When Stover returned to college as a junior, he showed the results of his summer with Regan. He had gone into construction gangs, and learned to obey and to command. He had had a glimpse of what the struggle for existence meant in the stirring masses; and he had known the keenness of a little joy and the reality of sorrow to those for whom everything in life was real.

He had long ago surrendered the idea of entering Skull and Bones over the enmity of Reynolds and Le Baron, and this relinquishing somehow robbed him of all the awe that he had once felt. He had returned a man, tempered by knowledge of the world, distinguishing between the incidental in college life and the vital opportunity within his grasp.

The new debating club, launched in the previous spring, had been an instant success, and its composition, carefully representative, had become the nucleus of a new comradeship in the class. With the one idea of proving his fitness to lead in this new harmonizing development, Stover made his room a true meeting-place of the class, and, loyally aided by Hungerford and Story, sought to restore all the old-time zest and good-will to the gatherings about the sophomore fence. His efforts were met by a latent opposition from Hunter and Bain, on one side, who never outgrew their wounded resentment, and from Gimbel on the other, who, though enthusiastically seconding him in the open, felt secretly that he was being supplanted.

But, as Story had foreseen, Stover had the magnetism and the energy to carry through what no other leader would have accomplished. Once resolved on the accomplishment, upheld by a strong sentimental devotion, Stover went at his task with a blunt directness that disdains all objections.

Each Saturday night was given over to a rally of the class en masse at the Tontine. Certain groups held off at first, but soon came into the fold when Stover, who was no respecter of persons, would find occasion to say publicly:

"Hello there, what happened to you last night? Get out of that silk-lined atmosphere of yours! Wake up! You're not too good for us, are you?"

"Well, why weren't you there? It's no orgy—you can get lemonade or milk if you want. There are bad men present, but we keep 'em from biting."

"I say, forget your poker game for one night. We all know you're dead game sports. That's why we want you—to give us an atmosphere of real life."

The remarks were made half in jest, half in earnest, but they seldom failed of their object. At the Saturday night rallies it was the same. Stover was everywhere, saying with his good-humored, impudent smile what no one else dared to say, sometimes startling them with his boldness:

"Here now, fellows, no grouping around here. We want to see a sport and a gospel shark sitting arm in arm. Come on, Schley, your social position's all right—there's only one crowd here to-night. No one here is going to boost you into a senior society. Percolate, fellows, percolate. We've scrapped like Sam Hill, now we're tired of it. No more biting, scratching, or gouging. Don't forget this is a love feast, and they're going to be lovelier. Now let's try over that song for the Princeton game. Bob Story perpetrated it—pretty rotten, I think, but let's hit it up all the same."

The rallies jumped into popularity. The class gasped, then laughed at Stover's abrupt reference to the late unpleasantness, and with the laugh all constraint went. The class found itself, as a regiment returns to its pride again. It went to the games in a body, it healed its differences, and packed the long room at the Tontine each Saturday night, shouting out the chorus which Buck Waters, McNab, Stone, and the talent led.

Many, undoubtedly, marvelling at the ease with which Stover had inspired the gathering, admired him for what they believed was a clever bid for society honors. But the truth was that he succeeded because he had no underlying motive, because he had achieved in himself absolute independence and fearlessness of any outer criticism, and his strength with the crowd was just the consciousness of his own liberty.

By the fall of junior year, he was the undisputed leader of the class, a force that had brought to it a community of interest and friendly understanding. Unknown to him, his classmates began to regard him, despite his old defiance, as one whom a senior society could not overlook. Stover had no such feeling. He believed that the hatred in what remained of the sophomore society organization was, and would continue, unrelenting, and this conviction had determined him in a course of action to which he was impelled by other reasons.

He went through the football season as he had gone through the previous season, with a record for distinguished brilliancy, acclaimed by all as the best end in years, the probable captain of the next year. He wanted the position, as he had desired it on his first arrival at Yale, and yet he surrendered it. Hunter had developed into a tackle and made the team. In the class below were two men of the defunct sophomore societies. Stover had vividly before him the record of Dana, his captain of freshman year, and the memory of the ordeal after the game, when he had stood up and acknowledged his lack of leadership.

That this still resentful society element in the eleven would follow him with distaste and reluctance, despite all traditional loyalty, he knew too well. Moreover, sure that he was destined to be passed over on Tap Day, he felt perhaps too keenly the handicap of such a rejection. Then, at the bottom, reluctantly, he knew in his heart that Regan was the born leader of men, and what once he had rebelled against he finally acknowledged.

So when at the end of a victorious season the members of the eleven gathered for the election of the next year's captain, he stood up immediately and stated his views. It was a difficult announcement to make, both on the score of seeming sentimentality, and from the danger of seeming to refuse what might not be offered him.

