g,--and
lift and lower himself over and over again by his left hand alone, you
might have thought it a very simple and easy thing to do, until you
tried to do it yourself. Mr. Bernard looked at himself with the eye
of an expert. "Pretty well!" he said;--"not so much fallen off as I
expected." Then he set up his bolster in a very knowing sort of way,
and delivered two or three blows straight as rulers and swift as winks.
"That will do," he said. Then, as if determined to make a certainty of
his condition, he took a dynamometer from one of the drawers in his old
veneered bureau. First he squeezed it with his two hands. Then he placed
it on the floor and lifted, steadily, strongly. The springs creaked
and cracked; the index swept with a great stride far up into the high
figures of the scale; it was a good lift. He was satisfied. He sat down
on the edge of his bed and looked at his cleanly-shaped arms. "If I
strike one of those boobies, I am afraid I shall spoil him," he said.
Yet this young man, when weighed with his class at the college, could
barely turn one hundred and forty-two pounds in the scale,--not a heavy
weight, surely; but some of the middle weights, as the present English
champion, for instance, seem to be of a far finer quality of muscle than
the bulkier fellows.

The master took his breakfast with a good appetite that morning, but was
perhaps rather more quiet than usual. After breakfast he went up-stairs
and put, on a light loose frock, instead of that which he commonly wore,
which was a close-fitting and rather stylish one. On his way to
school he met Alminy Cutterr, who happened to be walking in the other
direction. "Good-morning, Miss Cutter," he said; for she and another
young lady had been introduced to him, on a former occasion, in the
usual phrase of polite society in presenting ladies to gentlemen,--"Mr.
Langdon, let me make y' acquainted with Miss Cutterr;--let me make y'
acquainted with Miss Braowne." So he said, "Good-morning"; to which she
replied, "Good-mornin', Mr. Langdon. Haow's your haalth?" The answer
to this question ought naturally to have been the end of the talk; but
Alminy Cutterr lingered and looked as if she had something more on her
mind.

A young fellow does not require a great experience to read a simple
country-girl's face as if it were a sign-board. Alminy was a good soul,
with red cheeks and bright eyes, kind-hearted as she could be, and it
was out of the question for her to