Page:What answer dickinson.djvu/12

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2
What Answer?

More than one eye was lifted, and many a pleasant greeting passed between these selected few who filled the street and a young man who lounged by one of the overlooking windows; and many a comment was uttered upon him when the greeting was made:

"A most eligible parti!"

"Handsome as a god!"

"O, immensely rich, I assure you!"

"Isn't he a beauty!"

"Pity he wasn't born poor!"

"Why?"

"O, because they say he carried off all the honors at college and law-school, and is altogether overstocked with brains for a man who has no need to use them."

"Will he practise?"

"Doubtful. Why should he?

"Ambition, power,—gratify one, gain the other."

"Nonsense! He'll probably go abroad and travel for a while, come back, marry, and enjoy life."

"He does that now, I fancy."

"Looks so."

And indeed he did. There was not only vigor and manly beauty, splendid in its present, but the "possibility of more to be in the full process of his ripening days," a form alert and elegant, which had not yet all of a man's muscle and strength; a face delicate, yet strong, refined, yet full of latent power; a mass