07.02.06. In School Again

6. IN SCHOOL AGAIN When he boarded the train and started away it was with the full intention of doing what was right, and as the train rolled across the new state now fast becoming dotted with farms and ranches Todd resolved to come back home with education, money and honor. He said, "I’ll show my brother who thinks I won’t make good where he is wrong, and there will come a day when he will be proud of me; I will take my old parents out of the old log house and put them in a home where they will not have to work and my mother will not have to drag the heavy cotton sack clown the row and go like a hired hand to the field of corn." That was a good resolution, but he made the mistake that thousands have made. he left God out. When he entered the new school he found the same crowd he had known in the first one. Of course they had different names and different faces, but they represented the same forces. the powers of hell. and before he realized it, he had forgotten his resolutions and promises and was drifting from bad to worse. Here he spent much of his after-school-time in the pool hall, and in this way became acquainted with some of the toughs of the town. While he did not sell whiskey, he often accompanied them to the place where they kept it hidden; they liked him and often gave it to him to drink, and sometimes had him deliver it for them. More than once he made his way to his room staggering under the influence of strong drink. One morning, after such a night, when he entered the school for the opening exercises his name was called and he was publicly suspended, and asked to leave the building at once.

Angry and chagrined he walked out in disgrace and as soon as he could left town going to a school in another state. And it was about this time that the last brother who had assisted him wrote home, saying, "I am through with him, I am convinced he will never amount to anything."