“Oh, I'll help you all I can.” Burgess's kindly patience now was strangely unlike the aristocratic, resentful man to whom old Bond Saxon had appealed one stormy October night.
“I'm a failure, Professor. I've spoiled my life by my infernal weak will and appetite for whisky. I know it as well as you do. But I'm not meant for a bad man.” There was unspeakable pathos in Saxon's face and words.
“Nobody would call you bad. You are a lovable man when you—keep straight,” Burgess declared cordially.
“I graduated from the university back in the sixties,” Bond went on.
“You!” Burgess exclaimed.
“Yes, I'm one of your alumni brothers from Harvard. It takes more 'n a college diploma to make a man sometimes, although this would mighty soon get to be a cheap, destructible nation, if we should pull the colleges out of it. The boys I've seen Sunrise make into men does an old man's heart good to think about! But there's more than book-learning in a Master's Degree. There must be MASTERY in it. I never got farther 'n an A.B., partly because Nature made me easy going, but mostly because whisky ruined me. I finally came to Kansas. I'd have had tremens long ago but for that. But even here a man's got to keep the law inside, or no human law can prevent his making a beast of himself.”
Saxon paused, and the professor waited.
“The man that sets the cussed trap for me is a law breaker, an escaped convict, and a murderer. That's what drinking did for him; drinking and injustice in money matters together.”
Burgess started and his face grew pale.
“Oh, it's a fact, Professor. There are several roads to ruin. One by the route I've taken. One may be too much love of money, of women, or of having your own way. You can ruin your soul by getting it set on one thing above everything else. Education, for instance, like the Wreams back there in Cambridge.”