One more incident of my boyhood days may assist the reader to make my
acquaintance. In my early teens I was, for one year, a member of a boy
choir. Barring my voice, I was a good chorister, and, like all good
choir-boys, I was distinguished by that seraphic passiveness from which
a reaction of some kind is to be expected immediately after a service
or rehearsal. On one occasion this reaction in me manifested itself in
a fist fight with a fellow choir-boy. Though I cannot recall the time
when I have not relished verbal encounters, physical encounters had
never been to my taste, and I did not seek this fight. My assailant
really goaded me into it. If the honors were not mine, at least I must
have acquitted myself creditably, for an interested passer-by made a
remark which I have never forgotten. "That boy is all right after he
gets started," he said. About twelve years later I did get started, and
could that passer-by have seen me on any one of several occasions, he
would have had the satisfaction of knowing that his was a prophetic
eye.

At the usual age, I entered a public grammar school in New Haven,
Connecticut, where I graduated in 1891. In the fall of that year I
entered the High School of the same city. My school courses were
completed with as little trouble as scholastic distinction. I always
managed to gain promotion, however, when it was due; and, though few of
my teachers credited me with real ability, they were always able to
detect a certain latent capacity, which they evidently believed would
one day develop sufficiently to prevent me from disgracing them.

Upon entering the High School I had such ambitions as any schoolboy is
apt to have. I wished to secure an election to a given secret society;
that gained, I wished to become business manager of a monthly magazine
published by that society. In these ambitions I succeeded. For one of