gravel of your own ignorance and fighting any at¬ tempt to teach you anything every inch of the way. What’s worse, you are n’t content with your own ignorance; you insist that every one else be ignorant, too. Suppose a man attempts to acquire culture, as some of them do. What happens? He is branded as wet. He is a social leper.
“Wet! What currency that bit of slang has— and what awful power. It took me a long time to find out what the word meant, but after long re¬ search I think that I know. A man is wet if he is n’t a ‘regular guy’; he is wet if he is n’t ‘smooth’; he is wet if he has intellectual interests and lets the mob discover them; and, strangely enough, he is wet by the same token if he is utterly stupid. He is wet if he does n’t show at least a tendency to dis¬ sipate, but he is n’t wet if he dissipates to excess, A man will be branded as wet for any of these rea¬ sons, and once he is so branded, he might as well leave college; if he doesn’t, he will have a lonel} and hard row to hoe. It is a rare undergraduate who can stand the open contempt of his fellows.” He paused, obviously ordering his thoughts be fore continuing. The boys waited expectantly Some of them were angry, some amused, a few ii agreement, and all of them intensely interested. Henley leaned back in his chair. “What hor rible little conformers you are,” he began sar castically, “and how you loathe any one who does n’
