Hebron
Preparatory School.... It was a school for poor boys and men ... neither
age nor even previous preparation counted ... only earnestness of
purpose. And, as each student had his two hours' work a day to do, the
expense for each term was nominal.

I had been paid fifty dollars for my article on my adventures in the New
York Sunday paper. A Newark Sunday paper bought several articles also.
To the money I had saved up my father contributed as much again. I
started for preparatory school.

* * * * *

Mt. Hebron School consisted of a series of buildings set apart on a
hill. It was an evangelical school founded by a well-known
revivalist--William Moreton.

Around it lay pine forests and, at its feet, the valley of the
Connecticut River.

No matter what subjects they taught, the main endeavour of its
professors, in season and out, was the conversion of every freshman
immediately to Evangelical Christianity, as soon as he had had his
quarters assigned to him....

Scarcely had we settled ourselves, each with his roommate, than the two
weeks' revival began. I will not enter into the details of this revival.
This was merely the opening of the summer term. At the opening of the
school year in the fall--that was when they held the _real_
revival,--and the story of the whipped-up frenzy of that will afford a
more characteristic flavour.

* * * * *

It put a singing in my heart to find myself at last a student in a
regular preparatory school, with my face set toward college.

I had passed my examinations with credit, especially the one in the
Bible. This won me immediate notice and approval among the professors.
Fortunate, indeed, I now regarded those three months in jail ... the
most fruitful and corrective period of my life. For not only had I
studied the Bible assiduously there, but I had learned American
history--especially that of the Civil War period ... and I had studied
arithmetic and algebra, so that in these subjects I managed to slide
through.

* * * * *

I was put to cleaning stalls and currying horses for my two hours' work
each day. Though I hated manual labour, I bent my back to the tasks with
a will, glad to endure for the fulfillment of my dream.

That first summer I took Vergil and began Homer. I had studied these
poets by myself already, but found many slack ends that only the aid and
guidance of a pro