Asa Holmes or At the Cross-roads by Annie Fellows Johnston

THERE is something in the air of June that stirs even insentient things with a longing to blossom. Staid old universities blaze out with the gala colours of commencement week, when the month of roses is ushered in, and on every college campus the social life of the student year comes to flower in the crowning exercises of class-day.

One wonders sometimes if the roots, burrowing underground in order to fill the bush overhead with myriads of roses, have any share in the thrill of success at having produced such a wealth of sweetness and beauty. But there need be no surmise about college florescence. Faculties may beam with complacency on their yearly cluster of full-blown graduates, the very walls of the gray old universities may thrill as they echo the applause of admiring audiences, but the greatest pride is not felt within the college town itself where the student life centres. It is back in the roots that have made college life possible. Back in some parental existence that daily sinks itself farther into the commonplace in order that some son or daughter may blossom into the culture of arts and belles-lettres. The Jacqueminot that flaunts its glory over the garden wall may not sweeten life for the fibres that lift it, but the valedictorian who flaunts his diploma and degree in the classic halls of some sea-board college may be glorifying the air of some little backwoods village a thousand miles inland. Even the Cross-Roads are bound with a network of such far-reaching roots to the commencements of Harvard and Yale.