating over the low grounds in the swales of the prairies, but the reddening east was waking all nature into newness of life, and presently, the ever-punctual sun rose up to do his circuit of the earth. It was a healthy boy's walk amid the fields of morning and he was enraptured with the delightful vision. The day began earlier then. It was long, and like a clothes-line being so extended, required a prop in the middle, hence dinner could not be deferred then until an evening hour. Noon is now becoming as extinct as the mastodon. It faded out. It seems unreal, and belongs to the past. Boys did not carry watches and became quite expert in using a north and south fence for a divider in finding that medial line that cuts the day in halves. We still have the expressions A. M. and P. M. but we make little use of the M. We have God's time, and man's time, for the sake of daylight saving, but my memory testifies that we used the daylight for about all it was worth, anyway up to our limit, at both ends of the day. People then were much more expressive than they are now. If they felt refreshed and exuberant they did not care who knew it. We used to feel with Dickens, Give us, oh give us, the man who sings at his work! He will do more in the same time, he will do it better. He will persevere longer.

"Amidst the storm the Pilgrims sang,And the stars heard, and the sea,And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rangTo the anthems of the free."

Children were very much more commonly sung to sleep with a mother's foot upon the rocker of the cradle. If we could take out of our minds the fact that the hymn most widely used was for children, we all would say, How beautiful! Pious hymns and patriotic songs were the great leaders. Down through the corridors of time I can still hear the voices of both men and women who sang as they wrought. They who found that their wives did not sing when employed about the house set themselves to find the reason of the suspension and to remove it. This being done, unconsciously the house was gladdened again by impromptu song. From the fact that men worked more in solitary, quiet places, as contrasted with factories, having heavy machinery, men used to whistle. Some became very expert. When one man would say, Let's see how does that tune go? the custom was for the other to take up a few bars by whistling. When soldiers or parades or processions were passing, if the band should stop, those marching would take up some patriotic or other air and all would whistle it. This would spread to the boys on the side walk and extend through the town, and be revived the next day.

Men worked more hours and had more chores to do, early and late, so being physically weary, when they sat down to read there was a kind of physical preparation for it. The eye did not drop on a newspaper casually at any time. To begin to read required then a kind of personal adjustment illustrated remotely by that of a person who sits down when about to partake of a meal. Thus we used to see people take a book, and get ready to read it as you often see a person now who is about to sing in public, show what he is going to do by using a moment or two in getting himself ready for it.

It augurs well to discover more generally established what the French call the Hotel of God. The Hospital used to be in the same class with the Hospice. It was originally an outgrowth of the church, through the element of charity, very much as we find it on missionary ground in foreign lands. There was usually a chapel included in the construction.

It seemed on review to be the strong and rugged that were struck down, while the semi-invalids appeared to live to ripe old age. He who wins in the first round, does not always seem to come out, in the final test, as the best man. The battle is not to the strong. Like Romulus and Remus placed in a trough, cast adrift on the Tiber, nourished in the marshes by a wolf, some persons seem to be strengthened by the worst things to which they are exposed, while others succumb at their approach. It is hard to pass this same matter over as applied to the college without setting down outstanding illustrations. Some who were distinctly strong, like the pendulum of a dying clock soon passed away.

It became a great trial to me that our forbears never half believed one of the most eloquent and profound statements of the inspired volume. Recognizing, in faith, these beautiful words, what a mockery is artificial light, and how unnecessary a watcher. "Surely the darkness shall cover me, the night shall be light about me, the darkness and the light are both alike." When a soul had left its body and is wearing a crown, it was then the custom, when one of our neighbors had been invited, to be a guest in heaven, for some one of us who felt tenderly and neighborly to offer to serve as a watcher. It was then counted good form for someone other than a member of the family to keep awake throughout the night and that, in no remote part of the house out of which the spiritual world had just received a tenant. It was then the rule of my life never to resist my good impulses and to me it seemed to fall to render this melancholy duty which struck into my soul with terror. My fright, I suppose would have been less if I had lived a better life. I noticed the rattling of the plastering over head.

"Deep horror then my vitals froze."

