Every night, just before “lights out,” at ten, fifteen minutes was set aside, called “silent time”—­and likewise in the morning, just before breakfast-bell—­for prayer and religious meditation.

* * * * *

Jimmy Anderson, my little blond roommate, fair-haired and delicate-faced as a girl (his sisters, on the contrary, not femininely pretty, as he, but masculine and handsome)—­Jimmy Anderson read his Bible and knelt and prayed during both “silent times.”

I read the Bible and prayed for the quiet, religious luxury of it.  My prayer, when I prayed, was just to “God,” not Jehovah ... not to God of any sect, religion, creed.

“Dear God,” ran always my prayer, “Dear God, if you really exist, make me a great poet.  I ask for nothing else.  Only let me become famous.”

* * * * *

I was so happy in my studies,—­my work, even,—­my wanderings in the woods and along the country roads, with the poets under my arms....  I read them all, from Layamon’s Brut on.  For, for me, all that existed was poetry.  At this stage of my life it was my be-all and end-all.

* * * * *

My father was a most impractical man.  He would sit in his office as foreman, read the New York Herald, and suck at an unlit cigar, telling anyone who listened how he would be quite happy to retire and run a little chicken farm somewhere the rest of his life.

The men all liked him ... gave him a present every Christmas ... but they never jumped up and lit into their work, when they saw him coming, as they did for the other bosses.  And the management, knowing his easiness, never paid him over twenty or twenty-five dollars a week.  But whenever I could cozen an extra dollar out of him, alleging extra school expenses, I would do so.  It meant that I could buy some more books of poetry.

* * * * *

I was sent from the stable out into the fields to work ... harder and more back-breaking than currying horses.  But my labour was alleviated by the fact that a little renegade ex-priest from Italy worked by my side,—­and while we weeded beets or onions, or hoed potatoes, he taught me how to make Latin a living language by conversing in it with me.

* * * * *

There were no women on the hill but the professors’ wives, and they were an unattractive lot.  We were as exempt from feminine influence as a gathering of monks—­excepting when permission was given any of us to go over to Fairfield, where, besides the native New England population of women and girls, was situated the girls’ branch of our educational establishment....

* * * * *

The fall term ... the opening of the regular school year.  The regular students began to pour in, dumping off the frequent trains at the little school station ... absurd youths dressed in the exaggerated style of college and preparatory school ... peg-top trousers ... jaunty, postage-stamp caps ... and there was cheering and hat-waving and singing in the parlours of the dormitories on each floor.