“A tempest, by its own chance, drove us, borne from ancient Troy (if, perchance, the name of Troy has reached your ears), over various waters, to the African shores. I am the pious Æneas, known by fame above the sky, who bear with me, in my fleet, the Penates snatched from the foe. I seek Italy, my fatherland, and an ancestry that sprang from sovereign Jove.”
Then, without noticing in the least the astonished and indignant glances of the boys, who resented the criticism on Clark, not so much because it was Clark, but because it was the finest Latin scholar in the class, St. John proceeded with his own five lines, translating not only very correctly, but into choice and elegant English.
Mr. Horton’s face expressed his satisfaction at such an acquisition to the classical department. He even forgot the rudeness shown to Clark, who had come to be one of his favorite pupils, so greatly did he enjoy the thought of teaching such a scholar, and he turned with a sigh to the next boy, whose lame, halting sentences formed so great a contrast to St. John’s.
Nobody except the one reciting paid much attention then, until Dixon arose. It was impossible to ignore Dixon anywhere. Already he had succeeded in making both friends and enemies, and now the eyes of all the class were fixed on him.
“Good!” thought Gordon, as Dixon read smoothly on. “He won’t pull us down, and if St. John’s as good in other things as he is in Latin, he’ll help us up in spite of himself. Guess he’ll go ahead of Clark. I’m sorry for Clark, though.”
And much the same thoughts were in the minds of many of the boys when the recitation was over. Slowly, but surely, the feeling that had been so strong against Clark was dying out. Some few of the boys still stood aloof from him, however, and recalled, at intervals, the charges made against him early in the previous year. But Hamlin’s strong friendship for him, and his own quiet, steady doing of his duty, and holding himself apart, yet without any show of enmity or ill-feeling, had had their effect upon his schoolmates, and most of them were ready now to be friends with him; while all, whether friends or not, were proud of his scholarship, and had come to look upon him as the leader of the class in that line. So they were inclined to resent St. John’s arrogant assumption of superiority, and to wish that Clark could “dig in and get ahead of him,” as Reed expressed it.
In mathematics it was much the same, though here Hamlin and Gordon stood almost as high as Clark; would have stood quite as high, if they had had Clark’s power of concentration and application.
“I’ve had to learn how to study,” he had said once to Hamlin. “If you and Gordon had been obliged to do it, as I have, I shouldn’t be a bit ahead of you.”
With Everett St. John, it was not necessity, but the instinct of a born student that gave him the power to grasp and master whatever he studied. In the geometry class, his clear, concise demonstrations awakened at once the despair and the admiration of most of the class, while they aroused in our three boys an eager determination to work as they never had worked before over those lines and angles.
Gordon drew a long breath, as he joined Clark and Hamlin at recess.