Avis Benson or Mine and thine Author:Elizabeth Prentiss Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SUCCESS AND DEFEAT. Two young men, Robert Neale and William Collier, entered college together, and during the four succeeding years a warm friendship sprang u... more »p between them. Fellow-students wondered what points of congeniality there were between them, and would have sneered at their Quixotic union, but for the fact that everything Neale said and did appeared right in all eyes. He was a brilliant, attractive, popular young fellow. Nature had done for him all she could. She seemed to have been amusing herself by giving him so many varied talents, so genial a humour, so noble and manly a person. When William Collier, rather small for his age, found that the college favourite accepted his homage graciously, he could hardly believe his senses, and he often asked himself what he had done that entitled him to favours others sought in vain. Neale often asked himself what bound him to Collier, who possessed none of the originality and freshness that make an agreeable companion. The fact was, that the latter understood him better thanany other classmate did, and that on the principle that " it is the inferior natures that appreciate, indulge, reverence, and even comprehend genius the most." Perhaps, the philosophy of this principle may be found in the fact, that the " inferior nature" finding little to admire in itself, naturally seeks something to admire out of and above itself. But be that as it may, the two were almost constantly together—the one adoring, the other adored. Neale had leisure to make himself agreeable to many another besides his chum. It cost him little time to prepare himself for his recitations, and, while Collier plodded painfully at his task, he was here, there, and everywhere, the life of every festivity. It came to be understood that he was to receive all the e...« less