Running away may not be the exclusive prerogative of young Americans, but some way it is hard for me to picture European boys of fourteen going off on their own. And yet perhaps they do. At any rate it is such a favorite procedure with us that hardly one of us--I mean by us, American males--has not had a try at it or connived at some neighbor's son trying it. My own experience was only that of a conniver. A schoolmate of thirteen, whose father believed in a more vigorous method of correcting wayward sons than my father did, ran away from his house to as far as our house. There my brother and I secreted him in a clothes-closet for the nearly three hours of freedom that he enjoyed in half-smothered state. Then the stern father came over, discovered him and haled him away to proper discipline. I shall never forget the howls of the captured fugitive, nor the triumphant and accusing remark to us, shouted by the terrible capturer as he dragged off his victim: "Now ye see what liars ye are!" For, of course, we had done our impotent best to throw the hunter off the track. It was several days before I could lie again without a violent trembling. But Herbert Hoover ran away for keeps. He did not run away to ship before the mast or to kill Indians. Nor did he run very far, only to Portland and to Salem, which his geography had already taught him were the principal city and capital, respectively, of the state of Oregon. And he ran away with the full knowledge and even tolerance of his relatives. But he went away to be independent, and to fit himself for the special kind of college to which he had already decided to go. In Salem he lived again with his Uncle John, helping in the real estate business, but in Portland he lived entirely on his own. That part of his reason for running away which was connected with preparing for a college of his own choosing seems to have come about because of a difference of opinion that had arisen between young Herbert and his Quaker relatives with regard to the future course of his education. They had taken it quite as a matter of course that from the little Quaker academy in Newberg he would go to one of the reputable Quaker colleges of the country. But Herbert had come to a different idea about this matter of further education, and, as is characteristic of him, this idea had led to a decision, and the decision was on the rapid way to lead to action. In other words, Herbert had made up his mind that he wanted to study science, and for that purpose wanted to fit himself for and go to a modern scientific university. Also, he wanted to be, just as soon as he possibly could, on an independent financial footing. He probably did not express these wishes, in his boy's vocabulary, by any such large mouthful of phrases; he probably said to himself, "I want to earn my own living, and go to a university where I can learn science."