“Well, I’ll try it for once. It’ll be a fine lark anyway, and I shall learn something of human nature.”
“That you will,” answered Wellman. “I’ll take the country round that aristocratic town down the river, and you may take the stylish avenues. You’ll find blue blood in plenty—blue because the fathers owned land there a little before the present generation. Of course, you’ll find many well-bred people who are proud of their heads rather than of their purses; but even these are often very ‘select.’ We profess equality, and are probably more democratic than any other country; but a little extra amount of front lawn, or the fact that our great-grandfather was a governor, or that one woman has ‘William Morris’ chintz in her chambers, of which, perhaps, her neighbor never heard,—these make various degrees of rank. If our ancestor came over in the ‘Mayflower,’ or was even a sutler in the Revolutionary war, our fame is unalterably fixed.”
“I should like to sell books in so high-toned a town,” said Grant. “Maybe I might fall in love with some dainty daughter of a lineal descendant of a governor, or of a stable-boy!”
“Precious little good it would do a book-agent, for you would be classed among poor people if you worked, no matter how rich your father might be.”
The conversation had been listened to by a light-haired, blue-eyed student, a poet in temperament and by heredity. He was the only child of a devoted minister of the Gospel, now dead, and of a refined and intellectual mother. She would have shielded him from every rough wind had it been possible, but at best she could only pray for him, and send him now and then a little box of comforts, with her fond and beautiful letters. He worked late at night over his books, and his delicately curved mouth had come to bear an expression of sadness as he looked out upon the struggle before him. Heretofore the little money of the household had sufficed; but now he must earn his bread like James Wellman.
“Cheer up!” said the latter, who had noticed the tell-tale face of the minister’s son, Kent Raymond. “Blue eyes and polished manners will win kindness. We all have to get a trifle mellowed. We, who know how to earn our support, get a little extra schooling more than the other boys, that’s all. Life is good or bad, just as you look out upon it. It’s full of sunshine to me, for I won’t look at the shadows.”
Vacation days came. Kent and Grant took the book-agency, and James the clothes-wringer, among the country folk, who usually have a kindly interest in a boy who means to be somebody in the world.
••••••••
One bright day soon after, satchels in hand, the two college boys started out along one of the broad avenues of the staid old city.
“Don’t get discouraged!” said Grant to his boyish companion, who shrank from his task. “Remember you’re doing missionary work every time you get a book into a house. We’ll report three hours from now at the end of the street.”