“I hardly know what life in a town of that sort may be like. I suppose everything takes its color from the college.”
“Yes, in a great measure. Tippecanoe is a little old-fashioned and quaint. I always felt that my father missed an opportunity sometime in his life, but I never knew when or how; and I have no right to think so.”
Ezra Dameron, with the old Bible on his knees, raised his eyes and stared into the fire as these words caught and held his attention. He remembered Morris Leighton’s father very well, and he smiled grimly as he watched the hickory logs burning and reconstructed for himself certain pages of his own life. There had been a man that Margaret Merriam had loved, and would have married, if her pride had not betrayed her into an estrangement; but it was her pride that had given her into his own hands. He heard the son of Morris Leighton talking to his daughter,--to Margaret Dameron’s daughter,--and the fact gave him a certain pleasure. He continued to stare into the fire, with the old leather-bound Bible open on his lean knees. The girl was his own and she should not be given to Morris Leighton’s son. He should take care of that. And he nodded to himself as he turned the leaves of his Bible.
There comes a time in the life of young men when their college fraternity pins lie forgotten in the collar-button box and the spiking of freshmen ceases to be a burning issue. Tippecanoe was one of the few freshwater colleges that barred women; but this was not its only distinction, for its teaching was sound, its campus charming and the town of which it was the chief ornament a quiet place noted from the beginning of things for its cultivated people.
It is no longer so very laudable for a young man to pay his way through college; and Morris Leighton had done this easily and without caring to be praised or martyrized for doing so. He had enjoyed his college days; he had been popular with town and gown; and he had managed to get his share of undergraduate fun while leading his classes. He had helped in the college library; he had twisted the iron letter-press on the president’s correspondence late into the night; he had copied briefs for a lawyer after hours; but he had pitched for the nine and hustled for his “frat,” and he had led class rushes with ardor and success.