rs, most of them unpunishable elsewhere, but of serious
import in schools and barracks, where discipline is to be maintained. I
stayed out of bounds late at night ... I cut classes continually. I
visited Fairfield ... and a factory town further south, where I lounged
about the streets all day, talking with people.

Professor Stanton, not to my surprise, sent for me again.

Yet I was amazed at what he knew about me, amazed, too, to discover the
extent of the school's complicated system of pious espionage that
checked up the least move of every student.

Stanton brought out a sheet of paper with dates and facts of my
misbehaviour that could not be controverted....

"So we will have to ask you to withdraw from the school, unless you
right-about-face ... otherwise, we have had enough of you ... in fact,
if it had not been for your great promise--your talents!--"

I waved the compliment aside rather wearily.

"I think that if this school has had enough of me, I have had about
enough of the school."

I expressed, in plain terms, my opinion of their espionage system.

"Your omnipotent God must be hard put to it when He has to rely on the
help of such sneakiness to keep His Book (and I couldn't help laughing
at the literary turn I gave to my denunciation) before the public!"

Stanton's eyes flamed behind their glasses.

"Gregory, I shall have to ask you to leave the Hill as soon as you can
get your things together," he shouted.

"--which can hardly be soon enough for me," I replied.

"Come, my boy," continued Stanton, as if ashamed at himself for his
outburst, and putting his hand on my shoulder, "you're a good sort of
boy, after all ... you have so much in you, so much energy and power ...
why don't you put it to right uses?... after your father has made such
sacrifices for you, I hate to see you run off to a ravelled edge like
this.

"Even yet, if you'll only promise to behave and preserve a proper
dignity in the presence of the other students--even yet we would be glad
to have you stay and graduate ... and we might be able to procure you a
scholarship at Harvard or Princeton or Yale or Brown. Lang says you put
yourself into the spirit of Homer like an old Greek, always doing more
work than the requirements,--and Dunn says, that you show him things in
Vergil that he never saw before."

Moved, I shook my head sadly. I hated myself for liking these people.

"If you mean that I should be like other people ... I