little they think if he's ever to get back
again. 'T is their boast and their pride that they said, 'Go on;' and
when his cold corpse comes washed to shore, all they have is a word of
derision and scorn for one who ventured beyond his powers."

"How you cool down one's ardor; with what pleasure you check every
impulse that nerves one's heart for high daring!" said the youth,
bitterly. "These eternal warnings--these never-ending forebodings of
failure--are sorry stimulants to energy."

"Is n't it better for you to have all your reverses at the hands of a
crayture as humble as me?" said Billy, while the tears glistened in his
eyes. "What good am I, except for this?"

In a moment the boy's arms were around him, while he cried out,--

"There, forgive me once more, and let me try if I cannot amend a temper
that any but yourself had grown weary of correcting. I'll work--I'll
labor--I'll submit--I'll accept the daily rubs of life, as others take
them, and you shall be satisfied with me. We shall go back to all our
old pursuits, my dear Billy. I'll join all your ecstasies over AEschylus,
and believe as much as I can of Herodotus, to please you. You shall lead
me to all the wonders of the stars, and dazzle me with the brightness of
visions that my intellect is lost in; and in revenge I only ask that you
should sit with me in the studio, and read to me some of those songs of
Horace that move the heart like old wine. Shall I own to you what it is
which sways me thus uncertainly,--jarring every chord of my existence,
making life a sea of stormy conflict? Shall I tell you?"

He grasped the other's hand with both his own as he spoke, and, while
his lips quivered in strong emotion, went on:--

"It is this, then. I cannot forget, do all that I will, I cannot root
out of my heart what I once believed myself to be. You know what I mean.
Well, there it is still, like the sense of a wrong or foul injustice,
as though I had been robbed and cheated of what never was mine! This
contrast between the life my earliest hopes had pictured, and that which
I am destined to, never leaves me. All your teachings--and I have seen
how devotedly you have addressed yourself to this lesson--have not
eradicated from my nature the proud instincts that guided my childhood.
Often and often have you warmed my blood by thoughts of a triumph to be
achieved by me hereafter,--how men should recognize me as a genius, and
elevate me to honors and rewards; and yet