three years, I'll spin the yarn for you."

Dick Forrest had been right when he told his guardians that his mind
was acid and would bite into the books. Never was there such an
education, and he directed it himself--but not without advice. He had
learned the trick of hiring brains from his father and from John
Chisum of the Jingle-bob. He had learned to sit silent and to think
while cow men talked long about the campfire and the chuck wagon. And,
by virtue of name and place, he sought and obtained interviews with
professors and college presidents and practical men of affairs; and he
listened to their talk through many hours, scarcely speaking, rarely
asking a question, merely listening to the best they had to offer,
content to receive from several such hours one idea, one fact, that
would help him to decide what sort of an education he would go in for
and how.

Then came the engaging of coaches. Never was there such an engaging
and discharging, such a hiring and firing. He was not frugal in the
matter. For one that he retained a month, or three months, he
discharged a dozen on the first day, or the first week. And invariably
he paid such dischargees a full month although their attempts to teach
him might not have consumed an hour. He did such things fairly and
grandly, because he could afford to be fair and grand.

He, who had eaten the leavings from firemen's pails in round-houses
and "scoffed" mulligan-stews at water-tanks, had learned thoroughly
the worth of money. He bought the best with the sure knowledge that it
was the cheapest. A year of high school physics and a year of high
school chemistry were necessary to enter the university. When he had
crammed his algebra and geometry, he sought out the heads of the