dbugs thrown in for good measure.

In the morning, fried pork chops, pancakes and two cups of coffee--and I
set out for the hill.

The place buzzed with activity. The fall term was already in full swing,
and students poured in lines up and down both sides of the steep street
that led to the college ... girls and boys both, for it was
co-educational. They were well dressed and jolly, as they moved in the
keen windy sun of autumn.

I was not a part of this. I felt like an outcast, but I bore myself with
assumed independence and indifference. I thought everybody was looking
at me. Most of them were.

* * * * *

Langworth enrolled me as a special student. He himself paid my tuition
fee, which was a nominal one. I enrolled in Philosophy, Economics,
German, Latin.

My patron, furthermore, slipped a ten-dollar bill into my hand. "For the
books you will need."

He directed me to the Y.M.C.A. employment bureau. "They will see that
you get work at something, so you can be sure of board and room ... in
the early days we did not have things so well arranged. I worked my way
through college, too. I nearly perished, my first year. After you
settle somewhere, come and see me once in a while and let me hear how
you're getting on."

* * * * *

My first job was milking a cow and taking care of a horse, for board and
room.... The man for whom I worked was an old, retired farmer.

The disagreeable part of taking care of horses and cows is the smell. My
clothes, my room, even the skin of my body, soon reeked with the faint
yet penetrating odour of stable and barn.

But I was happy. Many great men had done as I was doing. Always trust me
to dramatise every situation!

I arranged my meagre row of text-books on the shelf in my attic. I set
Keats apart in a sacred nook by himself.

I sat humming softly to myself, studying my first lessons.

* * * * *

"Look," cried a girl, her voice vibrating with the hard sarcasm of
youth, "look, there goes Abe Lincoln," to another girl and two boys, who
lolled with her on the porch of the house next mine.

I was stabbed with a bitter pang of resentment. For my face was thin and
weather-beaten ... my sharp, bent knees never straightened as I walked
along, like a man going through snow drifts. Yet I held my head erect,
ridiculously erect ... and my chest was enormous through
over-development, as my