His first report, he says, will soon reach home; he warns his mother that it will be unfavourable, and he explains that this bad showing is the result of a deliberate plot.

The boys who obtain high marks, Page declares, secure them usually by cheating or through the partisanship of the professors; a high grade therefore really means that the recipient is either a humbug or a bootlicker.

Page had therefore attempted to keep his reputation unsullied by aiming at a low academic record! The report on that three months' work, which still survives, discloses that Page's conspiracy against himself did not succeed, for his marks are all high.

"Be sure to send him back" is the annotation on this document, indicating that Page had made a better impression on Trinity than Trinity had made on Page.
But the rebellious young man did not return.

After Christmas, 1872, his schoolboy letters reveal him at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va.
Here again the atmosphere is Methodistical, but of a somewhat more genial type.