s? Besides your old friends want to see you, and you ought
to want to see them."

"Well, I'm very glad to see you again, old fellow. But who else is there
I care to see? My old friends are gone, and the youngsters look on me as
a sort of don, and I don't appreciate the dignity. You have never broken
with the place. And then you always did your duty, and have done the
college credit. You can't enter into the feelings of a fellow who wasted
three parts of his time here."

"Come, come, Tom! You might have read more, certainly, and taken a
higher degree. But, after all, I believe your melancholy comes from your
not being asked to pull in the boat."

"Perhaps it does. Don't you call it degrading to be pulling in the
torpid in one's old age?"

"Mortified vanity! It's a capital boat. I wonder how we should have
liked to have been turned out for some bachelor just because he had
pulled a good oar in his day?"

"Not at all. I don't blame the youngsters. By the way, they're an
uncommonly nice set. Much better behaved in every way than we were. Why,
the college is a different place altogether. And as you are the only new
tutor, it must have been your doing. Now I want to know your secret?"

"I've no secret, except taking a real interest in all that the men do,
and living with them as much as I can. You may guess it isn't much of a
trial to me to steer the boat down, or run on the bank and coach the
crew. And now the president of St. Ambrose himself comes out to see the
boat. But I don't mean to stop up more than another year now at the
outside. I have been tutor nearly three years, and that's about long
enough."

The talk went on until the clock struck twelve.

"Hallo!" said Tom. "Time for me to knock out, or the old porter will be
in bed. Good-night!"

"Good-night!"

* * * * *

VICTOR HUGO

Les Miserables

Victor Marie Hugo, the great French poet, dramatist, and
novelist, was born at Besancon, on February 26, 1802. He wrote
verses from boyhood, and after minor successes, achieved
reputation with "Odes et Poesies," 1823. Hugo early became the
protagonist of the romantic movement in French literature. In
1841 he was elected to the Academy. From 1845 he took an
increasingly active part in politics, with the result that
from 1852 to 1870 he lived in exile, first in Jersey and then
in Guernsey. "Les Miserables" is not only the great