oes very little harm. It requires _mind for mind_ in
reading, and vice becomes unattractive even to the vicious when they
cannot understand it. I did understand Rabelais, and the _Moyen de
Parvenir_, and the _Cymbalum Mundi_, and Boccaccio (I owned these books),
and laughed over them, yet was withal as pure-minded a youth as could
well be imagined without being a simpleton. For, with all such reading,
I best loved such a book as Bromley's "Sabbath of Rest," or sweet,
strange works of ancient Mysticism, which bore the soul away to the stars
or into Nature. Such a combination is perfectly possible when there is
no stain of dishonesty or vulgarity in the character, and I had escaped
such influences easily enough.

A droll event took place in the spring. It had been usual once a year--I
forgot on what occasion--to give to all the classes a holiday. This year
it was abolished, and the Sophomore, junior, and senior classes quietly
acquiesced. But we, the Freshmen, albeit we had never been there before,
rebelled at such infringement of "our rights," and absented ourselves
from recitation. I confess that I was a leader in the movement, because
I sincerely believed it to be a sin to "remove old landmarks," and that
the students required more rest and holidays than were allowed them; in
which I was absolutely in the right, for our whole life, except Saturday
afternoons, was "one demnition grind."

The feeling which was excited by this "Freshman's rebellion" was one of
utter amazement, or awful astonishment tempered with laughter, not
unmingled with respect. It was the terrier flying at the lion, when the
great mastiff, and bloodhound, and Danish dog had quietly slunk aside.
There were in the class beside myself several youths of marked character,
and collectively we had already made an impression, to which my intimacy
with George Boker, and Professor Dodd, and the very _elite_ of the
seniors, added not a little force. We were _mysterious_. Hitherto a
Freshman had been the greenest of the green, a creature created for
ridicule, a sort of "leathery fox" or mere tyro (_ty_--not a
ty-pographical error--_pace_ my kind and courteous reviewer in the
_Saturday_)--and here were Freshmen of a new kind rising in dignity above
all others.

Which reminds me of a merry tale. It was usual for Freshmen to learn to
smoke for the first time after coming to college, and for more advanced
students to go to their rooms, or find them in