BOOTH TARKINGTON (Page 19)
Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1869. The author's love for and knowledge of his native state is revealed to us in several of his best novels. He was educated at Exeter Academy, at Purdue University, and at Princeton.
Mr. Tarkington may truly be said to be a literary man. Unlike most of our other authors, he has had no other formal occupation except that of writing. To this work, since he left Princeton, he has given all of his time and energy. For eight years he wrote stories that were always rejected. His courage and perseverance, however, were finally richly rewarded. With his first accepted work, The Gentleman from Indiana, he attained a secure position as a writer of distinction.
Mr. Tarkington is said to be exceedingly companionable and entirely without self-consciousness and egotism. He is a ready and entertaining talker and tells a story as well as he writes one. He has, too, a keen sense of the humorous. This naturalness and this sense of humor may be noticed readily in the story, "A Reward of Merit" selected from Penrod and Sam.
The books, Penrod, Penrod and Sam, and Seventeen are studies of the human boy, presented in a series of chapters that read like so many short stories.
A Reward of Merit
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21, 1. Obedient to inherited impulse. The boys followed an unreasoning impulse in their nature, inherited from their savage ancestors, who got their living by pursuing and killing running animals.
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21, 2. Automatons of instinct. Creatures guided, not by reason or will, but by tendencies inherited from savage ancestors.