He went to college in an exhausted condition, and for two years devoted himself to dandyism, designing to be the coolest, slackest, best-dressed man up. He almost was. But as that day approached when one must either beat or be beaten in learning by one’s contemporaries, a fearful feeling beset him, and he rushed off to a crammer. For a whole year he poured the crammer’s notes into his memory. What they were all about he had no notion, but his memory retained them just over that hot week when he sat writing for his life, twice a day. He would have received a First, had not an examiner who did not understand that examinations are simply held to determine who can beat whom, asked him in the living voice a question, to answer which required a knowledge of why there was an answer. He came down exhausted, and ate his dinners for the Bar. It was an occupation at which he could achieve no distinction save that of eating them faster than any other student; and for two whole years he merely devoted himself to trying to be the best amateur actor and the best shot in the land. His method of acting was based on nothing so flat as identification with the character he personified, but on the amount of laughter and applause that he could get in excess of that bestowed on any other member of the company. Nor did he shoot birds because he loved them, like a true sportsman, but because it was a pleasure to him to feel each day that he had shot or was going to shoot more than any one else who was shooting with him.