"A little more, and we'd have to take you over to the hospital,"
commented Smythe, as he looked at me, while I lay prone on my back,
resting, under shelter of the tent.
"Who--who used up all this witch-hazel?" he asked of the rubbers....
I hid my face in the grass, pretending to groan from the strain I had
just undergone. Instead, I was smothering a laugh at myself ... at the
school ... at all things....
"God and witch-hazel," I wanted to shout hysterically, "hurrah for God
and witch-hazel."
Then I rose shakily to my feet, and, flinging myself loose from those
who offered to help me, I ran at a good clip, in my sneakers, dangling
my running shoes affectionately--to my solitary room ... with a bearing
that boasted, "why, I could run all those three races over again, one
right after the other, right now ... no, I'm not tired ... not the least
bit tired!"
That night, in the crowded dining hall, the ovation for me was
tremendous.
"I'll smash life just like those races," I boasted, in my heart.
But my triumph and eminence were not to last long.
To be looked up to at Mt. Hebron you had to lead a distasteful,
colourless life of hypocrisy and piety such as I have seldom seen
anywhere before. Under cover of their primitive Christianity I never
found more pettiness. First, you prayed and hymn-sung yourself into
favour, and then indulged in sanctimonious intrigue to keep yourself
where you had arrived.
I could not stand my half self-hypnotised hypocrisy any longer. A spirit
of mischief and horseplay awoke in me. I perpetrated a hundred
misdemeanours, most of them unpunishable elsewhere, but of serious
import in schools and barracks, where discipline is to be maintained. I
stayed out of bounds late at night ... I cut classes continually. I
visited Fairfield ... and a factory town further south, where I lounged
about the streets all day, talking with people.
Professor Stanton, not to my surprise, sent for me again.
Yet I was amazed at what he knew about me, amazed, too, to discover the
extent of the school's complicated system of pious espionage that
checked up the least move of every student.
Stanton brought out a sheet of paper with dates and facts of my
misbehaviour that could not be controverted....
"So we will have to ask you to withdraw from the school, unless you
right-about-face ... otherwise, we have had enough of you ... in fact,
if it had not been for your great promise--your talents!--"