"He was a poor man in college, and an orphan. The property of his family
had been lost in the War of 1812; from then till he was twenty-one, he
had followed a dozen trades, and saved a couple of hundred dollars; and
he'd picked up book-learning enough to enter the sophomore class. The
first thing he did was to make a friend; he loved him with his whole
heart; thought nothing was too good for him, and so on. He and his
friend led the class for three years; and up to the time of the last
examination, he was first and his friend second. In the examination they
sat side by side; one question the friend couldn't answer; the other
wrote it out for him; after the examination the two papers were found to
be alike in the answer to that question, and the friend was summoned
before the faculty, and asked if he had copied it. He denied it--said it
had been copied from him; so he took the first rank in graduating, and
the other was dropped several places."
"What became of their friendship after that?" inquired Bressant.
"He I'm telling you of never knew any thing of what his friend had done
till long afterward. Well, the faculty and some of the wealthy patrons
of the university determined to send the first scholar abroad, to finish
his education: he accepted the offer eagerly, and sailed for Europe,
without bidding his friend good-by. Afterward, the faculty made the same
offer to him, on the consideration that he had stood so well, during his
course, until the examination. But he declined it: it was contrary to
his principle of never leaving his country."
"What sort of a man was the friend?" asked Bressant, who was paying
close attention, with his hand at his ear.
"Clever, with a winning manner, and fine-looking; had a pleasant, easy
voice; never lost his temper that I know of." The professor paused,
perhaps to arrange his ideas, ere he went on. "The man I'm telling you
of left the college-yard with as much of the world before him as lies
between the fifteenth and twenty-fifth parallels of latitude, and the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. He'd made up his mind to be a physician;
and in a year he was qualified to enter the hospital; worked there four
years, and, by the time he was twenty-nine, he had an office of his own
and a good practice.
"At last, he fell in love with a beautiful woman; she was the daughter
of one of his patients--a Southerner with a little Spanish blood in him.
The young doctor had--under Providence--saved the man's life; and, since
he himself came of a good family--none better--and had a respectable
income, there wasn't much difficulty in arranging the match. The only
condition was, that the father should never be out of reach of his
daughter, as long as he lived."