This had always bewildered Agamemnon a good deal.
"And how was a feller to tell," Solomon John had asked, "whether
he wanted to study a thing before he tried it? It might turn out
awful hard!"
Agamemnon had always been fond of reading, from his childhood
up. He was at his book all day long. Mrs Peterkin had imagined he
would come out a great scholar, because she could never get him
away from his books.
And so it was in his colleges; he was always to be found in the
library, reading and reading. But they were always the wrong
books.
For instance: the class were required to prepare themselves on the
Spartan war.
This turned Agamemnon's attention to the Fenians, and to study
the subject he read up on "Charles O'Malley," and "Harry
Lorrequer," and some later novels of that sort, which did not help
him on the subject required, yet took up all his time, so that he
found himself unfitted for anything else when the examinations
came. In consequence he was requested to leave.
Agamemnon always missed in his recitations, for the same reason
that Elizabeth Eliza did not get on in school, because he was
always asked the questions he did not know. It seemed provoking;
if the professors had only asked something else!
But they always hit upon the very things he had not studied up.
Mrs. Peterkin felt this was encouraging, for Agamemnon knew the
things they did not know in colleges.
Pages:
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136