haired urchin floundered through an ill-learned task and his classmates tittered at his blunders.  Dear old classmates!  How their faces shone and gladdened as they chased the bounding football!  How merrily they flushed and glowed when the clear frosty air of the Northern winter quivered with the ring of their skates upon the hard ice!  How soberly side by side they solved problems and looked up sesquipedalia verba in big lexicons!  And how happily the late evening hours wore away as they read Ivanhoe and the Leather Stocking Tales by the fireside with shellbarks and pippins!

Then the college days flew by with all their romance and delight.  Again there were bells ringing to morning prayers, recitations and lectures, examinations and prizes, speeches and medals, and the glorious friendships, pure, earnest, almost holy.  Would there were more such friendships in the outer, wider world!  Commencement with its “pomp and circumstance,” its tedious ceremony and scholarly display, its friends from home—­mothers, sisters, sweethearts, all bright eyes and fond hearts, its music and flowers, its caps, gowns, dress-coats and “spreads,” and, last and worst of all, its sorrowful “good-byes,” some of them, alas! for ever!  Once more he trembled as he rose to make his commencement speech, but slowly, as he went on, his voice grew steady and his manner calmer, for, lad as he was, and tyro at “orations,” he was in earnest.  “May my light hand forget its cunning, O my brother! may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, O ye oppressed! if ever there comes to me an opportunity to help you win your way to freedom and I fail you!” He, the aristocrat of his class, had chosen to speak “Against Caste,” and though he spoke with the enthusiasm of an untried man, it was with devoted honesty of purpose, of which his earnestness was witness, and of which his future was to give ample proof.  Again in vision he stood before that assembly and spoke for the lowly and oppressed.  “Let every man have place and honor as he proves himself worthy.  Make the way clear for all.”

Through the bewilderment of applause that greeted him as he finished he saw only the glad, smiling face of Alice Wentworth nodding approval of the rest, hundreds though they were, he saw nothing.  Her congratulation was enough.

Then came tenderer scenes, and Alice Wentworth was to be his wife.  Another change, and he is in the midst of ruder scenes.  There is war, civil war, and he is a soldier, once more he seems to be in Virginia, and there are marches and counter-marches, camps and barracks, battles and retreats, and all the great and little miseries of long campaigns.  The silver leaflets of a major are exchanged for the golden eagles of a colonel, and all the time, amid sterner duties, he finds time to write to Alice Wentworth, and never a mail comes into camp but he is sure of letters dated ‘Home’ and full of words that make him hopeful and brave, “‘Home!’ Yes hers and mine too, if home’s where the heart is!’” he thinks, and he loves her more dearly every day.