a rewarding conscience. When men are capable of such
heroism, George would say, arguing from these and similar stories,
they are open to true reformation, all that is necessary being some
exercise of an influence that shall make such impulses constant
instead of spasmodic.

About noon he had not been quite so sanguine regarding his mission,
and had almost resolved that when they reached Springfield he would
return East and join some of his class who were going to the
Kaatskills. The sun was then pouring down directly on the boat, the
cabin was stifling, the horses crept sluggishly along, the men were
rude and brutal, and around him was an atmosphere of frying fish and
boiling cabbage. The cabbage was perhaps the crowning evil; for while
he found it possible to force his ear and eye to be deaf and blind to
the disagreeable, he had no amount of will that could conquer the
sense of smell. There seemed to be little, he thought, with some
contempt for his expectations, to reward his quest or maintain his
theory that every one had at least one story to tell. It was not
necessarily one's own story, he had said, but lives the most barren in
incident come into contact with those more vehement, and have the
chance of looking into tragedies, into moral victories and fierce
conflicts, through other men's eyes. He had hinted something of this
to Joe Lakin early in the morning, when the mist was rising off the
hills, when the air was fresh and keen, and the sun was making the
long lines of oil upon the river glitter like so many brilliant
snakes. Joe was the laziest and roughest of the men on the boat, but
he sometimes had such a genial and even superior manner, that George
had felt sure that he would comprehend his meaning. Thus when noon
came, hot, close, and heavy with prophecy of dinner, George had
sickened of human nature and of psychological studies; but now the sun
had set, and a golden glory lit the sky; the fields on one side of the
river rolled away green in clover and wavy in corn, the hills heavily
wooded rose high and picturesquely on the other side, and the little
island in the bend of the river seemed the home of quiet and of peace.
The horses plodded patiently through the water, going out on the
shallows and avoiding the deeper currents near the shore, and the
boys, forgetting to shout and swear, rode along softly whistling. Over
by the hills stood a cottage, and in the terraced garden a group of
girls with bright r