A Brahman

Our pass--for we, too, are to call on Mr. MacGentle--would carry us through solider obstructions than Mr. Dyke; it is the pass of imagination. He does not even raise his head as we brush by him.

But, first, let us inquire who Mr. MacGentle is, besides President of the Beacon Hill Bank. He is a man of refinement and cultivation, a scholar and a reader, has travelled, and, it is said, could handle a pen to better purpose than the signing bank-notes. In his earlier years he studied law, and gained a certain degree of distinction in the profession, although (owing, perhaps, to his having entered it with too ideal and high-strung views as to its nature and scope) he never met with what is vulgarly called success. Fortunately for the ideal barrister, an ample private estate made him independent of professional earnings. Later in life, he trod the confines of politics, still, however, enveloping himself in that theoretical, unpractical atmosphere which was his most marked, and, to some people, least comprehensible characteristic. A certain mild halo of statesmanship ever after invested him; not that he had at any time actually borne a share in the government of the nation, but it was understood that he might have done so, had he so chosen, or had his political principles been tough and elastic enough to endure the wear and strain of action. As it was, some of the most renowned men in the Senate were known to have been his intimates at college, and he still met and conversed with them on terms of equality.