t into the Gymnasium and did "stunts" with the boys on the
flying rings.

One day when he was walking down to the athletic field with Mr. Barclay,
he said something that hinted his wistful and unhappy state of mind.
Barclay had suspected it and had been waiting for such an opportunity.

"Why don't you make some interest for yourself which would put you on a
footing with the boys--outside of the class-room and the dormitory?" he
asked.

"I wish I could. But how?"

"You ought to be able to work up an interest of some sort," said Barclay
vaguely.

"I don't know anything about athletics; I'm not musical, I don't seem to
be able to be entertaining and talk to the boys. I guess I'm just a
grind. I shall never be of much use as a teacher; it's bad enough to
feel that you're not up to your job. It's worse when it makes you feel
that you're even less up to the job that you hoped to prepare for."

"How's that?"

"I meant to study law; I'd like to be a lawyer. But what's the use? If I
can't learn to handle boys, how can I ever hope to handle men?--and
that's what a lawyer has to do, I suppose."

"Look here," said Barclay. "You're still young; if you've learned what's
the matter with you--and you seem to have--you've learned more than most
fellows of your age. It's less than a month that you've been here, and
you've never had any experience before in dealing with boys. Why should
you expect to know it all at once?"

"I suppose there's something in that. But I feel that I haven't it in me
ever to get on with them."

"You're doing better now than you did at first; they don't look on you
entirely as a joke now, do they?"

"Perhaps not.--Oh," Irving broke out, "I know what the trouble is--I want
to be liked--and I suppose I'm not the likeable kind."

Barclay did not at once dispute this statement, and Irving was beginning
to feel hurt.

"The point is," said Barclay at last, "that to be liked by boys you've
got to like them. If you hold off from them and distrust them and try to
wrap yourself up in a cloak of dignity or mystery, they won't like you
because they won't know you. If you show an interest in them and their
interests, you can be as stern with them as justice demands, and they
won't lay it up against you. But if you don't show an interest--why, you
can't expect them to have an interest in you."

They turned a bend in the road; the athletic field lay spread out before
them. In different parts of it half a doze