But it did not keep on. It all stopped one day quite suddenly.
CHAPTER VI
WORK—PLAY—"PROCS"
"Princeton, N. J., Sunday.
"Dear Mother: Yes, the Sophomores have hazed me a good many times since I first wrote about it, but I do not mind it much now. Honestly I do not. They mean it all in joke. You must not worry. I ought not to have told you anything about it. I am seldom homesick, and am very happy here at college."
And so he was. For each hour of discomfort there were many other hours that were exceedingly comfortable and satisfactory, for he was working with all his might at what he had always wanted to work—he was getting a college education. And when all is said and done there is nothing like hard work and a good digestion to make a fellow happy. That is if the work is congenial and the food is good; and they were.
His work was so congenial that his recitations sometimes made the fellows in the front rows turn and look at him, the same fellows that had turned and looked at him during that first frightful recitation; but their faces wore different expressions now. He was getting a reputation for being one of the "keeners" of his division.
And as for his food, it was good—and so were the table-mates, for now that the shyness was rubbing off he was beginning to enjoy meeting and sitting down at the table with those dozen classmates more than any part of the day, if only that long, thin fellow who was studying for the ministry would not say, solemnly, after Young had handed the bread, "Thank you, marm." However, he did not mind even that quite so much as at first, because he was learning how to take good-natured chaff now, and, more than that, to answer it. And that is something one is likely to be taught at college if he learns nothing else.
The letter continued: