ng, sometimes two of the older
ones would be telling each other the sort of jokes that daylight
forbids--and sometimes it would be the heavy, asthmatic breathing of the
proctor who was there to keep charge.

Of the boys themselves I could not judge at first. I was too young to
judge, at that: but I was not too young that I could not realize they
were not of the same sort as I had known in the city. There I had known
the pupils of a public school, poor, rough, almost always hard workers,
eager for whatever seemed fair and quick and democratic. But these boys
were of wealthy parents, most of them. There were only a few of them who
held scholarships, and these did jobs so menial and embarrassing that,
even under the most ideal conditions, they must have suffered in the
opinions of the rest of the school. As a matter of fact, we were a
brutal little crowd of snobs, and made life miserable for these poorer
scholars who must sweep the halls and wash dishes.

I do not think all military schools are like the one I attended. I hope
not. I gained from my year there much in the way of physical
development--but that is all. For every inch of muscle that I put on I
lost something worth incalculably more: honesty and cleanliness of mind
and what little shred of self-reliance I possessed. Somehow or other, it
seemed to me that I had reached the lowest rung of boyhood here--and, as
I look back upon it, I know that I was not much mistaken.

I wrote to ask my aunt to take me away. She refused to come to see
me--but scribbled a few empty lines to accuse me of homesickness, and to
assure me I should soon be rid of it.

We did much more drilling than studying. Though nearly all of us
intended to go to college, our school day was confined to about three
hours at the most--and under teachers who were always surly, sneering
and uncouth. The standard of work in the classroom was very low. At
first I did not have any trouble at all in leading the entire school in
scholarship; but gradually, under the careless and relaxed conditions, I
grew unambitious, lazy--and found myself failing among a class of boys
who, I secretly knew, were my mental inferiors. It is so much a matter
of competition, of environment.

Of friends I made few: even of those schoolboy friends who are your
"pals" one day, your sworn enemies the next. I had one or two
sentimental encounters with a brewer's son--a great, beefy ox of a boy
who lorded it over all of us because