overwhelming. And yet, he felt, as most young men must feel, an
individual strength that would exempt him from the workings of the
general law. His outlook on life was calm and unfrightened. Because he
knew the dangers that beset his way, he feared them less. He felt
assured because with so clear an eye he saw the weak places in his
armor which the world he was going to meet would attack, and these he
was prepared to strengthen. Was it not the fault of youth and
self-confessed weakness, he thought, to go into the world always
thinking of it as a foe? Was not this great Cosmopolis, this dragon of
a thousand talons kind as well as cruel? Had it not friends as well as
enemies? Yes. That was it: the outlook of young men, of colored young
men in particular, was all wrong,--they had gone at the world in the
wrong spirit. They had looked upon it as a terrible foeman and forced
it to be one. He would do it, oh, so differently. He would take the
world as a friend. He would even take the old, old world under his
wing.

They sat in the room talking that night, he and Webb Davis and Charlie
McLean. It was the last night they were to be together in so close a
relation. The commencement was over. They had their sheepskins. They
were pitched there on the bed very carelessly to be the important
things they were,--the reward of four years digging in Greek and
Mathematics.

They had stayed after the exercises of the day just where they had
first stopped. This was at McLean's rooms, dismantled and topsy-turvy
with the business of packing. The pipes were going and the talk kept
pace. Old men smoke slowly and in great whiffs with long intervals of
silence between their observations. Young men draw fast and say many
and bright things, for young men are wise,--while they are young.