o Oberlin
College, and Joe Jordan, who had gone to work for the Joralemon
Specialty Manufacturing Company.

Life at Plato was suspicious, prejudiced, provincial, as it affected
the ambitious students; and for the weaker brethren it was
philandering and vague. The class work was largely pure rot--arbitrary
mathematics, antiquated botany, hesitating German, and a veritable
military drill in the conjunction of Greek verbs conducted by a man
with a non-com. soul, a pompous, sandy-whiskered manikin with cold
eyes and a perpetual cold in the nose, who had inflicted upon a
patient world the four-millionth commentary on Xenophon. Few of the
students realized the futility of it all; certainly not Carl, who
slept well and believed in football.

The life habit justifies itself. One comes to take anything as a
matter of course; to take one's neighbors seriously, whether one lives
in Plato or Persia, in Mrs. Henkel's kitchen or a fo'c's'le. The
Platonians raced toward their various goals of high-school teaching,
or law, or marriage, or permanently escaping their parents; they made
love, and were lazy, and ate, and swore off bad habits, and had
religious emotions, all quite naturally; they were not much bored,
rarely exhilarated, always ready to gossip about their acquaintances;
precisely like a duke or a delicatessen-keeper. They played out their
game. But it was so tiny a game, so played to the exclusion of all
other games, that it tended to dwarf its victims--and the restless
children, such as Carl, instinctively resent this dwarfing. They seek
to associate themselves with other rebels. Carl's unconscious rebel
band was the group of rowdyish freshmen who called themselves "the
Gang," and loafed about the room of their unofficial captain, John
Terry, nicknamed "the Turk," a swarthy, large-featured youth with a
loud laugh, a habit of slapping people upon the shoulder, an ingenious
mind for deviltry, and considerable promise as a football end.

Most small local colleges, and many good ones, have their "gangs" of
boys, who presumably become honorable men and fathers, yet who in
college days regard it as heroic to sneak out and break things, and as
humorous to lead countryside girls astray in sordid amours. The more
cloistered the seat of learning, the more vicious are the active boys,
to keep up with the swiftness of life forces. The Turk's gang painted
the statues of the Memorial Arch; they stole signs; they were the
creators of