“He is good at one kind of exercise.”

“What's that?”

“He can draw the long bow.”

Leslie did not see Morton's meaning, and took the words
literally, as the latter intended he should.

“What, have you an archery club at college?”

“No; but there are one or two among us who use the
long bow, now and then, and Vinal beats them by all odds.
But he is very modest on the subject, and never alludes to it.
In fact there are very few who know his skill in that way.”

“It is all the better for his health to have some amusement
of the kind.”

“Yes, it would be a pity if his health should suffer.”

“I have often thought that his mind was too active for his
constitution.”

Morton cast another sidelong look at Leslie. Though he
admired the daughter, he refrained with difficulty from quizzing
the father.

“You seem to know Vinal very well.”

“Yes, thoroughly; I have known him from childhood;
he is the son of my wife's sister, and I am his guardian. I
watch his progress with great interest.”

“You will see him, I dare say, reach the top of the ladder.
At least, it will be no fault of his if he does not.”

“I am very glad to hear my good opinion of him confirmed
by one who has seen so much of him.”

And, rising, he left the room.

“A very good young man, this seems to be,” he thought
to himself, as he did so.

[figure description] Page 014.[end figure description]

“Amiable, good natured, and all that; but very soft, for a
man who has seen hard service,” thought Morton, on his part.

The party reassembled in the inn parlor. Masters William
and Marlborough, having gained a reprieve from their banishment,
busied themselves at the table, the one in poring over
Brewster on Natural Magic, the other in solving a problem
of Euclid. Leslie viewed these infant diversions by no means
with an eye of favor, and soon banished the students to a
retirement more suited to their tender years. The sentence
overcame all their philosophy, and they were carried off
howling.

Morton, meanwhile, was breathing a charmed air; and
though diffident in the presence of ladies, and not liberally
endowed by nature with the gift of tongues, his zeal to commend
himself to the good opinion of Miss Edith Leslie
availed somewhat to supply the defect. He had never mixed
with the world, conventionally so called, and knew as much
of ladies as of mermaids. But having an ardent temperament
and a Quixotic imagination; being addicted, moreover,
to Froissart and kindred writers; and, indeed, visited with a
glimmering of that antique light which modern folly despises,
he would have been ready, with the eye of a handsome woman
upon him, for any rash and ridiculous exploit. This
extravagance did him no manner of harm. On the contrary,
it went far to keep him out of mischief; for in the breast of
this youngster a chivalresque instinct battled against the urgency
of vigorous blood, and taught his nervous energies to
seek escape rather in ceaseless bodily exercises, rowing, riding,
and the like, than in any less commendable recreations.

[figure description] Page 015.[end figure description]

The close of the evening found him with an imagination
much excited. In short, decisive symptoms declared themselves
of that wide-spread malady, of which he had read
much and pondered not a little, but which had not, as yet,
numbered him among its victims. Among the various emotions,
novel, strange, and pleasurable, which began to possess
him, came, however, the dismal consciousness that, with the
morning sun, the enchantress of his fancy was to vanish like
a dream of the night.

CHAPTER IV.

What pleasure, sir, find we in life, to lock it
From action and adventure?
—Cymbeline.

[figure description] Page 016.[end figure description]

Morning came, and the Leslies departed. Morton
watched the lumbering carriage till it disappeared down the
rugged gorge of the Notch, then drew a deep breath, and
ruefully betook himself to his day's sport. He explored, rod
in hand, the black pools and plunging cascades of the Saco;
but for once that he thought of the trout, he thought ten
times of Edith Leslie.

Towards night, however, he returned with a basket reasonably
well filled; and, as he drew near the inn, he saw a
young man, of his own age, or thereabouts, sitting under the
porch. He had a cast of features which, in a feudal country,
would have been taken as the sign of noble birth; and
though he wore a slouched felt hat and a rough tweed frock,
though his attitude was careless, though he held between his
teeth a common clay pipe, at which he puffed with much relish,
and though he was conversing on easy terms with two
attenuated old Vermont farmers, with faces like a pair of
baked apples, — yet none but the most unpractised eye would
have taken him for other than a gentleman.

As soon as Morton saw him, he shouted a joyful greeting,

[figure description] Page 017.[end figure description]

to which Mr. Edward Meredith, rising and going to meet his
friend, replied with no less emphasis.

“I thought,” said Morton, “that you meant to do the dutiful
this time, and stay with your father and family at the
sea shore.”

“Couldn't stand the sea shore,” said Meredith, seating
himself again; “so I came up to the mountains to see what
you were doing.”

“You couldn't have done better; but come this way, out
of earshot.”

“Colonel,” said Meredith, in a tone of melancholy remonstrance,
“this seat is a good seat, an easy seat, a pleasant
seat. Why do you want to root me up?”

“Come on, man,” replied Morton.

“Show the way, then, Jack-a-lantern. But where do you
want to lead me? I won't sit on the rail fence, and I won't
sit on the grass.”

“There's a bench here for you.”

“Has it a back?”

“Yes, it has a back. There it is.”

Meredith carefully removed a few twigs and shavings which
lay upon the bench, seated himself, rested his arm along the
back, and began puffing at his pipe again. But scarcely had
he thus composed himself when the tea bell rang from the
house.

“Do you hear that, now? Another move to make!
Didn't I tell you so?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Please to explain, colonel, what you expect to gain by

[figure description] Page 018.[end figure description]

always bobbing about as you do, like a drop of quicksilver.”

“To hear you, one would take you for the laziest fellow in
the universe.”

“There's reason in all things. I keep my vital energies
against the time of need, instead of wasting them in unnecessary
gyrations. Ladies at the table! New Yorkers in
full feather, or I'll be shot! Now, what the deuse have lace
and ribbons to do in a place like this?”

