freshman year. If he
held back, as Hamlen did, they have let him stay in his shell; then he
concluded they didn't like him."

"But a boy can't advertise his characteristics--"

"No; but he can manifest them in legitimate ways. Why, my freshman year
there was a little fellow in the Class who didn't weigh a hundred
pounds, and had no more strength than a cat; but he went in for crew,
football, baseball, track athletics, debating,--and everything else you
could imagine. He was no good in any of them, and didn't come within a
mile of making any team. We all made fun of him and we all loved him for
his grit. He didn't have to advertise; we knew him through and through.
That is the kind of boy that makes good at Harvard."

"Some boys wouldn't realize the importance of this until too late, with
no one to tell them, would they?"

"That is the whole point, Miss Merry, and it hasn't taken you as long to
see it as it has taken the college authorities. When Hamlen and I were
there no one made any effort to shake us up together. I had my own small
circle of friends, and we cared precious little for any one outside of
it. If I had known Hamlen then as I have come to know him here in less
than a week, I should have insisted on his being one of that little
circle; but I didn't know him at all. I am watching this segregation of
the freshmen with great interest. It seems as if they must get to know
each other better now; but if this experiment doesn't solve the problem
then the authorities must keep on trying until they find one that does."

They walked on in silence for several moments. Huntington was deeply in
earnest, and Merry eager to hear every word. Her father, not being a
college man, had always been more or less intolerant of the claims made
by college graduates, so her ideas had naturally been colored by his
views. Her brother was sent to Harvard because his mother wished it, not
because Thatcher had changed his opinions, and Merry's new views, as
gained by her brother's life there, had not given her any deeper
understanding. What Huntington said to Hamlen supplied her with another
viewpoint, and she was keenly interested in this continuation of the
same subject.

"Hamlen is a man cowed and embittered by his experiences," Huntington
said, speaking again. "Every time he has gone out into the world it has
been head foremost, without looking. He has butted against stone wall
after stone wall when he could have seen the open