1
TRAVELING, STILL TRAVELING . . . not only in space but in time . . . until I had come to a small Canadian village, where the houses were thinly scattered and many of the streets unpaved, and there was still a rough new pioneer spirit on the land. There were few cars—dusty-looking flivvers many seasons old, jumping up and down on narrow tires. Plainly the machine had not yet conquered all in Scottsborough, Nova Scotia. Not many miles from here was Maritime University, the college I had left the United States to attend.
In the Scottsborough depot, I was met by Mr. Luther, accompanied by his brother-in-law, with horse and buggy. My missionary friend was a large, stocky farmerlike man with a little nose, and a fringe of reddish hair around the back of his head. He greeted me in his grave, pleasant way, in words of an excellent Korean. More than my exiled countrymen, he reminded me of the country I had left. Mr. Luther would return long before the rest of us. His life, for the most part, had been spent in Korea, and he had recently buried his Canadian missionary-wife on Korean soil. The remote peace of quiet Asia mingled with the steadfast faith of the Christian missionary on Mr. Luther’s brow. He was just the same, yesterday, today, and forever. The world of Canadian missionaries—like that of the Chinese in Chinatown—never changes, not for the East or the West. My teacher was a reflective, educated man, but neither Matthew Arnold nor Thomas Huxley of the nineteenth century had left any perceptible traces of their toilsome gigantic problems and doubts on him; and certainly he had never entered the century of the grandson, Aldous Huxley, and had no desire to do so. The climate of New York was not for him.
Our friendship dated back some years. Mr. Luther had been the American principal of a Korean school where I had taken some postgraduate high school courses. He became interested in me and in my desire to be educated in America—particularly after I made a debate on the subject “Does the hero make the time or does the time make the hero?” I spoke in Korean, a beautiful language for oratory, rolling down and foaming all around like mountain streams, and being a Korean boy I still believed ardently in heroes. I had no inklings of the twentieth-century nonsense of such words as:
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Such enthusiasm appealed to Mr. Luther, too. He was judge in the debate and he immediately singled me out as the best speaker. Afterwards he invited both debating teams to his house for tea, served in Canadian style. There were little Canadian tea cakes, which tasted to us awfully good, for Koreans eat very little sweets, none at all made out of refined white sugar with all the glutinous dark substances removed. We piled them in, and afterwards were sick. An older boy, who had read about American manners in a book, kept frowning at us, whispering, “Don’t make those noises when you drink!” We were trying to show our appreciation of the tea by smacking the lips, one of the politest noises at a meal a guest can make in the Orient.
Mr. Mathews, the brother of Mr. Luther’s dead wife, was a straight, silent man with a ruddy face, clean-shaven, dignified, but a person of simplicity. He was reticent and did not attempt to talk much, though he wished to put me at my ease as much as possible. My main impression was—“How different from a New York Y.M.C.A. man!”—And I felt much better with Mr. Mathews.
His house was a large new white one with a high porch. It was set in the midst of a big potato garden, a little distance out of Scottsborough. Outside and in, this house was plain and substantial. It had been built only recently, yet there was not much feel of newness about it . . . comfortable, old-fashioned, familylike furniture suggesting unpretentious British standards, ample space for books and potted flowers. The house was full of children. Mr. Luther and his four were visiting, and the Mathewses had several too. I was treated as one of “the children,” being classed with Mr. Luther’s oldest boy of twelve and Mr. Mathews’ son aged fourteen. A boy of nineteen, of course, was not supposed to have reached majority, and nothing, as I remember, was talked of my ardent baptism in the tumultuous modern stream of New York. Neither the Luthers nor the Mathewses had any interest whatsoever in New York. Instead we talked a good deal about Korea. No doubt the fervent new birth of Christianity in my poor distraught and suffering country was a source of strength and inspiration to this missionary clan far away in Canada. Korea has proved far more receptive than either China or Japan to Christian proselytizing. Mr. Luther, the young Luthers, and myself—we were the Koreans, and the Mathews family were never tired of hearing about the faraway Asian continent.
