a helping hand to a being in distress, brute or
human; was overflowing with good humor, and
was the idol of all his acquaintances."

Young masters of schools, public or private,
unmarried and attractive, usually rank next in
popularity to other professional men,--ministers,
lawyers, or doctors, as the case may be,--and a boy
of nineteen, the object of as much attention as
Nathan Hale must have received, might well be
pardoned if his head had been slightly turned, in
thus becoming the admired teacher of a large class
of young ladies. One special mark of stability of
character appears to have characterized this young
man in a greater degree than is always the case at
the present day. Detached as he was, as he supposed
irrevocably, from the woman he loved, he
appears to have carried himself with almost middle-aged
dignity, and, what is not a little to his credit,
even his intimate friends among his classmates
could not, by the most delicate cross-questioning,
draw from him anything suggesting more than a
pleasant interest in any of the young ladies with
whom he was thrown in contact.

A letter that will be given in its proper place
shows his courteous and cordial interest in the
little city he left when he entered the army; yet
it is rather a noteworthy fact that one of his class-

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v?