During the meal, the presence of the strangers was a check
upon their conversation.

“Crawford,” said Meredith, when it was over, “have you
had that sofa taken into my room?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the arm chair?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the candles?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. Now, then, colonel, allons.”

The name of colonel was Morton's college sobriquet.
Meredith led the way into a room which adjoined his bed
chamber, and which, under his direction, had assumed an air
of great comfort. Morton took possession of the sofa; his
friend of the arm chair.

“What's the word with you?” began the latter; “are
you bound for the Adirondacks, the Margalloway, or the
Penobscot?”

“To the Margalloway, I think. You mean to go with me,
I hope.”

[figure description] Page 019.[end figure description]

“To the Margalloway, or the antipodes, or any place this
side of the North Pole.”

“Then, if you say so, we'll set off to-morrow.”

“Gently, colonel. One day's fishing here. We have six
weeks before us. What sort of thing is that that you are
smoking?”

“Try, and judge for yourself,” said Morton, handing his
cigar case. Meredith took a sample of its contents between
his fingers, and examined it with attention.

“I always thought you were a kind of heathen, and now
I know it. Where did you pick up that cigar?”

“Do you find it so very bad?”

“It would not poison a man, and perhaps might pass for a
little better than none at all. But nobody except a pagan
would touch it when any thing better could be had.”

“I forgot to bring any from town, and had to supply myself
on the way.”

“That goes to redeem your character. Fling those away,
or give them to the landlord; I have plenty of better ones.
But a pipe is the best thing at a place like this, and especially
at camp, in the woods.”

“So I have often heard you say.”

“Mine, though, made a sensation, not long ago.”

“How was that?”

“The whole brood of the Stubbs, bag and baggage, passed
here this afternoon.”

“Thank Heaven they did not stop.”

“They came in their private carriage. I nodded to Ben,
and touched my hat to Mrs. S. You should have seen their
faces. They thought there must be something out of joint

[figure description] Page 020.[end figure description]

in the mechanism of the universe, when a person of their
acquaintance could be seen smoking a pipe at a tavern door,
like a bog-trotting Irishman.”

“You should have asked Ben to go with us.”

“It would be the worst martyrdom the poor devil ever
had to pass through. Ben seemed displeased with the scenery.
He says that the White Mountains are nothing to any
one who, like himself, has seen the Alps.”

“Pray when did Stubb see the Alps?”

“O, the whole family have seen the Alps, — the Alps,
Italy, the Rhine, the nobility and gentry, and every thing else
that Europe affords. They all swear by Europe, and hold
the soil of America dirt cheap. You can see with half an
eye what they are — an uncommonly bad imitation of an indifferent
model.”

“Let them pass for what they are worth. Have you come
armed and equipped — rifle, blanket, hatchet, and so forth?”

“Yes, and I have brought an oil cloth tent.”

“So much the better; it is more convenient than a birch
bark shanty.”

“I give you notice that I mean to take my ease in that
tent.”

“I hope you will.”

“One can be comfortable in the woods, as well as elsewhere.
Remember, colonel, that we are out for amusement,
and not after scalps. Last summer, you drove ahead, rain
or shine, through thickets, and swamps, and ponds, as if you
were on some errand of life and death. For this once, have
mercy on frail humanity, and moderate your ardor.”

Morton gave the pledge required. They passed the

[figure description] Page 021.[end figure description]

evening in arranging the details of their journey, set forth and
spent three or four weeks in the forest between the settled
districts of Canada and Maine, poling their canoe up lonely
streams, meeting no human face, but smoking their pipes in
great contentment by their evening camp fire. They chased
a bear, and lost him in a windfall; killed two moose, six
deer, and trout without number; and underwent, with exemplary
patience, a martyrdom of midges, black flies, and mosquitoes.
And when, at last, they turned their faces homeward,
they wiled the way with plans of longer journeyings,—
more bear, more moose, more deer, more trout, more
midges, black flies, and mosquitoes.

CHAPTER V.

Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.
— Gray.

[figure description] Page 022.[end figure description]

It was a week before “class day,” — that eventful day
which was virtually to close the college career of Morton and
his contemporaries. The little janitor, commonly called
Paddy O'Flinn, was ringing the evening prayer bell from the
cupola of Harvard Hall, — its tone was dull and muffled,
some graceless sophomore having lately painted it white, inside
and out, — and the students were mustering at the
summons. The sedate and the gay, the tender freshman and
the venerable senior, the prosperous city beau and the awkward
country bumpkin, one and all were filing from their
respective quarters towards the chapel in University Hall.
The bell ceased; the loiterers quickened their steps; the last
belated freshman, with the dread of the proctor before his
eyes, bounded frantically up the steps; and for a brief space
all was silence and solitude. Then there was a murmuring,
rushing sound, as of a coming tempest, and University Hall
disgorged its contents, casting forth the freshmen and juniors
at one door, and the sophomores and seniors at the other.

Of these last was Morton, who, with three or four of his
class, walked across the college yard, towards the great

[figure description] Page 023.[end figure description]

gateway. By his side was a young man named Rosny, carelessly
dressed, but with a lively, dare-devil face, and the look of a
good-natured game cock.

“I shall be sorry to leave this place,” said Morton; “I like
it. I like the elms, and the gravel walks, and the scurvy old
brick and mortar buildings.”

“Then I am not of your mind,” said Rosny; “gravel or
mud, brickbats or paving stones, they are the same to me, the
world over. Halloo, Wren,” to a mustachioed youth who
just then joined them; “we are bound to your room.”