I had been invited to visit the Luthers, or rather the Mathewses, until my college scholarship should begin. It was my first stay as guest with an American family in the West, and I wanted to be very goody and very nice. In the morning there was a sort of orderly crowding for the bathroom—a bathroom not outside and around the corner like that of many of the houses of Scottsborough—but on the second floor, centrally. Every one was given his allotted span there before the punctual eight o’clock breakfast. The first morning, escorted to the door of the bathroom by Mr. Mathews in his bathrobe, I parted from him with a bow. After that I took out my jackknife with which I always shaved. It was a big knife, but rather dull, and a certain flat stone I carried with me was an absolute essential. I would spit on the stone and rub my knife there hard. For finishing touch, I would stroke it gently on the palm of my hand. Then I would take the longest lock of hair on my head and cut off the very end to see if the knife were sharp enough yet to shave with. But this morning I could not find my stone. I looked and looked. Either I had forgotten to pack it, or it had dropped out on the way. I wasted many moments looking for my stone, and some more time trying to sharpen the jackknife on soap dishes and various other places. No good. It wouldn’t work. Then on a convenient shelf, I saw a long straight razor very bright and shining. Just what whiskers want. But Mr. Mathews was already knocking on the door to see if I was ready to come out. I didn’t want to take more than my time. Then, remembering that I had already a washstand and pitcher, I thought I would convey this razor into my own room for a moment. I slipped out unseen, bearing the long shiny blade. I was soon ready. So was everybody, except Mr. Mathews. At eight o’clock sharp we sat down to table. But Mr. Mathews was late. We had our porridge and milk. And still Mr. Mathews didn’t appear. We went on to the scrambled eggs and bacon, toast, stewed apples, orange marmalade, and tea. At the very end, Mr. Mathews slipped quietly into that empty place at the head of the table—and Mrs. Mathews said in a surprised voice: “Daddy, you didn’t shave this morning!”
“Never mind, dear—never mind!” said Mr. Mathews hastily.
It broke upon me! I alone knew why he hadn’t shaved. I had stolen his razor. Yes, Mr. Mathews was too polite to explain. But oh, how embarrassed I was—that most embarrassing moment of my life! Of course, I had only meant to borrow it—I had replaced it just before coming down to breakfast. But—too late!—I had taken it during just those five minutes of the day when Mr. Mathews always shaved. I imagined his confusion in not being able to find it. He must have spent all his time in the bathroom looking for it—so I imagined. Then perhaps he went into his bedroom and looked there. Finally there was no more time. He had to put on his collar and tie, and hurry down. He would have to go to business directly after breakfast, with out shaving! Oh, if I had only taken Mr. Mathews’ razor at any other time in the twenty-four hours!
I rose from the table and I went out with Mr. Mathews’ boy. I had a purpose. We visited a store in Scottsborough. It was the only store in town, and there were many horsewhips, oil lamps, hoes, washstand sets and bundles of ginghams and lawn, and many other things for sale. But I bought a razor. I paid $1.25. Practically my first luxury purchase in the New World, and destined to last me many years. Then I went back and dug potatoes in the potato garden very hard.
2
I was enrolled soon after as a special student in Maritime University, and put with one hundred other boys in the dormitory of Green Grove. Green Grove was an L-shaped building on top of a little hill, surrounded by oaks and pines and covered by a fine meadow grass. No crows to be fed on that soft grass—nothing unclean. The boys used to go out and play ball there on beautiful sunny days. Over the hill was an arm of the sea, and salty air rushed into the nose day and night, turning white faces red. It was said to be a mild oceanic climate, but always there was a little whip to the air and a good deal of fog in the morning not unlike the rawness of Mother England.
A piece to the left of Green Grove, Seaway Park was laid out with pines and firs. These magnificent trees were very tall and fragrant; they had spread a thick matting of needles over the ground. Here were many wandering roads through the pines, making the perfect rambling walk for a philosopher—or for Milton in Il Penseroso mood. Not many people seemed to use Seaway. It was open to the public, but it was so near the college, it was more like a college campus. On fine Sundays, you might encounter a few from the city here—an old gentleman or two, with yellow kid gloves and cane in hand, strolling very leisurely. On such days, a few horse carriages might walk slowly through as well, and when one of those old gentlemen met an old lady in one of these, the horse stopped, while the gentleman spoke with a courtly mumbling—slightly confused between his cane, his kid gloves, his cigarette, and his hat. His was the aloof, suave dignity of Queen Victoria and Alfred Lord Tennyson. Plainly an “heir of all the ages in the foremost files of time” (for probably he knew his way about London—even though he had no use for crass New York). Such were the Nova Scotians, to share Seaway. But when a fine drizzling rain was sifting down, like a veil blown from the sea, you were sure to meet no one—with the exception perhaps of a lone ex-serviceman who had come back after the Great War to resume his interrupted studies in Maritime College; swinging along in his trench coat at a steady martial pace, his prematurely set and silent face showing that he wished to be disturbed no more than you did.
