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 I can get my B. D. by passing an examination. Trouble with old Trosper is he's one of these smart alecks. T' hell with him!"

Along with his theological and ecclesiastical researches, Elmer applied himself to more worldly literature. He borrowed books from Cleo and from the tiny village library, housed in the public school; and on his occasional trips to Sparta, the nearest sizable city, he even bought a volume or two, when he could find good editions secondhand.

He began with Browning.

He had heard a lot about Browning. He had heard that he was a stylish poet and an inspiring thinker. But personally he did not find that he cared so much for Browning. There were so many lines that he had to read three or four times before they made sense, and there was so much stuff about Italy and all those Wop countries.

But Browning did give him a number of new words for the note-book of polysyllables and phrases which he was to keep for years, and which was to secrete material for some of his most rotund public utterances. There has been preserved a page from it:

Tennyson, Elmer found more elevating than Browning. He liked "Maud"—she resembled Cleo, only not so friendly; and he delighted in the homicides and morality of "Idylls of the King." He tried Fitzgerald's Omar, which had been recommended by the literary set at Terwillinger, and he made a discovery which he thought of communicating through the press.