The college served its purpose, in introducing him to the world of knowledge; but that did not take long, and afterwards it was all in his way. The mathematics were a discipline, and in them he rejoiced as a strong man to run a race; and this was true also of the sciences, and of history--the only trouble was that he would finish the text-books in the first few weeks, and after that there was nothing to do save to compose verses in class, and to make sketches of the professors. But as for the “languages” and the “literatures” they taught him--in the end Thyrsis came to forgive them, because he saw that they did not know what languages and literatures were. On this account he took to begging leave of absence on grounds of his poverty; and then he would go home and spend his days and nights in learning. One could get so much for so little, in this wonderful world of mind! For eight cents he picked up a paper volume of Emerson’s “Essays”; and in this shrewd and practical nobility was so much that he was seeking in life! And then he stumbled upon a fifteen-cent edition of “Sartor Resartus”, and took that home and read it. It was like the clash of trumpets and cymbals to him; it made his whole being leap. Hour after hour he read, breathless, like a man bewitched, the whole night through. He would cry aloud with delight, or drop the book and pound his knee and laugh over the demoniac power of it. The next day he began the “French Revolution”; and after that, alas, he found there was no more--for Carlyle had turned his back upon democracy, and so Thyrsis turned his back upon Carlyle. For this was one of the forces which had had to do with the shaping of his thought. Beginning in the public-schools he had learned about his country--the country which was his, if not Corydon’s. He had read in its history--Irving’s “Life of Washington,” and ten great volumes about Lincoln; so he had come to understand that salvation is of the people, and that those things which the people do not do--those things have not yet been done. So no one could deceive him, or lead him astray; he might laugh with the Tories, and even love them for their foibles--quaint old Samuel Johnson, for instance, because he was poor and sturdy, and had stood by his trade of bookman; but at bottom Thyrsis knew that all these men were gilding a corpse. Wordsworth and Tennyson, Browning and Swinburne--he followed each one as far as their revolutionary impulse lasted; and after that there was no more in them for him. Even Ruskin, who taught him the possibilities of English prose, and opened his eyes to the form and color of the world of nature--even Ruskin he gave up, because he was a philanthropist and not a democrat.