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?