Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/188

 being poor. There is always to substantiate their theory, the story of Webster setting off to Dartmouth with his one pair of homespun trousers—later ruined by the rain—and a bag of potatoes for his subsistence. They do not suspect how much pain and suffering he would have been spared, how much better he might have done, had he been properly clothed and decently fed.

The real facts are that the self-supporting student in college misses a tremendous lot usually of what one should get from college, and in a good many instances fails entirely.

"I know absolutely nothing of what real college life is," a junior said to me only a few days ago. "I've earned my own living ever since I entered, and I've had my nose on the grindstone ever since I struck the campus. I sometimes wonder if it pays."

Such a student picks up an inadequate living, and he sometimes falls down on his final examinations. The reason is perfectly evident. The college course, if it is well carried, requires the most of a man's time. The self-supporting student is attempting two tasks either of which have ordinarily been considered sufficient to occupy a man's whole time and energy.

There is also extant another notion to the effect that in a college town it is easier to live on nothing or to pick up a good job than in any other place. Many a young fellow gravitates to a college town thinking he can get work there more readily than in any other place. Quite the contrary