“That, I think, your mother could do best,” said my father, drily, “if she wants to be quite convinced that somebody will see that your shirts are aired. For I suppose they mean you to lodge at Trevanion’s.” “Oh, no!” cried my mother. “He might as well go to college then. I thought he was to stay with us; only go in the morning, but, of course, sleep here.” “If I know any thing of Trevanion,” said my father, “his secretary will be expected to do without sleep. Poor boy, you don’t know what it is you desire. And yet, at your age, I—” my father stopped short. “No!” he renewed abruptly, after a long silence, and as if soliloquising. “No, man is never wrong while he lives for others. The philosopher who contemplates from the rock, is a less noble image than the sailor who struggles with the storm. Why should there be two of us? And _could_ he be an _alter ego_, even if I wished it? impossible!” My father turned on his chair, and, laying the left leg on the right knee, said smilingly, as he bent down to look me full in the face; “But, Pisistratus, will you promise me always to wear the saffron bag?” CHAPTER XXIV. I now make a long stride in my narrative. I am domesticated with the Trevanions. A very short conversation with the statesman sufficed to decide my father; and the pith of it lay in this single sentence uttered by Trevanion—“I promise you one thing—he shall never be idle!” Looking back, I am convinced that my father was right, and that he understood my character, and the temptations to which I was most prone, when he consented to let me resign college and enter thus prematurely on the world of men. I was naturally so joyous, that I should have made college life a holiday, and then, in repentance, worked myself into a phthisis. And my father, too, was right, that, though I could study, I was not meant for a student. After all, the thing was an experiment. I had time to spare: if the experiment failed, a year’s delay would not necessarily be a year’s loss. I am ensconced, then, at Mr Trevanion’s. I have been there some months—it is late in the winter—parliament and the season have commenced. I work hard—Heaven knows, harder than I should have worked at college. Take a day for a sample. Trevanion gets up at eight o’clock, and in all weathers rides an hour before breakfast; at nine he takes that meal in his wife’s dressing-room; at half-past nine he comes into his study. By that time he expects to find done by his secretary the work I am about to describe. On coming home, or rather before going to bed, which is usually after three o’clock, it is Mr Trevanion’s habit to leave on the table of the said study a list of directions for the secretary. The following, which I take at random from many I have preserved, may show their multifarious nature:—