e evening, he put this and that together. And when this and
that were put together, they combined to produce a soliloquy:

"Mother and Katy want to make a match for me. As if _they_ understood
_me_! They want me to marry an _average_ woman, of course. Pshaw! Isabel
Marlay only understands the 'culinary use' of things. My mother knows
that she has a 'knack,' and thinks it would be nice for me to have a wife
with a knack. But mother can't judge for _me_. I ought to have a wife
with ideas. And I don't doubt Plausaby has a hand in trying to marry off
his ward to somebody that won't make too much fuss about his accounts."

And so Charlton was put upon studying all the evening, to find points in
which Miss Minorkey's conversation was superior to Miss Marlay's. And
judged as he judged it--as a literary product--it was not difficult to
find an abundant advantage on her side.

CHAPTER IX.

LOVERS AND LOVERS.

Albert Charlton had little money, and he was not a man to remain idle.
He was good in mathematics, and did a little surveying now and then; in
fact, with true democratic courage, he turned his hand to any useful
employment. He did not regard these things as having any bearing on his
career. He was only waiting for the time to come when he could found
his Great Educational Institution on the virgin soil of Minnesota. Then
he would give his life to training boys to live without meat or
practical jokes, to love truth, honesty, and hard lessons; he would
teach girls to forego jewelry and cucumber-pickles, to study
physiology, and to abhor flirtations. Visionary, was he? You can not
help smiling at a man who has a "vocation," and who wants to give the
world a good send-off toward its "goal." But there is something noble
about it after all. Something to make you and me ashamed of our
selfishness. Let us not judge Charlton by his green flavor. When these
discordant acids shall have ripened in the sunshine and the rain, who
shall tell how good the fruit may be? We may laugh, however, at Albert,
and his school that was to be. I do not doubt that even that visionary
street-loafer known to the Athenians as Sokrates, was funny to those
who looked at him from a great distance below.

During the time in which Charlton waited, and meditated his plans for the
world's advancement by means of a school that should be so admirable as
to modify the whole system of education by the sheer force of its
example, he found it of very gr