position in New England, a lawyer; he owned and carried on an
iron-foundery, as his father had done before him. He had begun with some
money, and he had made more; he knew that he was rich (rich for his day
and neighborhood); but save for his good horses and his observatory, he
lived as though he were poor. He gave his son Evert, however, the best
education (according to his idea of what the best education consisted
in), which money and careful attention could procure; but he did not
send him to college, and at sixteen the boy was put regularly to work
for a part of the day in the iron-foundery, being required to begin at
the beginning and learn the whole business practically, from the keeping
of books to the proper mixture of ores for the furnaces--those furnaces
which had seemed to the child almost as much a part of nature as the
sunshine itself, since he had seen their red light against the sky at
night ever since he was born. In the mean time his education in books
went steadily forward also, under his father's eye--a severe one.
Fortunately the lad had sturdy health and nerves which were seldom
shaken, so that these double tasks did not break him down. For one
thing, Andrew Winthrop never required, or even desired, rapid progress;
Evert might be as slow as he pleased, if he would but be thorough. And
thorough he was. Even if he had not been naturally inclined towards it,
he would have acquired it from the system which his father had pursued
with him from babyhood; but he was naturally inclined towards it; his
knowledge, therefore, as far as it went, was very complete.

In four years he had made some progress in the secrets of several sorts
of iron and several ancient languages. In six, he could manage the
foundery and the observatory tolerably well. In the ninth year his part
of the foundery went of itself, or seemed to, under his clear-headed
superintendence, while he ardently gave all his free hours to the
studies in science, in which his father now joined, instead of
directing, as heretofore. And then, in the tenth year of this busy,
studious life, Andrew Winthrop had died, and the son of twenty-six had
found himself suddenly free, and alone.

He had never longed for his freedom, he had never thought about it; he
had never realized that his life was austere. He had been fond of his
father, though his father had been more intellectually interested in him
as a boy who would see in all probability the fulness of t