I did not know that a bureau with its closed drawers contained so much creaking. It seemed a self-starter. A mid-night lunch had been made ready. I was usually fond of the pleasures of the table, but this repast was the least welcome of any I ever tasted. I needed no artificial aid to keep awake. I was far removed from drowsiness. My eyes would not be surprised at anything in that presence except sleep. This night seemed as much too long as all other nights seemed to me too short, but I sat it out alone till the day, to my inexpressible relief, dawned over the distant fields. Soon after I reached my room some of my associates called me to wake me for breakfast. "You didn't suppose I was asleep, did you?" Lord Brougham pretended to die in order to read what was said of him in the papers. At Athens, Alabama, a minister preached his own funeral sermon for he said, "I know my own faults and my own good points as nobody else knows and I am not going to have people after I am gone talking of a thing they don't understand." The whole affair was arranged as if it had been the real thing, with the minister's family in the pew in deepest mourning. By very much of what I had been reading, and by more, that all along I had been hearing, while my motives were well enough in volunteering my services as a watcher, yet I was surprised to find how ill-fitted I was for the office. The minds of ingenuous childhood would not now be subjected to quite so much frightfulness. There seems to be something in them when well stirred up, that responds with fearful alacrity to that kind of address. It can be found any time in children if one has the lamentable disposition to try to appeal to it. By an unintended combination of circumstances I had been supplied with uncommon numbers of ghost stories until I was afraid to be out alone, particularly in some localities where it was extra dark.

On leaving the neighbor's house for home I would induce someone to stand in the door until I, after moving rapidly, should shout back that I was safe.

The bogy-man in the cellar is not conjured with in governing children now as much as formerly, still a child likes those plays best which give a good deal of exercise to the imagination. So on the other hand the ills we imagine afflict us most. The microscope magnifies the object without altering it. How the thoughts of those troubled times of long ago come trooping over the hills and valleys of memory after so many years have been passed to our account in the book of the Recording Angel. There are some sights that we can never forget. Some occurrences are so scenic and suggestive that they come home unbidden to every man's heart and are with him in the market and on the street.

When I first came on the campus the students' rooms were bare and uninviting. No freshman's room was carpeted. A mat in front of his desk and one in front of his bed, a very plain bureau, three or four chairs, a wash-stand, pail, pitcher and bowl, and a few text-books made the outfit. An apartment was featured best by what it did not have. We lived the simple life. "In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes." The new president came in the morning of an opening educational era, during which more improvements have been made than occurred in long centuries before. With great distinction he served his day and its sun sank before the horizon in its evening splendor and that of his youthful, buoyant successor rose in its morning glory. The initial steps or incidents in the election of the present sovereign if ever known are now lost to history. The event was so spontaneous and natural that we can only say in scriptural language, Now it came to pass. The vote was only a memorandum. It was what everyone wanted, everybody expected.

In my day we all knew one another. A college may be good as an institution of learning and still fall far short of supplying what we feel this elite college did for us. The elective system has not been wholly a blessing. If left to himself, a student might elect to follow the line of the least resistance. In one of these institutions the whole class never meets together after the first day for any academic purpose. The class is no longer the social unit it once was. No two men take exactly the same course.

A boy's relation to his home is changed the instant his feet betake themselves to classic ways. His face is set toward an independent career. It is a beginning of a detachment and the home is behind this program and perhaps without quite recognizing all the results and sacrifices that are involved. No family is ever again quite the same after it has a son graduated from college. The plane of life is lifted all around. The kind of atmosphere in which he must live and move and have his being, for four years, will affect him. The traditions and the predominant type of student character will give him a pull which it is hoped is in the right direction. Where the majority of the students are disposed to do right, and to make a serious use of their great opportunities, the chances are that the graduate will feel his life long that he paid his tuition to the college, when he was for a fact most indebted to his associates. All testimony shows that students recite to the faculty and learn from one another. We are well beyond the old heresy that a boy goes to college for his mental training, enters society for his social life, and the church for his religious development. The college ideal, as stated, is to give a boy opportunity to do for himself the best he can do, also to do for each student the best that can be done for him and to give all possible advantage to the poorest student.

We all drank at the same fountain and felt the thrill of the same spirit. There was no caste or social class. We may well doubt whether higher life success would have attended us, if we launched from a different port. An earnest endeavor was made to put a young man on an equality with the demands of his time. It undertook to furnish a basis from which it was possible for him to advance himself to that level of usefulness, in his generation, to which his native gifts relegated him. The college cannot undertake to supply brains. In the presence of stupidity even the gods are powerless. I do not need to praise the college. As Cromwell said of his government, "This is a thing that speaks loudly for itself." Webster made, in the greatest address ever delivered to a jury, much of the proverb, Murder will out, but this is no peculiarity of murder. Character will out, mental discipline will out, education will out, and the lack of education will out. Without this item some vocations cannot be entered at all, and there is no vocation in which the mental training would not be a fine additional equipment.

