The more I think of all these degree decorations in my efforts to determine what is major in life and what is minor, the more I think of George.  He was an earnest schoolmaster, and was happiest when his boys and girls were around him, busy at their tasks.  One year there were fourteen boys in his school, fifteen including himself, for he was one of them.  The school day was not long enough, so they met in groups in the evening, at the various homes, and continued the work of the day.  These boys absorbed his time, his strength, and his heart.  Their success in their work was his greatest joy.  Of those fourteen boys one is no more.  Of the other thirteen one is a state official of high rank, five are attorneys, two are ministers of the Gospel, two are bankers, one is a successful business man, and two are engineers of prominence.  George is the ideal of those men.  They all say he gave them their start in the right direction, and always speak his name with reverence.  George has these thirteen stars in his crown that I know of.  He had no degrees, but I am thinking that some time he will hear the plaudit:  “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

CHAPTER XXVIII

PURELY PEDAGOGICAL

It was a dark, cold, rainy night in November.  The wind whistled about the house, the rain beat a tattoo against the window-panes and flooded the sills.  The big base-burner, filled with anthracite coal, was illuminating the room through its mica windows, on all sides, and dispensing a warmth that smiled at the storm and cold outside.  There was a book in the picture, also; and a pair of slippers; and a smoking-jacket; and an armchair.  From the ceiling was suspended a great lamp that joined gloriously in the chorus of light and cheer.  The man who sat in the armchair, reading the book, was a schoolmaster—­a college professor to be exact.  Soft music floated up from below stairs as a soothing accompaniment to his reading.  Subconsciously, as he turned the pages, he felt a pity for the poor fellows on top of freight-trains who must endure the pitiless buffeting of the storm.  He could see them bracing themselves against the blasts that tried to wrest them from their moorings.  He felt a pity for the belated traveller who tries, well-nigh in vain, to urge his horses against the driving rain onward toward food and shelter.  But the leaves of the book continued to turn at intervals; for the story was an engaging one, and the schoolmaster was ever responsive to well-told stories.

It was nine o’clock or after, and the fury of the storm was increasing.  As if responding to the challenge outside, he opened the draft of the stove and then settled back, thinking he would be able to complete the story before retiring.  In the midst of one of the many compelling passages he heard a bell toll, or imagined he did.  Brought to check by this startling sensation, he looked back over the