the only positive result he could ever trace to the influence of
Harvard College, and he had grave doubts whether Harvard College
influenced even that. Negative results in plenty he could trace,
but he tended towards negation on his own account, as one side of
the New England mind had always done, and even there he could
never feel sure that Harvard College had more than reflected a
weakness. In his opinion the education was not serious, but in
truth hardly any Boston student took it seriously, and none of
them seemed sure that President Walker himself, or President
Felton after him, took it more seriously than the students. For
them all, the college offered chiefly advantages vulgarly called
social, rather than mental.

Unluckily for this particular boy, social advantages were his
only capital in life. Of money he had not much, of mind not more,
but he could be quite certain that, barring his own faults, his
social position would never be questioned. What he needed was a
career in which social position had value. Never in his life
would he have to explain who he was; never would he have need of
acquaintance to strengthen his social standing; but he needed
greatly some one to show him how to use the acquaintance he cared
to make. He made no acquaintance in college which proved to have
the smallest use in after life. All his Boston friends he knew
before, or would have known in any case, and contact of Bostonian
with Bostonian was the last education these young men needed.
Cordial and intimate as their college relations were, they all
flew off in different directions the moment they took their
degrees. Harvard College remained a tie, indeed, but a tie little
stronger than Beacon Street and not so strong as State Street.
Strangers might perhaps gain something from the college if they