Let me introduce you to a young man who belongs to the Brahmin caste of New England.

CHAPTER II.

The student and his certificate.

Bernard C. Langdon, a young man attending Medical Lectures at the school connected with one of our principal colleges, remained after the Lecture one day and wished to speak with the Professor.  He was a student of mark,—­first favorite of his year, as they say of the Derby colts.  There are in every class half a dozen bright faces to which the teacher naturally, directs his discourse, and by the intermediation of whose attention he seems to hold that of the mass of listeners.  Among these some one is pretty sure to take the lead, by virtue of a personal magnetism, or some peculiarity of expression, which places the face in quick sympathetic relations with the lecturer.  This was a young man with such a face; and I found,—­for you have guessed that I was the “Professor” above-mentioned,—­that, when there was anything difficult to be explained, or when I was bringing out some favorite illustration of a nice point, (as, for instance; when I compared the cell-growth, by which Nature builds up a plant or an animal, to the glassblower’s similar mode of beginning,—­always with a hollow sphere, or vesicle, whatever he is going to make,) I naturally looked in his face and gauged my success by its expression.

It was a handsome face,—­a little too pale, perhaps, and would have borne something more of fulness without becoming heavy.  I put the organization to which it belongs in Section B of Class 1 of my Anglo-American Anthropology (unpublished).  The jaw in this section is but slightly narrowed,—­just enough to make the width of the forehead tell more decidedly.  The moustache often grows vigorously, but the whiskers are thin.  The skin is like that of Jacob, rather than like Esau’s.  One string of the animal nature has been taken away, but this gives only a greater predominance to the intellectual chords.  To see just how the vital energy has been toned down, you must contrast one of this section with a specimen of Section A of the same class,—­say, for instance, one of the old-fashioned, full-whiskered, red-faced, roaring, big Commodores of the last generation, whom you remember, at least by their portraits, in ruffled shirts, looking as hearty as butchers and as plucky as bull-terriers, with their hair combed straight up from their foreheads, which were not commonly very high or broad.  The special form of physical life I have been describing gives you a right to expect more delicate perceptions and a more reflective, nature than you commonly find in shaggy-throated men, clad in heavy suits of muscles.

The student lingered in the lecture-room, looking all the time as if he wanted to say something in private, and waiting for two or three others, who were still hanging about, to be gone.