3
When I reported soon after arrival to the administration building and to Doctor MacMillan (a solid round British gentleman with a clerical collar), he handed me over to my two Green Grovian tutors, both studying for the ministry and both ex-servicemen. Ian was of medium height, slight, blond, very English-looking. He had a smooth, regular face, rather handsome, but closer to the feminine ideal than the masculine one. One eyebrow was always cocking up and he impressed one as being witty and ironic. Ralph on the other hand was an out-and-out Canadian, very big and masculine-looking, and of the farmer type. He was red all over, but of different shades. His face was a kind of lipstick red, but his hair and eyebrows more a sandy tint. Though he shaved with meticulous care, his cheeks and chin always suggested a stubbly field. Ralph was quiet, unhumorous, very serious, and had ladylike, minute ways of speech and action.
These two were to be my tutors and my guardians. They promptly helped me with my registration card, then guided me over to the University, where everybody had a college bulletin in hand and a number of cards. Here for the first time I was lost in a crowd of alien boys from every Canadian province around there, from professional classes, farms, factories, and even fishermen’s villages. But with true British love of precedent—“not swift nor slow to change but firm”—the father’s calling usually determined the son’s. (In this I saw Canadians to be unlike people from the States, who love to break all precedents, where rarely does the son follow in the steps of his father.)
While I was standing, a little apart, somewhat overwhelmed by the racial, national, and religious homogeneity I sensed around me, I was approached by a narrow-faced, tender-skinned boy with dark eyebrows which looked like two strong lines drawn with a Chinese brush. He was wearing a big sweater with a letter and had a rather sneering and boisterous expression. He surveyed me arrogantly, giving vent to a long-drawn whistle, and turning on his heel I heard him say something to his companions about this “yellow dog we have to live with.” His words were so wantonly contemptuous that I burned with a greater indignation than I had ever felt for all the rudeness of New York. From the frowns and severe expressions of others around him, I judged such insults were unpopular. But in the midst of reserve and silence from my future classmates I received an unforgettable impression of smugness and shut-off-ness, as if the irrepressible Leslie Robin, as his name was, had voiced what was in the back of the minds of all. From others there, as I was soon to know—though not from Leslie—there would be no lack of kindness and consideration, but the school itself was set in a rigid mold—quite unlike the colleges and universities of the United States—a mold which held the superiority of the Briton above all races created as its unquestioned dogma, which believed without a trace of modern scepticism, without a fraction of scientific aloofness or of new time-vision, “better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay”—though (being only Canadian and incontestably New-World) it, too, must cringe, before the superiority of an elder country, England.
4
—gray twilight pour’d
On dewy pastures, dewy trees,
Softer than sleep—all things in order stored,
A haunt of ancient peace.
It was strange how the ghost of elderly England was in the new air here. Green Grove overlooked the city of Halifax, a naval city on the irregular Atlantic seacoast. In certain sections—notably the large and beautiful residential district and the many outlying homes—you saw walls with beautiful flowers climbing over stone, and hedged gardens as in England. Marvellous how this noisy colonial town could still convey obliquely an Old-World pattern, reminding of the English home. The downtown section of course was not attractive by reason of the thriving industrial atmosphere—the many factories concerned with iron founding, brewing, distilling, sugar refining, tanning etc. But the first impression here, too, was of British atmosphere. Well-dressed British naval and military officers were seen everywhere. Bright red coats, bright blue jackets. And many ex-servicemen, showing how thoroughly the British Empire had been mobilized a short while ago.
This city had been one of the chief bases of British operations against the revolting Americans during the Revolution. And also the War of 1812 found the Nova Scotians active and is said to have brought much wealth to the town. During the Civil War in the United States, this harbor was the starting point for numerous blockade runners and many of the citizens now living in the beautiful residential district made their fortunes at that time. Canadian fortunes—not so large certainly as those of United States millionaires, but undoubtedly going farther, lasting longer. For like England itself Canada bespoke the tenacity, the conservatism proper to Britons, and to Tennyson’s
A land of settled government,
A land of just and old renown,
Where Freedom broadens slowly down
From precedent to precedent.
Where faction seldom gathers head,
But by degrees to fulness wrought,
The strength of some diffuse thought
Hath time and space to work and spread.
