ter.

At the same time I went through a successful trial for membership in the
college dramatic association. I was not given a part in the annual play,
however. I made up my mind to consider this a just decision, and that I
had no right to impute it to anything other than my lack of talent. The
president of the association, however, met me at lunch hour one day and
made some rather lame remarks about the embarrassment to which the
"dramatics" would be put if I were in the cast.

"Yer see," he said, "we go on an annual tour. And we get entertained a
lot, yer see. And it's big social stunts in every city. And it's the
cream of society wherever we go--so, it'd be funny if--well don'tcher
see?"

"Yes," I admitted, "I do see. I see further than you do."

I was beginning to wonder if that fight that Trevelyan planned wouldn't
be worth while, after all.

XI

A MAN'S WORK

I talked to Trevelyan, too, of my interest in the work of Lawrence
Richards. Trevelyan had heard of him and of his settlement, and was
rather at sea to give an opinion about it. He was only mildly
enthusiastic.

"What's the use of bothering with things so far away from your college
life?" he protested lazily. "Of course, the idea of being useful to
people in need is splendid and all that. But somehow, it doesn't fit in
with college life."

"Why not? Why shouldn't it?" I argued.

He waved his hand as if to begin some generalization, but made no real
reply.

"Wait until you're through with college before you settle down to
manhood," he said a little later. "College is just the sport of kids,
after all."

It came to me--though I did not tell him so--of how, in the beginning, I
had thought of college as a place of full manhood--and of the misgivings
I had had, that perhaps, after all, college would be only another
stepping stone to that manhood. And so it was: just a stepping stone,
through brambles of prickly prejudice and childish pranks. When would it
come, that manhood?

"You know, Trev," I said to him hesitatingly, "I sometimes feel I am
much older than most fellows. Almost old enough to do a man's work."

He looked at me and laughed, refusing to take me too soberly. "You are
older," he admitted. "Only what do you call a man's work?"

I didn't know, and told him so. He seemed to consider it a triumph for
his own argument.

"See here," he said, "what's the use of all this stewing about the slums
and the wretched poor and that so