stopped them with an incredulous question.  When he was informed that it was true that the boy was to be taken to Rome, he had laughed sneeringly and said, “How proud you will be of his city education when you find that he comes back to your little government position, and can make no more money than you have.”  Horace had looked wonderingly into his father’s face, and found it unannoyed and smiling.  And even as a child he had noticed the dignity with which he answered the village magnate:  “Sir, I wish to educate my son to know what is best to know, and to be a good man.  If in outward circumstances he becomes only an honest tax-collector, he will not for that reason have studied amiss, nor shall I be discontented.”

The next day they had started for Rome, and soon the boy was rioting in the inexpressible glories of his first impressions of the great city.  Even the ordeal of going to a strange school had its compensations in the two slaves who went behind him to carry his books.  The centurions’ sons at home had carried their own, and Horace felt a harmless, boyish pleasure (without in the least understanding the years of economy on his father’s part that made it possible) in the fact that here in Rome he had what his schoolmates had, and appeared at school in the same state.  One thing he had that was better than theirs, and he felt very sorry for them.  A special servant went about with each of the other boys, to see that he attended his classes, was polite to his teachers, and did his work.  But Horace had his own father to look after him, a thousand times better than any carping paedagogus.  His father had explained to him that the other fathers were busy men, that they were the ones who carried on the great government, and ruled this splendid Rome; they could not spend hours going to school with their little sons.  But Horace thought it was a great pity, and was sure that he was the luckiest boy in school.

How good it had been to have his father learn directly from the grim Orbilius of his first success, to see him with a quick flush on his face take from the teacher’s hands the wax tablet on which his son had written “the best exercise in the class.”  His father had not spoken directly of the matter, but in some way Horace had felt that the extra sweet-meats they had had that night at supper were a mark of his special pleasure.  And many years afterwards, when he was looking through a chest that had always been locked in his father’s lifetime, he had found the little wax tablet still showing the imprint of his childish stylus.

For ten years Horace’s school life had continued, and then the second great day had come.  He was familiar with early Latin literature and with Homer.  He had studied philosophy and rhetoric with eager industry.  The end was near, and he had begun to wonder what lay before him.  Some of his friends hoped to get into political life at once, and perhaps obtain positions in the provinces.  Others had