Produced by Eric Eldred, Jerry Fairbanks, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
Henry Blake Fuller
_1. Cope at a College Tea
2. Cope Makes a Sunday Afternoon Call
3. Cope Is "Entertained"
4. Cope Is Considered
5. Cope Is Considered Further
6. Cope Dines—and Tells About It
7. Cope Under Scrutiny
8. Cope Undertakes an Excursion
9. Cope on the Edge of Things
10. Cope at His House Party
11. Cope Enlivens the Country
12. Cope Amidst Cross-Purposes
13. Cope Dines Again—and Stays After
14. Cope Makes an Evasion
15. Cope Entertains Several Ladies
16. Cope Goes A-Sailing
17. Cope Among Cross-Currents
18. Cope at the Call of Duty
19. Cope Finds Himself Committed
20. Cope Has a Distressful Christmas
21. Cope, Safeguarded, Calls Again
22. Cope Shall Be Rescued
23. Cope Regains His Freedom
24. Cope in Danger Anew
25. Cope in Double Danger
26. Cope as a Go-Between
27. Cope Escapes a Snare
28. Cope Absent From a Wedding
29. Cope Again in the Country
30. Cope as a Hero
31. Cope Gets New Light on His Chum
32. Cope Takes His Degree
33. Cope in a Final View_
1
What is a man's best age? Peter Ibbetson, entering dreamland withcomplete freedom to choose, chose twenty-eight, and kept there. Buttwenty-eight, for our present purpose, has a drawback: a man of thatage, if endowed with ordinary gifts and responsive to ordinaryopportunities, is undeniably—a man; whereas what we require here issomething just a little short of that. Wanted, in fact, a young malewho shall seem fully adult to those who are younger still, and who mayeven appear the accomplished flower of virility to an idealizing maidor so, yet who shall elicit from the middle-aged the kindly indulgencedue a boy. Perhaps you will say that even a man of twenty-eight mayseem only a boy to a man of seventy. However, no septuagenarian is tofigure in these pages. Our elders will be but in the middle forties andthe earlier fifties; and we must find for them an age which may evoketheir 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.
I think, then, that Bertram Cope, when he began to intrigue the littlegroup which dwelt among the quadruple avenues of elms that led to thecampus in Churchton, was but about twenty-four,—certainly not a daymore than twenty-five. If twenty-eight is the ideal age, the best isall the better for being just a little ahead.
Of course Cope was not an undergraduate—a species upon which many ofthe Churchtonians languidly refused to bestow their regard. "They come,and they go," said these prosperous and comfortable burghers; "and,after all, they're more or less alike, and more or les