into me about not taking anything for
granted. Anyway, by the time I go to Plato I'll know----"

"D'you mean to say you're going to that back-creek nunnery? That
Blackhaw University? Are you going to play checkers all through life?"

"Oh, I don't know, now, Bone. Plato ain't so bad. A fellow's got to go
some place so he can mix with people that know what's the proper thing
to do. Refining influences and like that."

"Proper! _Refining!_ Son, son, are you going to get Joralemonized? If
you want what the French folks call the grand manner, if you're going
to be a tip-top, A Number 1, genuwine grand senyor, or however they
pronounce it, why, all right, go to it; that's one way of playing a
big game. But when it comes down to a short-bit, fresh-water
sewing-circle like Plato College, where an imitation scholar teaches
you imitation translations of useless classics, and amble-footed girls
teach you imitation party manners that 'd make you just as plumb
ridic'lous in a real _salon_ as they would in a lumber-camp,
why----Oh, sa-a-a-y! I've got it. Girls, eh? What girl 've you been
falling in love with to get this Plato idea from, eh?"

"Aw, I ain't in love, Bone."

"No, I don't opine you are. At your age you got about as much chance
of being in love as you have of being a grandfather. But somehow I
seem to have a little old suspicion that you _think_ you're in love.
But it's none of my business, and I ain't going to ask questions
about it." He patted Carl on the shoulder, moving his arm with
difficulty in their small, dark space. "Son, I've learned this in my
life--and I've done quite some hiking at that, even if I didn't have
the book-l'arnin' and the git-up-and-git to make anything out of my
experience. It's a thing I ain't big enough to follow up, but I know
it's there. Life is just a little old checker game played by the
alfalfa contingent at the country store unless you've got an ambition
that's too big to ever quite lasso it. You want to know that there's
something ahead that's bigger and more beautiful than anything you've
ever seen, and never stop till--well, till you can't follow the road
any more. And anything or anybody that doesn't pack any surprises--get
that?--_surprises_ for you, is dead, and you want to slough it like a
snake does its skin. You want to keep on remembering that Chicago's
beyond Joralemon, and Paris beyond Chicago, and beyond Paris--well,
maybe there's some big peak of the Himalayas."

Fo