pale,
studious, bending over his book and absorbed in it, his long straight
black hair hanging down below his jaws like a pair of curtains on the
sides of his face. I can see him give his head a toss and flirt one of
the curtains back around his head--to get it out of his way, apparently;
really to show off. In that day it was a great thing among the boys to
have hair of so flexible a sort that it could be flung back in that way,
with a flirt of the head. George Robards was the envy of us all. For
there was no hair among us that was so competent for this exhibition as
his--except, perhaps, the yellow locks of Will Bowen and John Robards.
My hair was a dense ruck of short curls, and so was my brother Henry's.
We tried all kinds of devices to get these crooks straightened out so
that they would flirt, but we never succeeded. Sometimes, by soaking our
heads and then combing and brushing our hair down tight and flat to our
skulls, we could get it straight, temporarily, and this gave us a
comforting moment of joy; but the first time we gave it a flirt it all
shrivelled into curls again and our happiness was gone.

John Robards was the little brother of George; he was a wee chap with
silky golden curtains to his face which dangled to his shoulders and
below, and could be flung back ravishingly. When he was twelve years old
he crossed the plains with his father amidst the rush of the
gold-seekers of '49; and I remember the departure of the cavalcade when
it spurred westward. We were all there to see and to envy. And I can
still see that proud little chap sailing by on a great horse, with his
long locks streaming out behind. We were all on hand to gaze and envy
when he returned, two years later, in unimaginable glory--_for he had
travelled_! None of us had ever been forty miles from home. But he had
crossed the Continent. He had been in the gold-mines, that fairyland of
our imagination. And he had done a still more wonderful thing. He had
been in ships--in ships on the actual ocean; in ships on three actual
oceans. For he had sailed down the Pacific and around the Horn among
icebergs and through snow-storms and wild wintry gales, and had sailed
on and turned the corner and flown northward in the trades and up
through the blistering equatorial waters--and there in his brown face
were the proofs of what he had been through. We would have sold our
souls to Satan for the privilege of trading places with him.

I saw him when I was