But during the tests of the last year the self-consciousness which would have prevented Brockhurst's expressing himself had completely gone. Determined on one course of action, to be his own master, to do what he wanted to do, and to say what he wanted to say, in absolute fearlessness, he spoke with a frankness that amazed his comrades, still under the fetish of upper-class supremacy.

"Before we begin," he said, "I've a few words I want to say. I suppose I am a candidate here. I don't say I shouldn't be crazy to have the captaincy. I would—any one would. What I say is that I have thought it over and I withdraw my name. Even if you hadn't in Tom Regan here the best type of leader you could get, it would be very unfortunate for our chances next year if I were chosen. I'm quite aware that in a certain element of the team, due to the open stand I felt forced to take in the question of the sophomore society, there is a great deal of resentment against me. I can understand that; it is natural. But there should be no such division in a Yale team. We've got a tough fight next year, and we need a captain about whom are no enmities, who'll command every bit of the loyalty of the team"—he paused a moment—"and every bit of help he can get from the college. I move that Tom Regan be unanimously elected captain."

There was quite an outcry at the end of his declaration, especially from Regan, who was utterly surprised. But Stover held firm, and perceived, not without a little secret resentment, that the outcome came with relief not only to the team but to the coaches.

When they returned, and Regan was still protesting, Stover said frankly:

"Look here, Tom, we don't split hairs with one another. If I had thought it was right for me to stand for it I would have. I wanted it—like hell. You remember Dana? I do. It's an awful thing to lead a team into defeat, and say I was responsible. I don't care to do it. Besides, you are the better man—and I'm of such a low, skulking nature I hate to admit it. So shut up and buy me a rabbit at Mory's. I'm hungry as a pirate."

He had said nothing of his determination to any one. He had been tempted to talk it over with Jean Story, but he had refrained, feeling instinctively that in her ambition for him, and in her inability to judge the depth of certain antagonisms towards him, she would oppose his determination.

The four friends had gone to Lyceum together—Swazey and Pike were in the same building. There was a certain flavor of the simplicity and ruggedness of old Yale in the building that gave to the meetings in their rooms a character of old-time spontaneity.

By the opening of the winter term, Stover, the enthusiast, had begun to see the weakness of movements that must depend on organization. The debating club, which had started with a zest, soon showed its limitations. Once the edge of novelty had worn off, there were too many diverting interests to throng in and deplete the ranks.

When, following Regan's suggestion, they had attempted a new division on the lines of the political parties, the result was decidedly disappointing. There was no natural interest to draw upon, and the political discussions, instead of fanning the club into a storm of partizanship, lapsed into the hands of perfunctory debaters.

Regan himself took his disillusionment much to heart. They discussed the reasons of the failure one stormy afternoon at one of their informal discussions, to which they had returned with longing.

"What the devil is the matter?" said the big fellow savagely. "Why, where I come from, the people I see, every mother's son of them, feed on politics, talk nothing else—they love it! And here if you ask a man if he's a Republican or a Democrat, he writes home and asks his father. A condition like this doesn't exist anywhere else on the face of the globe. And this is America. Why?"

When he had propounded the question, there was a busy, unresponsive puffing of pipes, and then Pike added:

"That's what hits me, too. Just look at the questions that are coming up; popular election of senators, income tax, direct primaries; it's like building over the government again, and no one here cares or knows what's doing. I say, why?"

"There may be fifty-two reasons for it," said Brockhurst, in his staccato, biting way. "One is, our colleges are all turning into social clearing houses, and every one is too absorbed in that engrossing process to know what happens outside; second is the fact that our universities are admirably organized instruments for the prevention of learning!"

"Good old Brocky," said Swazey with a chuckle. "Just what I like; stormy outside, warm inside, and Brocky at the bat. Serve 'em up."

Brockhurst, who was used to this reception of his pointed generalizations, paid no heed. He, too, had grown in mental stature and in control. A certain diffidence was over him, and always would be; but when a subject came up that interested him, he forgot himself, and rushed into the argument with a zeal that never failed to arouse his listeners.

Brockhurst turned on Swazey with the license that was always permissible.

"Well, what do you know? You've been here going on three years. You are supposed to be more than half educated. And you're not a fair example either, because you really are seeking to know something."

"Well, go on," said Swazey, thoroughly aroused.

"What do you know about the Barbizon school, and the logical reasons for the revolt of the impressionists?"

Instantly there was an outcry:

"Not fair."

"Oh, I say."

"That's no test."

"Finishing your third year, gentlemen," said Brockhurst triumphantly, "age over twenty; the art of painting is of course known to the aborigines only in its cruder forms. Well, does any one know at least who Manet is, or what he's painted?"

