I fell in, there, With Gilbert Ripley, once my chum at Yale. Poor Gilbert groaned along a double year,— Read, spoke, boxed, fenced, rowed, trod the foot-ball ground,— Loving the college library more than Greek, His meerschaum most of all. But when we came Together, gathered from the breathing-time They give the fellows while the dog-days last, He found the harness chafe; then grew morose, And kicked above the traces, going home Hardly a Junior, but a sounder man, In mind and body, than a host who win Your baccalaureate honors. There he stayed, Half tired of bookmen, on his father’s farm, And gladly felt the plough-helve. In a year The old man gave his blessing to the son, And left his life, as ’twere his harvest-field, When work was over. Gilbert hugged the farm, Now made his own, besides a pretty sum In good State Sixes; partly worked the land, With separate theories for every field, And partly led the student-life of old, Mouthing his Shakespeare’s ballads to himself Among the meadow-mows; or, when he read In the evening, found a picture of his bull, Just brought from Devon, sleek as silk, loom in Before his vision. Thus he weighed his tastes, Each against each, in happiest equipoise. The neighbor farmers seeing he had thrift That would not run to waste, and pardoning all Beyond their understanding, wished him well. But when I saw him stride among his stock,— Straight-shouldered cattle, breathing of the field,— Saw him how blowze and hearty; then, at eve, Close sitting by his mother in the porch, Heard him discuss the methods of the times, The need our country has of stalwart men, Who scorn the counter and will till the land, Strong-handed, free of thought,—I somehow felt The man was noble, and his simple life More like the pattern given in the Mount Than mine, hedged close about with city life And grim, conventional manners. So much, then, For Gilbert Ripley. Not to dwell too long Upon his doings, let me tell the tale I got from him, one hazy afternoon, When he and I had wandered to the bridge, New-built across our favorite of the streams That skirt the village,—here three miles apart, Twin currents, joining in a third below.