noises unexpected and intolerable, during small, quiet
hours of moonlight.

As the silkworm draws its exquisite stuff from dowdy leaves, so youth
finds beauty and mystery in stupid days. Carl went out unreservedly to
practise with the football squad; he had a joy of martyrdom in
tackling the dummy and peeling his nose on the frozen ground. He knew
a sacred aspiration when Mr. Bjorken, the coach, a former University
of Minnesota star, told him that he might actually "make" the team in
a year or two; that he had twice as much chance as Ray Cowles,
who--while Carl was thinking only of helping the scrub team to
win--was too engrossed in his own dignity as a high-school notable to
get into the scrimmage.

At the games, among the Gang on the bleachers, Carl went mad with
fervor. He kept shooting to his feet, and believed that he was saving
his country every time he yelled in obedience to the St. Vitus
gestures of the cheer-leader, or sang "On the Goal-line of Plato" to
the tune of "On the Sidewalks of New York." Tears of a real patriotism
came when, at the critical moment of a losing game against the
Minnesota Military Institute, with sunset forlorn behind bare trees,
the veteran cheer-leader flung the hoarse Plato rooters into another
defiant yell. It was the never-say-die of men who rose, with clenched
hands and arms outstretched, to the despairing need of their college,
and then--Lord! They hurled up to their feet in frenzy as Pete Madlund
got away with the ball for a long run and victory.... The next week,
when the University of Keokuk whipped them, 40 to 10, Carl stood
weeping and cheering the defeated Plato team till his throat burned.

He loved the laughter of the Turk, Mae Thurston's welcome, experiments
in the physics laboratory. And he was sure that he was progressing
toward the state of grace in which he might aspire to marry Gertie
Cowles.

He did not think of her every day, but she was always somewhere in his
thoughts, and the heroines of magazine stories recalled some of her
virtues to his mind, invariably. The dentist who had loved her had
moved away. She was bored. She occasionally wrote to Carl. But she was
still superior--tried to "influence him for good" and advised him to
"cultivate nice people."

He was convinced that he was going to become a lawyer, for her sake,
but he knew that some day he would be tempted by the desire to become
a civil or a mechanical engineer.

* * *