MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS . 159 
the free; the dashing young Norwegian, with 
winning, deferential manners and a light in his 
blue eyes which speaks of his own glaciers and 
dark fjords; the gifted Japanese, absorbing 
philosophy or science with such readiness as to 
make his slower American competitor blush 
with shame; the angular Armenian, with his 
keen, thin face and nervous hands; the self- 
possessed Costa Rican, the moody Icelander 
and his taciturn but clear-headed neighbor from 
Newfoundland, — all are beside me taking turns 
with their American fellow-students in hurry¬ 
ing my wheel until the day is done. 
When the day is done, and pale sunset colors 
lie in the sky behind the witching iron tracery 
in the great western gateway, my soul goes 
northward again into that other October when 
the early snow melted, and the winds blew in 
the fair Chocorua land. I go back to a gusty 
afternoon when we rowed our boat the length 
of the lakes and landed upon the silent shore of 
the old Doe farm. It was our first visit to the 
white sand of that beach, to the little footpath 
leading upward through the orchard, and to the 
tumble-down cottage with its huge chimney, 
in which the swifts had found no smoke for 
twenty long years. Our first visit, — yet now 
the anchor of life is so strongly fixed on that 
shore, and the family fairies so firmly domiciled 
