anonymous work of his youth, Hawthorne has pictured some aspects of the
college at Brunswick, under a very slight veil of fiction.

"From the exterior of the collegians," he says, "an accurate observer
might pretty safely judge how long they had been inmates of those
classic walls. The brown cheeks and the rustic dress of some would
inform him that they had but recently left the plough, to labor in a not
less toilsome field. The grave look and the intermingling of garments of
a more classic cut would distinguish those who had begun to acquire the
polish of their new residence; and the air of superiority, the paler
cheek, the less robust form, the spectacles of green, and the dress in
general of threadbare black, would designate the highest class, who were
understood to have acquired nearly all the science their Alma Mater
could bestow, and to be on the point of assuming their stations in the
world. There were, it is true, exceptions to this general description. A
few young men had found their way hither from the distant seaports; and
these were the models of fashion to their rustic companions, over whom
they asserted a superiority in exterior accomplishments, which the
fresh, though unpolished intellect of the sons of the forest denied them
in their literary competitions. A third class, differing widely from
both the former, consisted of a few young descendants of the aborigines,
to whom an impracticable philanthropy was endeavoring to impart the
benefits of civilization.

"If this institution did not offer all the advantages of elder and
prouder seminaries, its deficiencies were compensated to its students by
the inculcation of regular habits, and of a deep and awful sense of
religion, which seldom deserted them in their course through life. The
mild and gentle rule ... was more destructive to vice than a sterner
sway; and though youth is never without its follies, they have seldom