One more incident of my boyhood days may assist the reader to make my acquaintance.  In my early teens I was, for one year, a member of a boy choir.  Barring my voice, I was a good chorister, and, like all good choir-boys, I was distinguished by that seraphic passiveness from which a reaction of some kind is to be expected immediately after a service or rehearsal.  On one occasion this reaction in me manifested itself in a fist fight with a fellow choir-boy.  Though I cannot recall the time when I have not relished verbal encounters, physical encounters had never been to my taste, and I did not seek this fight.  My assailant really goaded me into it.  If the honors were not mine, at least I must have acquitted myself creditably, for an interested passer-by made a remark which I have never forgotten.  “That boy is all right after he gets started,” he said.  About twelve years later I did get started, and could that passer-by have seen me on any one of several occasions, he would have had the satisfaction of knowing that his was a prophetic eye.

At the usual age, I entered a public grammar school in New Haven, Connecticut, where I graduated in 1891.  In the fall of that year I entered the High School of the same city.  My school courses were completed with as little trouble as scholastic distinction.  I always managed to gain promotion, however, when it was due; and, though few of my teachers credited me with real ability, they were always able to detect a certain latent capacity, which they evidently believed would one day develop sufficiently to prevent me from disgracing them.

Upon entering the High School I had such ambitions as any schoolboy is apt to have.  I wished to secure an election to a given secret society; that gained, I wished to become business manager of a monthly magazine published by that society.  In these ambitions I succeeded.  For one of my age I had more than an average love of business.  Indeed, I deliberately set about learning to play the guitar well enough to become eligible for membership in the Banjo Club—­and this for no more aesthetic purpose than to place myself in line for the position of manager, to which I was later elected.

In athletics there was but one game, tennis, in which I was actively interested.  Its quick give-and-take suited my temperament, and so fond was I of it that during one summer I played not fewer than four thousand games.  As I had an aptitude for tennis and devoted more time to it than did any of my schoolmates, it was not surprising that I acquired skill enough to win the school championship during my senior year.  But that success was not due entirely to my superiority as a player.  It was due in part to what I considered unfair treatment; and the fact well illustrates a certain trait of character which has often stood me in good stead.  Among the spectators at the final match of the tournament were several girls.  These schoolmates, who lived in my neighborhood, had mistaken