nd Junior years, when they're so
taken up with their athletics and their societies and their college life
generally that they haven't a moment for people that have been kind to
them, he was just as faithful as ever."

"How nice!" cried Mrs. Pasmer.

"Yes, indeed! And all the allurements of Boston society haven't taken
him from us altogether. You can't imagine how much this means till
you've been at home a while and seen how the students are petted and
spoiled nowadays in the young society."

"Oh, I've heard of it," said Mrs. Pasmer. "And is it his versatility
and brilliancy, or his amiability, that makes him such a universal
favourite?"

"Universal favourite? I don't know that he's that."

"Well, popular, then."

"Oh, he's certainly very much liked. But, Jenny, there are no universal
favourites in Harvard now, if there ever were: the classes are
altogether too big. And it wouldn't be ability, and it wouldn't be
amiability alone, that would give a man any sort of leadership."

"What in the world would it be?"

"That question, more than anything else, shows how long you've been
away, Jenny. It would be family--family, with a judicious mixture of the
others, and with money."

"Is it possible? But of course--I remember! Only at their age one thinks
of students as being all hail-fellow-well-met with each other--"

"Yes; it's hard to realise how conventional they are--how very much
worldlier than the world--till one sees it as one does in Cambridge.
They pique themselves on it. And Mr. Saintsbury"--she was one of those
women whom everything reminds of their husbands "says that it isn't a
bad thing altogether. He says that Harvard is just like the world; and
even if it's a little more so, these boys have got to live in the world,
and they had better know what it is. You may not approve of the Harvard
spirit, and Mr. Saintsbury doesn't sympathise with it; he only says it's
the world's spirit. Harvard men--the swells--are far more exclusive
than Oxford men. A student, 'comme il faut', wouldn't at all like to
be supposed to know another student whom we valued for his brilliancy,
unless he was popular and well known in college."

"Dear me!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "But of course! It's perfectly natural,
with young people. And it's well enough that they should begin to
understand how things really are in the world early; it will save them
from a great many disappointments."

"I assure you we have very little to teach Harv