personality ever since I had got it off the side of an ice-cart many
years before.

At the time the story was imagined Harvard had been for four years much
in the direct knowledge of the author, and I pleased myself in realizing
the hero's experience there from even more intimacy with the university
moods and manners than had supported me in the studies of an earlier
fiction dealing with them. I had not lived twelve years in Cambridge
without acquaintance such as even an elder man must make with the
undergraduate life; but it is only from its own level that this can be
truly learned, and I have always been ready to stand corrected by
undergraduate experience. Still, I have my belief that as a jay--the word
may now be obsolete--Jeff Durgin is not altogether out of drawing; though
this is, of course, the phase of his character which is one of the least
important. What I most prize in him, if I may go to the bottom of the
inkhorn, is the realization of that anti-Puritan quality which was always
vexing the heart of Puritanism, and which I had constantly felt one of
the most interesting facts in my observation of New England.

As for the sort of summer hotel portrayed in these pages, it was
materialized from an acquaintance with summer hotels extending over
quarter of a century, and scarcely to be surpassed if paralleled. I had a
passion for knowing about them and understanding their operation which I
indulged at every opportunity, and which I remember was satisfied as to
every reasonable detail at one of the pleasantest seaside hostelries by
one of the most intelligent and obliging of landlords. Yet, hotels for
hotels, I was interested in those of the hills rather than those of the
shores.

I worked steadily if not rapidly at the story. Often I went back over it,