At the annual commencement of one of our colleges, the youth who delivered the valedictory had, by the vigor and beauty of thought displayed in his address, and by his polished and graceful elocution, drawn down the applause of the large audience assembled on that occasion. Not a few eyes were moistened as he bade farewell to the venerable men under whose care and tuition he had gained the highest honors, and to the schoolmates with whom he had passed so many happy hours, and who now, like barques again put forth to sea that had long been safely moored in one quiet haven, were each to stem alone on life’s great deep.

“He! he! he! that’s Bobby Dunning, his father keeps a grocery-store,” said a foppish-looking stripling who wore the academic gown, as he pointed with his finger to the speaker on the platform, and at the same time seated himself beside a young lady in the gallery.

“He! he!” echoed his companion, “I dare say he has weighed many a pound of sugar in his time. A grocery-store! What queer associates you have at college, Gus.”

“Associates! No indeed, Sophy, when Bob first entered I thought him a fine, generous fellow, and was just about to ask him to our house, when I found out who his father was. A lucky escape, by Jupiter! I soon cut his acquaintance, and made him feel by my cool, contemptuous manner that the son of a grocer was no fit associate for the son of a gentleman.”

Again the young lady tittered, “That’s just like you, Gus, you are always so high spirited.”

“So my father says; he often calls me his ‘gallant Hotspur,’ and laughs heartily when he hears of my waggish pranks.”

Many honors were that day borne away by the ambitious youths who had late and early sought to win them, but none had been awarded to Gus, or as he liked best to write himself, Gustavus Adolphus Tremaine.

“Why, Gus, you’re a lazy dog,” said his father on their return home; “come, you must do better next time. And so Bob Dunning, the grocer’s son, graduated to-day, and carried away more honors than any of the other students; rather strange that!”

“There was nothing strange about it, father. Bobby knew he had to get his living somehow or other, and as Latin and Greek smacked more of gentility than brown paper and pack-thread, he abandoned the latter, and took to the former with such avidity, that he has grown thin and pale as a shadow. A capital village pedagogue Bob will make, to be sure! But something more manly than poring over musty old books, or flogging ragged little boys, must be my occupation through life. I say, father, when does that race come off between Lady Helen and Bluebeard?”

“Next week,” answered Mr. Tremaine, who was a member of a jockey club—“next week. Well remembered, Gus.—I dine with the club to-day, and this devilish college concern had nearly driven the engagement out of my head. We are to have splendid arrangements on the race ground for the accommodation of the ladies—a fine stand erected, covered with an awning—wines, ices, patÉs, and I don’t know what all. Sarah,” turning to his wife, “I expect you to be there; mind, none of your vapors—and, Gus, do you bring Sophy Warren; she is a spirited creature, and would make a capital jockey herself.” And with this equivocal compliment to Miss Sophia Warren, the elder Tremaine left the house.

A tyrant at home, a capital fellow abroad, was Oscar Tremaine. Over his wife, a mild, gentle creature, he had exercised his authority until she had become a perfect cipher in her own house; and, unnatural as it may appear, he had encouraged their son to flout his mother’s opinions and scorn her advice. It was not strange, then, that Mrs. Tremaine had remained silent while her husband and son were speaking, but now, looking on the boy with tenderness, she said,

“I regret, my dear Gustavus, that you have not been more successful in your studies; how happy and how proud I should have been had you brought home some token of reward, some prize, on which I might have looked, and said, ‘My child has won it!’”

“Fudge! this is all nonsense, mother. What do you know about such matters? Father has more money than I can ever spend, and why should I be compelled to mope away my lifetime over the midnight oil, as they call it? I’d rather have a canter on Fancy in the afternoon, and then to the theatre or opera at night—that is the life for me;” and, humming a fashionable air, he turned from the room.

His mother gazed after him sorrowfully. “God help thee, my child!—alas! I fear the worst; God help thee!” she repeated in anguish, and, feeling how “sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,” she bowed her head on her hands, and wept bitterly.

In less than a month after the commencement, Robert Dunning began the study of the law, and Gustavus Adolphus Tremaine was expelled from college.

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