So I opened his letter and began to read, substantially as follows:
“Dear ——:
“I know all about your life at —— College, and I want to tell you what I think about you. You and I have known one another all our lives, and we have been good friends; but I think you are a coward and I think that I ought to tell you so.”
I closed his letter and handed it back to him. His lips were quivering and his eyes were moist as he said:
“You can believe that when I got that letter it cut me all up, and the worst of it is that what she says is true.”
His father was a minister; his mother was of the salt of the earth. He had grown up under the best influences of a clean and wholesome Christian home, and he had slipped those strings. He had thought that it was manly to surrender to the current ideals of the college; that in cutting loose from the influence of his home he was doing a brave and courageous thing. But the girl knew he was doing it because he was a coward and she had the courage to tell him so. And he had come to see it in that light for himself. In his college fraternity and in his own class, men were praising him because he had broken from the old enslavements of home and was living his own life like a man. But he knew that he was nothing but a coward, who
“Held that hope was all a lie
And faith a form of bigotry
And love a snare that caught him.
Then thought to comfort human tears