“Why, nobody cares anything about the Leader. It's dead.”
Herman Beckman looked at his son sharply; something about him seemed strange. He decided that he was nervous about the commencement programme. Fritz had the one oration.
The boy had opened the drawer of his study table and was fingering some papers he had taken out.
“Sure you know it?” the man asked with affectionate parental anxiety.
“Oh, I know it all right,” Fred answered grimly, and again the father decided that he was nervous about the thing. He wasn't just like himself.
The man walked to the window and stood looking across at the university buildings. Colleges had always meant much to Herman Beckman. The very day Fritz was born he determined that the boy was to go to college. It was good to witness the fulfilment of his dreams. He turned his glance to the comfortable room.
“Pretty decent comfortable sort of place, isn't it, father?” Fred asked, following his father's look and thought from the Morris chair to the student's lamp, and all those other things which nowadays seem an inevitable part of the acquirement of learning.
It made his father laugh. “Yes, my boy, I should call it decent—and comfortable.” He grew thoughtful after that.
“Pretty different from the place you had, father?”
“Oh—me? My place to study was any place I could find. Sometimes on top of a load of hay, lots of times by the light of the logs. I've studied in some funny places, Fritz.”