“Oh, well,” said he, “it might, perhaps, have been worse, although I admit that was unlikely.  I couldn’t prove an alibi, but there were extenuatin’ circumstances.  The fact was, I got the politics of the place mixed up almost as bad as the People’s Choice.  That community woke up as one man at six-thirty the next morning, and turned out to see the evidence of their progress.  I never did see so many Democrats in my life.  Or was it Republicans?  I forget.  I had given ’em a good, hot, mixed Princeton paper,—­dog, international law, society, industrial progress, footlight favorites, and the whole business; had Sermons from Many Lands, and a Conundrum Department, as well as a Household Corner—­How to get Beautiful for the ladies, How to get Rich for the men, How to get Strong for the advertisers—­why, if I do say it, I don’t believe any one fellow was ever much more cosmopolitan in all his life, inside the space of one night’s writin’.  But they didn’t like me.  I was too good for them.  Ah, well!”

Dan Anderson sighed softly.  The lazy sun crawled on.  Nobody came into the street.  There was nothing to happen.  It might have been an hour before Dan Anderson leaned over, picked up a splinter to whittle, and went on with his story, back of which I was long before this well convinced there remained some topic concealed, albeit beneath inconsequent and picturesque details.

“At that state of my entwickelung, as the French say, I still wore my trousers with a strong crimp at the bottom and cut pear-shaped at the hips.  That pair was.  The next one wasn’t.  It was a long, long way to that next pair.  I forgot how many years.

“You see, by that time—­although I did still say ‘rully,’ account of having roomed with a man who had been in Harvard for a while—­I was really beginning to wake up just a little bit.  My dad still supposed I was doing dog on the dramatic page in New York, whereas the facts were I had been fired twice.  But that did me good.  I sort of woke up about then, and realized there were such things in the world as folks.  I wasn’t the People’s Choice,—­not yet,—­but I was learnin’ a heap more about the Basswood Junctions of this world.  And I want to say to you that after all’s said and done, Princeton hasn’t got Basswood Junction skinned no ways permanent.  There’s several kinds of things in life, when you come to find it out.  It ain’t all in the gay metropolis.

“At half-past four one afternoon I turned the roll down out of my trousers and took account of the world.  Says I to myself:  ’Journalism is not a science.  It ain’t exact enough.’  Then I thought of studyin’ medicine.  Bah!  That’s not a science.  It’s a survival.  I clerked for a while, but I couldn’t stand it.  What I was lookin’ for was a science.  At last I concluded to take up law, because I thought it was more of a science than any of these other things.  I wanted some place where I could sort of reason things out, and have them fit