radition and all fiction
pronounce the perfect manner of acquiring a noble independence and
financial ability. Indeed, the blessing of early poverty is in general
praised as the perfect training for acquiring enough wealth to save
one's own children from the curse of early poverty. It would be safer
to malign George Washington and the Boy Scouts, professional baseball
and the Y. M. C. A., than to suggest that working one's way through
college is not necessarily manlier than playing and dreaming and
reading one's way through.

Diffidently, without generalizing, the historian reports this fact
about the dean; he had lost the graciousness of his rustic clergyman
father and developed an itchingly bustling manner, a tremendous
readiness for taking charge of everything in sight, by acquiring
during his undergraduate days a mastery of all the petty ways of
earning money, such as charging meek and stupid wealthy students too
much for private tutoring, and bullying his classmates into
patronizing the laundry whose agent he was.... The dean stuck his
little finger far out into the air when drinking from a cup, and liked
to be taken for a well-dressed man of the world.

The half-hour of waiting gave Carl a feeling of the power of the
authorities. And he kept seeing Plain Smith in his cousin's
shoe-store, trying to "fit" women's shoes with his large red hands.
When he was ordered to "step into the dean's office, now," he stumbled
in, pulling at his soft felt hat.

With his back to Carl, the dean was writing at a roll-top desk. The
burnished top of his narrow, slightly bald head seemed efficient and
formidable. Not glancing up, the dean snapped, "Sit down, young man."

Carl sat down. He crumpled his hat again. He stared at a framed
photograph, and moved his feet about, trying to keep them quiet.

More waiting.

The dean inspected Carl, over his shoulder. He still held his pen. The
fingers of his left hand tapped his desk-tablet. He turned in his
swivel-chair deliberately, as though he was now ready to settle
everything permanently.

"Well, young man, are you prepared to apologize to the president and
faculty?"

"Apologize? What for? The president said those that wanted to
protest----"

"Now we won't have any blustering, if you please, Ericson. I haven't
the slightest doubt that you are prepared to give an exhibition of
martyrdom. That is why I asked the privilege of taking care of you,
instead of permitting you to distr