The sobbing of the world without was growing more intense. Many
pairs of eyes from among the auditors were straying out to where the
summer lay dying. Did they know--those boys whom the State classed
as unfortunates--that out of this death there would come again life?
Or did they see but the darkness--the decay--of to-day?

The professor from the State University was putting the case very
fairly. There were no flaws--seemingly--to be picked in his logic.
The State had been kind; the boys were obligated to good
citizenship. But the coldness!--comfortlessness!--of it all. The
open arms of the world!--how mocking in its abstractness. What did
it mean? Did it mean that they--the men who uttered the phrase so
easily--would be willing to give these boys aid, friendship when
they came out into the world? What would they say, those boys whose
ears were filled with high-sounding, non-committal phrases, if some
man were to stand before them and say, "And so, fellows, when you
get away from this place, and are ready to get your start in the
world, just come around to my office and I'll help you get a job?"
At thought of it there came from Philip Grayson a queer, partly
audible laugh, which caused those nearest him to look his way in
surprise.

But he was all unconscious of their looks of inquiry, absorbed in the
thoughts that crowded upon him. How far away the world--his kind of
people--must seem to these boys of the State Reform School. The
speeches they had heard, the training that had been given them,
had taught them--unconsciously perhaps, but surely--to divide the
world into two great classes: the lucky and the unlucky, those who
made speeches and those who must listen, the so-called good and the