Men, full fledged and at their work, are, for the most part, too busy for much thought; but lads, on whom the work of the world has not yet fallen with all its pressure,--they have time for thinking.
And thus John Eames was thoughtful.

They who knew him best accounted him to be a gay, good-hearted, somewhat reckless young man, open to temptation, but also open to good impressions; as to whom no great success could be predicated, but of whom his friends might fairly hope that he might so live as to bring upon them no disgrace and not much trouble.

But, above all things, they would have called him thoughtless.

In so calling him, they judged him wrong.

He was ever thinking,--thinking much of the world as it appeared to him, and of himself as he appeared to the world; and thinking, also, of things beyond the world.