lled Rufus's fire
disagreeably into play. And for himself, he was too
universally popular. If he was always in the foreground,
everybody knew it was because he _could_ not be anywhere else.
If Winthrop was often brought into the foreground, on great
occasions, every soul of them knew it was because no other
would have dignified it so well. And besides, neither Winthrop
nor Rufus forgot or seemed to forget the grand business for
which he was there. With all their diversity of manner and
disposition, each was intent on the same thing, -- to do what
he had come there to do. Lasting eminence, not momentary pre-
eminence, was what they sought; and that was an ambition which
most of their compeers had no care to dispute with them.

"Poor fellows!" said a gay young money-purser; "they are
working hard, I suppose, to get themselves a place in the eye
of the world."

"Yes sir," said the President, who overheard this speech; --
"and they will by and by be where you can't see them."

They came home for a few weeks in the summer, to the
unspeakable rejoicing of the whole family; but it was a break
of light in a cloudy day; the clouds closed again. Only now
and then a stray sunbeam of a letter found its way through.

One year had gone since the boys went to College, and it was
late in the fall again. Mr. Underhill, who had been on a
journey back into the country, came over one morning to Mr.
Landholm's.

"Good morning!" said the farmer. "Well, you've got back from
your journey into the interior."

"Yes," said Mr. Underhill, -- "I've got back."

"How did you find things looking, out there?"

"Middling; -- their winter crops are higher up than yours and
mine be."

"Ay. I suppose they've a little the start of us with the sun.
Did you come through Shagarack?"

"Yes -- I stopped there a night."

"Did you see my boys?"

"Yes -- I see 'em."

"Well -- what did they say?" said the father, with his eye
alive.

"Well -- not much," said Mr. Underhill.

"They were well, I suppose?"

"First-rate -- only Winthrop looked to me as if he was workin'
pretty hard. He's poorer, by some pounds, I guess, than he was
when he was to hum last August."

"Didn't he look as usual?" said the father with a smothered
anxiety.

"There wa'n't no other change in him, that I could see, of no
kind. I didn't know as Rufus was going to know who I was, at
first."

"He hasn't seen much of you for some time."

"No; and folks lose their memor