Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/46

 is well-nigh impossible. The boys who gravitated towards him, however, were solemn souls, semiostracized, like himself. This little group discussed and settled many of life's greatest problems.

That sex had something to do with life Harold had vaguely gleaned from the naïve books in his aunt's library. His relations with his new friends were too formal and his curiosity too small for him to add anything very tangible to this knowledge. Presently, however, even among the indigent young students about him, he noted signs of depravity. A grocer's daughter became pregnant and a student disappeared. Bottles were smuggled into respectable boarding-houses in defiance of both college rules and United States laws. Once, out riding, he passed a barn and was horrified at the strident sounds of blasphemy and obscene verse which issued from therein.

In his senior year he had achieved a slender philosophy. He accepted, in his modest fashion, the fact that there were unknown sins in the world. He even became a trifle cynical in an humble and apologetic way: he seemed to be so separated from others by his temperament and breeding. More and more he was alone.

There remains to be told one horrible detail which left its scars. I have noted how as a freshman his clothes by themselves would have prevented any successful intercourse with his fellow students. A raucous junior crystallized the feeling of the