5
I was studying English Literature in earnest. Tennyson and Browning, Ruskin and Carlyle. The professor at Maritime College I remember best was Doctor Donald, whom the boys called Donnie behind his back. He was a very dignified old gentleman, with Tennysonian locks and beard, and Browning personality. Sunset and evening star . . . the time of that looked just like him . . . and all is well with the world. I doubt if he would have assumed it necessary to argue the matter incessantly as Browning did . . .
This world’s no blot for us, nor blank.
It means intensely and means good.
For how could it be a blot or blank to Doctor Donnie with England in the offing?
Since all had to take the Liberal Arts Course at Maritime, every freshman had Doctor Donald’s Survey of English Literature and his classes were very large. Almost all the freshmen I knew were in my section—which contained more than one hundred students. Leslie Robin and his chums were there—and many others. Donnie was much respected. Even Leslie, always rough, wild, and insolent, dared no open rebellion before him. No high-necked sweaters, none, could enter here. At the start, Donnie had announced: “Two things I will not stand. I want nobody to chew gum here!” (Anybody with gum in the mouth promptly pressed it under the tongue, or stuck it beneath his chair.) “And I want nobody to wear sweaters in my class. When we sit down here for literary discussion, it must be done as English gentlemen.” Just before Donnie’s class was a busy time in lockers. It was like getting dressed for dinner. Every one had to put on that missing tie, or Donnie would not let him into the classroom.
Donnie himself always entered wearing his cap and gown. As he appeared, slowly and impressively, carrying a little bag of books for use in the classroom, there was a perfect silence, not a loud breath drawn. “Johnny Milton—Billy Shakespeare”—so one boy wrote in his theme, and Doctor Donald did not like that and commented a long time. He told the students, “Bad—bad—bad” (in a thundering voice). “You are very bad in composition. . . . But even so, you are better than American boys in American freshman classes,” he added confidentially. (Doctor Donnie also gave courses as visiting professor in an American university.)
All the boys clapped their hands and beat their heels against the floor at that, glad to be favorite sons. In the United States, you hear very little about Canadian colleges. But Canadian colleges are very America-conscious.
But then Doctor Donald clearly was still living in England, not in America. Very proud he was to be an Englishman:
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built of Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in a silver sea
. . . This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England!
He felt like that, with the same ecstasy and pride. To him, American colonization was the result of English enterprise; the oceanic highway was initiated and made safe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries owing to bold English expansion of commerce; and with Queen Victoria and the industrial revolution, then truly was the Empire most glorious of all, extending far and near, with spiderlike steel nets of communication covering the surface of all the earth.
Doctor Donald taught not only English literature—always he reflected English history, too. Somebody acted England’s heroic deeds . . . somebody sang them at the same time. He did not agree with William Morrison, who said, “History has remembered the kings and warriors because they destroyed; art has remembered the people because they created.” Doctor Donnie remembered all; warriors, kings, too, Chaucer was with Crecy and Poitiers, Shakespeare with Drake and Raleigh, Milton with Cromwell; Blake, Shelley, and Wordsworth, sandwiching Wellington with Tennyson and Browning. He would have found himself perfectly at home with his contemporary, Kipling, to whom he often referred. English literature was rightly great because it was the mirror for a great people, backed by a great moral sense, expanding over the world in a great empire. English laws, English democratic government had shocked all races into study and imitation. Behind everything worthwhile was the God-fearing, keen-thinking, liberty-loving, but decent and conservative English temperament. Day after day Doctor Donnie told how sublimation of the spirit, self-control, character, responsibility had always characterized the Britons’ civilization. “Through these unacknowledged legislators of the world, the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge has come to me,” said Doctor Donnie in one of his lectures.
6
English literature appealed to me more than anything else I was taking. Far more than English history, or British civilization. Day and night I read and read, until certain things that Doctor Donald was teaching were memorized unconsciously. It was the Oriental method of study. In my conversation, hardly knowing it, I used lines from Tennyson and Browning and many other poets. Sometimes the boys caught on, sometimes they did not. Tennyson was especially good, as his lines easily became prose, especially those in the long narrative poems. “Where were you yesterday? Whose child is that? What are you doing here?” It was like a conversation manual. I could say almost anything I craved to say now. But I had more trouble with the written English. I think I read too much Macaulay in studying for Doctor Donnie’s class. All my written sentences began to look like the life of Johnson; long sentences, the dovetailed kind—somehow the head verb was always getting lost or tangled. Ralph, my tutor, was very patient. He would attack some ambitious sentence of mine that curled and wound around itself. He would reduce it. “This sentence is just like saying, ‘I—hungry.’ Now what else do you need?” Ralph was always serious, never humorous. He would explain anything ad infinitum, always in the lowest and simplest terms.
