sation. Perhaps if she had had a girl friend of her own age she
might have exchanged with her those little confidences, speculations,
and fancies which are the first steps toward independent thought, those
mazy whispered discussions in which girls delight, the beginnings of
poetry and romance, the beginnings, in fact, of their own personal
individual consciousness and life. But she had only Rast, and that was
not the same thing. Rast always took the lead; and he had so many
opinions of his own that there was no time to discuss, or even inquire
about, hers.

In the mean time young Pronando was growing into manhood at the rate of
a year in a month. His handsome face, fine bearing, generous ways, and
incessant activity both of limb and brain gave him a leader's place
among the Western students, who studied well, were careless in dress and
manner, spent their money, according to the Western fashion, like
princes, and had a peculiar dry humor of their own, delivered with
lantern-jawed solemnity.

Young Pronando's preparation for college had been far better than that
of most of his companions, owing to Dr. Gaston's care. The boy
apprehended with great rapidity--apprehended perhaps more than he
comprehended: he did not take the time to comprehend. He floated lightly
down the stream of college life. His comrades liked him; the young
Western professors, quick, unceremonious, practical men, were constantly
running against little rocks which showed a better training than their
own, and were therefore shy about finding fault with him; and the old
president, an Eastern man, listened furtively to his Oxford
pronunciation of Greek, and sighed in spite of himself and his large
salary, hating the new bare white-painted flourishing institution over
which he presided with a fresher hatred--the hatred of an exile. For
there was not a tree on the college grounds: Young America always cuts
down all his trees as a first step toward civilization; then, after an
interregnum, when all the kings of the forest have been laid low, he
sets out small saplings in whitewashed tree-boxes, and watches and tends
them with fervor.

Rast learned rapidly--more things than one. The school for girls, which,
singularly enough, in American towns, is always found flourishing close
under the walls of a college, on the excellent and heroic principle,
perhaps, of resisting temptation rather than fleeing from it, was
situated here at convenient distance for a vari