The worst of it was--in fact the reason of it all was--that he took this as he did himself and everything else, with entirely too much self-importance. Instead of laughing or answering back he looked sullen and sedate when they said, "Thank you, marm," and naturally they said it then all the more. It cut and hurt to have his own classmates--the men with whom he had stood shoulder to shoulder in the rush and at the class meeting--treat him thus. If they had known that he was taking it so seriously, they would have stopped. But they did not know it. How should they? Most people have to suffer before they learn to be sympathetic. So, altogether, with the Sophomores who hazed and the classmates who guyed, Will Young decided that college life was not all it was cracked up to be. But you may be sure he did not let this opinion get into the letters he wrote home. Because he was discouraged was no reason for making his mother discouraged too. But, oh, it would have helped a lot, if he had only somebody to talk to about it all. He did not know how to make friends with the others, and the others did not seem to care to make friends, thank you, marm, with the sober-faced old Deacon. It was all very well for a fellow like Linton to say that something of this sort was a good thing for a fellow like Young. But Linton was a Junior, with friends that loved him; and Juniors forget. Besides, sometimes we get too much of a good thing, and then it becomes a bad thing. If it had kept on this way Young might have become meek and backboneless, and such an extreme would be even worse than that of self-importance. But it did not keep on. It all stopped one day quite suddenly. CHAPTER VI WORK--PLAY--"PROCS" "PRINCETON, N. J., Sunday. "DEAR MOTHER: Yes, the Sophomores _have_ hazed me a good many times since I first wrote about it, but I do not mind it much now. Honestly I do not. They mean it all in joke. You must not worry. I ought not to have told you anything about it. I am seldom homesick, and am very happy here at college." And so he was. For each hour of discomfort there were many other hours that were exceedingly comfortable and satisfactory, for he was working with all his might at what he had always wanted to work--he was getting a college education. And when all is said and done there is nothing like hard work and a good digestion to make a fellow happy. That is if the work is congenial and the food is good; and they were. His work was so congenial that his recitations sometimes made the fellows in the front rows turn and look at him, the same fellows that had turned and looked at him during that first frightful recitation; but their faces wore different expressions now. He was getting a reputation for being one of the "keeners" of his division.