There was an accusing silence.

"Of course you've an idea of the Barbizon school—one or two of you. You remember something about a Man with a Hoe or the Angelus—that's Sunday supplement education. Now let me try you. Please raise hands, little boys, when you know the answer to these questions, but don't bluff teacher. I'm not contending you should have a detailed knowledge of the world in your eager, studious minds. I am saying that you haven't the slightest general information. I'll make my questions fair.

"First, music: I won't ask you the tendencies and theories of the modern schools—you won't know that such a thing as a theory in music exists. You know the opera of Carmen—good old Toreadore song. Do you know the name of the composer? One hand—Bob Story. Do you know the history of its reception? Do you know the sources of it? Do you know what Bach's influence was in the development of music? Did you ever hear of Leoncavallo, Verdi, or that there is such a thing as a Russian composer? Absolute silence. You have a hazy knowledge of Wagner, and you know that Chopin wrote a funeral march. That is your foothold in music; there you balance, surrounded by howling waters of ignorance.

"Take up architecture. Do you know who built the Vatican? Do you know the great buildings of the world—or a single thing about Greek, Roman and Renaissance architecture? Do you know what the modern French movement is based upon? Nothing.

"Take up religion. Do you know anything about Confucius, Shintoism, or Swedenborg, beyond the names? Of course you would not know that under Louis XVI a determined movement was made to reunite the Catholic and Protestant branches, which almost succeeded. That's unfair, because of course it is the forerunner of the great religious movement to-day. Do you know the history of the external symbols of the Christian religion, and what is historically new? Darkness denser and denser.

"Take literature. You have excavated a certain amount of Shakespeare, and grubbed among Elizabethans, and cursed Spenser. Who has read Taine's History of English Literature, or known in fact who Taine is? Only Bob Story. And yet there is the greatest book on the whole subject; you could abolish the English department and substitute it. Beside Story, who else has had even a fair reading knowledge of any other literature—Russian, Norwegian, German, French, Italian? Who knows enough about any one of these writers to look wise and nod; Renan, Turgeniev, Daudet, BjÖrnson, Hauptman, Suderman, Strindberg? Do you know anything about Goethe as a critic, or the influence of Poe upon French literature? What do you know? I'll tell you. You know Les MisÉrables and The Three Musketeers in French literature. You know Goethe wrote Faust. You're beginning to know Ibsen as a name, and one may have read Tolstoi, and all know that he's a very old man with a long white beard, who lives among his peasants, has some queer ideas, and has started to die three or four times. The papers have told you that.

"Take another field, of simple curiosity on what is doing in a world in which by opportunity you are supposed to be of the leading class. What do you know about the strength and spread of socialism in Germany, France and England? In the first place no one of you here probably has any idea of what socialism is; you've been told it's anarchy, and, as that only means dynamite to you, you are against socialism, and will never take the trouble to investigate it. What do you know about the new political experiments in New Zealand?—nothing. What do you know about the labor pension system in Germany, or the separation of the church and state in France?—all subjects dealing with the vital development of the race of bipeds on this earth of which you happen to be members.

"Now here is a catch question—all candidates for the dunce-cap will take a guess. The Botticelli story is such a chestnut now that you all know that it isn't a cheese or a wine—credit that to ridicule. I'm going to give you a few names from all the professions, and let's see who can tag them. What was Spinoza, Holman Hunt, Dostoiefski, Ambrose Thomas, Savonarola (if you've read the novel you'd know that), Bastien Le Page, Zorn, Bizet, Bossuet! Unfair?—not at all. These things are just as necessary to know to a man of education and culture as it is to a man of good manners to realize that peas are not introduced into the mouth by being balanced on a knife."

"Help!" cried Hungerford, as Brockhurst went rushing on. "Great Scott, what do we know?"

"You know absolutely nothing," said Brockhurst savagely. "Here you are; look at yourselves—four years when you ought to learn something, some informing knowledge of all that has developed during the four thousand years the human race has fought its way toward the light, four years to be filled with the marvel and splendor of it all, and you don't know a thing.

"You don't know the big men in music; you don't know the pioneers and the leaders in any art; you don't know the great literatures of the world, and what they represent; you don't know how other races are working out their social destinies; you've never even stopped to examine yourselves, to analyze your own society, to see the difference between a civilization founded on the unit of the individual, and a civilization, like the Latin, on the indestructible advance of the family. You have no general knowledge, no intellectual interests, you haven't even opinions, and at the end of four years of education you will march up and be handed a degree—Bachelor of Arts! Magnificent! And we Americans have a sense of humor! Do you wonder why I repeat that our colleges are splendidly organized institutions for the prevention of learning? No, sir, we are business colleges, and the business of our machines is to stamp out so many business men a year, running at full speed and in competition with the latest devices in Cambridge and Princeton!"

