ce.
The perspective of all things had changed. The men who had once seemed
great to him in this little world now appeared in the light of a wider
judgment, as they really were--small, boastful, pompous, cowardly,
deceitful, pretentious. Franklin was himself now a man, and a man
graduated from that severe and exacting school which so quickly matured
a generation of American youth. Tall, finely built, well set up, with
the self-respecting carriage of the soldier and the direct eye of the
gentleman, there was a swing in his step not commonly to be found
behind a counter, and somewhat in the look of his grave face which
caused men to listen when he spoke. As his hand had fitted naturally a
weapon, so his mind turned naturally to larger things than those
offered in these long-tilled fields of life. He came back from the war
disillusionized, irreverent, impatient, and full of that surging
fretfulness which fell upon all the land. Thousands of young men,
accustomed for years to energy, activity, and a certain freedom from
all small responsibility, were thrust back at once and asked to adjust
themselves to the older and calmer ways of peace. The individual
problems were enormous in the aggregate.

Before Franklin, as before many other young men suddenly grown old,
there lay the necessity of earning a livelihood, of choosing an
occupation. The paternal arm of the Government, which had guided and
controlled so long, was now withdrawn. The young man must think for
himself. He must choose his future, and work out his way therein alone
and unsupported. The necessity of this choice, and the grave
responsibility assumed in choosing, confronted and oppressed Edward
Franklin as they did many another young man, whose life employment had
not been naturally determined by family or business associations. He
stood looking out over the way of life. There came to his soul that
indefinite melancholy known by the young man not yet acquainted with
the mysteries of life. Franklin had been taken away at the threshold
of young manhood and crowded into a rude curriculum, which taught him
reserve as well as self-confidence, but which robbed him of part of the
natural expansion in experience which is the ordinary lot of youth. He
had seen large things, and had become intolerant of the small. He
wished to achieve life, success, and happiness at one assault, and
rebelled at learning how stubborn a resistance there lies in that
perpetual