“Have rules ever done you any good,” went on the professor; “any rules except such as you dug out for yourself? What’s a good rule on a false basis? And what’s the use of any rule at all, if the right thing’s underneath? Do you have to teach a rule to a tree to make it grow--or to a ball to make it fall? If we build up from a right basis, the rest--the right rule--must follow by mathematical law. Isn’t that reasonable? And if, with a true foundation, the rules an individual derives clash with the rules accepted,--why the accepted rules are simply wrong. I think, to tell you the truth, that we all teach rules the way the good-hearted practice charity--to overcome with an act what has grown wrong from the bottom up.” “I’m glad to hear you talk that way,” replied the boy. “It seems strange.” The man laughed. “Do you--” Quincy hesitated,--“Are you a--teacher?” “My name is Deering.” “Not Professor Lawrence Deering!” Quincy demanded. The other nodded. So this was the famous Professor Deering. “Oh! And you teach that way yourself?” “I try to. But it’s hard in an institution that doesn’t agree with you. Hard also, with products so nearly finished as--say--you are. I should have gone in for kindergartening.” What an open candor this was, thought Quincy, from a great man to an unknown boy! From this moment of realization, he would have gone far and suffered much for Professor Deering. Then it occurred to him that since he knew the professor’s name, he must announce his own. “My name is Burt--Quincy Burt,” he said. The great man’s hand went out warmly. “I am glad to know you, Mr. Burt. I hope you will like your college years.” “Oh--I’m sure now, I will!” “You have lots of friends, I suppose, entering with you?” “None at all,” the boy answered quickly, “I come from a private school in New York. There were only ten boys in my class. None of them is coming up here.” “Then, if I may ask,” the man spoke deferentially, “why are you so confident that you will enjoy your college course?” Quincy looked up with feeling, at his questioner. “I seem somehow,” he said, “to have been welcomed.” There was a note in the boy’s voice that silenced the big man. Quincy, in that moment, felt that Professor Deering must be very sensitive. He also would have been silenced by such a leak of sentiment. “You make me glad I spoke to you,” he said at last. “Our college is not too well adapted for boys who enter without a crowd. That very fact is a good thing, if the boys really have the _stuff_.” Quincy’s amazement here was that a scholar famed throughout America should employ slang. “What do you mean, exactly, by _stuff_?” he asked.