But I had got more out of the books than they.

Their meagre physical experiences, plus their meagre intellectual experiences, made a negative sum so vast that it overbalanced their wholesome morality and healthful sports.
In short, I couldn't play with the pupils of a lower grade.

All the clean splendid young life that was theirs was denied me--thanks to my earlier tutelage under John Barleycorn.

I knew too much too young.

And yet, in the good time coming when alcohol is eliminated from the needs and the institutions of men, it will be the Y.M.C.A., and similar unthinkably better and wiser and more virile congregating-places, that will receive the men who now go to saloons to find themselves and one another.