l registers traced in the teacher's clear,
painstaking hand: _Christopher Mark Antony Burton_; nevertheless she
never troubled to address him in that fashion. Perhaps she hadn't the
time. Life was a busy enterprise and the days were short. One could not
stop to roll out a name like that unless blessed with leisure.
Accordingly in the schoolroom our hero passed as Burton and on the
ball-field as Chris, and since his existence alternated 'twixt these two
worlds, he was Christopher Mark Antony Burton only at breakfast and at
bed-time--intervals so brief that they were endured with cheerfulness
and complacency.

Therefore having rid himself thus early in his career of a stigma that
threatened to blast his chance for success, the future stretched before
him smooth as a macadam road. Uneventfully he finished the grammar
school and went on into the high school as did other boys of his
acquaintance. He was not, however, a scholar who leaped avidly toward
books. Painfully, reluctantly he trudged his way. Learning came
hard--especially Latin, French, and history. To hold fast a French verb
was for him a thousand times harder than to grip in his clutch a
writhing eel; and as for algebra--well, the unknown quantity was the
only one he was sure of.

Yet notwithstanding his scholastic limitations, he contrived to wriggle
along until at the beginning of his junior year he was whisked away to
the hospital with scarlet fever, after which, amid sage waggings of
their heads, a group of doctors congregated about his bed. He was not to
be alarmed, they said. His eyes were not permanently injured. Yet there
was no denying his illness had seriously weakened them and they must be
given a long vacation. Perhaps six months might do what was
necessary--perhaps, on the other hand, it might take a year. Rest was
the thing needed--absolute rest and protection from the light.
Whereupon, having delivered themselves of this decree, they placed upon
his nose a pair of blue goggles, told him to cheer up, and went their
way.

At first the tragedy on which they commiserated him did not appear to
Christopher very great. He detested books. Now, without effort of his
own, he was to be released from them. It was almost too good to be true.
Had he begged the boon on bended knees, his parents would have denied
it. And now, as if by magic, the favor he sought had been granted
without so much as a word from them. The law had been laid down so
forcefully that n