Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/164

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152
RESURRECTION ROCK

mother's voyages to Europe, Oliver accompanied her. Indeed, she proclaimed that many of her stays at Spa, Marienbad and Biarritz were necessary for Oliver's sake. Her son went to Japan and then around the world with her; but not until the September following her death did Oliver ever undertake an overnight journey alone. Then he ventured from Chicago to Boston to enter Harvard University.

This was wholly his own idea and entered upon of his own initiative. He purposed to make himself, as quickly as possible, like his cousins and the young men they knew, but his pride prevented him from following them to their chosen college. His determination was good; but he started a little late, and Harvard was very big and tolerant. Yale, where his cousins were, or a much smaller college might better have brought him into association with young men of the types he needed to know. There were plenty of them at Cambridge; but there were many of the milder, more timid men, too, studious, serious, interesting to Oliver and friendly. These welcomed Oliver and made him one of them; and so, though he steadfastly tried to row in one of the graded eights at Weld Boat Club, though he offered himself to track coaches and begged them to try him out mercilessly; though he even ventured—without any football experience whatever—to come out and be pummelled on the scrub elevens, the men whom he sought did not seek him. His cousins Lucas and John despised the mild friends he made almost as much as they despised him. When they came to Cambridge with the Yale teams, they introduced Oliver, condescendingly, to Harvard men who had been his neighbors in the dormitories for two years.

Lucas and John were members of good junior so-