He wrestled with rhetoric, and logic, and political economy, and
geometry, and came off an easy victor; he put new life into the dead
languages, dug among the Greek roots by day and soared up among the
stars by night. None could outstrip him as a student, and he easily
held his place at the head of his class. The dullest scholar found in
him a friend and a helper, while the brighter ones found in his
example, an incentive to do their best.
In athletic sports, too, he was excelled by none. He could run faster,
jump higher, lift a dumb-bell easier, strike a ball harder, and pull as
strong an oar as the best of them. He was the point of the flying
wedge in the game of foot-ball, and woe be to the opponent against whom
that point struck. To sum it all up, Tom was a mental and physical
giant, as well as a superb specimen of what that college could make out
of a young man. But unfortunately, it was one of those institutions
that developed the mental, trained the physical, and starved the
spiritual, and so it came to pass ere his college days were ended, Tom
had an enemy, and that enemy was the bottle.
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