panorama of cities and hasting populations, the seekers of
pleasure and money and fame, this gay world which was as fascinating as
it was wicked. The preacher said the world was wicked and vain. It did
not seem so to the boy this summer day, not at least the world he knew.
Of course the boy had no experience. He had never heard of Juvenal nor
of Max Nordau. He had no philosophy of life. He did not even know
that when he became very old the world would seem to him good or bad
according to the degree in which he had become a good or a bad man.

In fact, he was not thinking much about being good or being bad, but
of trying his powers in a world which seemed to offer to him infinite
opportunities. His name--Philip Burnett--with which the world, at least
the American world, is now tolerably familiar, and which he liked to
write with ornamental flourishes on the fly-leaves of his schoolbooks,
did not mean much to him, for he had never seen it in print, nor been
confronted with it as something apart from himself. But the Philip that
he was he felt sure would do something in the world. What that something
should be varied from day to day according to the book, the poem, the
history or biography that he was last reading. It would not be difficult
to write a poem like "Thanatopsis" if he took time enough, building up a
line a day. And yet it would be better to be a soldier, a man who could
use the sword as well as the pen, a poet in uniform. This was a pleasing
imagination. Surely his aunt and his cousins in the farmhouse would
have more respect for him if he wore a uniform, and treat him with more
consideration, and perhaps they would be very anxious about him when
he was away in battles, and very proud of him when he came home between
battles, and went quite modestly with the family into the village
church, and felt rather than saw the slight flutter in the pews as he
walked down the aisle, and knew that the young ladies, the girl comrades
of the district school, were watching him from the organ gallery,
curious to see Phil, who had gone into the army. Perhaps the preacher
would have a sermon against war, and the preacher should see how
soldierlike he would take this attack on him. Alas! is such vanity at
the bottom of even a reasonable ambition? Perhaps his town would be
proud of him if he were a lawyer, a Representative in Congress, come
back to deliver the annual oration at the Agricultural Fair. He could
see the audience of