e you indeed
oftener than you dare to speak of. Here you dream first of that very
sweet, but very shadowy success called Reputation.

You think of the delight and astonishment it would give your mother and
father, and most of all little Nelly, if you were winning such honors as
now escape you. You measure your capacities by those about you, and
watch their habit of study; you gaze for a half-hour together upon some
successful man who has won his prizes, and wonder by what secret action
he has done it. And when in time you come to be a competitor yourself,
your anxiety is immense.

You spend hours upon hours at your theme. You write and rewrite; and
when it is at length complete and out of your hands, you are harassed by
a thousand doubts. At times, as you recall your hours of toil, you
question if so much has been spent upon any other; you feel almost
certain of success. You repeat to yourself some passages of special
eloquence at night. You fancy the admiration of the professors at
meeting with such a wonderful performance. You have a slight fear that
its superior goodness may awaken the suspicion that some one out of the
college, some superior man, may have written it. But this fear dies
away.

The eventful day is a great one in your calendar you hardly sleep the
night previous. You tremble as the chapel-bell is rung; you profess to
be very indifferent, as the reading and the prayer close; you even stoop
to take up your hat, as if you had entirely overlooked the fact that the
old President was in the desk for the express purpose of declaring the
successful names. You listen dreamily to his tremulous, yet fearfully
distinct enunciation. Your head swims strangely.

They all pass out with a harsh murmur along the aisles and through the
doorways. It would be well if there were no disappointments in life more
terrible than this. It is consoling to express very depreciating
opinions of the Faculty in general,--and very contemptuous ones of that
particular officer who decided upon the merit of the prize-themes. An
evening or two at Dalton's room go still farther toward healing the
disappointment, and--if it must be said--toward moderating the heat of
your ambition.

You grow up however, unfortunately, as the college years fly by, into a
very exaggerated sense of your own capacities. Even the good, old,
white-haired Squire, for whom you once entertained so much respect,
seems to your crazy, classic fancy a very humdrum