He had just come from America; he had left there on the sixth. He had come to study under Dr. Joseph at the new Methodist College. Dr. Joseph had arranged for him to come to St. Mary's; their own College wasn't built yet. Foley asked if he thought he would like Oxford. "Yes, sir," the other replied, drawing a large handkerchief from his coat-tails, "I guess I will; though," he added cautiously after a moment, "it does seem kind of old and mouldy." Foley thought he had done his duty in calling, and meant for the future to see as little as possible of his new neighbour. And yet there had been something pleasant and sensitive in his face, he remembered afterwards; and at times he was haunted by the thought of this stranger sitting as he had found him, alone and lonely in the room upstairs, with two or three books in the empty shelves, a few photographs of home that made the mantelpiece and bare walls look all the more homeless and unfriendly. Now and then he would hear footsteps above moving vaguely about, or he would meet the American on the stairs, or see him walking out alone, and at last, out of kindness, he went again to call. Before long he began to take a certain liking to Sutton, and would often go up in the evenings with a cigarette to his rooms. To the young Englishman the American was certainly a curious and amusing study. How curious were the views and impressions of Oxford, that, breaking through his shy reserve, he would once in a while express, in his prim middle-aged way! He was a good deal shocked by the wine-drinking, card-playing, and Sabbath-breaking that seemed so prevalent there; what religion there was, (well, he didn't guess there was much,) he thought mechanical and dead. Of course there was a great deal of culture in Oxford; but in other things, like telephones and electric lights, why England was behind the Mississippi Valley! II. Foley began to have ideas of his own about this Mississippi Valley. He had already read of its rivers and railways and mushroom towns, and he remembered some of the proud things that Sutton had said at different times of Parnassus City and its importance--it was almost the only subject on which the reticent young man ever seemed willing to talk--the thought-out comparisons he would draw between that place and Oxford, in his attempts to explain to himself what he saw, and account for it all, according to his principles.