"Years of Plenty" was the name an Englishman recently gave to a book of his school days. My own years of secondary school and college were different from his, by far, but no less full. I shall only say by way of preface that they numbered seven. There were two of them at high school, one at a military school on the Hudson, and four at our city's university. Seven in all. Because they were not altogether happy, I have no right to think of them as lean years. For each one of them meant much to me—

Immediately upon our return from the mountains I entered high school. My aunt did her duty by accompanying me to the office of the principal and assuring him that I was an honest and upright boy, aged fourteen. It had been her ambition to have me attend one of the fashionable boarding schools in Connecticut. I do not think she had me much in mind when she made the attempt to enroll me at the St. Gregory Episcopalian Institute. She told so many of her friends of this intention—and told them it wi

Those first days at high school seemed terrible in the intensity of new experiences. Had I but had my parents to encourage me, perhaps I should not have felt so bitterly the loneliness of this new turn in the road. I do not care how manly and resolute he is, a boy will always need the kind words, the clasp and kiss which only his parents can give him. And I was not half so resolute then, nor half so hardened to battle as I am now. I worried a good deal about my standing in the class room. It see

High school's terrors developed for me into a more personal terror of that young tough, Jim Geoghen. A thorough bully, he made me feel always that he was aware of my religion, that he could at any moment disclose it to the rest of my classmates and make me the subject of their taunts. No doubt, they all knew as well as he that I was a Jew—but, for the most part, they paid little attention to that fact. A large number of them were Jews themselves: bright-eyed, poorly-dressed little fellows who le

My introduction to military school was hardly auspicious. I was now sixteen years old—nearly seventeen. I did not look that old, however; the commandant of the school, in examining me, took me for much less and assigned me to a room with a boy of twelve. At seventeen, our age is a most important item. We think so, anyhow. And this incident dampened my spirits most disproportionately. Especially when I discovered that this roommate was to be the only other Jew in the school. It seemed to me a ver

I wish I could write this episode in quite a different tone from all the others. I wish I could summon all the tenderness of which boyhood has—and which it loses—and put it into the lines of the recital that is now due. Because, then, perhaps, you would have some knowledge and appreciation of what the last few months of my stay at the military school meant for me. David Copperfield had his Steerforth. Every boy must have one. Certainly, I did. And I worshipped him with all the ardor and unquesti

New adventures must be prefaced by new hopes. My entering college meant the starting of a thousand new dreams, ambitions—and seemed to me an opening gate to a land stronger than any I had yet heard of: a land of real men, virile, courteous and kind, whose thoughts were never petty, whose breadth of mind unfailing. It was only a few weeks after Sydney's death that I took my college entrance examinations. I had taken the "preliminaries" the year before, and I entered upon these "finals" low in spi

This initial experience did not frighten me. I came up to the first day of college in the firm and joyous belief that here, if anywhere, that old bugbear of my past school days would be absent. I came into sight of buildings that were new to me, and oh, how stately to my freshman eyes! I came across a campus that was golden with the autumn grass, where red leaves filtered down from old elms, and where, from heights, I caught glimpses of the university's private parks, still green and soft, and o

"It isn't true," snapped my aunt, when I told her of what had happened at the fraternity house. "I can't imagine that young gentlemen of such an aristocratic set could act so meanly. You must have done something wrong. You must have insulted them personally, yourself. I'll wager, you're to blame—not they." I was too sickened by it all to protest. I repeated to her slowly the words of apology which the near-sighted junior had spoken to me at our parting, and, when they did not convince her, gave

I became rather friendly with that near-sighted junior. He was so genial, good-hearted, apologetic a chap that I could not harbor any resentment against him for the events which took place at his fraternity house. They were not his fault, anyhow. His name was Trevelyan, and he came from one of the oldest families in New York; one of the wealthiest, too. At college he was considered somewhat of a fool, his never-failing good nature giving justification for the opinion. I don't think that, since t

