the elements of a true
man,--a man to go through life with a firm step and a clear conscience
and a gallant hope. Such a man may not win fame,--that is an accident;
but he must occupy no despicable place in the movement of the world.

It was at first intended to send Percival to Oxford; but for some reason
or other that design was abandoned. Perhaps Lady Mary, over cautious, as
mothers left alone sometimes are, feared the contagion to which a
young man of brilliant expectations and no studious turn is necessarily
exposed in all places of miscellaneous resort. So Percival was sent
abroad for two years, under the guardianship of Captain Greville. On his
return, at the age of nineteen, the great world lay before him, and
he longed ardently to enter. For a year Lady Mary's fears and fond
anxieties detained him at Laughton; but though his great tenderness for
his mother withheld Percival from opposing her wishes by his own, this
interval of inaction affected visibly his health and spirits. Captain
Greville, a man of the world, saw the cause sooner than Lady Mary, and
one morning, earlier than usual, he walked up to the Hall.

The captain, with all his deference to the sex, was a plain man enough
when business was to be done. Like his great commander, he came to the
point in a few words.

"My dear Lady Mary, our boy must go to London,--we are killing him
here."

"Mr. Greville!" cried Lady Mary, turning pale and putting aside her
embroidery,--"killing him?"

"Killing the man in him. I don't mean to alarm you; I dare say his lungs
are sound enough, and that his heart would bear the stethoscope to the
satisfaction of the College of Surgeons. But, my dear ma'am, Percival is
to be a man; it is the man you are killing by keeping him tied to your
apron-string."

"Oh, Mr. Greville, I am sure you don't wish to wound me, but--"

"I beg ten thousand pardons. I am rough, but truth is rough sometimes."

"It is not for my sake," said the mother, warmly, and with tears in her
eyes, "that I have wished him to be here. If he is dull, can we not fill
the house for him?"

"Fill a thimble, my dear Lady Mary. Percival should have a plunge in the
ocean."

"But he is so young yet,--that horrid London; such
temptations,--fatherless, too!"

"I have no fear of the result if Percival goes now, while his principles
are strong and his imagination is not inflamed; but if we keep him here
much longer against his bent, he will learn to brood