"Most of the faults have been eradicated," he replied, "but weaknesses will always exist. Perhaps I should have called this a weakness. To-day it is partially remedied, and I believe that the new freshman dormitories are going to be a large insurance clause against it."
"I don't believe I understand—"
"Nor can you until I cease speaking in enigmas," laughed Huntington. "I once went to a lecture William James gave on Pragmatism, and all I took away as a reward for my hour of careful listening was that 'nothing is the only resultant of the one thing which isn't.' I upbraided him for it when next we met, and he explained that the prerogative of a philosopher is that he can retreat behind meaningless expressions and still be considered wise. I am no philosopher, so it is cowardly of me to try to take similar advantage of you. Hamlen is a college-made recluse, and there is no denying the fact that at Harvard there has been less effort made by the students to find out the personal characteristics of their classmates than at any of the other colleges. Each fellow has had to show them forth himself, and it had to be done his freshman year. If he held back, as Hamlen did, they have let him stay in his shell; then he concluded they didn't like him."
"But a boy can't advertise his characteristics—"
"No; but he can manifest them in legitimate ways. Why, my freshman year there was a little fellow in the Class who didn't weigh a hundred pounds, and had no more strength than a cat; but he went in for crew, football, baseball, track athletics, debating,—and everything else you could imagine. He was no good in any of them, and didn't come within a mile of making any team. We all made fun of him and we all loved him for his grit. He didn't have to advertise; we knew him through and through. That is the kind of boy that makes good at Harvard."
"Some boys wouldn't realize the importance of this until too late, with no one to tell them, would they?"
"That is the whole point, Miss Merry, and it hasn't taken you as long to see it as it has taken the college authorities. When Hamlen and I were there no one made any effort to shake us up together. I had my own small circle of friends, and we cared precious little for any one outside of it. If I had known Hamlen then as I have come to know him here in less than a week, I should have insisted on his being one of that little circle; but I didn't know him at all. I am watching this segregation of the freshmen with great interest. It seems as if they must get to know each other better now; but if this experiment doesn't solve the problem then the authorities must keep on trying until they find one that does."
They walked on in silence for several moments. Huntington was deeply in earnest, and Merry eager to hear every word. Her father, not being a college man, had always been more or less intolerant of the claims made by college graduates, so her ideas had naturally been colored by his views. Her brother was sent to Harvard because his mother wished it, not because Thatcher had changed his opinions, and Merry's new views, as gained by her brother's life there, had not given her any deeper understanding. What Huntington said to Hamlen supplied her with another viewpoint, and she was keenly interested in this continuation of the same subject.
"Hamlen is a man cowed and embittered by his experiences," Huntington said, speaking again. "Every time he has gone out into the world it has been head foremost, without looking. He has butted against stone wall after stone wall when he could have seen the opening had he used his eyes. Each time he has been bruised he has fancied that the world struck him, when in reality the wound was self-inflicted."
"Has he no friends—no hobby which can take him out of himself?"