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II.
A child of the college.
I come back to
Cambridge every autumn, when the leaves are falling from the trees, and the old university, like the weird witch-hazel in the groves, puts out fresh blossoms at the season when all else grows sere.
It is a never failing delight to behold the hundreds of newcomers who then throng our streets: boys with smooth and unworn faces, full of the zest of their own being, taking the whole world as having been made for them, which indeed it was;--willing to do any needful kindness to an elder human being, as in rescuing him from carriage-wheels or picking him out of the mud, but otherwise as wholesomely indifferent to his very existence as if he were a lamp-post or a horseless vehicle.
If he be wise, he joyfully accepts the situation, and takes in it something of the pride which a father feels when his youngest son overtops him by a head.
Instead of grudging to the new-comers this empire of the immediate future, I feel always impelled to welcome them to it; in behalf of the human race,