"Brocky, you are terrific," said Swazey in admiration. There was too much truth in the attack, violent as it was, not to have called forth serious attention.

"I feel a good deal the way you do," said Bob Story, and Stover nodded, "only it seems to me, Brocky, a good deal of what you're arguing for must come from outside—in just such informal talks as this."

"That's true," said Brockhurst. "If the stimulus in the college life itself were toward education all our meetings would be educational. It's true abroad, it isn't here. You know my views. You think I'm extreme. I'm getting an education because I didn't accept any such flap-doodle as, 'What am I going to do for Yale?' but instead asked, 'What has Yale got to offer me?' I'm getting it, too."

Stover suddenly remembered the conversation they had together the year before, and looking now at Brockhurst, revealed in a new strength, he began to understand what had then so repelled him.

"The great fault," continued Brockhurst, "lies, however, with the colleges. The whole theory is wrong, archaic and ridiculous—the theory of education by schedule. All education can do is to instil the love of knowledge. You get that, you catch the fire of it—you educate yourself. All education does to-day is to develop the memory at the expense of the imagination. It says: 'Here are so many pounds of Greek, Latin, mathematics, history, literature. In four years our problem is to pass them through the heads of these hundreds of young barbarians so that they will come out with a lip knowledge.'"

"But come, we do learn something," said Hungerford.

"No, you don't, Joe," said Brockhurst. "You've translated the Iliad—you've never known it. You've recited in Horace—you have no love for him. You've excavated the plays of Shakespeare, a couple of acts at a time; you don't know what Hamlet means or Lear, the beauty of it all has escaped you. You've recited in Logic and Philosophy, but you don't understand what you're repeating. You're only repeating all the time. Your memory is trained to hold a little knowledge a little time—that's all. You don't enjoy it, you're rather apologetic—or others are."

"Well, what other system is there?" said Regan.

"There is the preceptorial system of England," said Brockhurst, "where a small group of men are in personal contact with the instructor. In French universities, education is a serious thing because failure to pass an examination for a profession means two extra years of army service. Men don't risk over there, or divide up their time heeling the News or making a team. In Germany a man is given a certain number of years to get a degree, and I believe has to do a certain amount of original work.

"But of course the main trouble here is, and there is no blinking the fact, that the colleges have surrendered unconsciously a great deal of their power to the growing influence of the social organization. In a period when we have no society in America, families are sending their sons to colleges to place themselves socially. Some of them carry it to an extreme, even directly avow their hope that they will make certain clubs at Princeton or Harvard, or a senior society here. It probably is very hard to control, but it's going to turn our colleges more and more, as I say, into social clearing houses. At present here at Yale we keep down the question of wealth pretty well; fellows like Joe Hungerford here come in and live on our basis. That's the best feature about Yale to-day—how it will be in the future I don't know, for it depends on the wisdom of the parents."

"Social clearing house is well coined," said Hungerford. "I think it's truer though of Harvard."

"That's perhaps because you see the mote in your neighbors' eyes," said Brocky rising. "Well, discussion isn't going to change it. Who's always talking about school for character—Pike or Brown? We might as well stand for that—but it would not be very wise to announce it to the American nation, would it?—we might be dubbed a reformatory. Fathers, send your sons to college—reform their characters, straighten out the crooks. At the end give 'em a degree of—of, say—G. B."

"What's that, Brocky?" said Swazey, grinning with the rest.

"Good Boy," said Brockhurst, who departed, as he liked, on the echoes of the laugh which he had inspired.

"Whew!" said Hungerford, with a comical rubbing of his head. "What struck me?"

"And I expect to make Phi Beta Kappa," said Swazey, with an apologetic laugh.

"What a dreadfully disconcerting person," said Bob Story.

"By George, it takes the conceit out of you," said Stover ruthfully. "Shall we all start in and learn something? What's the answer?"

At this moment a familiar slogan was heard below, increasing in riotous, pagan violence with the approach of boisterous feet.

The room burst into a roar of laughter.

"There's one answer," said Regan rising.

The door slammed open, and McNab and Buck Waters reeled in arm in arm.

"I say, fellows, we've cornered the sleigh market," said Dopey uproariously. "We're all going to beat it to the Cheshire Inn, a bottle of champagne to the first to arrive. Are you on?"

Half an hour later, Stover at the reins was whirling madly along the crusty roads, in imminent danger of collision with three other rollicking parties, who packed the sleighs and cheered on the galloping horses, singing joyfully the battle hymn of the pagans: