THE PLASTIC AGE BY PERCY MARKS ILLUSTRATED WITH SCENES FROM THE PHOTOPLAY A PREFERRED PICTURE GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK [Illustration: "SHE'S _MY_ GIRL! HANDS OFF!"] Made in the United States of America 1924 THE CENTURY Co. PRINTED IN U. S. A. To MY MOTHER LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS "SHE'S _MY_ GIRL! HANDS OFF!" "LOOK! FLANNELS FOR MAMMA'S BOY!" "COME ON--I KNOW WHERE THERE'S LIQUID REFRESHMENT!" "THAT'S CYNTHIA DAY--A REAL HOTSY-TOTSY!" "DANCE, SALOME!" HUGH'S POPULARITY IS ESTABLISHED AFTER THE FIRST ATHLETIC TRY-OUTS. "ONE TURN, HUGH, AND WE'LL QUIT THESE JOINTS FOR GOOD!" CARL FORGETS HIS ANIMOSITY IN HONEST ADMIRATION FOR HUGH. THE PLASTIC AGE CHAPTER I When an American sets out to found a college, he hunts first for a hill. John Harvard was an Englishman and indifferent to high places. The result is that Harvard has become a university of vast proportions and no color. Yale flounders about among the New Haven shops, trying to rise above them. The Harkness Memorial tower is successful; otherwise the university smells of trade. If Yale had been built on a hill, it would probably be far less important and much more interesting. Hezekiah Sanford was wise; he found first his hill and then founded his college, believing probably that any one ambitious enough to climb the hill was a man fit to wrestle with learning and, if need be, with Satan himself. Satan was ever before Hezekiah, and he fought him valiantly, exorcising him every morning in chapel and every evening at prayers. The first students of Sanford College learned Latin and Greek and to fear the devil. There are some who declare that their successors learn less. Hezekiah built Sanford Hall, a fine Georgian building, performed the duties of trustees, president, dean, and faculty for thirty years, and then passed to his reward, leaving three thousand acres, his library of five hundred books, mostly sermons, Sanford Hall, and a charter that opened the gates of Sanford to all men so that they might "find the true light of God and the glory of Jesus in the halls of this most liberal college." More than a century had passed since Hezekiah was laid to rest in Haydensville's cemetery. The college had grown miraculously and changed even more miraculously. Only the hill and its beautiful surroundings remained the same. Indian Lake, on the south of the campus, still sparkled in the sunlight; on the east the woods were as virgin as they had been a hundred and fifty years before. Haydensville, still only a village, surrounded the college on the west and north.