Bertram Copes Year

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Bertram Cope's Year, by Henry Blake Fuller

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Title: Bertram Cope's Year
Author: Henry Blake Fuller
Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8101] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on June 14, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
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BERTRAM COPE'S YEAR
Henry Blake Fuller
CONTENTS
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
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.
I think, then, that Bertram Cope, when he began to intrigue the little group which dwelt among the quadruple avenues of elms that led to the campus in Churchton, was but about twenty-four,--certainly not a day more than twenty-five. If twenty-eight is the ideal age, the best is all the better for being just a little ahead.
Of course Cope was not an undergraduate--a species upon which many of the 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 less unrewarding." Besides, the Bigger Town, with all its rich resources and all its varied opportunities, lay but an hour away. Churchton lived much of its real life beyond its own limits, and the student who came to be entertained socially within them was the exception indeed.
No, Bertram Cope was not an undergraduate. He was an instructor; and he was working along, in a leisurely way, to a degree. He expected to be an M.A., or even a Ph.D. Possibly a Litt.D. might be within the gift of later years. But, anyhow, nothing was finer than "writing"--except lecturing about it.
"Why haven't we known you before?" Medora T. Phillips asked him at a small reception. Mrs. Phillips spoke out loudly and boldly, and held his hand as long as she liked. No, not as long as she liked, but longer than most women would have felt at liberty to do. And besides speaking