"Good-by."

* * * *

THE EGOTIST DOWN

Amory's two years at St. Regis', though in turn painful and triumphant,
had as little real significance in his own life as the American "prep"
school, crushed as it is under the heel of the universities,
has to American life in general. We have no Eton to create the
self-consciousness of a governing class; we have, instead, clean, flaccid
and innocuous preparatory schools.

He went all wrong at the start, was generally considered both conceited
and arrogant, and universally detested. He played football intensely,
alternating a reckless brilliancy with a tendency to keep himself as safe
from hazard as decency would permit. In a wild panic he backed out of a
fight with a boy his own size, to a chorus of scorn, and a week later,
in desperation, picked a battle with another boy very much bigger,
from which he emerged badly beaten, but rather proud of himself.

He was resentful against all those in authority over him, and this,
combined with a lazy indifference toward his work, exasperated every
master in school. He grew discouraged and imagined himself a pariah;
took to sulking in corners and reading after lights. With a dread of
being alone he attached a few friends, but since they were not among the
elite of the school, he used them simply as mirrors of himself, audiences
before which he might do that posing absolutely essential to him.
He was unbearably lonely, desperately unhappy.