The pleasantest part of my day’s work used to be in the retirement of the Greek study and from eight to nine in the morning. Never a student of mine who did not come at that hour for some occasion or need. One man snatched the opportunity to read at sight a good part of the Odyssey. Another took up and discussed certain dialogues of Plato. Another who aimed at theological learning studied the Greek Testament and the “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.” Others came in to block out courses of work. Still others were preparing papers and gathering arguments, authorities, and data for debating societies and clubs. In that hour, too, a sympathetic ear would hear many a personal history told with entire frankness and naïveté. One poor fellow had that defect of will which is mated at times with the humorous warmth which the Germans call gemüth, and the added pain of consciousness of his own weakness. Another clear-headed, muscular-handed, and ready youth measured his chances of getting wood to saw,--“just the exercise he needed, out of doors,”--horses to groom, and the city lamps to light, to earn the simple fare which he himself cooked. Many a pathetic story found tongue in that morning air, and times were when fate dropped no cap of recognition and granted no final victory. In hearing the details of hope deferred, of narrow estate and expansive ambition, you longed for the fabled Crœsus touch which turned want to plenty, or, more rationally, you projected a social order where the young and inapt should not suffer for the sins of others, but be within the sheltering arms of some sympathetic power. There was the mildness of the chinook to this social blizzard, however, for groups moved even in the dewy hour of half-past eight toward the open door of the Greek lecture-room, laughing at the last college joke or secret society escapade, and forecasting who would be the next penitent before the council. Also certain youths and maids, between whom lay the engagement announced by a ring on the heart-finger--these one might see hanging over and fingering-- “Vor Liebe und Liebesweh”-- volumes lying upon my table, and in their eagerness and absorption of the world in two, dog-earing the golden edges of ever-living Theocritus. And why not? Such entanglements in the web of love oftenest differed in no way from the innocence and simplicity of the pristine Daphnes and Coras. They were living again, the Sicilian shepherd and shepherdess, and wandering in the eternally virid fields of youth. The skies and trees and waters were merely not of Trinacria. But Hesperus heavens omitted no degree of ardor.