“That's as it should be. But where are the rest?”

“Coming — all in good time; here's one of them.”

A dapper little person approached, with a shining beaver,
yellow kid gloves, a switch cane, and a very stiff but somewhat
dashing cravat, surmounted by a round and rubicund
face.

“Ah, Chester!” exclaimed Wren; “the very man we
were looking for. Come and take a glass of punch at my
room.”

“Punch, indeed!” replied Chester, whose face had changed
from a prim expression to one of great hilarity the moment
he saw his friends — “no, no, gentlemen, I renounce punch
and all its works. The pure unmixed, the pure juice of the
grape for me.”

“But, Chester,” urged Wren, “won't the pure mountain
dew be a sufficient inducement?”

“The good company will be a sufficient inducement,” said
Chester, waving his hand, — “the good company, gentlemen,—
and the good liquor. But what have we here? Meredith

[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]

and Vinal walking side by side. Good Heavens, what a conjunction!”

The objects of Chester's astonishment, on a flattering invitation
from Wren, joined the party, which, however, was
weakened by the temporary secession of Rosny, who, pleading
an errand in the village, left them with a promise to rejoin
them soon. His place was in a few moments more than
supplied by a new party of recruits, among whom was Stubb.
Arrived at Wren's room, the desk and other appliances of
study were banished from the table; bottles and glasses
usurped their place, and the company composed themselves
for conversation, most of them permitting their chairs to
stand quietly on all fours, though one or two, like heathen
Yankees from the backwoods, forced them to rear rampant on
the hind legs, the occupant's feet resting on the ledge over
the fireplace.

A few minutes passed, when a quick, firm step came up the
stairs, and Rosny entered.

“How are you again, Dick?” said Meredith.

“Good evening, Mr. Rosny,” echoed Stubb, who sat
alone on the window seat.

“Eh? what's that?” demanded Rosny, turning sharp
round upon the last speaker, with a face divided between indignation
and laughter.

“I said, `Good evening,'” replied Stubb, much disconcerted.

“And why didn't you say, `Good morning,' yesterday, eh?—
when I met you in Boston, eh? He gave me the cut direct,”
turning to the company. “Mr. Benjamin Stubb, here,

[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]

gave me the cut direct! It was the pepper-and-salt coat and
the thunder-and-lightning breeches that Stubb couldn't think
of bowing to when he was walking in — Street, with a
lady. Look here, Stubb,” — again facing the victim, —
“what do you take me for? and what the devil do you take
yourself for? I know your dirty family history. Your
grandfather was a bricklayer, and the Lord knows who your
great grandfather was. The best Huguenot blood of France
runs in my veins! My ancestors were fighting at Ivry and
Jarnac, while yours were peddling coal and potatoes about
London streets, or digging mud in a ditch, for any thing you
or I know to the contrary.” Stubb gasped. “Your father
has a crest painted on his carriage; but where did he get it?
Why, Cribb, the engraver, stole it for him out of the British
peerage.”

Stubb, who was weak and timorous, here rose in great confusion,
muttered something about conduct unbecoming to a
gentleman, and meaning to require an explanation, and abruptly
left the room.

“That job is finished,” said Rosny, composedly seating
himself. “His bill is settled for him.”

“But, Dick,” said Morton, who had been laughing in his
sleeve during the scene, “do you want to be considered as a
Frenchman or an American?”

“I'm an American,” answered Rosny — “an American
and a democrat, every inch.”

Rosny had adopted democratic principles and habits partly
out of spite against the class to which Stubb belonged, and
which he was pleased to designate as the “codfish

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

aristocracy,” and partly because he thought that he could thus most
effectually gain the ends of his impatient, hankering ambition.
His ancestor, the head of an eminent Huguenot race, had
been driven to America by the persecutions which followed
the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The family had lived
ever since in poverty and obscurity; yet this fiery young democrat
nourished an inordinate pride of birth, and never forgot
that he was descended from a line of warlike nobles.

“No, no,” said Rosny, as Morton pushed a glass towards
him, “drinking is against my rule — Well, as it's about the
last time,” — filling the glass, — “here's to you all.”

“The last time!” said Morton; “that's a dismal word.
If my next four years are as pleasant as these last have been,
I will never complain of them.”

“I tell you, boys,” said Meredith, who was tranquilly puffing
at his cigar, “the cream of our lives is skimmed already.
Rough and tumble, hurry and worry — that will be the story
with most of us, more or less, to the end of our days.”

“Rough and tumble!” exclaimed Rosny; “so much the
better. `Scots play best at the roughest game' — that's just
my case. Who wants to be always paddling about on smooth
water? Close reefed topsails, a gale astern, and breakers all
round — that's the game.”

“Every one to his taste,” said Chester, shrugging his
shoulders. “I suppose a salamander loves the fire, but I
don't. `The race of ambition' — `the unconquerable will'—
pshaw! Cui bono? One chases after his object, and
when he has got it, he turns from it, and chases another. I
profess the philosophy of Horace — enjoy the hour as it flies.

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

Ah! he was a model man, a man after my own heart, a gentleman
and a man of the world. He could drink his Falernian,
and thank the gods for their gifts.”

Rosny whispered in Morton's ear, “Chester ought to
have been born a century ago, among the John Bulls, up in
the cockloft of Brazen Nose College, or some such antediluvian
hole.”

In spite of these derogatory remarks, Chester, besides
being one of the best scholars in the class, was noted for a
social, jovial disposition, which, though, like Fluellen's valor,
a little out of fashion, made him a general favorite.

