Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/35

 who was your last year?" As soon as he had named his  of the previous year, I was completely convinced that I had found the guilty man. I had in fact had an interview with him that very morning, and I knew something of the financial difficulties he had been in, and I felt strongly the weakness and shiftiness of his character. Before calling him I got from his English teacher his last theme, and I looked up his study list which bore his penmanship and his signature. When I compared these papers with the forged signature I found two or three things which interested me. The color of the ink was identical in all cases, the form of several letters was the same, and the general slant of the letters was similar.

After I had gone over these things in my own mind I called the suspected student and told him the whole story. I presented him with the evidence which I had, laid the forged signatures and the samples of his own writing before him, and said to him quite frankly that I thought he had written the forged checks. He turned quite white as I was talking; when I had finished he dropped his head upon the desk for a moment and then looking me in the eye he said, "I did do it." I presume that in reality I had little or no convincing evidence against him. It was purely a matter of knowing the man and feeling that he was the guilty one. It is a sort of feeling which it would be dangerous to rely upon, and yet it has got me out of a corner many and many a time.

There is much in the experience of a college officer as closely connected with discipline as I am to make one cynical and to cause him to lose faith in human