on either side; they commit the writers to nothing; they are commonly
without result, except in wasting time which is hardly worth saving. Every
one who has lived the American life must have produced them in great
numbers. While youth lasts, they afford an excitement whose charm is hard
to realize afterward.

Bartley's correspondents were young ladies of his college town, where
he had first begun to see something of social life in days which he now
recognized as those of his green youth. They were not so very far removed
in point of time; but the experience of a larger world in the vacation he
had spent with a Boston student had relegated them to a moral remoteness
that could not readily be measured. His friend was the son of a family who
had diverted him from the natural destiny of a Boston man at Harvard, and
sent him elsewhere for sectarian reasons. They were rich people, devout
in their way, and benevolent, after a fashion of their own; and their son
always brought home with him, for the holidays and other short vacations,
some fellow-student accounted worthy of their hospitality through his
religious intentions or his intellectual promise. These guests were
indicated to the young man by one of the faculty, and he accepted their
companionship for the time with what perfunctory civility he could muster.
He and Bartley had amused themselves very well during that vacation. The
Hallecks were not fashionable people, but they lived wealthily: they had
a coachman and an inside man (whom Bartley at first treated with a
consideration, which it afterward mortified him to think of); their house
was richly furnished with cushioned seats, dense carpets, and heavy
curtains; and they were visited by other people of their denomination,
and of a like abundance. Some of these were infected with the prevailing
culture of the city, and the young ladies especially dressed in a style and
let fall ideas that filled the soul of the country student with wonder and
worship. He heard a great deal of talk that he did not understand; but