Gladiator | Page 8

eye on him. But Hugo did not misbehave. It was his first
contact with a group of children, his first view of the larger cosmos. He
sat quietly with his hands folded, as he had been told to sit. He listened
to the teacher's stories of Jesus with excited interest.
On his third Sunday he heard one of the children whisper: "Here comes
the strong boy."
He turned quickly, his cheeks red. "I'm not. I'm not."
"Yes, you are. Mother said so."
Hugo struggled with the two hymn books on the table. "I can't even lift
these books," he lied.
The other child was impressed and tried to explain the situation later,
taking the cause of Hugo's weakness against the charge of strength. But
the accusation rankled in Hugo's young mind. He hated to be
different--and he was beginning to realize that he was different.
From his earliest day that longing occupied him. He sought to hide his
strength. He hated to think that other people were talking about him.
The distinction he enjoyed was odious to him because it aroused
unpleasant emotions in other people. He could not realize that those
emotions sprang from personal and group jealousy, from the hatred of
superiority.
His mother, ever zealous to direct her son in the path of righteousness,
talked to him often about his strength and how great it would become
and what great and good deeds he could do with it. Those lectures on
virtuous crusades had two uses; they helped check any impulses in her
son which she felt would be harmful to her and they helped her to

become used to the abnormality in little Hugo. In her mind, it was like
telling a hunchback that his hump was a blessing disguised. Hugo was
always aware of the fact that her words connoted some latent evil in his
nature.
Abednego Danner left the discipline of his son to his wife. He watched
the child almost furtively. When Hugo was five, Mr. Danner taught him
to read. It was a laborious process and required an entire winter. But
Hugo emerged with a new world open to him--a world which he
attacked with interest. No one bothered him when he read. He could be
found often on sunny days, when other children were playing, prone on
the floor, puzzling out sentences in the books of the family library and
trying to catch their significance. During his fifth year he was not
allowed to play with other children. The neighborhood insisted on that.
With the busybodyness and contrariness of their kind the same
neighbors insisted that Hugo be sent to school in the following fall.
When, on the opening day, he did not appear, the truant officer called
for him. Hugo heard the conversation between the officer and his
mother. He was frightened. He vowed to himself that his abnormality
should be hidden deeply.
After that he was dropped into that microcosm of human life to which
so little attention is paid by adults. School frightened and excited Hugo.
For one thing, there were girls in school--and Hugo knew nothing about
them except that they were different from himself. There were
teachers--and they made one work, whether one wished to work or not.
They represented power, as a jailer represents power. The children
feared teachers. Hugo feared them.
But the lesson of Hugo's first six years was fairly well planted. He
blushingly ignored the direct questions of those children whom his
fame had reached. He gave no reason to any one for suspecting him of
abnormality. He became so familiar to his comrades that their curiosity
gradually vanished. He would not play games with them--his mother
had forbidden that. But he talked to them and was as friendly as they
allowed him to be. His sensitiveness and fear of ridicule made him a
voracious student. He liked books. He liked to know things and to learn

them.
Thus, bound by the conditionings of his babyhood, he reached the
spring of his first year in school without accident. Such tranquillity
could not long endure. The day which his mother had dreaded
ultimately arrived. A lanky farmer's son, older than the other children
in the first grade, chose a particularly quiet and balmy recess period to
plague little Hugo. The farmer's boy was, because of his size, the bully
and leader of all the other boys. He had not troubled himself to resent
Hugo's exclusiveness or Hugo's reputation until that morning when he
found himself without occupation. Hugo was sitting in the sun, his dark
eyes staring a little sadly over the laughing, rioting children.
The boy approached him. "Hello, strong man." He was shrewd enough
to make his voice so loud as to be generally audible. Hugo looked both
harmless and slightly pathetic.
"I'm