At my Alma Mater, on revisiting the earth, in conversation with friends the inquiry was altogether natural, at Commencement, as to how I would approach things, if I were to begin my studies again. I would try to remember that it is the intensity of the work that does the good. A horse needs, in practice, to be tested at his top speed. He must have the occasional fast mile to fit him for a real occasion. The mind requires to be tasked. The faculties ought then to be alert. The need is of "sinewy thinking." Gird up the loins of the mind. Pull yourself together. We read of One who, as he prayed, sweat. Study and have it over. Dawdling over a newspaper is the arch enemy of all this. When one reads he ought to read with attention. If, by this power, we throw our whole minds upon an important subject, we make it a prompt and easy matter of recollection. Genius is really intensity of thought, feeling, emotion, activity. All the faculties are in earnest. "A man is not educated, till he has the ability to summon, in case of emergency," said Webster, "all his mental power in vigorous exercise to effect his object." The great gain is in the undivided, intense mental power of application. Be all there. Play hard. To spend two hours on a lesson that could better be done in one is a suicidal process. The greatest benefit of study is the trained power to concentrate the faculties. What one sees, he ought to see strongly. The importance of this matter lies in the fact, that the habits which a student acquires while pursuing his studies, generally adhere to him through life.

If I could begin again, I would give my chief attention to disciplinary study. If a person has a fair library, as every man and woman should have, he would acquire information, daily, his life long. While a student, his aim should be discipline. It is a vice for him to spend so much time over fugitive ephemeral literature which is like the grass, in the morning it flourisheth, in the evening it withereth. After hard work, skimming over such gossipy literature as one finds in the papers may restore tone to the mind but it is not to be classed as reading, but as recreation. Its effect dies with the day that gave it birth.

Of all my studies, I have rejoiced most in the discipline acquired by the study of Latin. If I could go back and acquire early a classical enthusiasm I would make myself sure of the educational passion.

There is a certain fluency of speech, fertility of expedient and power of application which a student should cultivate for what Lord Coke called the "occasion sudden." The appeal to students to aim at good public speaking, while in college, and to awaken then and there, the active powers of the soul, is based upon two observations: that Albert Beveridge like recent orators showed his gait while still in his university, and that such gifts are not ideal but practical and not studied merely for their own sake but because of their connection with our civil liberty. To attain an end so indispensable if, in my studies, I was worked out to my limit, I would incline to the discussion of questions that would not send me to the library but into the open air, themes on which I could prepare myself during a stroll, subjects that I could stick in the corner of a mirror to formulate while I shaved.

Why did not the negroes do more to help secure their own emancipation?

Can a man change his disposition?

Why do ministers that do not believe in the inspiration of the Bible use a text? A man will take a text and explain it away. Why did he choose it?

Is it the brain or the soul that does the thinking? Is our body the agent or is it a living spirit that uses the organisms? Is it the imagination whose wings uplift or am I at the center of the circle of my faculties making use of them?

Is there any causal relation between justice and victory in arms?

This student life establishes certain relationships both with the institution, also with individuals which are felt to be the choicest holding of a man's whole later life. The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure gold. Here is a strong illustration of how deep and enduring are the attachments of an eager hearted boy. They are more ardent perhaps than they should have been, but there they are, and the college gains thus a token of attachment and tender recollection of unreturnable youth. The most exquisite, the most unforeseen, the most compensative feature of my life has been, my personal friendship with the professors. Some of them I admired extravagantly. Silhouetted upon my memory for all time is my first sight of Professor Leonard F. Parker. I remember a particular day when we gathered somewhat early for a Sabbath service. Some of us who were to be his pupils had no acquaintance with him even by sight. Assuming that the leading scholar of the place would attend the meeting it was for us a question of identification. Soon there came a man in the succession not a farmer, possibly a resident clergyman, and some of us thought it might be he. But something within me said "Query." I tried to make it into the professor.

A good man doubtless, but I wanted to see something in this worshiper that was not in him. He did not fill the picture. He did not make me say, It is enough. Soon there came a man who needed no badge, no signature, no guarantee. His face was an index of him. All of us joined in a common feeling of relief. We felt his presence. We knew that this was the man. The bearing of a professional man in those days was more sedate than now, occasioned by what he thought to be due to his professorship. He looked upon his office as a high and sacred calling, and it met all the ends of his ambition if he could be, not teaching students, but educating men and women. It is said of the Roman conquerors that they were so used to victory that they carried on their faces the secret of an imperial people who knew not defeat.

