younger still, and who may even appear the accomplished flower of virility
to an idealizing maid or so, yet who shall elicit from the middle-aged the
kindly indulgence due a boy. Perhaps you will say that even a man of
twenty-eight may seem only a boy to a man of seventy. However, no
septuagenarian is to figure in these pages. Our elders will be but in the
middle forties and the earlier fifties; and we must find for them an age
which may evoke their friendly interest, and yet be likely to call forth,
besides that, their sympathy and their longing admiration, and later their
tolerance, their patience, and even their forgiveness.

I think, then, that Bertram Cope, when he began to intrigue the little
group which dwelt among the quadruple avenues of elms that led to the
campus in Churchton, was but about twenty-four,--certainly not a day more
than twenty-five. If twenty-eight is the ideal age, the best is all the
better for being just a little ahead.

Of course Cope was not an undergraduate--a species upon which many of the
Churchtonians languidly refused to bestow their regard. "They come, and
they go," said these prosperous and comfortable burghers; "and, after all,
they're more or less alike, and more or less unrewarding." Besides, the
Bigger Town, with all its rich resources and all its varied opportunities,
lay but an hour away. Churchton lived much of its real life beyond its own
limits, and the student who came to be entertained socially within them was
the exception indeed.

No, Bertram Cope was not an undergraduate. He was an instructor; and he was
working along, in a leisurely way, to a degree. He expected to be an M.A.,
or even a Ph.D. Possibly a Litt.D. might be within the gift of later years.
But, anyhow, nothing was finer than "writing"--except lecturing about it.