God breathed His spirit into the earth and it became a living man.

Man--His image--must breathe the spirit into the earth and make it a

living civilization.

His father, with a Gettysburg bullet bruising his life, had nevertheless

played the part, and done his share toward turning a frontier village

into a noble city. With a thrill Dick saw himself building the structure

higher on its firm foundations, making it great enough to match the wide

fertile acres that lay about it, and the dazzling Minnesota sky that

hung above. So he built his castle of achievement in the air, where his

own glory lay mistily behind his service to his fellow men. Already the

thing seemed done--vague and yet, somehow, concrete.

"Pooh, what is time? A mere figment of the imagination!" exclaimed Dick

suddenly. "Was it day before yesterday that I came home? Forty-eight

hours have put a gulf between the old and the new me. Condensed

time,--just add hot water and it swells to six times its original bulk."

His mother smiled indulgently at her son's vagaries of speech, and he

went on: "Moreover, I've been away four years,--years of vast importance, it

seems to me. I come back and everything is going on in the same old way.

Every one is interested in the same old things. They don't seem to think

anything exciting has happened, except that the city has doubled in size

and there has been another presidential election. They aren't a bit

stirred up over me. They aren't even deeply moved because Ellery over

there is wielding an inexperienced editorial pen. Everything is

familiar, but I've forgotten it all. It's hard to pick up the threads."

"More than that, boys. The threads are not all done up in a neat bunch

and handed to you as they are in New Haven. St. Etienne's point of view

is not always that of the gentleman and the scholar. Its great men are

not of the campus, but those who control the destinies of others,

sometimes by wealth, oftener by the genius of power. But, after all,

this is the real world."

Dick laughed again.

"And a world after my own heart, mother."

"Yes, I think you will fit in," she said with maternal complacency.

"Both of you," she added with sudden remembrance.

"The fitting-in on my part will have to be a process of swelling, I

guess," Norris said whimsically. "Small and narrow as is the berth I

have at the Star office, I shall have to be bigger than I am before I

fill it."

"Oh, you're all right. You're fundamentally all right, and that means

you'll rise to every opportunity you get." Dick's voice took on some of

the patronage of a leader for his follower. "I'd bank on Ellery Norris

if the rest of the world turned sour."




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