He even sold one of them.

The Old Gentleman was delighted, signed him a check for twenty dollars, and told him that in three years he could afford to send him abroad.
In the meanwhile Vandover set himself to enjoy the new life.

Little by little his "set" formed around him; Geary and young Haight, of course, and some half dozen young men of the city: young lawyers, medical students, and clerks in insurance offices.

As Vandover thus began to see the different phases of that life which lay beyond the limits of the college, he perceived more and more clearly that he was an exception among men for his temperance, his purity, and his clean living.
At their clubs and in their smoking-rooms he heard certain practices, which he had always believed to be degrading and abominable, discussed with shouts of laughter.

Those matters which until now he had regarded with an almost sacred veneration were subjects for immense jokes.