glimpse of the world of knowledge and was fascinated with the idea of a university education. Beyond the university, he occasionally saw himself a multimillionaire with a palace and a brilliant retinue of servants. He had chosen for his life mate a brilliant young woman who was a teacher in a kindergarten school connected with the academy. They were to be married when he should graduate from the university. All seemed hopeful and promised a most noble and notable career. But while he was spending his vacation at the old home in the Hampshire Highlands of the Berkshire Hills, helping his old father in gathering the usual crops, he received an invitation from a rich uncle living near San Francisco, inviting him to visit his estate. The uncle had not often corresponded with the young man's parents and they had taken no interest in his history. They had heard that he was a wealthy manufacturer and a railroad director. So the brother, and the sister who was the student's mother, had lost all acquaintance with each other in the fifty years of their separation. The young man gladly accepted his uncle's invitation to visit him, and the uncle sent on a railroad pass to bring him to California and return. The estate of the uncle was on the shore of the Pacific, occupying a gentle slope with wide lawns, evergreen trees fancifully trimmed, and gushing fountains. Hedges of lilies, acres of poppies, roses of every perennial variety, and shade trees in long rows, decorated the great plateau. Orchards of luscious and rare fruits stretched away in great lanes from the back gardens. The house was a mansion built for show, with a front largely Grecian in design, and a rear porch and veranda of the Old Colony style. Carpets, paintings, mirrors, and a hundred curious and costly decorations made an exhibition of lavish wealth. Fine horses and extravagantly furnished carriages in great variety filled the stables. Servants' quarters were really fine cottages and the gatekeeper's lodge cost an extravagant sum. To this New England nephew who had spent his youth in the simplicity and poverty of a back-country farm, all this display of wealth was bewildering. The great library of costly volumes, few of which had ever been opened, seemed to him a great opportunity for his uncle to learn almost everything. The food was so various and so delicious. The wines which he had never tasted were sweetly stimulating and had been made on the estate. His uncle entertained him royally and introduced him to a number of handsome young ladies of fascinating manners, who volunteered to teach him to dance. Every kind of musical invention seemed to be stored in the mansion, and quartets from the university near by came in often to entertain and to be entertained at the uncle's evening socials. The uncle was a widower and childless, and seemed to be most pathetically lonely. He was pleased with his nephew and was proud of his apparently sterling character and manly appearance.