"He had the pull on me," says Mr. Reed, "by simply holding over me in critical moments the penalty of dismissal. You know, I had a sort of inborn idea that the school was a great thing for me, and I knew that my parents were too poor to afford to send me anywhere else, so I kept straight along, doing my duty. It was the master's custom to allow each boy who had no demerits to ring his bell before leaving the class, and once for three days in succession I did not ring that bell. I can see now the master coming to me, and saying: 'Tom, is it an inadvertence?' 'No, sir.' 'Did you break the rules?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Why?' 'Because they were too hard.' 'Well, boy, you know what you can do if the rules are too hard; you can leave school.' I hung my head, and he went away, after a few moments of, to me, terrible silence, saying: 'Never let me hear of this again, Tom.' And I replied: 'No, sir.' And meant it."
On entering Bowdoin College in 1856, young Reed had a half-formed desire of becoming a minister, which he relinquished, however, long before his graduation. His life struggle began in earnest with that first year at college, for he had to earn enough to pay his way as he went along. His attendance at class recitations during the first term of his freshman year was regular, but he found it necessary to drop out the next two terms and earn some money by teaching. He kept up his studies, however, without an instructor. All through the first part of his college course young Reed devoted a great deal of time to literature, to the neglect of his studies. While in the high school, a garret in the house of one of his mother's relations had become his Mecca. It was packed full of books, especially novels, and there he was wont to journey twice a week, loading himself with volumes, over which he spent his days and the best part of his nights. Mr. Reed says that it was mostly trashy, imaginative stuff, but that it also was full of delight, and in some ways full of information for him. To that omnivorous reading he attributes in large part his knowledge of words, and it was also, no doubt, an apprenticeship from which he naturally stepped into higher literature.
Graduation was but little more than a year off, when, the contents of the garret being exhausted, the young man realized to his consternation that his class standing was very low. His place at the end of the college course depended on his average class standing all through. He had received none of the sixteen junior parts which were given out during the junior year, and to his dismay the English orations, corresponding to the junior parts at the end of the course, were reduced to twelve. There was but one course open to the ambitious, spirited boy--to offset the low average of his earlier terms by an exceptionally high average during his last. Romances and poems were laid aside, and from that time forward until Commencement he was up at five in the morning, and by nine o'clock every night he was in bed, and tired enough to drop asleep at once. Mr. Reed says very frankly that he did not relish this regimen, for by nature he is indolent. Apropos of this, it was a common saying among his comrades that Reed would be somebody some day, if he were not so lazy.