features and
firm mouth, at the nervous, capable hand that grasped his walking-stick
as if it were a weapon, would reveal the type claimed by America as
peculiarly her own. It was evident that he possessed energy and
endurance, if not the power of the athlete. His expression was
intellectual, and shrewd almost to hardness; yet somewhere in his eyes
and in the corners of his mouth there lurked a suggestion of sweetness
and of ideality, that gave the whole personality a claim to more than
passing interest and regard.

This curious blending of opposite traits, of shrewdness and of
ideality, was illustrated by his thoughts as he strode along, making no
more of the hill than he would have made of level ground. Nothing
escaped his eye or failed of its impression upon his mind. Fresh from
the teeming life of a large university, he noted the absence of
students from the steps of the fraternity houses on his right, though
it lacked but three days of the opening of the college. Already his
own university had felt the first wave of the incoming class, a class
that would doubtless contain four times as many students as the total
membership of St. George's Hall. Instinctively he searched his mind
for an explanation of this lack of growth in an institution that
numbered nearly one hundred years of life. What was the defect? Where
was the remedy? He jumped at once to the conclusion that both were
discoverable, and dimly foresaw that the discovery might be his own.

He approached the scene where he was himself to be on trial in the
spirit of one who questioned, not his fitness for the place he was to
occupy, for of that he had no shadow of doubt, but the fitness of the
place for him. If he saw promotion, perhaps the presidency, within his
grasp, he might deem it worth his while to stay; if not, his
professorship should be a stepping-stone to something better. With the
history, the traditions, and the ideals of the Hall he was but slightly
acquainted; in fact, the institution existed for him at present only in
its relation to himself and his possible future.

And yet, beneath these thoughts of self ran a current of feeling or
impressions which never rose high enough in his consciousness to win
definite recognition. If his first view of the college was depressing
because of the failure of fruition its appearance suggested, he was not
utterly unappreciative of the pictorial effect: the splendid lines of
dignity and beauty;