Now comes a blinding flash from the clouds, and a quick, sharp clang
clatters through the heavens, and bellows loud and long among the hills.
Then--like great grief spending its pent agony in tears--come the big
drops of rain,--pattering on the lawn and on the leaves, and most
musically of all upon the roof above me,--not now with the light fall of
the Spring shower, but with strong steppings, like the first proud tread
of Youth!
I.
_Cloister Life._
It has very likely occurred to you, my reader, that I am playing the
wanton in these sketches, and am breaking through all the canons of the
writers in making You my hero.
It is even so; for my work is a story of those vague feelings, doubts,
passions, which belong more or less to every man of us all; and
therefore it is that I lay upon your shoulders the burden of these
dreams. If this or that one never belonged to your experience, have
patience for a while. I feel sure that others are coming which will lie
like a truth upon your heart, and draw you unwittingly--perhaps
tearfully even--into the belief that You are indeed my hero.
The scene now changes to the cloister of a college; not the gray,
classic cloisters which lie along the banks of the Cam or the
Isis,--huge, battered hulks, on whose weather-stained decks great
captains of learning have fought away their lives,--nor yet the
cavernous, quadrangular courts that sleep under the dingy walls of the
Sorbonne.
Pages:
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120