hat
it's about."

"No soap," said Carl decisively.

"I know," Hugh announced, excited and pleased.

"Shoot!"

"Well, it's this reincarnation business. Wordsworth thought you lived
before you came on to this earth, and everything was fine when you were
a baby but it got worse when you got older. That's about all. It's kinda
bugs, but I like some of it."

"It isn't bugs," Pudge contradicted flatly; "it's got sense. You do lose
something as you grow older, but you gain something, too. Wordsworth
admits that. It's a wonderful poem, and you're dumbbells if you can't
see it." He was very serious as he turned the pages of the book and laid
his pipe on the table at his elbow. "Now listen. This stanza has the
dope for the whole poem." He read the famous stanza simply and
effectively:

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."

There was a moment's silence when he finished, and then Hugh said
reverently: "That is beautiful. Read the last stanza, will you, Pudge?"

So Pudge read the last stanza, and then the boys got into an argument
over the possible truth of the thesis of the poem. Freddy finally
brought them back to the task in hand with his plaintive plea, "We've
gotta get going." It was two o'clock in the morning when the seminar
broke up, Hugh admitting to Carl after their visitors departed that he
had not only learned a lot but that he had enjoyed the evening heartily.

The college grew quieter and quieter as the day for the examinations
appro