uld all be different in the fall: it would all
be different when I was at high school. For then I was to begin those
seven years which were to be my real education. So far it had been
naught but childhood's prologue. And what a shabby little part I had
played in it!

But I did not know that, then!

II

IN THE BEGINNING

Immediately upon our return from the mountains I entered high school. My
aunt did her duty by accompanying me to the office of the principal and
assuring him that I was an honest and upright boy, aged fourteen.

It had been her ambition to have me attend one of the fashionable
boarding schools in Connecticut. I do not think she had me much in mind
when she made the attempt to enroll me at the St. Gregory Episcopalian
Institute. She told so many of her friends of this intention--and told
them it with such an evident pride--that I fear she was more concerned
with her own social prestige than with my education. And when St.
Gregory, through a personal visit from its headmaster, discovered that
Mrs. Haberman had no right to aspire to the exquisite preference which
God accords Episcopalians, and later sent us a polite but cursory letter
of regret that its roster's capacity was full for the year, she bore it
as a direct insult upon her ancestors. (Though, of course, even so sharp
a hurt to her pride would not let her admit openly that all of those
ancestors were Jews.)

At any rate, I went to the high school as a sort of a last resort. My
aunt dreaded the company I might have to keep there--all the public
riffraff, she called it. That was really why she accompanied me, that
first day, to assure herself that I was going to be placed among a
"perfectly horrid set of rude ruffians--ghetto boys, and the like!" and
to have something tangible and definite to worry about during the next
few years.

The principal, busy with the hundred details of school's opening, gave
us as much time and courtesy as he could afford. As I look back upon it,
I think he was remarkably patient with my aunt.

She told him her fears in a fretful, supercilious way; it was in exactly
the same tone that she ordered things from the butcher and grocer each
morning over the telephone. The principal heard her through--in fact,
prompted her whenever she faltered, nodded appreciatively when something
she said was most flagrantly out of place. When she was finished, he
turned to look very steadily at me.

"If you have such object