Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/38

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disgrace to them, men who are willing to confess their faults even when such confession means dismissal.

I seldom lose track of the fellows who for one reason or another have been disciplined by the University. Even if their dismissal is a permanent one they write to me, or send me messages, or drift at intervals in a friendly way across my path. I count them among my closest and warmest friends. Only this afternoon one of them called me up to ask a few words of advice and to make a kindly inquiry about my health. There is lying in my basket of unanswered correspondence one of the kindest letters I ever received from a boy whom I was instrumental in sending away from the University.

There is never a Christmas that I do not hear from some of the once derelicts who send me good wishes or the baby's picture. It gives me the greatest pleasure to know that these men are almost without exception doing a man's work in a manly way, and that out of their discipline has come for them a real strength of character.