sincere. He sought to mould me to what he thought the form a man
should take, and now as I look back on the five years through which he
labored with me, I may smile at the memory of his mien, his pomposity,
his bigotry, yet I smile too with affection. He taught me without pay.
His study became my school-room, and when at times I chafed under his
vigilant tutelage and wearied in my well-doing, he steeled himself with
the remembrance that Job endured more than he without complaint. In my
sulkiness or open rebellion he found evidences to confirm his belief in
the doctrine of innate evil; he seemed to rush singing into battle with
the devil that was in me.

Through this intimate association I became a little Mr. Pound. How
could it have been otherwise when day after day, books in hand, I
walked down to his house to recite my lesson of Latin and Greek, and
with him worked through the mysteries of algebraic calculation and
studied the strange habits of the right line? He pressed me into his
mould. Years went by. In the valley the Professor was forgotten, and
to me Penelope was but a dim figure in the past. Even the memory of
Rufus Blight ceased to awaken rancor, and I could contemplate with
growing cynicism my old-time hatred of him. Unconsciously new
ambitions stirred within me, and they were fostered by the flattery of
my elders. In that Africa of my dream-land I no longer pictured myself
in a cork helmet slaying lions, but dying at the stake, a martyr to my
duty and--must I add it?--being preached about afterward from a
thousand pulpits.

Mr. Pound was my model of deportment, my glass of fashion. I see him
now as we used to sit, vis-a-vis, at his study table. Samson's
physical strength came from his hair. From the same source, it seemed
to me, Mr. Pound derived that mental vigor with which he pulled down
the temples of ignorance and slew the thousand devils of unorthodoxy
which sprang from my doubting mind. From the top of his head a red
lock flamed up, licking the air; over its sides the hair tumbled in
cataracts, breaking about his ears; then the surging hair lost itself
in orderly currents which flowed, waving, from his cheeks, leaving a
rift from which sprang a generous nose and a round chin with many
folds. His mouth was formed for the enunciation of large words and
pompous phrases. From it monosyllables fell like bullets from a
cannon. He seldom descended to conversation. He declaimed. He sought