ent of not finding him tall. He was of the middle height,
but he was hewn out and squared upward massively. He felt like stone to
any accidental contact, and the painter brought away a bruise from the
mere brunt of his shoulders. He learned that Jeff was a frequenter of the
gymnasium, where his strength must have been known, but he could not make
out that he had any standing among the men who went in for athletics. If
Jeff had even this, the sort of standing in college which he failed of
would easily have been won, too. But he had been falsely placed at the
start, or some quality of his nature neutralized other qualities that
would have made him a leader in college, and he remained one of the least
forward men in it. Other jays won favor and liking, and ceased to be
jays; Jeff continued a jay. He was not chosen into any of the nicer
societies; those that he joined when he thought they were swell he could
not care for when he found they were not.

Westover came into a knowledge of the facts through his casual and
scarcely voluntary confidences, and he pitied him somewhat while he
blamed him a great deal more, without being able to help him at all.

It appeared to him that the fellow had gone wrong more through ignorance
than perversity, and that it was a stubbornness of spirit rather than a
badness of heart that kept him from going right. He sometimes wondered
whether it was not more a baffled wish to be justified in his own esteem
than anything else that made him overvalue the things he missed. He knew
how such an experience as that with Mrs. Marven rankles in the heart of
youth, and will not cease to smart till some triumph in kind brines it
ease; but between the man of thirty and the boy of twenty there is a gulf
fixed, and he could not ask. He did not know that a college man often
goes wrong in his first year, out of no impulse that he can very clearly
account for himself, and then when he ceases to be merely of his type and
becomes more of his character, he pulls up and goes right. He did not
know how much Jeff had been with a set that was fast without being fine.
The boy had now and then a book in his hand when he came; not always such
a book as Westover could have wished, but still a book; and to his
occasional questions about how he was getting on with his college work,
Jeff made brief answers, which gave the notion that he was not neglecting
it.

Toward the end of his first year he sent to Westover one night fr