"To quiet your suspicions, I can assure you that I am neither 'dead,
absconded, or anything worse.' I have involved myself in no 'foolish
scrape,' as you say all my friends suppose; but ever since my misfortune
I have been as steady as a sign-post, and as sober as a deacon, have
been in no 'blows' this term, nor drank any kind of 'wine or strong
drink.' So that your comparison of me to the 'prodigious son' will hold
good in nothing, except that I shall probably return penniless, for I
have had no money this six weeks.... The President's message is not so
severe as I expected. I perceive that he thinks I have been led away by
the wicked ones, in which, however, he is greatly mistaken. I was full
as willing to play as the person he suspects of having enticed me, and
would have been influenced by no one. I have a great mind to commence
playing again, merely to show him that I scorn to be seduced by another
into anything wrong."

The last week of the term and the close of the Senior year appear to
have been the seasons of conviviality, and Hawthorne's life of this sort
ended with his being an officer of the Navy Club, an impromptu
association of those of his classmates, fourteen out of thirty-eight,
who for one reason or another were not to have a Commencement part on
graduation. The Club met at the college tavern, Miss Ward's, near the
campus, for weekly suppers and every night during Commencement week;
this entertainment was for these youths the happy climax of their
academic life together.

In his studies Hawthorne must have followed his own will very freely. He
refused to declaim, and no power could make him do so, and for this
reason he was denied the honor of a Commencement part, which he had won,
being number eighteen by rank in his class; he was nervously shy about
declaiming, owing, it is said, to his having been laughed at on his