troubling over their method; but in Stevenson, even to a schoolboy
the conscious artifice and nicety of phrase were puzzingly apparent.
A taste for literature, however, is a very different thing from a
determination to undertake the art in person as a means of
livelihood. It takes brisk stimulus and powerful internal fevers to
reduce a healthy youth to such a contemplation. All this is a long
story, and I telescope it rigorously, thus setting the whole matter,
perhaps, in a false proportion. But the central and operative factor
is now at hand.

* * * * *

There was a certain classmate of mine (from Chicago) whose main
devotion was to scientific and engineering studies. But since his
plan embraced only two years at college before "going to work," he
was (in the fashion traditionally ascribed to Chicago) speeding up
the cultural knick-knacks of his education. So, in our freshman
year, he was attending a course on "English Poets of the Nineteenth
Century," which was, in the regular schedule of things, reserved for
sophomores (supposedly riper for matters of feeling). Now I was
living in a remote dormitory on the outskirts of the wide campus
(that other Eden, demi-paradise, that happy breed of men, that
little world!) some distance from the lecture halls and busy heart
of college doings. It was the custom of those quartered in this
colonial and sequestered outpost to make the room of some central
classmate a base for the day, where books might be left between
lectures, and so on. With the Chicagoan, whom we will call "J----,"
I had struck up a mild friendship; mostly charitable on his part, I
think, as he was from the beginning one of the most popular and
influential men in the class, whereas I was one of the rabble. So it