Is there anybody like me, or do my readers all paste their leaves down as they turn them over? If you do not you will never get farther in the book of reform than the preface!
But, whether we worked or idled, the days ever passed on Ned and I were taking our stroll one evening in the early part of the fall. We had just turned our faces back towards the college when a gentleman and lady on horseback approached. Before I could withdraw my eyes from an impolite stare, they had passed and were sweeping on far ahead.
From that moment study was at an end for me. Soul and body was wrapped in admiration of this beautiful vision, that had flitted by like a dream. Yet I had not seen her face; only the glorious wealth of golden hair, mingling and tossing with the long blue plume in her cap; only the superb form, gracefully swaying to the motion of her prancing steed; only the flutter of a rich white skirt beneath the blue velvet robe, and my heart was gone.
“Great Heavens!” I exclaimed, grasping Ned’s arm, “what a beauty! Who is she, Ned?”
“How should I know?” he replied, coolly. “I suppose it is DeVare’s sweetheart, as this is the second time I have seen him out riding with her.”
“DeVare! then I may yet know her and be happy. Won’t it be glorious, old fellow?” and I slapped Ned’s shoulder exultingly.
“Just half crazy, that’s all you are as yet, John.”
“But see, Ned, they are returning. My throbbing heart, be still, that I may gaze!”
As she again flashed by the wondrous beauty of her face and form made my jesting extravagance to Ned seem almost reasonable. I could think or talk of nothing else till we reached our room, and as soon as the lamps were lit, and I thought DeVare was in his room, I went to it. I found only Carrover there, but he said DeVare would be in presently, and told me to wait.
Carrover and DeVare roomed together, and, as their rooms were on the same floor, and very near ours, we had become very intimate with them. Our intimacy was strengthened and made more pleasant by Ned and me becoming members of their club, so that they became our fastest friends, and we had even reached the point of calling them Charlie and Ramie. While I liked them both, yet Raymond DeVare was my favorite. Carrover was courteous and kind, but there was always a slight touch of frigidity about him—a formality I could never quite penetrate—and as constantly as I was thrown in his company I could never feel at perfect ease; I always felt younger, more unsophisticated and more capable of making blunders when he was looking at me than at any other time. He was so quiet and possessed in his air of savoir faire that I always feared he was thinking that all I did was out of time or place, and was pitying my ignorance. This feeling was not strong enough to constrain me in his presence, or suppress my flow of spirits, but when with him I was always conscious of a slight hesitation in word and action. With DeVare it was different. He was even more refined and gentle than Carrover, but he thought too much of others to think he knew more, and while he was the most brilliant man in his class, yet his nature’s vocabulary had no such word as conceit in it. He always made me feel that I knew as much as he did, and, whenever we conversed, afforded me the pleasure of believing that I was very entertaining. He never ridiculed anybody, and I felt that I could eat peas with my knife, under his eye, and he never would remind me that it was customary to use a fork. He had that instinctive and yet cultivated delicacy that cared for another’s feelings as if they were his own. Yet, when anything was wrong, he always condemned it with firmness, yet without bitterness. His moral character was spotless.