"All the chemistry in the world couldn't have run Ole Oleson for you," Roger would reply.
"No, but it would have made a real engineer of me," his father would say thoughtfully.
When Roger was a freshman and sophomore in college, he suffered a complete relapse from his interest in experimental work, and his father was very much depressed, but both his mother and Dean Erskine laughed at Mr. Moore's fuming.
"Let the poor child have his play time," said Alice Moore. "Between the farm work and that nasty laboratory the boy hasn't known anything but work since we came out here. If you'd had more chance to play, John dear, your nerves would be in better shape now. I'm glad he's learned to dance, bless him."
"Give him his fling, Moore," said the Dean. "He was getting one sided, and he's way ahead of his class now, as a result of all his corn crib grinding. Football and girls won't hurt him at all for a year or so. I'll see to it that he doesn't neglect his work. If I'm any judge of men at all, that boy of yours is going far. You've no cause to worry."
So Roger was not nagged at home. Somehow his father raised the money to pay a hired man so that except in the long summer vacations Roger was relieved from farm work. Until well into his junior year, he merely carried the required work in college and devoted all his excess energy to football and girls. He was notably successful in both fields. He was six feet tall, lean and muscular and a splendid half back. He was eager and chivalrous and had a charming smile and was a famous schemer of things to do, and places to go. The University was co-educational and Roger had no rival with the girls except perhaps Ernest. Ernest was whimsical and sweet and very musical, and he took the girls seriously, which Roger refused to do.
But all the playing came to an end in Roger's junior winter. A venomous epidemic of La Grippe swept over the world that year and Roger's mother succumbed to it. A month after her death, John Moore gave in to pneumonia and early in February Roger found himself alone in the world.
Roger escaped with only a mild attack of the disease, but the shock of his loss left him for a time, it seemed, spiritually and physically bankrupt. There was nothing left. The worn out farm was eaten up by mortgages. The stock and implements would only just pay food bills, the doctor, the funeral expenses.
One cold gray afternoon Roger closed the gate for the last time and, suitcase in hand, started down the road to town. He had not covered half the distance when he met Ernest.
"Hey, Rog, old man, I was just coming up. Where are you going?"