text:  He was very willing to go on in his own way if all parties would but let him alone; he was not going to be made a proselyte to long walks and toast and water nor had he any conscientious abhorrence of supper-parties; and as his prospects in life were in no way dependent upon a class or a scholarship and he seemed to be tacitly repudiated by the _literati_ of his college young and old on account of some of his aforesaid heterodox notions on the subject of study he accustomed himself gradually to set their opinions at defiance; while the moderate reading which encouragement and emulation had made easy at school became every day more and more distasteful