“Finally my health gave out. My mother feared that I would die, and at last gained the point of my being allowed to go to Tyre to school, if I could earn my board and clothes there. I went through the long village street there, stopping at every house to ask if they wanted a little boy to do chores for his board and go to school. I said nothing about clothes after the first few inquiries. It took me almost all day to find a place. It was nearly the last house in the village. The people happened to want a boy, and agreed to take me. I had only to take care of two horses, milk four cows, saw wood for three stoves, and run errands. When I lay awake in my new bed that night, it was with joy that I had found such a kind family and such an easy place! “I went to school for a year, and learned something--not much, I daresay, but something. Then I went back to the farm, alternating between that and other places in Tyre, some better, some worse, until finally I had saved eight dollars. Then I told my mother that I was going to Thessaly seminary. She laughed at me--they all laughed--but in the end I had my way. They fitted me out with some clothes--a vest of Ezra’s, an old hat, trousers cut perfectly straight and much too short, and clumsy boots two sizes too big for me, which had been bought by my stepfather in wrath at our continual trouble in the winter to get on our stiffened and shrunken boots. “I walked the first ten miles with a light heart. Then I began to grow frightened. I had never been to Thessaly, and though I knew pretty well from others that I should be well received, and even helped to find work to maintain myself, the prospect of the new life, now so close at hand, unnerved me. I remember once sitting down by the roadside, wavering whether to go on or not. At last I stood on the brow of the hill, and saw Thessaly lying in the valley before me. If I were to live a thousand years, I couldn’t forget that sight--the great elms, the white buildings of the seminary, the air of peace and learning and plenty which it all wore. I tell you, tears came to my eyes as I looked, and more than once they’ve come again, when I’ve recalled the picture. I remember, too, that later on in the day old Dr. Burdick turned me loose in the library, as it were There were four thousand books there, and the sight of them took my breath away. I looked at them for a long time, I know, with my mouth wide open. It was clear to me that I should never be able to read them all--nobody, I thought, could do that--but at last I picked out a set of the encyclopaedia at the end of the shelf nearest the door, and decided to begin there, and at least read as far through the room as I could.” Reuben stopped here, and relighted his cigar. “That’s my story,” he said after a pause, as if he had brought the recital up to date. “I should call that only the preface--or rather, the prologue,” said Horace.