reat deal of the teacher.

Hugh went to his first conference with him not entirely easy in his
mind. Henley had a reputation for "tearing themes to pieces and making a
fellow feel like a poor fish." Hugh had written his themes hastily, as
he had during his freshman year, and he was afraid that Henley might
discover evidences of that haste.

Henley was leaning back in his swivel chair, his feet on the desk, a
brier pipe in his mouth, as Hugh entered the cubbyhole of an office.
Down came the feet with a bang.

"Hello, Carver," Henley said cheerfully. "Come in and sit down while I
go through your themes." He motioned to a chair by the desk. Hugh
muttered a shy "hello" and sat down, watching Henley expectantly and
rather uncomfortably.

Henley picked up three themes. Then he turned his keen eyes on Hugh.
"I've already read these. Lazy cuss, aren't you?" he asked amiably.

Hugh flushed. "I--I suppose so."

"You know that you are; no supposing to it." He slapped the desk lightly
with the themes. "First drafts, aren't they?"

"Yes, sir." Hugh felt his cheeks getting warmer.

Henley smiled. "Thanks for not lying. If you had lied, this conference
would have ended right now. Oh, I wouldn't have told you that I thought
you were lying; I would simply have made a few polite but entirely
insincere comments about your work and let you go. Now I am going to
talk to you frankly and honestly."

"I wish you would," Hugh murmured, but he wasn't at all sure that he
wished anything of the sort.

Henley knocked the ashes out of his pipe into a metal tray, refilled it,
lighted it, and then puffed meditatively, gazing at Hugh with kind but
speculative eyes.

"I think you have ability," he began slowly. "You evidently write with
great fluency and considerable accuracy, and I can find poetic touches
here and there that please me. But you are careless, abominably
careless, lazy. Whatever virtues there are in your themes come from a
natural gift, not from any effort you made to say the thing in the best
way. Now, I'm not going to spend anytime discussing these themes in
detail; they aren't worth it."

He pointed his pipe at Hugh. "The point is exactly this," he said
sternly. "I'll never spend any time discussing your themes so long as
you turn in hasty, shoddy work. I can see right now that you can get a C
in this course without trying. If that's all you want, all right, I'll
give it to you--and let it go at that. The Lord knows that