of memory. The life once lived here
is as truly finished as if eternity had placed the impassable gulf
between it and this quiet hour. These are the shores through which the
river once passed, these the green fields which encircled it, these the
mountains which flung their shadows over it, but the river itself has
swept leagues onward.

Mr. Higginson has written charmingly about "An Old Latin Text-Book,"
and there is surely something magical in the power with which these
well-worn volumes lay their spell upon us, and carry us back to other
scenes and men. I have a copy of Virgil from which all manner of
old-time things slip out as I open its pages. The eager enthusiasm of
the first dawning appreciation of the undying beauty of the old poet,
faintly discerned in the language which embalms it, comes back like a
whiff of fragrance from some by-gone summer. The potency of college
memories lies in the fact that in those years we made the most
memorable discoveries of our lives; the unknown river may widen and
deepen beyond our thought, but the most noteworthy moment in all our
wanderings with it will always be the moment when we first came upon
it, and there dawned upon us the sense of something new and great. To
most boys this rich and never-to-be-forgotten experience comes in
college. Except in cases of rare good fortune, a boy is not ripe for
the literary spirit in the classic literature until the college
atmosphere surrounds him. To many it never discovers itself at all,
and the languages which were dead at the beginning of study are dead at
the end; but to those in whom the instinct of scholarship is developed
there comes a day when Virgil lives as truly as he lived in Dante's
imagination, and, like Boccaccio, they light a fire at his tomb which
years do not quench.

Who that has ever gone through the experience will forget the hour when
he discovered the Greeks in Homer's pages, and felt for the first time
the grand impulse of that noble race stir his blood and fill his brain
with the far-reaching aspiration for a life as rich as theirs in
beauty, freedom, and strength! It is told of an English scholar that
he devoted his winters to the "Iliad" and his summers to the "Odyssey,"
reading each several times every year. One could hardly reconcile such
self-indulgence with the claims of to-day on every man's time and
strength; but I have no doubt all Grecians have a secret envy for such
a career. The Old-World