which you are examined you
can score a possible hundred. That means perfection, and in, the brief
history of Stillwater, which is a very, new college, only one man has
attained it. After graduating he "accepted a position" in an asylum for
the insane, from which he was, promoted later to the poor-house, where
he died. Many Stillwater undergraduates studied his career and, lest
they also should attain perfection, were afraid to study anything else.
Among these Peter was by far the most afraid.

The marking system at Stillwater is as follows: If in all the subjects
in which you have been examined your marks added together give you an
average of ninety, you are passed "with honors"; if of seventy-five, you
pass "with distinction"; if Of fifty, You just "pass." It is not unlike
the grocer's nice adjustment of fresh eggs, good eggs, and eggs. The
whole college knew that if Peter got in among the eggs he would be
lucky, but the professors and instructors of Stillwater 'were determined
that, no matter what young Hallowell might do to prevent it, they would
see that he passed his examinations. And they constituted the jury of
awards. Their interest in Peter was not because they loved him so much,
but because each loved his own vine-covered cottage, his salary, and his
dignified title the more. And each knew that that one of the faculty who
dared to flunk the son of old man Hallowell, who had endowed Stillwater,
who supported Stillwater, and who might be expected to go on supporting
Stillwater indefinitely, might also at the same time hand in his
official resignation.

Chancellor Black, the head of Stillwater, was an up-to-date college
president. If he did not actually run after money he went where
money was, and it was not his habit to be downright rude to those who
possessed it. And if any three-thousand-dollar-a-year professor, through
a too strict respect for Stillwater's standards of learning, should lose
to that institution a half-million-dollar observatory, swimming-pool,
or gymnasium, he was the sort of college president, who would see to
it that the college lost also the services of that too conscientious
instructor.

He did not put this in writing or in words, but just before the June
examinations, when on, the campus he met one of the faculty, he would
inquire with kindly interest as to the standing of young Hallowell.

"That is too bad!" he would exclaim, but, more in sorrow than in anger.
"Still, I hope the boy