You will understand now why the young man wanted me to give him a certificate of his fitness to teach, and why.  I did not choose to urge him to accept the aid which a meek country-boy from a family without ante-Revolutionary recollections would have thankfully received.  Go he must,—­that was plain enough.  He would not be content otherwise.  He was not, however, to give up his studies; and as it is customary to allow half-time to students engaged in school-keeping,—­that is, to count a year, so employed, if the student also keep on with his professional studies, as equal to six months of the three years he is expected to be under an instructor before applying for his degree,—­he would not necessarily lose more than a few months of time.  He had a small library of professional books, which he could take with him.

So he left my teaching and that of my estimable colleagues, carrying with him my certificate, that Mr. Bernard C. Langdon was a young gentleman of excellent moral character, of high intelligence and good education, and that his services would be of great value in any school, academy, or other institution, where young persons of either sex were to be instructed.

I confess, that expression, “either sex,” ran a little thick, as I may say, from my pen.  For, although the young man bore a very fair character, and there was no special cause for doubting his discretion, I considered him altogether too good-looking, in the first place, to be let loose in a room-full of young girls.  I didn’t want him to fall in love just then,—­and if half a dozen girls fell in love with him, as they most assuredly would, if brought into too near relations with him, why, there was no telling what gratitude and natural sensibility might bring about.

Certificates are, for the most part, like ostrich-eggs; the giver never knows what is hatched out of them.  But once in a thousand times they act as curses are said to,—­come home to roost.  Give them often enough, until it gets to be a mechanical business, and, some day or other, you will get caught warranting somebody’s ice not to melt in any climate, or somebody’s razors to be safe in the hands of the youngest children.

I had an uneasy feeling, after giving this certificate.  It might be all right enough; but if it happened to end badly, I should always reproach myself.  There was a chance, certainly, that it would lead him or others into danger or wretchedness.  Any one who looked at this young man could not fail to see that he was capable of fascinating and being fascinated.  Those large, dark eyes of his would sink into the white soul of a young girl as the black cloth sunk into the snow in Franklin’s famous experiment.  Or, on the other hand, if the rays of a passionate nature should ever be concentrated on them, they would be absorbed into the very depths of his nature, and then his blood would turn to flame and burn his life out of him, until his cheeks grew as white as the ashes that cover a burning coal.