“Speaking of the next four years,” said Wren, “I wonder
what plans each of us has made for that time. For my part, I
have no plan at all, and should be glad to profit by the suggestions
of the rest. Come, Chester, what do you mean to do?”

“Expatiate,” said Chester, expanding his hands, and thereby
revealing an odd little antique ring which he wore; “take
mine ease, roaming, like the bee, from blossom to blossom.
I will leave the earnest men — bah! — the men with a mission—
to grub on in their vocation. I will renounce this
land of cotton mills and universal suffrage. First for Paris,
to walk the Boulevards, and go to the masked balls and the
opera; — vive la bagatelle! — then for Rome, to saunter
through the Vatican and the picture galleries, — but not to
moralize with a long face over fallen grandeur, and the mutability
of human affairs. No, no, gentlemen, I belong to another
school of philosophy. I will sit among the ruins of the
Forum, and laugh, like Democritus, at the image of Death.
Then I will recreate myself at Capri, like the Cæsars before

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

me; then enjoy the dolce far niente at Florence, and read the
Tuscan poets in the shades of Vallombrosa.”

“But, Chester,” interposed Wren, “don't you ever mean
to marry and settle down?”

“I object to that phrase, `settle down.' It calls up disagreeable
images. It reminds one of the backwoods, log cabins,
men in shirt sleeves, and piles of pine boards and lumber.
Yes, certainly, I mean to marry. What man of taste would
leave matrimony out of his scheme of life? One likes to
gather his treasures round him, his pictures, his vases, and
statues; and how can he adorn his rooms with an ornament
more exquisite — where can he find a piece of furniture more
charmingly moulded — than a beautiful woman?”

This flourish, between jest and earnest, he pronounced
with a graceful wave of his hand.

“If, when you have married your beautiful woman,” said
Morton, “you find you have caught a Tartar, it will serve you
right.”

“Hear him,” said Chester; “hear the barbarian. He will
always be conjuring up some image of disquiet. `Rest, rest,
perturbed spirit.'”

“He could not rest, if he tried,” said Horace Vinal.

“No, he is one of those unfortunates who lie under a sentence
of endless activity. It is a disease, with which men
are afflicted for the sins of their ancestors; and for the sins
of mine I was born among a whole nation of such. Perpetual
motion, bustle and whirl, — I grow dizzy to think of it.
They cannot rest themselves, and will not let any one else
rest. Always pursuing, always doing, never enjoying. A

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

true American cannot enjoy. He would build a steam saw
mill in Arcadia, and dam up the four rivers of Paradise for
cotton factories.”

“But, Chester,” said Wren, “that is not at all like Morton;
you know he hates utilitarianism.”

“Yes, but still he cannot rest. He would not build saw
mills and dams; but he would be sure to fire his rifle at some
of Adam's live stock, and set all Eden by the ears. Come,
Morton, I have told the company my plans. Let us hear
what yours are.”

“My guardian wishes me to enter the law school.”

“You are twenty-one now,” said Vinal, “and can do as
you please.”

Vinal was a very tall and slender young man, with a
strongly marked face, though thin and pale; a grave, thoughtful
eye, and compressed lips, expressing a kind of nervous
self-control. His dress was very elaborate and scrupulous,
though without the smallest trace of foppery. He was less
popular in the class than Morton, but had the reputation of
greater talents. This he owed, perhaps, to his habitual reserve;
for every one thought that he understood Morton
thoroughly, while few pretended to fathom the silent and self-contained
Vinal.

“I should like well enough to study law,” was Morton's
non-committal answer.

“I thought, Morton, that you were more of a philosopher.
Here you are, a young fellow, full of blood, and worth half
a million, and yet you speak of buckling down to the law.
That is all well enough for poor dogs like me, who go into

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

the mill from necessity. We drudge on for twenty years or
more, till we have scraped together a competency, or something
better, perhaps, and then we find that we have forgotten
how to enjoy it. We have grown so used to harness
that we are good for nothing out of it, and sacrifice body and
soul to our profession. You have reached already the point
that we are straining for. The world is all before you, man;
launch out and enjoy yourself.”

“Didn't you just say,” asked Rosny, “that Morton couldn't
rest, if he tried?”

“I said he could not rest, but I did not say he could not
enjoy himself. Look at him: his cheek is ruddier and
browner than any of us. Nobody would believe that a fellow
like that was not made to enjoy life. I know Morton. He
could roam from blossom to blossom, as Chester says, with as
good a will as any body. He has an eye for the fair sex, correct
as he is at present. He knows a pretty face from a plain
one. The devil will catch him yet with a black eye and a
rosy cheek.”

“Then,” said Morton, “he will show his good opinion of
my taste.”

Rosny, who had his own reasons for disliking Vinal, here
broke in without ceremony, —

“Be gad, Vinal, he will bait his hook differently when he
fishes for you.”

“How will that be, Dick?” said Meredith.

“With a five dollar bank note, and a lying puff in a newspaper;
and Vinal will jump at it like a mackerel at a red rag.”

Vinal laughed, but with a bad grace.

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

“Riches and fame!” said Chester, anxious to smooth
away all traces of irritation — “riches and fame! I call those
legitimate objects of pursuit; and the black eye is positively
praiseworthy. Come, Morton, let us hear your plan. You
have not told it yet.”

“I defer to Rosny — he is my senior. Dick, some ten or
twelve years from this, I suppose I shall vote against you for
the presidency.”

“Thank you. By that time you will have no whig party
left to vote with. The democrats will have it all their own
way.”

“I have often wondered what could have induced a driving
man of the world like you to come to college at all. You
have been here more than a year; and in the same time,
with your previous knowledge, you might have learned as
much any where else at half the cost. You are not the fellow
to regard a degree of A. M. with superstitious veneration.”