Ian was my humorous tutor. To know Ian a little, you would not think him serious about anything. He seemed to effuse an air of raillery. When I came into his room for tutoring, the first fifteen minutes he might sit like an English gentleman, but only for the first fifteen minutes. Then he would put his coat collar up over his head, hunch his head down into it, and look at me with eyebrow cocked, out from underneath his coat. Underneath his prankishness, Ian was very reserved. His humor was all of the active kind, a practical joking, a daily drollery which seemingly he put up as a fence to shield the real workings of his mind.
Later I found out, from Ian’s mother, that all through the year he was writing religious poetry, appearing in his hometown paper. He never showed this to any one at Green Grove. But he showed his drawings to all. They were humorous drawings. Ian was a clever cartoonist, it was said. He did all the cartoons for the college paper—for instance, a man sitting on a piano, a man with a high hat and a maid coming in and dusting the hat with the man still in it. I didn’t see anything very funny in that, but Western humor was hard for me to get. Ian himself had just such a tall hat. His funniest joke was to put on that high hat with a very high white collar and cravat and play the ukulele.
Ian had been studying to be an engineer, before the war, but his service in France seemed to have knocked all desire for engineering out of him. He was tired of science, he said.
“Why?” I questioned.
“Well, in times of peace, it takes away a man’s job. In times of war, it takes away his life.”
But Ian would never go into this deeply, only semi-humorously, so it was hard to tell what he really thought. Sometimes there were symposiums in Ian’s room, in which he admitted cheerfully that the Bible could never be reconciled with itself, or with anything else. But that didn’t matter.
“Anyhow, I’m only interested in composing sermons, you know. Each one a noble little essay. But there will be jokes here and there, so people won’t get too bored.”
The other theologues were serious, not humorous. Except Allan. And Allan was not so much humorous as frivolous. He, too, was of the age to have been overseas, and always he wore his service button prominently. Not at all studious, Allan was more society-minded. He was small, but very good-looking, with beautifully combed crisp hair, and a dimple in his cleft chin. Always he was unusually well-dressed for Green Grove. Everything he ever wore was well pressed and clean, with the exception of his trench overcoat, of which he was very fond, though it was beginning to wear out. “Are you ashamed to go out with me in this?” he used to joke with me.
All that he had from overseas he treasured. Like most of the older boys in Green Grove, he was known as a hero-volunteer. Others were shy about confessing it. Not Allan. He loved to talk of that time overseas. All the hero-volunteers were allowed to choose what courses to omit on their overseas “credit,” and Allan was very pleased to cross out mathematics, natural science and psychology, which were generally considered very stiff stuff.
He loved to go to the “cinema” and often he would take me with him, paying my way. The first movie I saw made me cry—it was all Romeo and Juliet sentiment. But afterwards every movie seemed somewhat a repetition of the first one, and I didn’t cry any more—unlike good poetry which can be cried over many times.
7
That autumn there was to be a track race around Seaway Park. It was the big athletic event of Green Grove that season. The town people came to look on, and even visitors from afar. Boys everywhere said to me, “You’ll run, of course?” I had been a leader in sports among my childhood friends. Since then I had not had much chance to practise up. But I said, “Yes, if I knew what to wear.” All the other contestants had track costumes.
Then one of the athletic stars, on the floor below mine, raced up to my room and got my extra suit of Korean underwear from its drawer, the suit in fact which George had once cut down. Everybody knew about it and had much interest in it, for they often visited me while I was dressing, and then they would question me, if I found Canada warm. They all wore their underwear long for the winter, and even when bits showed below their wrists, they didn’t care. They were not Americanized like George.
We examined my underwear and I thought it seemed as modest as their track suits. When they suggested it, that solved the problem. Track day came and I went out to run in my cut-off short Korean underwear. How my Canadian schoolmates cheered when I appeared on the track! Many women were there too. A great crowd of spectators, and everybody cheered. I ran and ran. Some of my buttons burst off. Still, I did not win, for a big grain of sand got between my toes and I fell down. Two boys were ahead of me in the final spurt. But yet applause seemed all for me. I could not understand why a long write-up about me came out in the college paper next day, with a clever cartoon of me running, drawn by Ian. The write-up was very handsome, and it said that I had won, which wasn’t true, owing to sand in my toe. Next night at the dinner table there were speeches and a prize, and Ralph was chairman. In the speeches I was called a good sport and a prize was made for me. (Allan alone was angry with them for allowing me to do this. He had come to watch the race with a girl, and he said it was embarrassing.) I thought it was embarrassing, myself. But I did not resent that. I knew I was considered queer and alien, but the theologues and young Clendenin were the more friendly toward me for such jokes.
