On the score of my scholarship and my knowing my
subject they had no complaint. It was that I disrupted their classes and
made for lax discipline.
But I seldom cut class deliberately.... I would find myself lost in a
book back in the "stack" as the big room that housed the tiers of books
was called. The day would be dusking, the lights of evening glimmering
below in town, to my bewildered eyes! The day gone, when I had stepped
back among the books at nine o'clock, intending to while away a half
hour between classes! (Once it was Sidney's Arcadia that entranced me
so).
Or I would set out for class ... hatless ... my hair tousled and long
... in my sandals that were mocked at by my colleagues ... my books
under arm ... and fall into a reverie that would fetch me up, two miles
or so away, a-stray up a by-road flanked with a farmhouse and young
cornfields.
Then it would be too late for my schoolday, and I would make a day of it
... would perhaps get acquainted with some farmer and his family, have
dinner and supper at his house, and swap yarns with him and the rest of
his people.
* * * * *
Jack Travers was as proud of my foot-trip to Osageville as if he had
accomplished it himself.
"The boys out at the Sig-Kappa house expect three or four kegs of beer
in from Kansas City ... come on out and help us to celebrate.
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