ectory of undergraduate activities issued
by the university Y. M. C. A., and is sent to all members of the
incoming class. I read each little page and its small, fine print as if
my life depended upon its reading. When I came to understand that
freshman must wear a black, green-buttoned cap upon the campus, a deep
awe of collegiate law and order came over me. When I saw the little
half-tone prints of the chapel, the gymnasium, the baseball field, I
felt that I was glimpsing, before my proper time, the sacred precincts
of a land which would be magical, splendid with an eternal sunlight,
peopled only with a chivalrous and knightly manhood. I suppose that
college was to me, as to most subfreshman, a place of green swards and
track meets and those musical harmonies which glee clubs can so
throatily accomplish.

I was at the hotel in New Hampshire when this book arrived. The very
same mail brought me the definite results of my college entrance
examinations. I remember that I was just starting to walk down to the
lake with my aunt when they arrived. I knew what was in the big ominous
envelope--and I was afraid to open it. I crammed it into my coat pocket,
careful not to let my Aunt Selina see it, and went on to the boat house,
hired a boat and rowed her dutifully around the lake for a full two
hours. She remarked upon my silence--but I did not tell her that my fate
was in my pocket--and that I dared not look upon it.

But when I was back at the hotel, I went straightway to my room and
opened the envelope, stripped out the blue, bank-note sheet and
read--yes, I had passed every examination. And I was a regularly
enrolled student at the university.

I told my aunt of it at lunch, as if it were a casual thing--and she
treated it as such, too. If I had had any doubts of her lack of genuine
interest in me, I knew it now for certain. It was just a matter of
course to her--this entrance into college--and to me, in turn, it meant
so much: a new work, a new land, a life entirely new and shot through
with hopes. I did not tell her that, but let her change the topic
quickly. She was intent upon talking fashions with Mrs. Fleming-Cohen.

I had hated to come to this hotel for another year. The people persisted
in making things graciously unpleasant for us. I was beginning to be
old enough to feel it keenly--and not old enough to overlook. I wonder,
for that matter, if Jews are ever old enough to overlook it?

But Aunt Selina was dict