al revolt against the subject,
slipped them under the rubber bands with others of their kind and
dropped the neat packages out of his sight into one of the drawers of
the desk. Wayland's book on Greece, the fruit of eighteen months'
sojourn there, had come through the mail on the same day when the
calculus papers had been handed in, and he had read it through at once,
not to be teased intolerably by its invitation. He had mastered the
text, avid through the long winter night, but he picked it up again now,
and for a little while studied the sumptuous illustrations. How long
Wayland had been away from Vaucluse, how much of enrichment had come to
him in the years since he had left! He himself might have gone also, to
larger opportunities--he had chosen to remain, held by a sentiment! The
professor closed the book with a little sigh, and taking it to a small
shelf on the opposite side of the room, stood it with a half-dozen
others worthy of such association.

Returning, he got together before him the few Greek authors habitually
in hand's reach, whether handled or not, and from a compartment of his
desk took out several sheets of manuscript, metrical translations from
favorite passages in the tragedists or the short poems of the Anthology.
Like the rest of the Vaucluse professors--a mere handful they were,--he
was straitened by the hard exactions of class-room work, and the book
which he hoped sometime to publish grew slowly. How far he was in actual
miles from the men who were getting their thoughts into print, how much
farther in environment! Things which to them were the commonplaces of a
scholar's life were to him impossible luxuries; few even of their books
found their way to his shelves. At least the original sources of
inspiration were his, and sometimes he felt that his verses were not
without spirit, flavor.

He took up a little volume of Theocritus, which opened easily at the
Seventh Idyl, and began to read aloud. Half-way through the poem the
door opened and his wife entered. He did not immediately adjust himself
to the interruption, and she remained standing a few moments in the
centre of the room.

"Thank you; I believe I will be seated," she said, the sarcasm in her
words carefully excluded from her voice.

He wondered that she should find interest in so sorry a game. "I thought
you felt enough at home in here to sit down without being asked," he
said, rising, and trying to speak lightly.

She took the