Page 26 - The Adventures of a Freshman

The Sophomores took it up. It became a second nick-name.

The worst of it was--in fact the reason of it all was--that he took this as he did himself and everything else,
with entirely too much self-importance. Instead of laughing or answering back he looked sullen and sedate
when they said, "Thank you, marm," and naturally they said it then all the more.

It cut and hurt to have his own classmates--the men with whom he had stood shoulder to shoulder in the rush
and at the class meeting--treat him thus. If they had known that he was taking it so seriously, they would have
stopped. But they did not know it. How should they? Most people have to suffer before they learn to be
sympathetic.

So, altogether, with the Sophomores who hazed and the classmates who guyed, Will Young decided that
college life was not all it was cracked up to be. But you may be sure he did not let this opinion get into the
letters he wrote home. Because he was discouraged was no reason for making his mother discouraged too.
But, oh, it would have helped a lot, if he had only somebody to talk to about it all. He did not know how to
make friends with the others, and the others did not seem to care to make friends, thank you, marm, with the
sober-faced old Deacon.

It was all very well for a fellow like Linton to say that something of this sort was a good thing for a fellow
like Young. But Linton was a Junior, with friends that loved him; and Juniors forget. Besides, sometimes we
get too much of a good thing, and then it becomes a bad thing. If it had kept on this way Young might have
become meek and backboneless, and such an extreme would be even worse than that of self-importance.

But it did not keep on. It all stopped one day quite suddenly.