Page:Lynch Williams--The girl and the game.djvu/304

 yonder classic, elm-shaded paths," and so on as usual. We used to sit very still and try to look duly impressed as became our youth and inexperience. But sometimes I couldn't help thinking, suppose we did not know our place, suppose instead of holding our peace and filing out modestly while he beamed down upon us with a patronizing smirk, pronouncing us a fine, manly, modest lot—just suppose we were to let loose and say, "Hi there! Fatty, don't judge us by yourself. Simply because you happened to be a conceited prig in college it does not necessarily follow that all of us are. You were a young man at the most artificial period of the century. You read Byron and took Bulwer Lytton seriously, and sat on horse-hair sofas, and curled incipient side-whiskers before ugly walnut bureaus. What do you know about us anyway! But you do know something about the real world, presumably; why don't you give us some straight talk about that. What we, who are kids, want from you, who are men, is a little substantial encouragement once in a while,