me. In
consequence he was requested to leave.

Agamemnon always missed in his recitations, for the same reason that
Elizabeth Eliza did not get on in school, because he was always asked
the questions he did not know. It seemed provoking; if the professors
had only asked something else! But they always hit upon the very
things he had not studied up.

Mrs. Peterkin felt this was encouraging, for Agamemnon knew the things
they did not know in colleges. In colleges they were willing to take
for students only those who already knew certain things. She thought
Agamemnon might be a professor in a college for those students who
didn't know those things.

"I suppose these professors could not have known a great deal," she
added, "or they would not have asked you so many questions; they would
have told you something."

Agamemnon had left another college on account of a mistake he had
made with some of his classmates. They had taken a great deal of
trouble to bring some wood from a distant wood-pile to make a bonfire
with, under one of the professors' windows. Agamemnon had felt it
would be a compliment to the professor.

It was with bonfires that heroes had been greeted on their return from
successful wars. In this way beacon-lights had been kindled upon lofty
heights, that had inspired mariners seeking their homes after distant
adventures. As he plodded back and forward he imagined himself some
hero of antiquity. He was reading "Plutarch's Lives" with deep
interest. This had been recommended at a former college, and he was
now taking it up in the midst of his French course. He fancied, even,
that some future Plutarch was growing up in Lynn, perhaps, who would
write of this night of suffering, and glorify its heroes.

For himself he took a severe cold and suffered from chilblains, in
consequence of going back and forward through the snow, carrying the
wood.

But the flames of the bonfire caught the blinds of the professor's
room, and set fire to the building, and came near burning up the whole
institution. Agamemnon regretted the result as much as his
predecessor, who gave him his name, must have regretted that other
bonfire, on the shores of Aulis, that deprived him of a daughter.

The result for Agamemnon was that he was requested to leave, after
having been in the institution but a few months.

He left another college in consequence of a misunderstanding about the
hour for morning prayers. He went every day regular