Читать книгу Vassall Morton - Francis Parkman - Страница 4

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Richt hardie baith in ernist and play.—Sir David Lyndsay.

"Morton, what was the little old fogy in the white cravat saying to you just now in the library?"

"Telling me that my father was a worthy man, and that he hoped I should make just such another."

"Ah, that was kind of him."

"What a pile of books you are lugging! Here, let me take half a dozen of them for you. You look as if you were training to be a hotel porter."

"I am laying in for vacation."

"What sense is there in that? Let alone your Latin, Greek, and mathematics; what the deuse is vacation made for? Take to the woods, as I do, breathe the fresh air, and see the world at large."

"Do you call it seeing the world at large, to go off into some barbarous, uninhabitable place, among mosquitoes, snakes, wolves, bears, and catamounts? What sense is there in that? What can you do when you get there?"

"Shoot muskrats, and fish for mudpouts. Will you go with me?"

"Thank you, no. There's no one in the class featherwitted enough to go with you, except Meredith, and he ought to know better."

"Stay at home, then, and improve your mind. I shall be off to-morrow."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

Mr. Horace Vinal shrugged his shoulders, a movement which caused Sophocles and Seneca to escape from under his arm. Morton gathered them out of the mud, and thrusting them back again into their place, left his burdened fellow-student to make the best of his way towards his den in Stoughton Hall.