The first disappointment encountered by the young hero was the wonderful shock of finding out that it was not an abstract world he had to encounter and fight with, but that life was an affair of days and hours exactly as at Ramore, which was about his first real mental experience and discovery. It was a strange mortification¹ to Colin, who was, like his mother, a poet in his soul, to find out that there was nothing abstract in his new existence, but that a perpetually recurring² round of lessons to learn, and classes to attend, and meals to eat, made up the days, which were noways changed in their character from those days which he had already known for all the fifteen years of his life. After the first shock, however, he went on with undiminished courage—for at fifteen it is so easy to think that those great hours are waiting for us somewhere in the undisclosed orb³ of existence. Certainly a time would come when every day, of itself a radiant whole and complete unity⁴, would roll forth⁵ majestic⁶ like the earth in the mystic atmosphere. He had missed it this time, but after a while it must come; for the future, like the past, works wonders upon the aspect of time; and still it is true of the commonest hours that they—
——“win
A glory from their being far,
And orb into the perfect star
We saw not when we walked therein.”

So thought Colin, looking at them from the other side, and seeing a perfection which nobody ever reached in this world. But of course he did not know that—so he postponed⁷ those grand days, and barred them up with shining doors, on which was written the name and probable date of the next great{32} change in his existence; and, contenting himself for the present with the ordinary hours, went light-hearted enough upon his boyish way.

A little adventure which occurred to the neophyte

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