nd, and had always tried to
find out what would be expected of him, but had never hit upon the right
thing.

Solomon John thought the trouble might be in what they called the
elective system, where you were to choose what study you might take.
This had always bewildered Agamemnon a good deal.

"And how was a feller to tell," Solomon John had asked, "whether he
wanted to study a thing before he tried it? It might turn out awful
hard!"

Agamemnon had always been fond of reading, from his childhood up. He was
at his book all day long. Mrs Peterkin had imagined he would come out a
great scholar, because she could never get him away from his books.

And so it was in his colleges; he was always to be found in the library,
reading and reading. But they were always the wrong books.

For instance: the class were required to prepare themselves on the
Spartan war.

This turned Agamemnon's attention to the Fenians, and to study the
subject he read up on "Charles O'Malley," and "Harry Lorrequer," and
some later novels of that sort, which did not help him on the subject
required, yet took up all his time, so that he found himself unfitted
for anything else when the examinations came. In consequence he was
requested to leave.

Agamemnon always missed in his recitations, for the same reason that
Elizabeth Eliza did not get on in school, because he was always asked
the questions he did not know. It seemed provoking; if the professors
had only asked something else!

But they always hit upon the very things he had not studied up.

Mrs. Peterkin felt this was encouraging, for Agamemnon knew the things
they did not know in colleges. In colleges they were willing to take
for students only those who already knew certain things. She thought
Agamemnon might be a professor in a college for those students who
didn't know those things.

"I suppose these professors could not have known a great deal," she
added, "or they would not have asked you so many questions; they would
have told you something."

Agamemnon had left another college on account of a mistake he had made
with some of his classmates. They had taken a great deal of trouble to
bring some wood from a distant wood-pile to make a bonfire with,
under one of the professors' windows. Agamemnon had felt it would be a
compliment to the professor.

It was with bonfires that heroes had been greeted on their return from
successful wars. In this way beacon-lights had been kindled u