“Father,” he asked, fretfully, “why do you always talk to those fellows?” Herman Beckman turned in his chair and stared at his son. Then he laughed. “Now, that's a fine question to come from the honour man of a law school! I hope, Fritz, that your oration to-night is going to have a little more sense in it than that.” The calling up of his oration made him reach out another clutching hand to the vanished reporter. “But it's farcical, father, to be always interviewed by a paper nobody reads.” “Nobody--_reads_?” “Why, nobody cares anything about the _Leader_. It's dead.” Herman Beckman looked at his son sharply; something about him seemed strange. He decided that he was nervous about the commencement programme. Fritz had the one oration. The boy had opened the drawer of his study table and was fingering some papers he had taken out. “Sure you know it?” the man asked with affectionate parental anxiety. “Oh, I know it all right,” Fred answered grimly, and again the father decided that he was nervous about the thing. He wasn't just like himself. The man walked to the window and stood looking across at the university buildings. Colleges had always meant much to Herman Beckman. The very day Fritz was born he determined that the boy was to go to college. It was good to witness the fulfilment of his dreams. He turned his glance to the comfortable room. “Pretty decent comfortable sort of place, isn't it, father?” Fred asked, following his father's look and thought from the Morris chair to the student's lamp, and all those other things which nowadays seem an inevitable part of the acquirement of learning. It made his father laugh. “Yes, my boy, I should call it decent--and comfortable.” He grew thoughtful after that. “Pretty different from the place you had, father?” “Oh--me? My place to study was any place I could find. Sometimes on top of a load of hay, lots of times by the light of the logs. I've studied in some funny places, Fritz.” “Well, you _got_ there, father!” the boy burst out with feeling. “By Jove, there aren't many of them _know_ the things you know!” “I know enough to know what I don't know,” said the old man, a little sadly. “I know enough to know what I missed. I wanted to go to college. No one will ever know how I wanted to! I began to think I'd never feel right about it. But I have a notion that when I sit there to-night listening to you, Fritz, knowing that you're speaking for two hundred boys, half of whose fathers did go to college, I think I'm going to feel better about it then.” The boy turned away. Something in the kindly words seemed as the cut of a whip across his face. “Well, Fritz,” his father continued, getting into his coat, “I'll be going downtown. Leave you to put on an extra flourish or two.” He laughed in proud parental fashion. “Anyway, I have some things to see about.” The boy stood up. “Father, I have something to tell you.” He said it shortly and sharply. The father stood there, puzzled.