Risen from the Ranks: Harry Walton's Success

Oscar Vincent.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” said the stranger boy.  “My name is Oscar Vincent, from Boston, at present a student at the Prescott Academy, at your service.”

As he spoke, he doffed his hat and bowed, showing a profusion of chestnut hair, a broad, open brow, and an attractive face, lighted up by a pleasant smile.

Harry felt drawn to him by a feeling which was not long in ripening into friendship.

Imitating the other’s frankness, he also took off his hat and replied,—­

“Let me introduce myself, in turn, as Harry Walton, junior apprentice in the office of the ‘Centreville Gazette,’ sometimes profanely called ‘printer’s devil.’”

“Good!” said Oscar, laughing.  “How do you like the business?”

“I think I shall like it, but I have only just started in it.  I went into the office for the first time to-day.”

“I have an uncle who started as you are doing,” said Oscar.  “He is now chief editor of a daily paper in Boston.”

“Is he?” said Harry, with interest.  “Did he find it hard to rise?”

“He is a hard worker.  I have heard him say that he used to sit up late of nights during his apprenticeship, studying and improving himself.”

“That is what I mean to do,” said Harry.

“I don’t think he was as lazy as his nephew,” said Oscar.  “I am afraid if I had been in his place I should have remained in it.”

“Are you lazy?” asked Harry, smiling at the other’s frankness.

“A little so; that is, I don’t improve my opportunities as I might.  Father wants to make a lawyer of me so he has put me here, and I am preparing for Harvard.”

“I envy you,” said Harry.  “There is nothing I should like so much as entering college.”

“I daresay I shall like it tolerably well,” said Oscar; “but I don’t hanker after it, as the boy said after swallowing a dose of castor oil.  I’ll tell you what I should like better—­”

“What?” asked Harry, as the other paused.

“I should like to enter the Naval Academy, and qualify myself for the naval service.  I always liked the sea.”

“Doesn’t your father approve of your doing this?”

“He wouldn’t mind my entering the navy as an officer, but he is not willing to have me enter the merchant service.”

“Then why doesn’t he send you to the Naval Academy?”

“Because I can’t enter without receiving the appointment from a member of Congress.  Our member can only appoint one, and there is no vacancy.  So, as I can’t go where I want to, I am preparing for Harvard.”

“Are you studying Latin and Greek?”

“Yes.”

“Have you studied them long?”

“About two years.  I was looking over my Greek lesson when you playfully tumbled over me.”

“Will you let me look at your book?  I never saw a Greek book.”

“I sometimes wish I never had,” said Oscar; “but that’s when I am lazy.”

Harry opened the book—­a Greek reader—­in the middle of an extract from Xenophon, and looked with some awe at the unintelligible letters.

“Can you read it?  Can you understand what it means?” he asked, looking up from the book.

“So-so.”

“You must know a great deal.”

Oscar laughed.

“I wonder what Dr. Burton would say if he heard you,” he said.

“Who is he?”

“Principal of our Academy.  He gave me a blowing up for my ignorance to-day, because I missed an irregular Greek verb.  I’m not exactly a dunce, but I don’t think I shall ever be a Greek professor.”

“If you speak of yourself that way, what will you think of me?  I don’t know a word of Latin, of Greek, or any language except my own.”

“Because you have had no chance to learn.  There’s one language I know more about than Latin or Greek.”

“English?”

“I mean French; I spent a year at a French boarding-school, three years since.”

“What!  Have you been in France?”

“Yes; an uncle of mine—­in fact, the editor—­was going over, and urged father to send me.  I learned considerable French, but not much else.  I can speak and understand it pretty well.”

“How I wish I had had your advantages,” said Harry.  “How did you like your French schoolmates?”

“They wouldn’t come near me at first.  Because I was an American they thought I carried a revolver and a dirk-knife, and was dangerous.  That is their idea of American boys.  When they found I was tame, and carried no deadly weapons, they ventured to speak with me, and after that we got along pretty well.”

“How soon do you expect to go to college?”

