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52
THE PLASTIC AGE

master who sat at the table with our form would correct me. I used to want to die, and sometimes I would say that I was sick and did n’t want any food so that I would n’t have to go to meals. The fellows razzed the life out of me; some of ’em called me Paddy. The reason I came here to San¬ ford was that no Kane fellows come here. They go mostly to Williams, but some of ’em go to Yale or Princeton.

“Well, I had four years of that, and I was home¬ sick the whole four years. Oh, I don’t mean that they kept after me all the time—that was just the first few months—but they never really accepted me. I never felt at home. Even when I was with a bunch of them, I felt lonesome. . . . And they never made a gentleman out of me, though my old lady thinks they did.”

“You ’re crazy,” Hugh interrupted indignantly. “You ’re as much a gentleman as anybody in college.”

Carl smiled and shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. You ’re a gentleman, but I’m not. Oh, I know all the tricks, the parlor stunts. Four years at Kane taught me those, but they ’re just tricks to me. I don*t know just how to explain it— but I know that you ’re a gentleman and I’m not.”

“You’re just plain bug-house. You make me feel like a fish. WEy, I’m just from a country high school.

I ’m not in your class.”

Hugh sat