did cram! I had two years' new work to do in a third of a year.
For five weeks I crammed, until simultaneous quadratic equations and
chemical formulas fairly oozed from my ears. And then the master of the
academy took me aside. He was very sorry, but he was compelled to give
me back my tuition fee and to ask me to leave the school. It wasn't a
matter of scholarship. I stood well in my classes, and did he graduate
me into the university he was confident that in that institution I would
continue to stand well. The trouble was that tongues were gossiping
about my case. What! In four months accomplished two years' work! It
would be a scandal, and the universities were becoming severer in their
treatment of accredited prep schools. He couldn't afford such a scandal,
therefore I must gracefully depart.

I did. And I paid back the borrowed money, and gritted my teeth, and
started to cram by myself. There were three months yet before the
university entrance examinations. Without laboratories, without
coaching, sitting in my bedroom, I proceeded to compress that two years'
work into three months and to keep reviewed on the previous year's work.

Nineteen hours a day I studied. For three months I kept this pace, only
breaking it on several occasions. My body grew weary, my mind grew
weary, but I stayed with it. My eyes grew weary and began to twitch, but
they did not break down. Perhaps, toward the last, I got a bit dotty. I
know that at the time I was confident, I had discovered the formula for
squaring the circle; but I resolutely deferred the working of it out
until after the examinations. Then I would show them.

Came the several days of the examinations, during which time I scarcely
closed my eyes in sleep, devoting every moment to cramming and reviewing.
And when I turned in my last examination paper I was in full possession
of a splendid case of brain-fag. I didn't want to see a book. I didn't
want to think or to lay eyes on anybody who was liable to think.

There was but one prescription for such a condition, and I gave it to
myself--the adventure-path. I didn't wait to learn the result of my
examinations. I stowed a roll of blankets and some cold food into a
borrowed whitehall boat and set sail. Out of the Oakland Estuary I
drifted on the last of an early morning ebb, caught the first of the
flood up bay, and raced along with a spanking breeze. San Pablo Bay was
smoking, and the Carquinez Straits