“You are right there, colonel. I am of no kith nor kin to
some of your New England old fogies, who would give their
souls for a D. D. or an LL. D. — and get it, too, though
they know no more Greek or Hebrew than I know of Choctaw,
and can barely manage to stumble along through the
Latin Testament. What's a piece of sheep's skin to me?
Humbug is the current coin all the world over, and just
as much in this free and enlightened country as any where
else. I have schemes on foot, — not political, — no matter
what they are, — out in the western country; and I happen
to know that a degree from Harvard University is the

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

medicine that suits my case; with that for my credentials, I shall
carry it over all competitors. Yes, boys, gammon is the
word; and the man who would rise in the world must use
the stepping stones.”

“You're a victim of the national disease, Rosny,” said
Chester. “Rising in the world! — that's the idea that ruins
us. It's that that makes us lean, starveling, nervous, restless,
dyspeptic, hypochondriac, — the most prosperous and
most uncomfortable people on earth. Sit down, man, and
take your ease. What garden will thrive if every plant in it
must be dug up every day, and set out in a better place?”

“Ah, that's good doctrine for you. You have got nothing
to gain, and a good deal to lose. Stand up for the status quo,
old boy; I would, in your place. Look at me, though. I
was cut adrift at fourteen, — parents dead, — not a cent in
my pocket, — and since then I have tumbled along through
the world as I could. You can't kill me. I have more lives
than a cat. I have been thrown on my back a dozen times;
but the harder I was flung down, the higher I bounced up
again. Why, I have known the time when I was glad to
earn a shilling by shovelling snow off a sidewalk. I have
tried my hand at every thing, — printer's work, lecturing,
politics, editing, keeping school, — and do you suppose I
shall be content to rest in the mud all my days? Not a bit
of it. I know my cue better. The time will come when
you'll see me shooting up like a rocket.”

Here a broad glare against the window interrupted him,
and, looking out, his auditors saw a bonfire blazing with peculiar
splendor under the windows of the chamber where the

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

Faculty were at that moment in solemn session. Three proctors
and a tutor were hastening towards the scene of outrage,
when a stentorian voice from the adjacent darkness roared
forth a warning that there was a canister of gunpowder in
the fire expected every moment to explode. The prudent
officers therefore kept their distance, busying themselves with
noting down the names of several innocent spectators, while
the bonfire subsided to a natural death, the gunpowder hoax
having perfectly succeeded.

Mr. Wren's guests resumed their seats, mingling with
graver matters the usual badinage of a college gathering;
and when at length they separated, only a lonely light or two
glimmered from among the many windows of the academic
barracks which overlook the college green.

CHAPTER VI.

As if with Heaven a bargain they had made
To practise goodness — and to be well paid,
They, too, devoutly as their fathers did,
Sin, sack, and sugar, equally forbid;
Holding each hour unpardonably spent
That on the leger leaves no monument.
—Parsons.

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Mr. Erastus Flintlock sat at his counting room, in his
old leather-bottomed arm chair. Vassall Morton, his newly
emancipated ward, just twenty-one, stood before him, the
undisputed master of his father's ample wealth.

“What, no profession, Mr. Morton? None whatever, sir?”

“No, sir, none whatever.”

The old man's leathery countenance expressed mingled
wrath and concern.

Flintlock was a stanch old New Englander, boasting himself
a true descendant of the Puritans, whose religious tenets
he inherited, along with most of their faults, and not a few
of their virtues. He was narrow as a vinegar cruet, and just
in all his dealings. There were three subjects on which he
could converse with more or less intelligence — politics, theology,
and business. Beyond these, he knew nothing; and
except American history and practical science, he had an indistinct
idea that any thing more came of evil. He distrusted
a foreigner, and abhorred a Roman Catholic. All poetry, but

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Milton and the hymn book, was an abomination in his eyes;
and he looked upon fiction as an emanation of the devil. To
the list of the cardinal virtues he added another, namely,
attention to business. In his early days, he had come from
his native Connecticut with letters to Morton's father, who,
seeing his value, took him as a clerk, placed unbounded trust
in him, and at last made him his partner. He was a youth
of slow parts, solid judgment, solemn countenance, steady
habits, and a most unpliable conscience. He had no follies,
allowed himself no indulgences, and could enjoy no other
pleasures than business and church-going. He attended service
morning, afternoon, and evening, and never smiled on
Sundays. His old age was as upright and stiff-necked as
might have been augured from such a youth. He thought
the rising generation were in a very bad way, and once gave
his son a scorching lecture on vanity and arrogance, because
the latter, who had been two years at college, very modestly
begged to be excused from carrying a roll of sample cotton, a
yard and a half long, from his father's store at one end of the
town, to the shop of a retail dealer at the other.

“What, no profession, Mr. Morton?”

“None whatever, sir.”

Morton was prepared for the consequence of these fatal
words, and sought to arm himself with the needful patience.
It would be folly, he knew, to debate the point with his
guardian, who was tough and unmanageable as a hickory
stump; who would never see any side of a question but his
own, and on whose impervious brain reasons fell like rain
drops on a tarpauline. Flintlock, therefore, opened fire

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unanswered, and discoursed for a full hour on duty, propriety, and
a due respect for what he called the general sense of the
community, which, as he assured his auditor, demands that
every one should have some fixed and stated calling, by which
he may be recognized as a worthy and useful member of society.
Sometimes he grew angry, and scolded his ward with
great vehemence; then subsided into a pathetic strain, and
exhorted him, for the sake of his excellent father, not to grow
old in idleness and frivolity. Morton, respectful, but obdurate,
heard him to an end, assured him that, though renouncing
commerce and the professions, his life would by no
means be an idle one, thanked him for his care of his property,
and took his leave; while the old merchant sank back
into his chair, and groaned dismally, because the son of his
respected patron was on the road to perdition.

