he eagerly treasured every impression, and pieced it out, by question
or furtive observation, into an image often shrewdly true, and often
grotesquely untrue, to the conditions into which he had been dropped. He
civilized himself as rapidly as his light permitted. There was a great
deal of church-going; but he and young Halleck went also to lectures and
concerts; they even went to the opera, and Bartley, with the privity of his
friend, went to the theatre. Halleck said that he did not think there was
much harm in a play; but that his people stayed away for the sake of the
example,--a reason that certainly need not hold with Bartley.

At the end of the vacation he returned to college, leaving his measure with
Halleck's tailor, and his heart with all the splendors and elegances of the
town. He found the ceilings very low and the fashions much belated in the
village; but he reconciled himself as well as he could. The real stress
came when he left college and the question of doing something for himself
pressed upon him. He intended to study law, but he must meantime earn his
living. It had been his fortune to be left, when very young, not only an
orphan, but an extremely pretty child, with an exceptional aptness for
study; and he had been better cared for than if his father and mother had
lived. He had been not only well housed and fed, and very well dressed, but
pitied as an orphan, and petted for his beauty and talent, while he was
always taught to think of himself as a poor boy, who was winning his own
way through the world. But when his benefactor proposed to educate him for
the ministry, with a view to his final use in missionary work, he revolted.
He apprenticed himself to the printer of his village, and rapidly picked up
a knowledge of the business, so that at nineteen he had laid by some money,
and was able to think of going to college. There was a fund in aid of
indigent students in the institution to which he turned, and the faculty
favored him. He finished his course with great credit to himself and the
college, and he was naturally inclined to look upon what had been done for