he renewed abruptly, after a long silence, and as if soliloquizing,--
"no; man is never wrong while he lives for others. The philosopher who
contemplates from the rock is a less noble image than the sailor who
struggles with the storm. Why should there be two of us? And could he
be an alter ego, even if I wished it? Impossible!" My father turned on
his chair, and laying the left leg on the right knee, said smilingly, as
he bent down to look me full in the face: "But, Pisistratus, will you
promise me always to wear the saffron bag?"




CHAPTER VII.


I now make a long stride in my narrative. I am domesticated with the
Trevanions. A very short conversation with the statesman sufficed to
decide my father; and the pith of it lay in this single sentence uttered
by Trevanion: "I promise you one thing,--he shall never be idle!"

Looking back, I am convinced that my father was right, and that he
understood my character, and the temptations to which I was most prone,
when he consented to let me resign college and enter thus prematurely on
the world of men. I was naturally so joyous that I should have made
college life a holiday, and then, in repentance, worked myself into a
phthisis.

And my father, too, was right that though I could study, I was not meant
for a student.