Of
her age you scrupulously say nothing.
The trivialities of Dalton amaze you: it is hard to understand how a man
within the limit of such influences as Miss Dalton must inevitably
exert, can tamely sit down to a rubber of whist, and cigars! There must
be a sad lack of congeniality;--it would certainly be a proud thing to
supply that lack!
The new feeling, wild and vague as it is,--for as yet you have only most
casual acquaintance with Laura Dalton,--invests the whole habit of your
study; not quickening overmuch the relish for Dugald Stewart, or the
miserable skeleton of college Logic, but spending a sweet charm upon the
graces of Rhetoric and the music of Classic Verse. It blends
harmoniously with your quickened ambition. There is some last appearance
that you have to make upon the college stage, in the presence of the
great worthies of the State, and of all the beauties of the town,--Laura
chiefest among them. In view of it you feel dismally intellectual.
Prodigious faculties are to be brought to the task.
You think of throwing out ideas that will quite startle His Excellency
the Governor, and those very distinguished public characters whom the
college purveyors vote into their periodic public sittings.
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