A moment's retrogression will explain the young man's
recusancy.

On a May evening, some two months before the close of
his college career, Morton sat in lonely meditation on a
wooden bench, by the classic border of Fresh Pond. By
every canon of polite fiction, his meditation ought to have
been engrossed by some object of romantic devotion; but in
truth they were of a nature wholly mundane and sublunary.

He had been much exercised of late upon the choice of a
career for his future life. He liked none of the professions
for itself, and had no need to embrace it for support. He
loved action, and loved study; was ambitious and fond of
applause. He had, moreover, enough of the American in his
composition never to be happy except when in pursuit of

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something; together with a disposition not very rare among
young men in New England, though seldom there, or elsewhere,
joined to his abounding health and youthful spirits —
a tendency to live for the future, and look at acts and things
with an eye to their final issues.

Thierry's Norman Conquest had fallen into his hands soon
after he entered college. The whole delighted him; but he
read and re-read the opening chapters, which exhibit the
movements of the various races in their occupancy of the
west of Europe. This first gave him an impulse towards
ethnological inquiries. He soon began to find an absorbing
interest in tracing the distinctions, moral, intellectual, and
physical, of different races, as shown in their history, their
mythologies, their languages, their legends, their primitive
art, literature, and way of life. The idea grew upon him of
devoting his life to such studies.

Seated on the wooden bench at the edge of Fresh Pond,
he revolved, for the hundredth time, his proposed scheme, and
summed up what he regarded as its manifold advantages. It
would enable him to indulge his passion for travel, lead him
over rocks, deserts, and mountains, conduct him to Tartar
tents and Cossack hovels, make him intimate with the most
savage and disgusting of barbarians; in short, give full swing
to his favorite propensities, and call into life all his energies
of body and mind. In view of this prospect, he clinched his
long-cherished purpose, devoting himself to ethnology for the
rest of his days.

He had a youthful way of thinking that any resolution
deliberately adopted by him must needs be final and

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conclusive, and was fully convinced that his present determination
was a species of destiny, involving one of three results — that
he should meet an early death, which he thought very likely;
that he should be wholly disabled by illness, which he thought
scarcely possible; or that, in the fulness of time, say twenty
or twenty-five years, his labors would have issue in some prodigious
work, redounding to his own honor and the unspeakable
profit of science.

CHAPTER VII.

'Tis a dull thing to travel like a mill horse,
Still in the place he was born in, round and blinded.
Beaumont and Fletcher.

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A novel-maker may claim a privilege which his betters
must forego. So, in the teeth of dramatic unities, let the
story leap a chasm of some two years.

Not that the void was a void to Morton. His nature
spurred him into perpetual action; but his wanderings were
over at length; and he and Meredith sat under the porch
of Morton's house, a few miles from town. The features of
the latter were swarthy from exposures, while those of his
friend were somewhat pale, and had the expression of one
insufferably bored.

“Colonel, you are the luckiest fellow I know. Here you
have been following the backbone of the continent from Darien
to the head of the Missouri, mixing yourself up with
Spaniards and Aztecs, poking sticks into the crater of Popocatapetl,
and living hand and glove with Blackfeet and Assinnaboins,
while I have been doing penance among bonds and
mortgages, and title deeds and leases. My father has thrown
up responsibility and gone to Europe — and so has every
body else — and left all on my shoulders.”

“Your time will come.”

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

“I hope so.”

“But what news is there?”

“Nothing.”

“What, nothing since I went away?”

“The old story. You know it as well as I. Now and
then, a new engagement came out. Mrs. A. approved it, and
Mrs. B. didn't; and then characters were discussed on both
sides. Something has been said of the balls, the opera, and
what not; with the usual talk about the wickedness of the
democrats and the fanaticism of the abolitionists.”

“You appear to have led a gay life.”

“Very! — we need a war, an invasion, — something of the
sort. It would put life into us, and rid us of a great deal of
nonsense. You were born with a stimulus in yourself, and
can stand this stagnant sort of existence; but I need something
more lively.”

“Then go with me on my next journey.”

“Are you thinking of another already? Rest in peace,
and thank Heaven that you have come home in a whole skin.”

“I have done the North American continent; but there
are four more left, not to mention the islands.”

“And you mean to see them all?”

“Certainly.”

“Your science is a convenient hobby. It carries you wherever
you fancy to go.”

“You could not do better than go with me.”

“I know it; but, if wishes were horses — I am training
Dick to take my place. I am a model elder brother to
that youngster in the way of cultivating his mind and morals;

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and when I have him up to the mark, I shall gain a year's
furlough for my pains. But when is your next journey to
begin — next week?”

“No, I mean to pin myself down here, and dig like a mole,
for the next ten months, at least.”

“If I had not had ocular proof of what a determined dig
you can be, I should set down your studies as mere humbug.”

“But I wish to hear the news.”

“I would tell it willingly, if I knew any.”

“Have the Primroses come home from Europe yet?”

“Yes.”

“And the Everills?”

“I believe not.”

“Nor the Leslies, I suppose.”

“For a reasonably sensible and straightforward fellow, you
have a queer way of making inquiries. You question like a
lady's letter, with the pith in the postscript. You ask after the
Primroses and the Everills, a stupid, priggish set, for whom
you care nothing, as earnestly as if you were in love with
them, and then grow indifferent when you come to the Leslies,
whom you like.”

