these things Horace was meditating beneath his ilex tree, being
moved to evaluate his life by the chance appeal of his memory to that
dead friend whose "white soul" had so often, when he was alive, proved
a touchstone for those who knew him. He was sure that in the larger
issues Virgil would have given him praise on this afternoon; and with
that thought came another which was already familiar to him. It was
less probing, perhaps, but more regretfully sad. If only his father
could have lived to see his success! His mother he had not known at
all, except in his halting, childish imagination when, one day in
each year, he had been led by his father's hand to stand before the
small, plain urn containing her ashes. But his father had been his
perfect friend and comrade for twenty years. He had been able to talk
to him about anything. Above all the reserves of maturer life, he
could remember the confidence with which as a child he had been used
to rush home, bursting with the gossip of the playground, or some
childish annoyance, or some fresh delight. He could not remember that
he was ever scolded during his little choleric outbursts or
untempered enthusiasms, and yet, somehow, after a talk with his
father he had so often found himself feeling much calmer or really
happier. Anger in some way or other came to seem a foolish thing;
and even if he had come in from an ecstasy of play, it was certainly
pleasant to have the beating throbs in his head die away and to feel
his cheeks grow cool again. In looking back, Horace knew that no
philosophy had ever so deeply influenced him to self-control and to
mental temperance as had the common, kindly, shrewd man who had once
been a slave, and whose freedom had come to him only a few years before
the birth of his son.

And how ambitious the freedman had been for the education of his son!
Horace could understand now the significance of two days in his life
which at their occurrence had merely seemed full of a vivid
excitement. One had come when he was ten years old, but no lapse of
years could dull its colours. On the day before, he had been wondering
how soon he would be allowed to enter the village school, and become
one of the big boys whom he watched every morning with round eyes
as they went past his house, their bags and tablets hanging from their
arms. But on that great day his father had lifted him in his arms--he
was a little fellow--and looking at him long and earnestly had said,