If he was always in the foreground, everybody knew it was because he _could_ not be anywhere else.
If Winthrop was often brought into the foreground, on great occasions, every soul of them knew it was because no other would have dignified it so well.

And besides, neither Winthrop nor Rufus forgot or seemed to forget the grand business for which he was there.

With all their diversity of manner and disposition, each was intent on the same thing, -- to do what he had come there to do.

Lasting eminence, not momentary pre- eminence, was what they sought; and that was an ambition which most of their compeers had no care to dispute with them.
"Poor fellows!" said a gay young money-purser; "they are working hard, I suppose, to get themselves a place in the eye of the world." "Yes sir," said the President, who overheard this speech; -- "and they will by and by be where you can't see them." They came home for a few weeks in the summer, to the unspeakable rejoicing of the whole family; but it was a break of light in a cloudy day; the clouds closed again.

Only now and then a stray sunbeam of a letter found its way through.
One year had gone since the boys went to College, and it was late in the fall again.