"What's this?" I asked, taken aback. He had thrust a check into my hand as he shook hands good-bye.
"It's a check I've just endorsed over to you. Royalties on a recent text-book. Please do take it." I had intimated that I would probably be compelled to quit college and go on the tramp again ... confessing frankly, also, that a stationary life got on my nerves at times.
"I want you to keep on, not go back to the tramp life ... we'll make something of you yet," he jested, diffidently, steering me off when he noticed that I was about to heap profuse thanks on him.
"How can I ever thank you—"
"By studying hard and making good. By becoming the great poet I wanted to be."
"But how can I pay this back? It will take a long time—"
"When you arrive at the place where you can afford to pay me back, pass it on to someone else who is struggling as you are now, and as I myself have struggled."
Always, always I wrote my poetry and kept studying in my own fashion ... marks of proficiency, attendance at class went by the board. My studying was rather browsing among the multitudes of books in the college library. I passed hours, back in the stacks, forgetting day and night ... recitations ... meals....
I was soon in trouble with my professors ... I was always up, and even ahead, with my studies, but I was a disrupting influence for the other students, because of my irregularity.