Cope as a Hero
31. Cope Gets New Light on His Chum
32. Cope Takes His Degree
33. Cope in a Final View_
AFTERWORD
1
_COPE AT A COLLEGE TEA_
What is a man's best age? Peter Ibbetson, entering dreamland with complete
freedom to choose, chose twenty-eight, and kept there. But twenty-eight,
for our present purpose, has a drawback: a man of that age, if endowed with
ordinary gifts and responsive to ordinary opportunities, is undeniably--a
man; whereas what we require here is something just a little short of that.
Wanted, in fact, a young male who shall seem fully adult to those who are
younger still, and who may even appear the accomplished flower of virility
to an idealizing maid or so, yet who shall elicit from the middle-aged the
kindly indulgence due a boy. Perhaps you will say that even a man of
twenty-eight may seem only a boy to a man of seventy. However, no
septuagenarian is to figure in these pages. Our elders will be but in the
middle forties and the earlier fifties; and we must find for them an age
which may evoke their friendly interest, and yet be likely to call forth,
besides that, their sympathy and their longing admiration, and later their
tolerance, their patience, and even their forgiveness.
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