“Fess,” said Jeremiah Keene, on the night of Commencement Day, “what are you going to do with yourself? You are the most expansive--nay, sentimental and emotional creature on one side of you, and on the other the most secretive! I’ve turned myself inside out to you over and over again. You know all my hopes, aspirations, plans--who doesn’t? What have I been digging away at this school of mines for? But you’ve gone in for everything, distinguished yourself in pretty nearly everything--and we are none the wiser. In these days you’ve got to be one thing--one thing--there’s no chance for any but the specialist, and you are as well aware of that as any one else. So I know, we all know, that you must have made up your mind--that you know what you are about. It isn’t only curiosity that prompts me to ask for your secret--there is no necessity for maunderings on my part. I’d like to know; we may not meet again for years--you go East, I go West--I’ve never taken a liberty with you before; forgive me this.” Fessenden made no reply for a moment. He was spending his last night in Turbine in the rooms of his chum. The day had been crowded with triumphs. He was dazzled, elated, a trifle bewildered. Compliments and flattering predictions had fallen thick upon him. The president had congratulated him publicly, invited him to dinner to meet the distinguished guests, and he had been the only student so honored. Among the guests were several of the eminent men who had condescended to illuminate the university during the past year, and they had singled out Fessenden and paid him such marked attentions, besides interrogating him so closely as to his interest in his more important studies, that both faculty and students, highly as they thought of their star, were astonished: the successful self-made American takes very little interest in unmade futures. It was a great and notable tribute to personality, and Fessenden’s chest had risen and his head bulged more than once. He was feeling his strength at every nerve-point, he knew himself to be ready to go out and conquer the world at once; his mind had flashed back during the exciting day to the long course of training, from his babyhood until this last week of his twenty-first year, which had modelled his inherited forces in brain and character, slowly and safely, given him the physical endurance to keep pace with the restless energies of his mind. He was filled with gratitude for his father, but he also thought very well of himself. The self-made American was his type, the ideal he had set on high; whether born in a log-cabin, on a Virginia plantation, or a romantic British isle, was immaterial. All the great men of his country had started with a reasonable amount of poverty, and certainly the youthful record of none was more brilliant than his. He had had his disappointments, his disillusionments, even in Turbine; he had been deceived and tricked and