Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/106

 his college life and associations The memory of Allan comes to me as I write. He was at best mediocre intellectually, and socially he was completely untrained. It was his dogged stubborn persistence only that carried him through. He was like a bull dog which had taken hold and could not let go. He had little resourcefulness, little initiative, so that there was nothing open to him but the most menial physical tasks. He had few friends and he was often without sufficient food. He slept in a stable during more than half his life in college and did the dirty scullery work at a cheap untidy down-town restaurant for his meals. He reeked constantly of stable odors and of the heavy smells of frying food. His wretched life told on him physically and mentally; he grew hard, bitter, sullen. He felt, not wholly without reason, that every one was against him, that he was fighting alone and a losing fight. He got his degree, but he left college coarse, soured, repellant, ill-trained, without courage to fight longer and without hope for the future. He has not accomplished as much since he received his college degree as he might reasonably have been expected to do without education.

The boy who works his way through college, and by this I mean the student who gets no help from any other source excepting his own efforts, must first of all have concentration, for he will of necessity have less time to devote to his studies than have those fellows whose entire time is at their disposal. There is a pretty general idea that the man in college who does not earn a good part of his living is on the whole a loafer and a spendthrift, who has so many