little Latin?"

"I'd like to learn anything, sir, that will help me to get on."

"What's the business?"

"Tobacco."

"I don't know that Latin will help you much there, unless it aids you to
name a blend."

"It--it isn't only that, sir, I--I want an education--not just a common
one."

A smile broke suddenly like a beam of light on his face, and I
understood all at once why his calomel and his quinine so often cured.
At that moment I should have swallowed tar water on faith if he had
prescribed it.

"I don't know much about you, my lad," he remarked with a grave,
old-fashioned courtesy, which lifted me several feet above the spot of
carpet on which I stood, "but a gentleman who starts out to learn old
Samuel Johnson's Dictionary by heart, is a gentleman I'll give my hand
to."

With my pulses throbbing hard, I watched him take down a dog-eared Latin
Grammar, and begin turning the pages; and when, after a minute, he put a
few simple questions to me, I answered as well as I could for the lump
in my throat. "It's the fashion now to neglect the classics," he said
sadly, "and a man had the impertinence to tell me yesterday that the
only use for a dead language was to write prescriptions for sick people
in it. But I maintain, and I will repeat it, that you never find a
gentleman of cultured and elevated tastes who has not at least a bowing
acquaintance with the Latin language. The common man may deride--"

I looked up quickly. "If you please, sir, I'd like to learn it," I broke
in with determination.

He glanced at me kindly, secretly flattered, I suspect, by my
spontaneous tribute to his eloquence, and the leaves of the Latin
Grammar had fluttered open, when the door swung wide with a cheerful
bang, and a boy of about my own age, though considerably under my height
and size, entered the room.

"I didn't get in from the ball game till an hour ago, doctor," he
exclaimed. "Uncle George says please don't slam me if I am late."

Some surface resemblance to my hero of the railroad made me aware, even
before Dr. Pry introduced us, that the newcomer was the "young George"
of whom I had heard. He was a fresh, high-coloured boy, whose features
showed even now a slight forecast of General Bolingbroke's awful
redness. Before I looked: at him I got a vague impression that he was
handsome; after I looked at him I began to wonder curiously why he was
not? His hair was of a bright chestnut colour, very curly, and clipped
unusu