“But were you thus indifferent to all forms of education?”
“No, my case was not quite so hopeless as that. I did not desert the
schools entirely, but my attendance was so provokingly irregular and my
indifference so supreme, I wonder now that I was tolerated at all. But
I had one mainstay; I loved to read. I was a most inordinate reader.
In some lines of literature, especially history and some kinds of
fiction, my appetite was insatiate, and many a day, while my companions
were clustered together in the old red brick schoolhouse, struggling
with their problems in fractions or percentage, I was carefully hidden
in the woods near by, lying upon my elbows, munching an apple, and
reveling in the beauties of Plutarch, Byron or Goldsmith.
“Did you not attend college, or the higher grade of schools?”
“Yes, for a brief period. My brother was a student in Wabash
College,—here in Crawfordsville,—and hither I also was sent; but within
six weeks I had tired of the routine, was satiated with discipline, and
made my exit from the institution. I shall never forget what my father
did when I returned home. He called me into his office, and, reaching
into one of the pigeon-holes above his desk, withdrew therefrom a
package of papers neatly folded and tied with the conventional red
tape. He was a very systematic man, due, perhaps, to his West Point
training, and these papers proved to be the receipts for my tuition,
which he had carefully preserved. He called off the items, and asked me
to add them together. The total, I confess, staggered me.”