My mind was as undeveloped as my body, and my proudest brag was that I knew the name of everyone who lived in Concord, Massachusetts, and that I hadn’t an enemy in the world. I had no taste whatever—if I had been crushed under the tongue, I would have given out nothing. I was proud of the first nicknames they gave me, most of them being “Wimba,” “Wambat,” “Winnie”—all of them being derived from that flattering title, “Wamba, son of Witless.” I was proud, also, of being able to make a louder noise than anyone else, due to my training in the public school, where we were taught to go to the back of the room and shout one another down. It never occurred to me to refuse to go to college. I went because I was told to, and had no particular desires about it one way or another. My expenses of something under nine hundred dollars each year were furnished me by my family and again I never gave a thought as to where or how they were obtained. Money, I was taught, I should not work for, but gifts were to be freely taken—probably this was due in some measure to the inherited ideas of parsons, who are always supported. I could easily have led my class, but I saw no reason for excelling. I was considered a pretty second-rate person at home; they didn’t expect anything from me, and to win, for my own sake, things I had been surrounded with _ad nauseam_ as a child, held no attraction for me. In fact, I had not really learned to care for books as such, and college opened up nothing new to me except in the line of English and botany. My power of judgment was poor, as I had not been required to use it before. I was conditioned in algebra, in which I was expert, because I devoted nearly all of the time allotted to it in the examination to Greek composition, and could not finish the answers to the questions in algebra on time.