said after swallowing a dose of castor
oil. I'll tell you what I should like better--"

"What?" asked Harry, as the other paused.

"I should like to enter the Naval Academy, and qualify myself for the
naval service. I always liked the sea."

"Doesn't your father approve of your doing this?"

"He wouldn't mind my entering the navy as an officer, but he is not
willing to have me enter the merchant service."

"Then why doesn't he send you to the Naval Academy?"

"Because I can't enter without receiving the appointment from a
member of Congress. Our member can only appoint one, and there is no
vacancy. So, as I can't go where I want to, I am preparing for
Harvard."

"Are you studying Latin and Greek?"

"Yes."

"Have you studied them long?"

"About two years. I was looking over my Greek lesson when you
playfully tumbled over me."

"Will you let me look at your book? I never saw a Greek book."

"I sometimes wish I never had," said Oscar; "but that's when I am
lazy."

Harry opened the book--a Greek reader--in the middle of an extract
from Xenophon, and looked with some awe at the unintelligible letters.

"Can you read it? Can you understand what it means?" he asked,
looking up from the book.

"So-so."

"You must know a great deal."

Oscar laughed.

"I wonder what Dr. Burton would say if he heard you," he said.

"Who is he?"

"Principal of our Academy. He gave me a blowing up for my ignorance
to-day, because I missed an irregular Greek verb. I'm not exactly a
dunce, but I don't think I shall ever be a Greek professor."

"If you speak of yourself that way, what will you think of me? I
don't know a word of Latin, of Greek, or any language except my own."

"Because you have had no chance to learn. There's one language I
know more about than Latin or Greek."

"English?"

"I mean French; I spent a year at a French boarding-school, three
years since."

"What! Have you been in France?"

"Yes; an uncle of mine--in fact, the editor--was going over, and
urged father to send me. I learned considerable French, but not much
else. I can speak and understand it pretty well."

"How I wish I had had your advantages," said Harry. "How did you
like your French schoolmates?"

"They wouldn't come near me at first. Because I was an American they
thought I carried a revolver and a dirk-knife, and was dangerous.
That is their idea of American boys. When they found I was tame, and
carried no dea