Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/183

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known fifteen years before. One man has found the world exacting, unreasonable, unjust, and cruelly difficult. The other thought it a beautiful place; kind, gracious, and considerate as an old friend. He said he had been lucky.

As I sought an explanation, it seemed to me to lie in the college life and development of the two men. The first one had been a loafer who just managed to slip by at examination time. If he passed he gave a party to celebrate his luck; if he failed he did the same thing to drown his sorrow. He had cultivated neither ambitions nor ideals; he had congratulated himself that in his various derelictions he had never been caught, and he was hilariously satisfied merely to pass his work.

The second man had done his work honestly and well; he had studied whether he was expecting a quiz or not, and he had practiced physical and moral self-control even when he was not in training for an