Only here and
there you catch the loitering footfall of some other benighted dreamer,
strolling around the vast quadrangle of level green, which lies, like a
prairie-child, under the edging shadows of the town. The lights glimmer
one by one; and one by one, like breaking hopes, they fade away from the
houses. The full-risen moon, that dapples the ground beneath the trees,
touches the tall church-spires with silver, and slants their
loftiness--as memory slants grief--in long, dark, tapering lines upon
the silvered Green.
IV.
_First Look at the World._
Our Clarence is now fairly afloat upon the swift tide of Youth. The
thrall of teachers is ended, and the audacity of self-resolve is begun.
It is not a little odd, that, when we have least strength to combat the
world, we have the highest confidence in our ability.
Very few individuals in the world possess that happy consciousness of
their own prowess which belongs to the newly-graduated collegian. He has
most abounding faith in the tricksy panoply that he has wrought out of
the metal of his Classics. His Mathematics, he has not a doubt, will
solve for him every complexity of life's questions; and his Logic will
as certainly untie all Gordian knots, whether in politics or ethics.
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