The Witness

o return to his room and his classes.

They welcomed him back with touching eagerness. They tried to hush their
voices and temper their noisiness to suit an invalid. They told him all
their news, what games had been won, who had made Phi Beta Kappa, and
what had happened at the frat. meetings. But they spoke not at all of
Stephen!

Down the hall Stephen's door stood always open, and Courtland, walking
that way one day, found fresh flowers upon his desk and wreathed around
his mother's picture. A quaint little photograph of Stephen taken
several years back hung on one wall. It had been sent at the class's
request by Stephen's mother to honor her son's chosen college.

The room was set in order, Stephen's books were on the shelves, his few
college treasures tacked up about the walls; and conspicuous between the
windows hung framed the resolutions concerning Stephen the hero-martyr
of the class, telling briefly how he had died, and giving him this
tribute, "He was a man!"

Below the resolutions, on the little table covered with an old-fashioned
crocheted cotton table-cover, lay Stephen's Bible, worn, marked, soft
with use. His mother had wished it to remain. Only his clothes had been
sent back to her who had sent him forth to prepare for his life-work,
and received word in her distant home that his life-work had been
already swiftly accomplished.

Courtland entered the room and looked around.

There were no traces of the fray that had marred the place when last he
saw it. Everything was clean and fine and orderly. The simple saint-like
face of the plain farmer's-wife-mother looked down upon it all with
peace and resignation. This life was not all. There was another. Her
eyes said that. Paul Courtland stood a long time gazing into them.

Then he closed the door and knelt by the little table, laying his
forehead reverently upon the Bible.

Since he had returned to college and things of life had become more
real, Reason had returned to her throne and was crying out against his
"f

John Addington Symonds (October 5, 1840 - April 19, 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. He was an early advocate of the validity of male love which included for him pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships, and which he would refer to as lamour de limpossible.

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