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THE PLASTIC AGE
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angrily. “We may not be so hot, but we ’re a damn sight better than these guys that work in offices and mills. Jimmie Henley gives me a pain. He shoots off his gab as if he knew everything. He ’s got to show me where other colleges have anything on Sanford. He’s a hell of a Sanford man, he is.” They were walking slowly down the stairs. George Winsor caught up with them. “What did you think of it, George?” Hugh asked. Winsor grinned. “He gave me some awful body blows,” he said, chuckling. “Cripes, I felt most of the time that he was talking only to me. I’m sore all over. What did you think of it? Jimmie’s a live wire, all right.” “I don’t know what to think,” Hugh replied soberly. “He ’s knocked all the props from under me. I’ve got to think it over.” He did think it over, and the more he thought the more he was inclined to believe that Henley was right. Boy-like, he carried Henley’s statements to their final conclusion and decided that the college was a colossal failure. He wrote a theme and said so.

“You ’re wrong, Hugh,” Henley said when he read the theme. “Sanford has real virtues, a bushel of them. You ’ll discover them all right before you graduate.”