from an alma mater for the more alluring prospect of culture and
adventure on the Continent. This supplementary course of self-improvement
and self-entertainment had now continued for three years.

He had written back to his family at discreet intervals, his
communications not being altogether untinctured, it is true, by
considerations of a financial nature; and his sister Jane, who charged
herself with the preservation of this correspondence, would have
undertaken to reconstruct his route and to make a full report of his
movements up to date on ten minutes' notice. She kept his letters in a
large box-file that she had teased from her father at the store; and two
or three times a year she overhauled her previous entries, so to speak,
and added whatever new ones were necessary to bring her books down to the
present day.

She pleased herself, on the occasion of such reviews, with the thought
that her brother's long absence was so largely and so laboriously
educational. There, for example, was his winter and spring at Heidelberg,
which she figured as given over to Kant and Hegel. This sojourn was
attested by a photograph which showed her brother in a preposterous
little round cap, as well as with a bar of sticking-plaster (not markedly
philosophical, it must be confessed) upon one cheek.

Again, there was his six months' stay in Paris, during which time he had
dabbled in pigments at one of the studios affected by Americans. Her
vouchers for this period consisted of several water-colors; they were
done in a violent and slap-dash fashion, and had been inspired,
apparently, by scenes in the environs of the capital. They were marked
"Meudon" and "St. Cloud" and "Suresnes," with the dates; both names and
dates were put where they showed up very prominently. Jane was rather