Page:Rose in Bloom (Alcott).djvu/66

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You are not changed in that respect, though you are in others. You had great plans and projects once, Charlie; and now you seem to be contented with being a 'jack of all trades and master of none.'"

"Boyish nonsense! Time has brought wisdom; and I don't see the sense of tying myself down to one particular thing, and grinding away at it year after year. People of one idea get so deucedly narrow and tame, I've no patience with them. Culture is the thing; and the sort one gets by ranging over a wide field is the easiest to acquire, the handiest to have, and the most successful in the end. At any rate, it is the kind I like, and the only kind I intend to bother myself about."

With this declaration, Charlie smoothed his brow, clasped his hands over his head, and, leaning back, gently warbled the chorus of a college song, as if it expressed his views of life better than he could:—

"While our rosy fillets shed
Blushes o'er each fervid head,
With many a cup and many a smile
The festal moments we beguile."

"Some of my saints here were people of one idea; and, though they were not very successful in a worldly point of view while alive, they were loved and canonized when dead," said Rose, who had been turning over a pile of photographs upon the table, and, just then, found her favorite, St. Francis, among them.

"This is more to my taste. Those worn-out, cadav-