tting his
meagre competence smoulder on almost without consuming, like the fuel in
an air-tight stove. But after Master Bernard came Miss Dorothea
Elizabeth Wentworth Langdon, and then Master William Pepperell Langdon,
and others, equally well named,--a string of them, looking, when they
stood in a row in prayer-time, as if they would fit a set of Pandean
pipes, of from three feet upward in dimensions. The door of the air-tight
stove has to be opened, under such circumstances, you may well suppose!
So it happened that our young man had been obliged, from an early period,
to do something to support himself, and found himself stopped short in
his studies by the inability of the good people at home to furnish him
the present means of support as a student.

You will understand now why the young man wanted me to give him a
certificate of his fitness to teach, and why I did not choose to urge him
to accept the aid which a meek country-boy from a family without
ante-Revolutionary recollections would have thankfully received. Go he
must,--that was plain enough. He would not be content otherwise. He was
not, however, to give up his studies; and as it is customary to allow
half-time to students engaged in school-keeping,--that is, to count a
year, so employed, if the student also keep on with his professional
studies, as equal to six months of the three years he is expected to be
under an instructor before applying for his degree,--he would not
necessarily lose more than a few months of time. He had a small library
of professional books, which he could take with him.

So he left my teaching and that of my estimable colleagues, carrying with
him my certificate, that Mr. Bernard C. Langdon was a young gentleman of
excellent moral character, of high intelligence and good education, and
that his services would be of great value in any school, academy, or
other institution, where young persons of-either sex were to be
instructed.

I confess, that expression, "either sex," ran a little thick, as I may
say, from my pen. For, although the young man bore a very fair
character, and there was no special cause for doubting his discretion, I
considered him altogether too good-looking, in the first place, to be let
loose in a roomful of young girls. I didn't want him to fall in love
just then--and if half a dozen girls fell in love with him, as they most
assuredly would, if brought into too near relations with him, why, there
was no t