Smyrna times., 1874-07-15

able as to shaving, shirt-cuffs, or neck-tie
they carry both an umbrella and a cane; there
is fiat album with the class photographs in
their coat-pocket, but in the waistcoat carte
and bit of black or yellow curl, which they
brought away last night from the Presidents
party. They call loudly to each other across
the car; in secluded corners they give many
editions CT the same joke about certain bottles
of champagne last night they lard their re-
marks with tags of Horace, and glancing fur
lively about the car, talk of the HOt pOltOt
The graver and more scholastic spirits sit apart,
meditating upon their future they are either
orthodox and devout, and destined to the min
istry, or have just finished a premiership of
Carlyle and are now disciples of Emerson, with
a hazy effort at atheism which they think is
German mysticism. A touch will fire them
into argument which will last to the journey
end. Nothing else breaks their calm self
pOlse; the braksman stopping in the smoking
car to wipe his perspiring face and make re-
mark on the weather, or the sharp town law
yer with his "Just out school, eh?'' are
held off by the same armor of grave dignity.
But when the pretty girl with the pink buds
in her hat goes out, and her polonaise futters
airiy past their knees, they half rise and blush
and stammer and sit down, quite sure that they
have never looked so like idiots. In a few
hours each one of them will be landed at home,
cane, downy mustache, Greek, science, and
dignity, and presto! he is not A. B., but Phil
or Bob again. Whether he has earned honors
or not, he is hero for few days, coddIed and
worshiped, the snuggest corner given up to his
cigar and books and instruments. But in a
fortnight he finds the world about him alien.
There is no room or comprehension for his
profound theories, his gigantic plans. His
father puts the question sharply, " Is it to be
the law or the counting house, BOb?' His
mother, his fat, stocking darning, pie-baking
mother-he thinks of his venerable Alma
Mater crowned with the lore of ages, and
turns away from the old lady with half distaste
Then there are his sisters Polly and Sue, and
the pert, pretty little chits that they bring
about the house. He adventures among then
and Homer and Kant and Herbert Spencer
vanish and leave him in the lurch; his brair
is wrung out sponge, his jaws are on fire, hi
collar runs into his ears, his arms and legs triI
him up.
And so he stumbles on day by day and yea
by year, pulled this way by difidence and tha
way by cOnceit, until he is showed at last int
his proper place 10 the world. Some day il
middle age he wakes up to find that he ha
slain no tyrant, heraded no dawn; that he
too grumbes over tickets or pores over fnan
cial columns that he has forgotten Kant an
Emerson and German infidelities, and Is give
over to zeal i'll the sugar trade or the spawnln
of fish, or to 4 break in the village church Q
which he is an elder. Alma Mater and he
lore he remembers with good humorcd laug
and nod, but there is nothing so sacred or dea
, to him, or SO often remembered as the simpI
, teachings of the old, fat tender hearted mOtf
! err whom, when her work was done, he lai
reverently to rest in the churchyard.