and when you saw him dressed in them, and seated in a car bound for Park
Square, you knew he was going into Boston, where he would read
manuscript essays on Botticelli or Pico della Mirandola, or manuscript
translations of Armenian folksongs; read these to ecstatic, dim-eyed
ladies in Newbury Street, who would pour him cups of tea when it was
over, and speak of his earnestness after he was gone. It did not do the
ladies any harm; but I am not sure that it was the best thing for Oscar.
It helped him feel every day, as he stepped along to recitations with
his elbow clamping his books against his ribs and his heavy black curls
bulging down from his gray slouch hat to his collar, how meritorious he
was compared with Bertie and Billy--with all Berties and Billies. He
may have been. Who shall say? But I will say at once that chewing the
cud of one's own virtue gives a sour stomach.

Bertie's and Billy's parents owned town and country houses in New York.
The parents of Oscar had come over in the steerage. Money filled the
pockets of Bertie and Billy; therefore were their heads empty of money
and full of less cramping thoughts. Oscar had fallen upon the reverse
of this fate. Calculation was his second nature. He had given his
education to himself; he had for its sake toiled, traded, outwitted, and
saved. He had sent himself to college, where most of the hours not
given to education and more education, went to toiling and more toiling,
that he might pay his meagre way through the college world. He had a
cheaper room and ate cheaper meals than was necessary. He tutored, and
he wrote college specials for several newspapers. His chief relaxation
was the praise of the ladies in Newbury Street. These told him of the
future which awaited him, and when they gazed upon his features were put
in mind of the dying Keats. Not that Oscar was going to die in the
least. Life burned strong in him. There were sly times when he took
what he had saved by his cheap meals and room and went to Boston with