f the citizens that Dick Garland's boy was in some
ways a remarkable youth, but (I regret to say) I cannot lay hands on a
single item. It appears that I was just one of a hundred healthy,
hearty, noisy students--but no, wait! There is one incident which has
slight significance. One day during my final term of school, as I stood
in the postoffice waiting for the mail to be distributed, I picked up
from the counter a book called _The Undiscovered Country_.

"What is this about?" I asked.

The clerk looked up at me with an expression of disgust. "I bought it
for a book of travel," said he, "but it is only a novel. Want it? I'll
sell it cheap."

Having no money to waste in that way, I declined, but as I had the
volume in my hands, with a few minutes to spare, I began to read. It did
not take me long to discover in this author a grace and precision of
style which aroused both my admiration and my resentment. My resentment
was vague, I could not have given a reason for it, but as a matter of
fact, the English of this new author made some of my literary heroes
seem either crude or stilted. I was just young enough and conservative
enough to be irritated and repelled by the modernity of William Dean
Howells.

I put the book down and turned away, apparently uninfluenced by it.
Indeed, I remained, if anything, more loyal to the grand manner of
Hawthorne, but my love of realism was growing. I recall a rebuke from my
teacher in rhetoric, condemning, in my essay on Mark Twain, an over
praise of _Roughing It_. It is evident, therefore that I was even then a
lover of the modern when taken off my guard.

Meanwhile I had definitely decided not to be a lawyer, and it happened
in this way. One Sunday morning as I was walking toward school, I met a
young man named Lohr, a law student several years older than myself, who
turned and walked with me for a few blocks.

"Well, Garland," said he, "what are you going to do after you graduate
this June?"

"I don't know," I frankly replied. "I have a chance to go into a law
office."

"Don't do it," protested he with sudden and inexplicable bitterness.
"Whatever you do, don't become a lawyer's hack."

His tone and the words, "lawyer's hack" had a powerful effect upon my
mind. The warning entered my ears and stayed there. I decided against
the law, as I had already decided against the farm.

* * * * *

Yes, these were the sweetest days of my life for I was c