There was an obvious neatness about him and a perfection of dress, which usually requires an absence of anything which draws attention to itself. He excelled all men whom I have ever known in the teaching profession for enkindling among his pupils an ardent zeal in their literary pursuits. A great personal force was needed in those days to teach disciplinary studies only, in an effective manner, and to dominate the industrial spirit and the trade spirit by those classical enthusiasms which were the joy and ornament of his youth. Mercantilism was unbridled in the general community, yet it is an acknowledged fact, that at the beginning the responsibility of the teacher has much to do with the success of the school. No teaching is worth much without enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is generated by concentrating interest at a focal point. One cannot teach for more than he is.

A little history is worth a great deal of opinion. By his unusual gifts, by his out-reaching personal sympathies, by the individual impress of a great teacher, many of his pupils became interested through him in the classics. Let him be judged by his product. I never hear President Main in one of those vigorous, fine-phrased, official statements, in language impressive, copious and beautiful, the outward sign of an inward grace, making a sort of an Iliad out of a routine college president's report, without saying to myself and to others,—That power of statement, discipline of mind, felicity of speech, the administration itself, if you please, are the fruitage of patient discipline acquired in his early and long study of Greek. Alexander of Macedon used to say that he owed his life to his father, but to his teacher, Aristotle, a greater debt, for it was that philosopher who taught him how to make the most of life. While the ability to teach is a treasure committed to earthly vessels, some are of finer clay than others.

The Professor was a natural leader, full of vision and initiative, whose heart was in his work, and the old college impulse never left him, and he represents a part of what has given a worthy name and character to the college. A man gets to do what he is fitted to do. I do not believe he will be allowed to come back from the other world to this but he will hardly know what to do with himself when separated from those interesting associations on which so much of his happiness depended. A father or mother or both would come to town, wander about the place, invariably in company with the object of their affection. These parents are not first of all astronomical, or philosophical, or mathematical, they are human, and they are not there to hear about the new water-works or the freshly paved streets, or the perfect miracle of an artificial lake. They are there because their treasure is, and a kind word spoken to them about their young hopeful is like a spark of fire upon tinder. These folks used to wait about the doors and walk the streets and hope to throw themselves in the Professor's way, with the idea that he would talk with them a little about their scion. I was once driving the distance between two railroads and a dark night and a continuous downpour of rain settled drearily upon me, and I was forced to stop at random at a farm house, and beg for entertainment. Disposing of my case in a few words, the family resumed its talk relative to a letter they had received from the Professor about their descendant in whom were centered great expectations. And when they had said everything that could be said, someone, as if by accident, would pull a string and let loose again the flood of talk about that letter. Someone, coming in, for a moment, out of the storm, would divert the attention, and then they would apply the flail again to that letter and thrash out some further kernels of wheat that they had not at first noticed. The family, of course, found out that I knew the Professor, and so, although I was to start in the morning while it was still dark, the mother was unexpectedly up, and had the table so spread, that she could at once sit down, when I did, and talk over her happiness and the rewards of her self-sacrifice in having a boy at college. She had hoped and believed all that had been written, and yet it was a great comfort to have the professor say it.

He lived close to the people. When Christian, in the Pilgrim's Progress, found himself in the City of Destruction, he departed speedily out of it, whereas our professor would consider if the situation was remediless. I was present when he, having given the best of his life to the college, under the weight of his years, resigned. It was touching, as a great American author has pointed out, to see the new attitude that the community had taken toward him, putting him into a new relationship and into a new atmosphere, in which it was recognized that he was undeniably and irresistibly older than he had been. People had hardly thought that he was not a permanent feature. The evidences of Christianity stand very much in facts. I point to the fact of his consistent fruitful life and to the fact of his triumphant peaceful death. They make a fresh volume on the evidences of Christianity. I have heard of a man who had one foot in the grave, but here was a man who had one foot in heaven. Dear friend, and my father's friend, friend of my youth, and all my later years, teacher, counselor, encourager, model of my student life, to whom my heart was knit in all the ardor of the first enthusiasm over the idea of going to college, to whom my obligations are beyond computation, Thou hast thyself gone to sit at the feet of the Great Teacher.

I can thankfully say that I have been on earth twice, once walking on air, when I graduated from college, and again when I, walking across the College campus, with heart lifted up, tenderly recalling the past, saw the jejune young hopeful that I used to be and sat down with him under a birch, the queen of trees,—many savage nations worship trees,—and debated for an hour with this young blonde, that I met, that I used to be, this question, Which is better for the person graduating, the opportunities which were lined up, reaching out their hands to us, that we had, or the greater academic advantages which the students now enjoy. I could not seem to make him see that the present advantages develop opportunities which are quite as acceptable and fruitful as those that in early days came to us ready-made.

