“Of course you’re as much of a gentleman as any one; but that--except very, very superficially--isn’t the question.” Curtiss was beginning to feel like a hoary old oracle. “There’s nothing strange or tragic in your situation; it’s shared by lots of other fellows in college,” he went on; “you slipped into Harvard as soon as your tutor thought you were ready to, and, as you came from a rather obscure place, you slipped in quite alone. A year and a half have dragged themselves through the vagaries of the Cambridge climate; you are still, broadly speaking, quite alone. Yet all this time you have been sensitive--keenly so--to the life that is being lived everywhere around you, and you begin to feel about as essential to the drama as a freshman does when he puts on a somewhat soiled court costume and assists Sir Henry Irving in one of his interesting productions. The trouble with you and every one like you is simply this: you didn’t come to Harvard from a preparatory school with a lot of acquaintances and some friends; you didn’t come from any of the few big towns that annually send a number of fellows who know, or who at least have heard, of one another; you are athletic, perhaps, but scarcely what one would call an athlete--although I confess, that isn’t of much consequence; we don’t, as a rule, reward athletes for being athletes. If they perform well, we applaud them. At Harvard, athletics are occasionally a means to a man’s becoming identified with the sort of people he wishes to be one of; but I have never known them to be an end. Finally, you are not a Bostonian, and when I say ‘a Bostonian,’”--Curtiss removed his glasses and softly polished them with his handkerchief,--“when I say ‘a Bostonian,’” he repeated with the gentlest of satire, “I mean of course a Bostonian that one knows.” “Now, although you are doubtless a great many interesting and attractive things, you do not happen to be any one of those I have just named; and it is from the men who are, that the crowd destined to be of importance in college--the fellows who are going to lead, who are going to be felt--whatever you choose to call it--will generally originate. Think of your own class for a moment, and, nine times out of ten, the men that you feel would be congenial as well as interesting, if you knew them, are taken from the sort of men I’ve specified.” “Nine times out of ten!” Hewitt laughed hopelessly, “who the devil is the tenth man?”