leges, wise in the accumulated knowledge of mankind.
So it was thought, at any rate. There never was a place where education was more venerated than in the cow-camps of the west. College men, from England and from home places, were not rare in those times; it was a sort of catch-all for college men, indeed, that wide-open country west of the Arkansas. No matter for their dissipations and utter worthlessness of character—and some of them were about as bad as men ever get to be—they always were more or less hallowed by that glamour of a college education.
"That man's got a college education," was at once the palliation and the absolution for his excesses and follies. His comrades boasted it in pride of reflected consequence and superiority. It seemed to be the general belief among the unlettered that a college education gave a man some kind of subtle advantage over all men less fortunate, which he had only to exercise to elevate himself into riches and power. That he did not employ this talisman to his own profit usually was taken as proof of his humane and generous spirit. His associates were hopelessly trammelled by ignorance: why should he desire to rise above them? So his friends and companions believed, in the face of all evidence that an educated sot is the most depraved and disgusting creature that shames the shape of man.
Tom Simpson rode along with his new companions that day, playing poker with them, winning a few dollars of their money, to which they unreservedly felt that he was welcome, considering his financial state, eating out of their paper sacks, taking a nip with the rest when the