Discussion over, this rather immature youngster, that I met, that I used to be, rising up, I getting up, went down town, or perhaps more properly, he went down town and I went with him. He found a man, I did not so easily recognize, that was Sophomoric at about the same period that he was and I experienced a bad quarter of an hour. The situation had in it an uncomfortable pinch. I became self-conscious. I found myself stammering and protesting the past. We had come upon a tall, sparsely-haired, gray-bearded bent figure, with a smooth shiny head, with furrows in his cheeks and forehead, having evidently, as Webster so well said, come down to us from another generation. I knew that he was of my age but I never dreamed that I was of his. This callow stripling then started to show us around, and unlike Elihu, in the days of Job, who apologized for showing his opinion, seeing he was so young, asserted that once we were led by the clergy, then by lawyers, then by business men, but that now everything pointed to a great revival of the college and its influence in affairs. Then he stood right out apart and began to plaster praise on his own institution. I thought that the young man gestured too much, and I told him so, but he dramatically with open mouthed vehemence of adoration told of her spirit, her fellowship. I tried to use the soft pedal, suggesting that perhaps he had too many exciting topics to discuss thus in public, and that we might later adjourn to a restaurant where we could make an afternoon of it. But he was in high spirits and made his talk like a young man who had the world at an advantage. It was June in his personal history and the top tide of his youthful happiness. That part of his existence was so satisfactory to him that he liked to dwell upon it.

I kept noticing that I was much more interesting to this unripe young sprig, who, I thought, had much to learn, and whose mind seemed like an unweeded garden, than he was even to me, for I had seen him before, while I had for him all the interest that is excited by a relic, something designed by Providence to arrest attention, like those that after a great convulsion of nature came out of their graves and went into the city and appeared unto many.

Then this sappy, beardless representative of the rising generation that I met, that I used to be, with the Aurora-spirit, had the effrontery to ask me how it happened that a man had but one youth and then came age and infirmity, while a college, like a nation, seems under favorable administration to have a re-birth and a renewal of the vitality of youth twice or even thrice. I thought that the excess of his knowledge was too much for him and that he was cross examining me, and so side-stepping the main issue, I stammered out something about the excessive beauty of the classic town with embowered streets and sunny gardens, a sort of a metropolis of education, the very capital of a little republic of letters.

There seemed to be equality in all the competitions for the prizes of student life, with no favors and yet no privilege denied. There was fair play and all good feeling, with no caste of wealth, and no apology for the laggard. Even when whipping up a little I flagged miserably in all the conversation. This lad, in his leading strings, was an incomparable gossip. I felt that he had a kind of genius for picking up news. Anyway he used great liberality in the diffusion of it. He was I thought a charitable reporter. While he had breathed the classic atmosphere of the place, yet all the books he had to read had been dumped there, like a sort of terminal moraine. For scholars today the whole stock would be not only a curiosity, but a relic, being little else than folios on serious subjects. They were books that must be reverenced, as members of the eldest liturgical church would reverence the bones of the blessed martyrs. I inquired, Do you participate in athletics? Yes, by dividing cord wood into stove lengths, toying with the spade, coquetting with big bundles of grain. Golf and basket ball were not in his day introduced into the college curriculum. I thought he was flippant. I felt that comparisons were odious, as some one must suffer when a comparison is instituted. So I said with a good deal of voice, My Friend, hear me, I am older than thou. Your question shows what your diploma cannot cover nor absolve. Nobody thinks that you lack courage. I wish now that you would try and be polite.

So far from gratifying this wish, in another connection he put it right up to me, that I was looking around with complaisance, as though it was a college of this present size and appearance that I graduated from, but that such was not the historic fact. It did not seem nice in the stripling to move right out in the direction of ocular demonstration, and make particular inquiry of me about the library and chapel and training field and gymnasium that I used in that college that I graduated from. His very impudence made him interesting to me. But I wished he would cultivate more repose and serenity. He had sense enough to know better but his resources in that direction were not immediately available.

As we were looking around I observed that this young tyro was all the time tipping his hat and bowing and scraping as often as a pretty face came within the horizon, and so I knew that there was a way I could divert his remarks from poor me, and that was to ask him outright about the girls. I was astonished that I had not named them to the fledgling before. I was amazed that I was capable of passing them by so long. He said that there was nothing like them, that the air was favorable to their elegance and charm, that there was no place of its size in that state or in any other that could show fairer specimens of the various kinds of feminine attractiveness. But in his talk on the comeliness of the young ladies I noticed that he quoted from an actress who seems to have said that three things are necessary for success on the stage, vivacity, ability and beauty, and I told him that I could not be too thankful that the stage of practical life did not insist on these rigid requirements.

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