To most boys this rich and never-to-be-forgotten experience comes in college.

Except in cases of rare good fortune, a boy is not ripe for the literary spirit in the classic literature until the college atmosphere surrounds him.

To many it never discovers itself at all, and the languages which were dead at the beginning of study are dead at the end; but to those in whom the instinct of scholarship is developed there comes a day when Virgil lives as truly as he lived in Dante's imagination, and, like Boccaccio, they light a fire at his tomb which years do not quench.
Who that has ever gone through the experience will forget the hour when he discovered the Greeks in Homer's pages, and felt for the first time the grand impulse of that noble race stir his blood and fill his brain with the far-reaching aspiration for a life as rich as theirs in beauty, freedom, and strength! It is told of an English scholar that he devoted his winters to the "Iliad" and his summers to the "Odyssey," reading each several times every year.

One could hardly reconcile such self-indulgence with the claims of to-day on every man's time and strength; but I have no doubt all Grecians have a secret envy for such a career.

The Old-World charm of the "Odyssey" is one of the priceless possessions of every fresh student, and to feel it for the first time is like discovering the sea anew.