I talked to Trevelyan, too, of my interest in the work of Lawrence Richards. Trevelyan had heard of him and of his settlement, and was rather at sea to give an opinion about it. He was only mildly enthusiastic. "What's the use of bothering with things so far away from your college life?" he protested lazily. "Of course, the idea of being useful to people in need is splendid and all that. But somehow, it doesn't fit in with college life." "Why not? Why shouldn't it?" I argued. He waved his hand a

My promise to Mr. Richards brought more than one result. The first of them was a serious quarrel with my Aunt Selina. Her horror at the idea of my spending the summer at a slum-settlement was beyond curbing. She had planned that I should accompany her and Mrs. Fleming-Cohen upon a trip to Europe. They did not need me; they would be in no way dependent on my company ... and I flatly declined. Aunt Selina, outraged at my actual intentions, left for France a week earlier than she had expected—and,

One hot evening, when the fire-escapes were crowded with hundreds of sleeping children, and the streets were shrieking canyons of heated stone and iron, and men and women lay in the grass of little parks, breathing heavily as if in prayer for coolness, I learned the secret in the heart of young Frank Cohen. He was sitting beside me in the amateur roof-garden which Mr. Richards had contrived atop the settlement. We had wicker chairs there, a few potted palms and a solitary, tiny goldfish in a sma

The summer came to an end only too quickly. I had enjoyed every moment of it, every opportunity. I had built up three clubs of which I was personal leader; I had given service in the gymnasium and playground; I had helped in the development of a roof-garden cordiality between the settlement workers and the mothers of children on the street. Mr. Richards, the last night I was there, presented me with a loving-cup on behalf of the other workers. It was at supper that he did this, in front of them

Across the hall from Trevelyan's rooms lived one of the college "grinds." Now that I had moved there and came and went at all hours of the day, I saw this man often. Fallon—that was his name—stood fully six-feet four, and had about a thirty-two-inch waist. He stooped until his thin shoulder blades were at directly right angles to each other. He would never talk to any one he met on his way; his nose was always deep in the book which he held outspread. He was the most ferocious grind I have ever

So far in my college course I had met with actually little outspoken insult. Once or twice in my freshman year some loutish sophomore had not stopped at making comments upon my religion. There had been that incident at Trevelyan's fraternity house, too. But, generally speaking, the prejudice had been of a negative sort, restricting rather than driving—though none the less offensive and chafing on that account. There was nothing on which I could actually lay my finger to complain. I had no actual

Fair play comes first—and reasoning follows it. For fair play is always an impulse. It comes when least expected. That is how it was at the university. The incident of the big, painted sign was practically the last demonstration against the influx of Jewish boys. Waters, who made capital of everything, attempted to found a formal organization dignified by the title of the Anti-Hebrew Collegiate League, but when, at the first meeting, he was not elected to the presidency, abandoned the project wi

Thus it happened that only five Jews enrolled in the entering freshman class. One of them, of course, was Frank Cohen. Mr. Levi's accusations had stung deeply. My anger at them was all the more intense because my heart admitted half their truth. Nevertheless, I was glad to see that there could be no possible aggravation this year: surely, with only five Jewish freshmen, the percentage would be small and unnoticed. It was all very well, that venom of Mr. Levi's—but it was unreasonable. I would be

I awoke the next morning to an insistent knocking at my door. I sprang out of bed and opened it. In the hall, their dress showing signs of much haste, stood Sayer and Braley. They did not wait my invitation, but strode at once into the room and, throwing the rumpled covers from the bed, plumped down upon it. "See here," said Braley, without prelude, "what's this talk about Fred's calling a special meeting of the senior class for tonight? Do you know anything about it?" I smiled my way out of a p

When I rose from a hospital bed of fever and darkness, ten days later, it was with a feeling of rebirth—as if, in the dripping delirium of threatened blindness, the last doubts had sloughed away. And when the bandage was taken from my eyes, and I had, for the first time in so long a while, a short and tempered bit of sunshine that came through the shaded windows and across the clean, white floors, it was as if I saw things, now, as I had never seen them—face to face. I must not return immediatel