"Oh Heaven!" he said, "I have deceived myself; I am no genius, able to rise above the lowliness of my station. The bitter cup of poverty is at my lips. I have not even the power to purchase a single book. Shall I go again to my good friend at C----? Shall I appear as a beggar, or a peasant, to beg the trifling pittance of a book?" A burning blush for a moment passed over his pale countenance. "Will they not say, and justly, 'Go back to your plough; it is your destiny and proper vocation to labor?'" He sat down on the side of his little pallet, and burst into tears. He wept long, and, as he wept, his mind became more calm. The short summer's night, in its progress, had bathed the earth in darkness, and cooled the heated roof of his little apartment. The night breeze, as it came in at his window, chilled him, and he rose to close it. As he looked from his little window, the dawn was just appearing in the east, and the planet Venus, shining with the soft light of a crescent moon, was full before him. "O beautiful star!" he thought, "the same that went before the sages of the East, and guided them to the manger of the Savior! I aspire only to be a teacher of the sublime wisdom of that humble manger. Let me but lift up my weak voice in his cause, and let all worldly ambition die within me. '---- Thou, O Spirit! who dost prefer, Before all temples, th' upright heart and pure,' I consecrate my powers to thee." The morning breeze, as it blew on his temples, refreshed him. The young birds began to make those faint twitterings beneath the downy breast of the mother, the first faint sound that breaks the mysterious silence of early dawn. He turned from the window; the rush-light was just expiring in its rude candlestick. He threw himself on his bed, and was soon lost in deep and dreamless slumbers. CHAPTER III. "I give thee to thy God,--the God that gave thee A well-spring of deep gladness to my heart! And, precious as thou art, And pure as dew of Hermon, He shall have thee! My own, my beautiful, my undefiled! And thou shalt be his child." While the student sleeps, we will make the reader acquainted with his short and simple annals. His maternal grandfather had been among the Puritan emigrants who sought the rock-bound coast of New England. He was a man of worth and property, had been educated at Oxford, and distinguished for classical learning and elegant pursuits. But at the call of conscience he left the luxurious halls of his fathers, the rank, and ancestral honors that would have descended to him, to share the hardships, privations, and sufferings of the meanest of his companions. He brought with him his wife and an only child, a daughter of twenty years. Like her mother, she had been carefully nurtured, and had lived in much luxury, although in the strict seclusion of the daughters of the Puritans.