“Did I?” said Morton, in some discomposure; “I ask
their pardon. Have they come home?”

“Not yet, but I believe they mean to come as soon as they
have staid their year out.”

“And that will be very soon — early in the spring, or
sooner.”

“Now I think of it, I made the acquaintance, a few

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evenings ago, of a person who, I believe, is a relation or connection
of yours — Miss Fanny Euston.”

“O, yes, she is my third, fourth, or fifth cousin, or something
of that sort; but I have not seen her since she was ten
years old. She was a great romp, then, and very plain.”

“That last failing is cured. She has grown very handsome.”

“The first failing ought to be cured, too, by this time.”

“I am not so clear on that point. She is a girl with an
abundance of education, and a good deal of a certain kind of
accomplishment — music, and so on — but no breeding at all.
If she had had the training of good society, she would have
been one of a thousand. As it is she cares for nobody, and
does and says whatever comes into her mind, without the
least regard to consequences or appearances.”

“Does she affect naturalness, independence, and all that?”

“No, she affects nothing. The material is admirable. It
only needs to be refined, polished, and toned down. It's unlucky,
colonel, but in this world every thing worth having is
broken in pieces and mixed with something that one doesn't
want. It's an even balance, good and bad; there's no use in
going off into raptures about any thing. One thing is certain,
though; this cousin of yours has character enough to
supply material for a dozen Miss Primroses, without any visible
diminution.”

“I should like to see her. I'll go to-morrow.”

“You'd better. But now tell me something more about
your journey.”

And, in reply to his friend's questions, Morton proceeded
to relate such incidents as had befallen him.

CHAPTER VIII.

Beauty is a witch
Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.
D. Pedro.

— If thou wilt hold longer argument,
Do it in notes.
Benedick.

— Now, divine air, now is his soul ravished.
Much Ado about Nothing.

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Morton visited his cousin, Miss Fanny Euston, a guest,
for a few days, at a friend's house in town. By good fortune,
as he thought it, he found her alone; and, as he conversed
with her, he employed himself — after a practice usual with
him — in studying her character, and making internal comments
upon it. These insidious reflections, condensed into a
paragraph, would have been somewhat as follows: —

“A fine figure, and a very handsome face; but there is a
lurking devil in her eye, and about the corners of her mouth.”
Here some ten minutes of animated dialogue ensued before
his observations had shaped themselves into further results.
“She is exceedingly clever; she knows how to think and act
for herself. I should not like to cross her will. There is fire
enough in her to make a hundred women interesting. She is
none of our frosty New England beauties. She could love a
man to the death, and hate him as well. She could be a
heroine or a tigress. Every thing about her is wild and chaotic,
the unformed elements of a superb woman.”

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Here, the conversation having lasted a half hour or more,
his imagination began to disturb the deductions of his philosophy,
and he was no longer in a mood of just psychological
analysis, when, to his vexation, his cousin's hostess, Miss
Jones, entering, brought his tête-à-tête to a close. She displayed
a marvellous fluency of discourse, and was eloquent
upon books, parties, paintings, and the opera.

“I need not ask you, Mr. Morton, if you have seen Tennyson's
new poem.”

“Yes — at the bookseller's.”

“But surely you have read it.”

“No, I am behind the age.”

“Then thank Heaven for it,” exclaimed his unceremonious
cousin; “for of all insipidity, and affectation, and fine-spun,
wire-drawn trash, Tennyson carries away the palm. Every
body reads him because he is the fashion, and every body
admires him because he is the fashion. But he is a bubble,
a film, a gossamer; there's nothing in him.”

This explosion called forth a protest from the poet's admirer.

“May I ask,” said Morton to his cousin, “who are your
literary favorites?”

“Not the latter-day poets — the Tennysonian school;
their puling mannerism is an insult to the Saxon tongue.”

“But,” urged Miss Jones, “you are not quite reasonable.”

“Of course I am not. It's not a woman's province to be
reasonable.”

“Do you subscribe to these poetical heresies, Mr. Morton?”

“On the contrary, I think that Tennyson has often great
beauties.”

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“If he sometimes wrote like an angel,” pursued Fanny
Euston, “I should find no patience to see it in a man who
could put upon paper such parrot rhymes as these: —


`Not a whit of thy tuwhoo,
Thee to woo to thy tuwhit,
Thee to woo to thy tuwhit,
With a lengthened loud halloo,
Tuwhoo, tuwhit, tuwhit, tuwhoo-o-o!'
Bah! it puts one in a passion to hear such twaddle.”

“I see,” said her friend, “that nothing less than your own
music will calm your indignation. Pray let us hear the ballad
which you set to music this morning.”

“I will sing, if you wish it; but not that ballad.”

And she seated herself before the open piano.

“What do you choose, Mr. Morton?”

“The Marseillaise. That, I think, is in your vein.”

“Ah! you can choose well!”

And, running her fingers over the keys, she launched at
once into the warlike strains of the hymn of revolution. Her
voice and execution were admirable; and though by no means
unconscious that she was producing an effect, she sang with
a fire, energy, and seeming recklessness that thrilled like
lightning through her auditor's veins. He rose involuntarily
from his seat. For that evening his study of character
was ended, and philosophy dislodged from her last
stronghold.

Half an hour later he was riding homeward in a mood
quite novel to his experience. He pushed his horse to a keen

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trot, as if by fierceness of motion to keep pace with the fiery
influence that was kindling all his nerves.

“I have had my fancies before this,” he thought, — “in
fact I have almost been in love; but that feeling was no more
like this than a draught from a clear spring is like a draught
of spiced wine.”

That night he fully expected to be haunted by a vision of
Fanny Euston; but his slumbers were unromantically dreamless.

