Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/79



HOUGH entirely prepared for the Sophomore Class at Yale, and in fact having progressed much farther in my studies than the requirements, the proposition had to be abandoned for the very prosaic reason that the necessary money could not be secured.

Most people look back to their youth as a time of enjoyment, free from the sense of responsibility. With me the approach to manhood was a period filled with anxieties and uncertainties. I was about five feet ten inches in height, slim and anæmic, and weighed about one hundred and twenty-seven pounds. The mental attitude of those around me had a tendency to depress rather than to encourage. My uncle, Dr. Samuel A. Whitaker, once told somebody that I should probably live to be about eighteen years of age, and in some way the diagnosis or prophesy had come to me. He did not stand alone; others of my relatives, more blunt than discreet, had indicated by word or manner a somewhat similar opinion and I had come to regard such a result as probable. I hoped to be able to last until thirty-five, so that I might have the opportunity to see whether I could not do some useful thing in life. Remembering these moods now, I can see that they were entirely unreal, because they were always accompanied with a determination to take hold somewhere and a sense that I would succeed. This is not the feeling of a moribund or weakling. Nevertheless I must have approached a condition not then recognized but which I have since come to know as nervous prostration. Once, after going Rh