that a man old enough to have children should
recite Xenophon by morning candle-light!

The class in advance you study curiously; and are quite amazed at the
precocity of certain youths belonging to it, who are apparently about
your own age. The Juniors you look upon with a quiet reverence for their
aplomb and dignity of character; and look forward with intense yearnings
to the time when you too shall be admitted freely to the precincts of
the Philosophical chamber, and to the very steep benches of the
Laboratory. This last seems, from occasional peeps through the blinds, a
most mysterious building. The chimneys, recesses, vats, and cisterns--to
say nothing of certain galvanic communications, which, you are told,
traverse the whole building in a way capable of killing a rat at an
incredible remove from the bland professor--utterly fatigue your
wonder! You humbly trust--though you have doubts upon the point--that
you will have the capacity to grasp it all, when once you shall have
arrived at the dignity of a Junior.

As for the Seniors, your admiration for them is entirely boundless. In
one or two individual instances, it is true, it has been broken down by
an unfortunate squabble with thick-set fellows in the Chapel aisle. A
person who sits not far before you at prayers, and whose name you seek
out very early, bears a strong resemblance to some portrait of Dr.
Johnson; you have very much the same kind of respect for him that you
feel for the great lexicographer, and do not for a moment doubt his
capacity to compile a dictionary equal, if not superior, to Johnson's.

Another man with very bushy, black hair, and an easy look of importance,
carries a large cane, and is represented to you as an astonishing
scholar and speaker. You do not doubt it; his very air proclaims it. You
think of him as presently--(say four or five years hence)--astounding
the United States Senate with his eloquence. And when once you have
heard him in debate, with that ineffable gesture of his, you absolutely
languish in your admiration for him, and you describe his speaking to
your country friends as very little inferior, if at all, to Mr. Burke's.
Beside this one are some half dozen others, among whom the question of
superiority is, you understand, strongly mooted. It puzzles you to
think, what an avalanche of talent will fall upon the country at the
graduation of those Seniors!

You will find however that the country bears such inundations of