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A study in slouching indifference, he lounges against a Gothic building.
He is a tall fellow, but his height appears irrelevant to his presentation of himself.
A later photograph, marked “Cheyenne, Wyoming, 1876,” shows Johnson quite differently.
The following story tells what happened between the two pictures.
But the text itself, or even excerpts, was never published, until now.)
According to his headmaster at Exeter, Johnson was “gifted, attractive, athletic and able.”
Unless he finds a purpose to his life, he risks unseemly decline into indolence and vice."
William Johnson fulfilled his headmaster’s prediction during his first year at Yale.
Silas Johnson paid the bill.
For their part, they found reason to seek his attention, their formal upbringings notwithstanding.
In all other respects, however, he remained unrepentant.
And anyway, it looks simple enough."
Thus his family was surprised when William Johnson abruptly decided to go west during the summer of 1876.
Johnson never publicly explained why he had changed his mind.
But those close to him at Yale knew the reason.
He had decided to go west because of a bet.
Harold Hannibal Marlin was my own age, eighteen.
I found him insufferable.
The sentiment was returned in kind.
Nothing would exist but that we would compete over it.
We argued incessantly, always taking the opposing view from the other.
One night at dinner he said that the future of America lay in the developing West.
He replied I didn’t know what I was talking about, because I hadn’t been there.
I had never succeeded in neutralizing it.
“Going west is no shakes.
Any fool can go,” I said.
“But all fools haven’t goneat least you haven’t.”
“I’ve never had the least desire to go,” I said.
“I think you’re afraid.”
“That’s absurd.”
A nice trip to Europe’s more your way of things."
Europe is for old people and dusty scholars."
“Mark my word, you’ll tour Europe this summer, perhaps with a parasol.”
“And if I do go, that doesn’t mean”
“Ah hah!
Marlin turned to address the assembled table.
He smiled in a knowing, patronizing way that made me hate him and left me no choice.
That caught him by surprise; the smug smile froze on his face.
The bone professor?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re going with Marsh?
Accommodations for his group are Spartan, and they say he works the boys unmercifully.
It doesn’t seem your line of things at all.”
“When do you leave?”
“He hasn’t told us the date yet.”
“You’ve never laid eyes on Professor Marsh, and you’ll never go with him.”
“I will.”
“You won’t.”
“I tell you, it’s already decided.”
Marlin sighed in his patronizing way.
“I have a thousand dollars that says you will not go.”
Marlin had been losing the attention of the table, but he got it back with that one.
A thousand dollars was a great deal of money in 1876, even from one rich boy to another.
“A thousand dollars says you won’t go west with Marsh this summer,” Marlin repeated.
“You, sir, have made a wager,” I replied.
