"Gregory, I shall have to ask you to leave the Hill as soon as you can
get your things together," he shouted.
"--which can hardly be soon enough for me," I replied.
"Come, my boy," continued Stanton, as if ashamed at himself for his
outburst, and putting his hand on my shoulder, "you're a good sort of
boy, after all ... you have so much in you, so much energy and power ...
why don't you put it to right uses?... after your father has made such
sacrifices for you, I hate to see you run off to a ravelled edge like
this.
"Even yet, if you'll only promise to behave and preserve a proper
dignity in the presence of the other students--even yet we would be glad
to have you stay and graduate ... and we might be able to procure you a
scholarship at Harvard or Princeton or Yale or Brown. Lang says you put
yourself into the spirit of Homer like an old Greek, always doing more
work than the requirements,--and Dunn says, that you show him things in
Vergil that he never saw before."
Moved, I shook my head sadly. I hated myself for liking these people.
"If you mean that I should be like other people ... I just can't ...
it's neither pose nor affectation." (He had intimated that some of the
professors alleged that as the core of the trouble.) "I guess I don't
belong here ... yes, it would be better for me to go away!"
* * * * *
That night, unobserved, I stole into the chapel that stood on the Crest
of the hill, against the infinite stars.
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