young Wherry was started into Henrietta Starrett's school 

 (the Kenwood institute) in preparation for college. Between 

 her fears that he would never make the Latin, and his own that 

 he was too old for the place anyway, he quit. Wherefore, a 

 certain Doctor Bray entered his educational picture. What was 

 his Christian name nobody knows; nor the origin of his doc- 

 torate. Some thought him an M D, more a Ph D, the most a 

 D D, the weight of hearsay evidence lying heaviest with the 

 last named. Whatever had been the designation, he was now 

 busted. The elder Wherry had definite misgivings. He believed 

 him, in plain English, an "atheist," which charge the doctor 

 parried by attesting to the fact that a blue angel in India stood 

 guard over him. The situation made for frequent calls by the 

 father upon the tutor and admonishment that he leave the 

 boy's religious propensities and their training alone. In sisterly 

 mind — in fatherly, too — the boy's "dullness" at the "insti- 

 tute" and at home was still being debited to his scarlet fever. 

 Such things are not impossible, of course. Yet, what in the 

 boy's instance passed for dullness was nothing but a silence. 

 There was germinating in his own mind a vine which was to 

 strangle what had flowered so fully in his father's. 



What the boy did beyond his lessons has never been dis- 

 closed. Attendance upon church and Sunday school could not 

 be avoided, though he seems to have been less intense in these 

 matters than the rest of the children. More nebulous appear 

 certain organization activities which involved the bad boys of 

 the neighborhood. The type, perhaps, stood closer to what he 

 remembered out of India, so it was not long before he had them 

 corralled into a "gang." Later in life he used to boast of his 

 crowd's victories over the weaker tribes; besides which no 

 more vicious attacks upon society seem to have been executed 

 than the filching of tithes from ice cream freezers too care- 

 lessly delivered upon the back porches of a social class better 

 off. But, as his college years approached, these romantic ven- 

 tures gave way before a less material one. 



Doctor Bray succeeded quickly and well with the prepara- 

 tion of his charge for college. It delighted the father. But his 

 delight might have suffered setback had he known the content 

 of discussions between tutor and pupil. The elder Wherry was 

 case-hardened in fundamentalism; Doctor Bray — as we shall 