Leslie Robin I could not understand. His obvious dislike for me appeared almost irrational, and after this track meet particularly, he went out of his way to emphasize his hate. In mature retrospect I believe I must have been to Leslie an irritating symbol of some sort. His sister, Miss Jean Robin, was a very nice missionary in Korea, and I think he had other relatives in missionary fields. His father, too, was a well-known Presbyterian minister.
But Leslie had elected to take dentistry. He and his gang were the wildest, most difficult students in Green Grove, always at outs with the proctors and the authorities. They lived in the Old Building, as it was called, where rooms were very large and slightly more luxurious. Some of the rooms held four roommates. The Old Building was not so staid and theological as the Main House, and it was especially noisy early in the morning owing to the boys on upper floors who fought each other for the right of way in sliding down the banisters. The struggle was to reach the dining room in the Main House just before closing time—and no earlier. All the Maritime boys slept in a one-piece garment called a nightshirt. In the morning a boy needed only to jump out of bed and stuff the ends into his trousers for the last-minute rush.
Leslie and his friends defied Green Grove traditions whenever possible. As, for instance, by drinking. Green Grove as a whole was stern on the subject of intemperance. No post-war license yet had entered here. The students kept light homemade wines in their rooms, of course, even Ian (but not Ralph), yet hard drinking at Green Grove just wasn’t “done,” not even in secret except by Leslie and his gang. I heard that some of the boys at these wild parties drank from skulls, for being medical or dental students mostly, it was their pride to have skulls in their rooms. One boy had a complete skeleton, with its jaw fitted up on a string so that the owner from a secret hiding place could make it move when any visitor came. Dentists, like Leslie, on the other hand decorated their rooms with teeth.
After the track meet, yellow autumn soon turned into snowy winter. Ralph left early for the holidays. By the middle of December, unexpectedly there was ice on the pond. Now the talk was not of swimming or of running but only of skating. I had no skates, but again many pairs were offered for my use. Then one day Leslie Robin burst into my room. He accused me of stealing his skates. I was very angry and said it was a lie. He snarled and struck me on the cheek. “Turn the other. You’re a good Christian!” Friends of his held my arms. Then they heard steps in the corridor. They ran away.
Allan came in and found me almost in tears because I had been beaten. I wanted to get revenge, and I told Allan I must fight Robin and he must umpire. But Allan would not let me do this. He took me at once to Ian, and both talked to me, and told me that out of my love for Green Grove, I must be too proud to take any notice. I must ignore it. Fighting was against the rules of Green Grove. They made me promise not to fight with Robin. Something must have been done to Leslie, too, for after that I was unmolested. But bitterness remained in my heart. I hated Leslie Robin and didn’t see why I couldn’t have fought with him, with honest umpiring. In wrestling I knew I could beat and I often meditated on how I could throw him by various jujutsu tricks I knew. . . .
I believe that my resentment against Robin—and my undignified position as the poor and humiliated protégé of the right honorable British Canadian theologues poisoned my year at Maritime University. And yet when I look back, it seems as if everybody in Green Grove, with the exception of my enemy and his followers, was very kind to me, almost too kind. I belonged to no clique, I had no chum. I was inexorably unfamiliar. And yet I was accepted by all, and hardly a boy there who did not show graciousness to me in some manner, who did not make an effort to be especially well-meaning, kind and considerate in a shy, British way. Whenever anybody received a cake from home, no matter what others might be there, Chungpa was always invited—then given two slices instead of one. I did not care much for cake, yet ate for politeness and gratitude. By and by I got sick. It was not only the cake. I was unaccustomed to the heavy substantial Canadian food—meat, bread, and potatoes. Besides, I had never had regularly so much to eat, and my stomach was too surprised. The college mother came in and took the most kindly care of me while I was sick. She was Mrs. Cummings, a tall woman, enormously large, with a red face and motherly ways. Even Doctor MacMillan came to see me, and patting me kindly on the shoulder advised me not to eat so much.
Why then did I feel myself so lonely and sad, small, lowly, and unappreciated? Why, in short, did I long once more—like a veritable Roy Gardner—for escape? The magnificent journey to America, the avid desire for Western knowledge, had it come to this?