Whereupon he left me once more to return nearly immediately and hand me a small object. It was a first-class ticket to Montreal.
“Go on home now,” he said. “Train will be along in twenty-five minutes.” He would have left me again without waiting for my thanks, but I stopped him and insisted on his listening to my very simple experience and accepting my card. He was mightily amused at a tramp having a visiting-card. He certainly was an understanding young man, only a few years older than I was, but he knew the world, and understood many things that were to cost me much in the learning.
The price of my railroad ticket was eighty-five cents. I had been a tramp for nearly four days, and had only walked a distance equal to eighty-five cents in railroad travel, and thereby had acquired a foot not fit to bear my weight without excruciating pain. I concluded that I was not cut out for a tramp. I was cured, and had forgotten the pain of being plucked. My friend, the station agent, knew me quite well before my train came.
When I arrived home, lame, tired and dirty, I was surprised to discover that the anxious one had been my father. He had had detectives searching for me in every place where I was not.
“I knew you were not far off and would come back soon,” said my mother.
“John, I’m afraid you are a damned fool,” said my father, and he kissed me affectionately.
I understood later the full significance of this adventure—I had tried to run away from myself—the only fellow from whom you cannot run. No word was said of my having been plucked.
The summer passed as summers will to those at an age when they do not realise how short a man’s time really is. I read a good deal and studied in a half-hearted way; rode, fished, and spent some weeks in the woods. The fall soon came and I went back to M’Gill to take my first year for the second time.
I believe that second “first year” was of more real value to me than any other. I think I was the only chap who took the first year twice, except one, Bury, who was a chronic freshman. He had already been a freshman for several years and never was anything else. But he is to-day general passenger agent of one of the largest railroads in the world, while I am an automaton.
Taking a survey of all the college men I know, and have known, I cannot be sure that the addition of a college education makes much difference in the end. The man who succeeds with a college degree would have succeeded without it. It is personality that counts. Character rules the world, be it educated at college or in the gutter.