Three days later, he ventured another visit; but his cousin
had returned to her home in the country. By this time
he was conscious of a great abatement of ardor; and his
equanimity was little moved by the disappointment. In a
week he had learned to look back on his transient emotion
as an effervescence of the moment, and to regard his relative
with no slight interest, indeed, yet by no means in a light
which could blind him to her glaring faults. He summoned
up all that he could recall of herself and her family, and
chiefly of her father, whom he remembered in his boyhood as
a rough, athletic man, whose black and bushy eyebrows were
usually contracted into something which seemed like a frown.
These boyish recollections were far from doing Euston justice.
He was a man of masculine and determined character. His
will was strong, his passions violent; he was full of prejudices,
and when thwarted or contradicted, his rage was formidable.
His honor was unquestioned; he was most bluntly
and unmanageably honest. Yet through the rock and iron
of his character, there ran, known to but few, a delicate vein
of poetic feeling. The music of his daughter, or the verses

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of his favorite Burns, could often bring tears to his stern gray
eyes. For his wife, whom he had married in a fit of pique
and disappointment, when little more than a boy, he cared
nothing; but his fondness for his daughter was unbounded.
He alone could control her; for she loved him ardently, and
he was the only living thing of which she stood in awe.

CHAPTER IX.

Elle ne manque jamais de saisir promptement
L'apparente lueur du moindre attachement,
D'en semer la nouvelle avec beaucoup de joie, —
Le Tartufe.

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Among Morton's acquaintance was a certain Miss Blanche
Blondel. They had been schoolmates when children; and
as, at a later date, Miss Blanche had been fond of making
long visits to a friend in Cambridge, during term time, Morton,
in common with many others, had a college acquaintance
with her, so that they were now on a footing of easy intercourse.
Not that he liked her. On the contrary, she had
inspired him with a very emphatic aversion; but being rather
a skirmisher on the outposts of society, than enrolled in the
main battalion, she was anxious to make the most of the acquaintance
she had. She had the eyes of an Argus, and was
as sly, smooth, watchful, and rusée as a tortoise shell cat;
wonderfully dexterous at finding or making gossip, and unwearied
in sowing it, broadcast, to the right and left.

One evening Morton was at a ball, crowded to the verge
of suffocation. At length he found himself in a corner from
which there was no retreat, while the stately proportions
of Mrs. Frederic Goldenberg barred his onward progress.
But when that distinguished lady chanced to move aside, she

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revealed the countenance of Miss Blondel, beaming on him
like the moon after an eclipse. She nodded and smiled.
There was no escape. Morton smiled hypocritically, and
said, “Good evening.” Blanche, as usual, was eager for conversation,
and, after a few commonplaces, she said, turning up
her eyes at him with an arch expression, —

“I have a piece of news to tell you, Mr. Morton.”

“Ah!” replied Morton, expecting something disagreeable.

“A piece of news that you will be charmed to hear.”

“Indeed.”

“Why, how cold you are! And I know that, in your
heart, you are burning to hear it.”

“If you think so, you are determined to give my patience
a hard schooling.”

“Well, I will not tantalize you any more. Miss Edith
Leslie sailed from Liverpool for home last Wednesday.”

“Ah!”

“How cold you are again! Are you not glad to
hear it?”

“Certainly — all her friends will be glad to hear it.”

“Upon my word, Mr. Morton, you are worse and worse.
When a gentleman dances twice with a young lady on class
day, and twice at Mrs. Fanfaron's ball, and joins her in the
street besides, has she not a right to feel hurt when he hears
with such profound indifference of her coming home after a
year's absence?”

Morton could hardly restrain the extremity of his distaste
and impatience.

“Miss Leslie, I imagine, would spend very little thought

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upon the matter.” And he hastened, first to change the conversation,
and then to close it altogether.

Having escaped from his fair informant, he remained divided
between pleasure at the tidings, and annoyance at the
manner in which they had been told.

In a few days Miss Leslie arrived. Her beauty had matured
during her absence. She was conspicuously and brilliantly
handsome, and was admired accordingly, — a fact which,
though she could not but be conscious of it, seemed to affect
her very little. Morton found her but slightly changed, with
the same polished and quiet frankness, the same lively conversation,
not without a tinge of sarcasm, and the same enthusiasm
of character, betraying itself by an earnestness of manner,
and never by any extravagance of expression. He had
many opportunities of seeing her, Miss Blanche Blondel
being but rarely present, and, in his growing admiration of
her, the charms of his unbridled cousin faded more and more
from his memory.

CHAPTER X.

For three whole days you thus may rest
From office business, news, and strife.
— Pope.

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When the summer heats set in, Meredith, one evening,
drove to Morton's house, and, arrayed in linen and grasscloth,
smoked his cigar under his friend's veranda with as
much contentment as the thermometer at ninety would permit.
The window at his side was that of the room which
Morton used as his study, and the table was covered with
books.

“Colonel,” said Meredith, “what a painstaking fellow you
are! Ever since you left college — except when you were off
on that journey, which was one of the most rational things
you ever did in your life — you have been digging here
among your books, as if you were some half-starved law student,
with a prospect of matrimony.”

“I've done digging for the present. It's against my principles
to work much in July and August.”

“What do you mean to do?”

“Set out on a journey.”

“I suppose so. You are a lucky fellow.”

“Give yourself a vacation, and come with me.”

“No, I'm in for it for the next two months; but I will
have my revenge before long.”

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“Three days from your office will never ruin you or your
family. Come with me to New Baden, if you can't do better.”

“I think I can manage that, — and I will.”

Accordingly, on Monday morning, they took the train
thitherward.