wear off in time." And this was better teaching than one sometimes
gets in class.

This is no tale of the inner life of an American university. It is but
a brief summary of young Harlson's ways there. But some day, I hope, a
Thomas Hughes will come who will write the story, which can be made as
healthful as "Tom Brown," though it will have a different flavor. What
a chance for character study! What opportunity for an Iliad of many a
gallant struggle! Valuable only in a lesser degree than what is
learned from books is what is learned from men in college, that is,
from young men, and herein lies the greater merit of the greater place.
In the little college, however high the grade of study, there is a lack
of one thing broadening, a lack of acquaintance with the youth of many
regions. The living together of a thousand hailing from Maine or
California, or Oregon or Florida, or Canada or England, young men of
the same general grade and having the same general object, is a great
thing for them all. It obliterates the prejudice of locality, and
gives to each the key-note of the region of another. It builds up an
acquaintance among those who will be regulating a land's affairs from
different vantage-grounds in years to come, and has its most practical
utility in this. When men meet to nominate a President this fact comes
out most strongly. The man from Texas makes a combination with the man
from Michigan, and two delegations swing together, for have not these
two men well known each other since the day their classes met in a rush
upon the campus twenty years ago?

No studious recluse was Harlson. His backwoods training would not
allow of that. In every class encounter, in every fray with townsmen,
it is to be feared in almost every hazing, after his own gruesome
experience--for they hazed then vigorously--he was a factor, and