st broken by the events of the
day, might have considered this last blow the most overwhelming of all.

"No," said Penrod; "when she had kittens."

CHAPTER XV. A MODEL LETTER TO A FRIEND

On Monday morning Penrod's faith in the coming of another Saturday
was flaccid and lustreless. Those Japanese lovers who were promised a
reunion after ten thousand years in separate hells were brighter with
hope than he was. On Monday Penrod was virtually an agnostic.

Nowhere upon his shining morning face could have been read any eager
anticipation of useful knowledge. Of course he had been told that school
was for his own good; in fact, he had been told and told and told, but
the words conveying this information, meaningless at first, assumed,
with each repetition, more and more the character of dull and
unsolicited insult.

He was wholly unable to imagine circumstances, present or future, under
which any of the instruction and training he was now receiving could
be of the slightest possible use or benefit to himself; and when he was
informed that such circumstances would frequently arise in his later
life, he but felt the slur upon his coming manhood and its power to
prevent any such unpleasantness.

If it were possible to place a romantic young Broadway actor and athlete
under hushing supervision for six hours a day, compelling him to
bend his unremittent attention upon the city directory of Sheboygan,
Wisconsin, he could scarce be expected to respond genially to frequent
statements that the compulsion was all for his own good. On the
contrary, it might be reasonable to conceive his response as taking the
form of action, which is precisely the form that Penrod's smouldering
impulse yearned to take.

To Penrod school was merely a state of confinement, envenomed by
mathematics. For interminable periods he was forced to listen to
information concerning matters about which he had no curiosity whatever;
and he had to read over and over the dullest passages in books that
bored him into stupors, while always there overhung the preposterous
task of improvising plausible evasions to conceal the fact that he
did not know what he had no wish to know. Likewise, he must always be
prepared to avoid incriminating replies to questions that he felt nobody
had a real and natural right to ask him. And when his gorge rose and his
inwards revolted, the hours became a series of ignoble misadventures and
petty disgraces strikingly lacking in