and works of history, biography, poetry, travel and fiction, classic and modern—for it was Harrington’s design to grasp the thought and life of all the ages. So toiled he. No dilettante litterateur; no student forgetful of his time and kind, or gaining lore to fortify or gild oppression;—but kinsman to the golden blood of the gallant scholars to whose graves the heart brings its laurels and its tears. No scholar, either of the modern sort, which stores the brain and saps the arm—but of the large Elizabethan type, training his body in every manly exercise, training his mind in equal skill and power. Such was the budding promise of Harrington. CHAPTER X. CONVERSATION. In the young man’s kindled mood, composition was easy, and by two o’clock his article was done. He was leaning back in his chair, enjoying the consciousness of eighty dollars earned, when the door opened, and in came the Captain, with his head very much on one side, and an ominous gravity on his quaint features. He did not remove his straw-hat, but stood surveying Harrington with a critical eye, like a marine raven. A slow smile twinkled around the young man’s bearded mouth, for he instantly divined what the Captain had come for. “Well, Eldad,” he said, “it’s the rent, I know. I see rent written in every lineament of your ingenuous countenance. Come, sit down.” The Captain slowly lifted his clenched fist and shook it at Harrington, then lounged about, seated himself on the sofa under the windows, and cocked up his eye at the trap in the ceiling. “Could I smoke, John?” he asked, suddenly dropping his glance at the young man. “Certainly. Light up, and smoke away.” Keeping his head on one side, and his round, bright eyes intent on the smiling Harrington, the Captain produced a short pipe and a match from the hollow of his left hand, and putting the pipe in one corner of his mouth, lit the match on his sleeve, and igniting the tobacco, began to blow a cloud. “And why didn’t you come to dinner?” he blandly demanded, opening the war. “Dinner! I declare I never thought of it till this minute,” exclaimed Harrington, coloring a little. “It was a brile to-day, John,” pursued the Captain, contemplatively, smoking. “Briled steak, potatoes, spinach, with a top off of bread puddin’ and coffee,” he continued, pensively enumerating the components of the meal. “Together with bread and butter, and apple-sarce. Joel James eat till he thought his jacket was buttoned. Hannah says, ‘I wonder where John is?’ Sophrony answers, ‘he’s in his room, for I see him go in at eleven o’clock.’ ‘Better call him,’ says John H. ‘Better not,’ says I, ‘or you’ll scatter some of his idees.’ So we didn’t.” Harrington listened attentively to this account of the family colloquy on his absence from the dinner-table. Joel James was the Captain’s son, a sturdy schoolboy of ten. Sophronia was his daughter, a girl of fifteen. John H. was the youngest son, named after Harrington. Hannah was the Captain’s wife.