“You know everything, Rob,” Hewitt smiled; he had after all no wish to appear emotional. “Is there something the matter with me, or with Harvard, that has kept me what you very well know I am--an isolated nonentity who has rather begun to lose hope? Are there other fellows in college who are gentlemen, and used to all the word implies, but who might be in any one of the fifteen leading universities of Kansas, for all the good they are getting out of this place? If I had only been given a chance--” he broke out with sudden vehemence,--“a good, square chance, the kind a man has a right to expect when he enters college--to meet my equals equally--to make myself felt and liked if I had the power to, why I shouldn’t mind failing, you know, not in the least; a man who isn’t an ass accepts chronic unpopularity as he does chronic red hair, or any other personal calamity.” Hewitt’s own locks had sufficient colour to lend authority to his statement. “It isn’t that--it’s the utter impossibility, as far as I can see, of a boy who came here as I did, getting a fair trial. Every day I am more and more convinced that my prospects for the broad, enlightening sort of existence I expected to find on entering Harvard were about as definite and as brilliant as the prospects of a stillborn child on entering the world. What’s the matter? What’s wrong? Who’s to blame?” There was an admirable force to Hewitt’s manner when he was thoroughly in earnest that, as a rule, roused even in Curtiss a vague apprehension that sincerity was, somehow, obligatory. It did not restrain him, however, from assuming an expression of mock helplessness and murmuring,-- “It’s so long--so intricate.” “If people only knew what they were in for before they came,” Hewitt continued. “Maybe they wouldn’t come,” suggested the other. “Of course they’d come,--the place is too great,--they couldn’t afford to stay away.” Horace passed over the axioms with the impatience of one who has problems to solve. “Of course they would come,” he repeated; “but they would come with their eyes opened--they would know what not to expect; that’s the important thing.” “Ah, but who could do it? Who would do it? It would be like assisting a new kitten to see by means of a pin. We must all work out our own salvations,” Curtiss added sententiously.