As soon as she reached her home she ran upstairs, hastily threw off her wraps, and remembered the letter from Arthur, in her pocket. Opening it, she read: “How many times I have wanted to tell you that I loved you! How often have the words died on my lips! But now, before I go back to college, I must ask you if you can return that love, and sometime be mine.” Alas, that she had not opened the letter sooner! She could not tell Arthur that she had preferred him to Elmer; that were disloyalty to the man whom she had promised to wed. She could only say that she was already betrothed to his brother. She married him whom she had promised. Both men became prominent in the history of New England—this little story is true. One went through life unmarried. His letter was opened too late. THREE COLLEGE STUDENTS. “WHAT’S the work for vacation, boys?” The speaker was a tall, dark-haired, open-faced young man, who sat with his two companions on the sloping ground of Amherst College, looking away to silent Mount Tom and the fertile meadows of the Connecticut-river valley. “It’s something downright earnest for me,” said James Wellman, a broad-shouldered, big-hearted youth from the neighboring county, who in spite of poverty and many obstacles had fought his way by the hardest work. “I’m in debt for board, books unpaid for; but I’ve seen worse times than these. I’m used to standing alone, so I’m ready for the battle. I shall take an agency—books, or maybe clothes-wringers, to sell.” “That will be fun, I’ll warrant,” said the first speaker, Grant Reynolds, whose father, a rich manufacturer, had spared no pains to make his son’s life a bed of roses, altogether different from what his own had been. “Not much fun,” said James. “You wouldn’t like contemptuous looks from women who know less than you, and whose hearts had become hardened because their husbands, once poor, very likely, had become the possessors of houses on aristocratic streets. Why, a woman—I will not call her a lady—whose husband used to be a stable boy, but who has become a rich government official, ordered me out of the house when I was selling chromos. She said ‘agents were tramps and a nuisance;’ and when I explained that I was working my way through college, she answered, remembering the former occupation of her lord, perhaps, ‘Be somebody’s coachman, then, and earn an honorable living.’ I wanted to add, ‘And run away with your pretty daughter;’ but I only replied politely, ‘Nobody would hire an inexperienced man for two months, which is as long as our vacation lasts.’” “But these must be rare cases,” said Grant. “Most well-to-do ladies are very courteous.” “Yes, when you meet them on an equality in drawing-rooms; but not always when you are a workingman.” “Well, I’ll try it for once. It’ll be a fine lark anyway, and I shall learn something of human nature.”