recommending, instead, Young's Night Thoughts, and Pollock's Course of
Time, and Southey--the dear good woman!

And then came a time when he was in the store of Markham & Co., and
finally was taken from the counter, because of his sharp words to
customers, and set at the books, and sent away from that post because
he illustrated them with caricatures on the margins, and smart
personal rhymes. Julia was sixteen, and as sweet a romping, hoydenish,
laughing, brave, strong girl as ever bewitched the heart of dreaming
youth; and he had taught her to ride on horseback; and then she was
sent off, away "down country," to the centre of the world, to Boston,
where were uncles and aunts, and was gone, oh, ever and ever so
long!--half a lifetime--nearly two years--and came back; and then his
thoughts became confused. Then he thought of Judge Markham, and now
he was sure that the Judge did not like him; and he remembered that
Julia's mother, as he came towards manhood, was kind and patronizing,
and that when he went to say good-by to Julia, three months ago,
although she knew he was coming, she was not at home, and he only saw
her mother and Nell Roberts. Then he thought of all the things he had
tried to do within the last two years, and how he had done none of
them. People had not liked him, and he had not suspected why, and had
not cared. People liked his elder brothers, and he was glad and proud
of it; and a jumble of odds and ends and fragments became tangled and
snarled in his mind. What would people say of his return? Did he care?
He asked nobody's leave to go, and came back on his own account. But
his mother--she would look sad; but she would be glad. It certainly
was a mistake, his going; could it be a blunder, his returning?

He was thinking shallowly; but deeper thoughts came to him. He began
to believe that easy places did not exist; and he scorned to seek them