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men whose favorite literature lies in old English plays.
His very name was not that by which he afterwards became noted; it being originally Henry Welles Smith, and being changed subsequently to gratify a relative who was also his benefactor.
Stranger than even this transformation of name and career was the third bit of the unexpected.
The only member of the class who ever landed in the state's prison was precisely and unequivocally the most dignified and respectable man we mustered,--a man absolutely stainless as we knew him, whose whole aspect and bearing carried irresistible weight, and who was chosen by acclamation as the treasurer of our class fund.
In truth, it was his face and manner that were his ruin; he was a lawyer and had charge of estates; trustful widows and orphans thronged round him and believed in him up to the moment the prison doors opened to receive him; he could no more resist such perilous confidence than could Shakespeare's Autolycus, and might say with him, “If I had a mind to be honest, I see Fortune would not suffer me.”
My only really intimate friend in the class was Parker, already named, who, although two years older than myself, and of more staidness of temperament and maturity of character, had
Boston and New York. Houghton, Mifflin and Company. 1898.
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