d her. But if she could have flashed into splendid greatness, if
by any amount of laborious study, or work, or suffering, she could have
seen the way to world-wide renown she would have grasped for it in an
instant.

The next best thing to being renowned one's self was to have renowned
people for friends. This was another thing that Ruth coveted in silence.
She wanted no one to know how earnestly she aspired to, sometime,
making the acquaintance of some of the great people not--the vulgarly
great, those who were in a sense, and in the eyes of a few, great
because of the accidents of fortune and travel. She knew such by the
scores. Indeed, she had been in circles many a time where _she_ shone
with that sort of greatness herself. Perhaps it was for that reason that
it was such a despised height to her. But she meant the _really_ great
people of this world--people of power, people who moved the masses by
the force of their brains. Not one such had she ever met to look upon as
an acquaintance; and here was this man telling off the honored names by
the score, and saying, "My friend, Dr. Guthrie"--"My good friend, Thomas
Carlyle"--"My dear brother, Newman Hall." How would it seem to stand in
intimate relationship with one single gifted mind like these, and was
she destined ever to know by actual experience?

There was another reason why Ruth had desired to choose Dr. Cuyler to
listen to rather than some other names on the programme, because, from
the nature of his subject she had judged it most unlikely that he
should have about him any arrows that would touch home to her. Not that
she put it in that language; she did not admit even to herself that any
of the solemn words that had been spoken at Chautauqua had reference to
her; and yet in a vague, fitful way she was ill at ease.

She had moments of feeling that there was a reach of happiness possessed
by these people of which she knew nothing. Little side thrusts had come
to her from time to time in places where she least expected them. That
question, asked by Flossy during her night of unrest, "Should you be
afraid to die?" hovered around this quietly poised young lady in a most
unaccountable manner. All the more persistently did it cling because she
could not shake it off with the thought that it was silly. Common sense
told her that the strange, solemn shadow, which came so steadily after
men, and so surely enveloped one after another among the grandest
intellects that t