When I had cleared my desk for my successor and had bidden good-by to my old known tasks, I found myself turning to the new and unknown with more interest than I had believed myself capable of showing. So much was to be done in those three days that I had little time for self-condolence. One day had to be taken for a farewell to my parents; and what a day it was, with my father and mother driving down to Pleasantville in the late night to meet me that they might not lose one moment of my visit! Only when I slept were they from my side, for my mother's mind was filled with all the stories of shipwreck that she had ever read, and my father had doubts as to whether or not the moral environment of London was such as he would ask for his son. My father never had much faith in my moral strength. Then Mr. Pound came up to see me, having, as usual, commandeered Mr. Smiley's comfortable phaeton for the transport of himself and Mrs. Pound. His hair was white now, and he bent a little, and his voice had lost some of its pompous roll, but his phrases were as round as ever. He insisted that I owned the paper. He placed his hand on my head and for the information of Miss Agnes Spinner named my good points much as a jockey would those of a favorite horse. He congratulated himself on the success of his method of training and called on Judge Malcolm to admit that his effort to have his son go to Princeton had been based on a misconception of the underlying merits of the McGraw system of education.