“Are you a college man?” asked Garland. “I’ve noticed your deplorable tendency toward the classics.”
“I fitted for college when I was sixteen. My health was bad, or I should have entered right off. I had pretty nearly everything that was going in the way of diseases,” this was said with a comical twist voice, “so I didn’t get to Williams till I was eighteen. My health improved right along, but I’m sorry to say that of the college did not.” He smiled again, a smile that meant a very great deal.
“What happened then?”
“Well, my father died, and I returned West. I went to live with my guardian, Professor Burgess, of Knox College. This college is situated at Galesburg, Illinois. This is the college that has lately conferred A. M. upon me. The Professor’s guardianship was merely nominal, however. I did about as I pleased.
“I next went to the State University 199 at Columbia, Missouri. It was an old slave-holding town, but I liked it. I’ve got a streak of Southern feeling in me.” He said abruptly, “I’m an aristocrat. I’m looking for a Mæcenas. I have mighty little in common with most of the wealthy, but I like the idea of wealth in the abstract.” He failed to make the distinction quite clear, but he went on as if realizing that this might be a thin spot of ice.
“At twenty-one, I came into sixty thousand dollars, and I went to Europe, taking a friend, a young fellow of about my own age, with me. I had a lovely time!” he added, and again the smile conveyed vast meaning.
Garland looked up from his pad.
“You must have had. Did you ‘blow in the whole business’?”
“Pretty near. I swatted the money around. Just think of it!” he exclaimed, warming with the recollection. “A boy of twenty-one, without father or mother, and sixty thousand dollars. Oh, it was a lovely combination! I saw more things and did more things than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio,” he paraphrased, looking at his friend with a strange expression of amusement, and pleasure, and regret. “I had money. I paid it out for experience—it was plenty. Experience was laying around loose.”
“Came home when the money gave out, I reckon?”