settle down to the uneventful life of a student and a teacher, could shut himself up within the four walls of a classroom, could find anything to inspire and hold him in the dull presentation of facts or the dry elucidation of theories,—­this seemed to be a miracle not to be expected in this realistic age.  But, miracle or not, the thing actually happened.  He remained nearly four years in the school, earning his living by work that he did in the intervals of study, and doing it so well that, when he graduated, he had not only his education and the diploma which stood for it, but also a bank account.

He lived in a little cabin by himself, for he wished to be where he would not disturb others when he sang or whistled over his work in the small hours of the night.  But his meals he took at the college dormitory, where he presided at a table of young women students.  Never was a man more popular with the ladies than this weather-beaten patriarch with the girls of his table.  No matter how gloomy the day might be, one could always find sunshine from that quarter.  No matter how grievous the troubles of work, there was always a bit of cheerful optimism from a man who had tasted almost every joy and sorrow that life had to offer.  If one were in a blue funk of dejection because of failure in a class, he would lend the sympathy that came from his own rich experience in failures,—­not only past but present, for some things that come easy at sixteen come hard at sixty-five, and this man who would accept no favors had to fight his way through “flunks” and “goose-eggs” like the younger members of the class.  And even with it all so complete an embodiment of hope and courage and wholesome light-heartedness would be hard to find.  He was an optimist because he had learned long since that anything but optimism is a crime; and learning this in early life, optimism had become a deeply seated and ineradicable prejudice in his mind.  He could not have been gloomy if he had tried.

And so this man fought his way through science and mathematics and philosophy, slowly but surely, just as he had fought inch by inch and link by link, across the Arizona desert years before.  It was a much harder fight, for all the force of lifelong habit, than which there is none other so powerful, was against him from the start.  And now came the human temptation to be off on the old trail, to saddle his horse and get a pick and a pan and make off across the western range to the golden land that always lies just under the sunset.  How often that turbulent Wanderlust seized him, I can only conjecture.  But I know the spirit of the wanderer was always strong within him.  He could say, with Kipling’s Tramp Royal: 

  “It’s like a book, I think, this bloomin’ world,
  Which you can read and care for just so long,
  But presently you feel that you will die
  Unless you get the page you’re reading done,
  An’ turn another—­likely not so good;
  But what you’re after is to turn them all.”