“A year from next summer.  I suppose I shall be ready by that time.  You are going to stay in town, I suppose?”

“Yes, if I keep my place.”

“Oh, you’ll do that.  Then we can see something of each other.  You must come up to my room, and see me.  Come almost any evening.”

“I should like to.  Do you live in Dr. Barton’s family?”

“No, I hope not.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, the Doctor has a way of looking after the fellows that room in the house, and of keeping them at work all the time.  That wouldn’t suit me.  I board at Mrs. Greyson’s, at the south-east corner of the church common.  Have you got anything to do this evening?”

“Nothing in particular.”

“Then come round and take a look at my den, or sanctum I ought to call it; as I am talking to a member of the editorial profession.”

“Not quite yet,” said Harry, smiling.

“Oh, well that’ll come in due time.  Will you come?”

“Sha’n’t I be disturbing you?”

“Not a bit.  My Greek lesson is about finished, and that’s all I’ve got to do this evening.  Come round, and we will sit over the fire, and chat like old friends.”

“Thank you, Oscar,” said Harry, irresistibly attracted by his bright and lively acquaintance, “I shall enjoy calling.  I have made no acquaintances yet, and I feel lonely.”

“I have got over that,” said Oscar.  “I am used to being away from home and don’t mind it.”

The two boys walked together to Oscar’s boarding-place.  It was a large house, of considerable pretension for a village, and Oscar’s room was large and handsomely furnished.  But what attracted Harry’s attention was not the furniture, but a collection of over a hundred books, ranged on shelves at one end of the room.  In his father’s house it had always been so difficult to obtain the necessaries of life that books had necessarily been regarded as superfluities, and beyond a dozen volumes which Harry had read and re-read, he was compelled to depend on such as he could borrow.  Here again his privileges were scanty, for most of the neighbors were as poorly supplied as his father.

“What a fine library you have, Oscar!” he exclaimed.

“I have a few books,” said Oscar.  “My father filled a couple of boxes, and sent me.  He has a large library.”

“This seems a large library to me,” said Harry.  “My father likes reading, but he is poor, and cannot afford to buy books.”

He said that in a matter-of-fact tone, without the least attempt to conceal what many boys would have been tempted to hide.  Oscar noted this, and liked his new friend the better for it.

“Yes,” he said, “books cost money, and one hasn’t always the money to spare.”

“Have you read all these books?”

“Not more than half of them.  I like reading better than studying, I am afraid.  I am reading the Waverley novels now.  Have you read any of them?”

“So; I never saw any of them before.”

“If you see anything you would like to read, I will lend it to you with pleasure,” said Oscar, noticing the interest with which Harry regarded the books.

“Will you?” said Harry, eagerly.  “I can’t tell you how much obliged I am.  I will take good care of it.”

“Oh, I am sure of that.  Here, try Ivanhoe.  I’ve just read it, and it’s tip-top.”

“Thank you; I will take it on your recommendation.  What a nice room you have!”

“Yes, it’s pretty comfortable.  Father told me to fix it up to suit me.  He said he wouldn’t mind the expense if I would only study.”

“I should think anybody might study in such a room as this, and with such a fine collection of books.”

“I’m rather lazy sometimes,” said Oscar, “but I shall turn over a new leaf some of these days, and astonish everybody.  To-night, as I have no studying to do, I’ll tell you what we’ll do.  Did you ever pop corn?”

“Sometimes.”

“I’ve got some corn here, and Ma’am Greyson has a popper.  Stay here alone a minute, and I’ll run down and get it.”

Oscar ran down stairs, and speedily returned with a corn-popper.

“Now we’ll have a jolly time,” said he.  “Draw up that arm-chair, and make yourself at home.  If Xenophon, or Virgil, or any of those Greek and Latin chaps call, we’ll tell ’em we are transacting important business and can’t be disturbed.  What do you say?”

“They won’t be apt to call on me,” said Harry.  I haven’t the pleasure of knowing them.”

“It isn’t always a pleasure, I can assure you, Harry.  Pass over the corn-popper.”