The one time I can remember fighting at home, I had been thrashed by the boy, caned by the school teacher and whipped by the Father, when he noticed my black eye. Fighting was strictly forbidden. After this triple beating I fell into the habit of being bullied. As even the smallest boy in our village knew I was afraid to defend myself, I was the victim of endless tyrannies. The first use I wanted to make of my new freedom was to change this. I resolved to resent the first encroachment. It came that very day from one of the boys in the fourth class. I remember that his name was Blake. Just before supper we had it out on the tennis-court. It was hardly fair to him. He fought without much enthusiasm. It was to him part of the routine of keeping the new boys in order. To me it was the Great Emancipation. I threw into it all the bitterness of all the humiliations and indignities of my childhood. The ceremonial of "seconds" and "rounds" and "referee" was new to me. At home the boys just jumped at each other and punched and bit, and pulled hair and kicked until one said he had enough. As soon as they gave the word to begin, I shut my eyes and hammered away. We battered each other for several rounds and then Blake was pronounced victor on account of some technicality. They told me, pityingly, that I did not know how to fight. But all I had wanted was to demonstrate that I was not afraid. I had won that. It was the only fight I had in school. Even the bullies did not care to try conclusions with me, and I had no desire to force trouble. I had won a respect in the little community which I had never enjoyed before. In a way it was a small matter, but it was portentous for me. It was the first time I had done the forbidden thing and found it good. The Father had been wrong in prohibiting self-defense. It was an entering wedge to realize that his wisdom had been at fault here. In time his whole elaborate structure of morals fell to the ground. The school was a religious one, of course. But the teachers, with eminent good sense, realized that other things were more important for growing boys than professions of faith. It seemed that, after my illness, my mind woke up in sections. The part which was to ponder over Mary and Oliver, which was to think out my relation to God, for a long time lay dormant. I puttered along at my Latin and Greek and Algebra, played football and skated and, with the warm weather, went in for baseball. In the spring a shadow came over me—the idea of returning home. The more I thought of another summer in the camp, the more fearsome it seemed. At last I went to the doctor.