A  while  later  I  ran  over  to  announce  to  the  amazed  Tom
Peters  that  I  was  actually  going  to  Harvard  with  him.  He
stood  in  the  half-lighted  hallway,  his  hands  in  his  pockets,
blinking  at  me.
"Hugh,  you're  a  wonder!"  he  cried. ^" How  in  Jehosha-
phat  did  you  work  it?"  .  ..
I  lay  long  awake  that  night  thinking  over  the  momentous
change  so  soon  to  come  into  my  life,  wondering  exultantly
what  Nancy  Willett  would  say  now.  I  was  not  one,  at  any
rate,  to  be  despised  or  neglected.
VI


The  following  September  Tom  Peters  and  I  went  East
together.  In  the  early  morning  Boston  broke  on  us  like  a
Mecca  as  we  rolled  out  of  the  old  Albany  station,  joint  lords
of  a  "herdic."  How  sharply  the  smell  of  the  salt-laden
east  wind  and  its  penetrating  coolness  come  back  to  me !  I
seek  in  vain  for  words  to  express  the  exhilarating  effect  of
that  briny  coolness  on  my  imagination,  and  of  the  visions
it  summoned  up  of  the  newer,  larger  life  into  which  I  had
marvellously  been  transported.  We  alighted  at  the  Parker
House,  full-fledged  men  of  the  world,  and  tried  to  act  as
though  the  breakfast  of  which  we  partook  were  merely  an
incident,  not  an  Event ;  as  though  we  were  Seniors,  and  not
freshmen,  assuming  an  indifference  to  the  beings  by  whom
we  were  surroimded  and  who  were  breakfasting,  too,  —  al-
though the  nice-looking  ones  with  fresh  faces  and  trim
clothes  were  all  undoubtedly  Olympians.  The  better  to  pro-
claim our  nonchalance,  we  seated  ourselves  on  a  lounge  of
the  marble-paved  lobby  and  smoked  cigarettes.  This  was
liberty  indeed !  At  length  we  departed  for  Cambridge,  in
another  herdic.
