CHAPTER XV 



OFF TO THE WAR 



IN leaving Cambridge, I remember taking account of what I had 

 done in the three and a half years that I had been a student 

 there. Although at that day, I fully expected that three years 

 of work would not serve as the foundations of a career, for the 

 reason that I was going into conditions of grave stress with 

 what seemed to be a scant measure of strength, so that I was 

 pretty sure to find the way out in the field or in the hospital, 

 I was yet contented with the instrument. In the three years 

 of my connection with the University I had worked hard and 

 continuously, and with a clear purpose, which was to lay the 

 foundations for work in natural history with specialization in 

 geology. Although the official instruction I had access to was 

 scanty, almost absurd in its limitations, the contriving I had 

 done to supplement it had been fairly successful. From Marcou, 

 Jackson, and Rogers there had come good help, but the best, it 

 seemed, was from my sense that I had to be untiringly vigilant 

 in using all the opportunities which the field, the books, and 

 the men I was so fortunate as to know could give me. Moreover, 

 in this endeavor I had learned how to deal with men of my own 

 group. The fact that from about the age of fourteen until I came 

 to Cambridge I had not been in a boy's school, but with an 

 ancient philosopher, was in certain ways a misfortune; for it 

 left me untrained in the art of dealing with youths of my own 

 age. The intense life of the group of students with which I had 

 been thrown quickly made me, in the best sense of the word, 

 a man of the world, ready to meet his neighbor in the give-and- 

 take which is the most important feature in a college education. 

 The only unfortunate feature in this Cambridge student life 

 was the narrow range of acquaintances I had a chance to make. 



