Ponzi's Scheme_ The True Story of a Financial Legend - Mitchell Zuckoff [29]
In the immediate afterglow of the engagement, Richard pulled up his grades enough to rejoin his class as a junior in February 1908. But by spring Richard was back to his old habits and in danger of again failing freshman English composition. Once more, he became a topic of discussion for Harvard’s academic masters.
“I am sick in bed,” Richard wrote Hurlbut in April while he was suffering from an ear infection. “Can you put off action on my case until I am able to see you?” The dean granted his request, and also agreed to hold off writing another letter to Richard’s father. Two weeks later, though, the board stopped waiting and placed Richard on probation for his third time in three years at Harvard. He was failing three of his five classes, and Hurlbut wrote again to Edwin Grozier. This time the dean injected a touch of melancholy not found in their earlier exchanges.
“It is unnecessary for me to write you about the meaning of probation, for Richard has been on probation before,” Hurlbut wrote. “I hope that his final record will justify his relief from probation, so that it will be unnecessary to close his connection with the College. I wish that you would let me know of anything I can do to help the boy. Personally, he is a very attractive fellow, but I judge him to be as restless as the sea, or anything else that is a comparison for great restlessness.”
Hurlbut’s sympathy was answered by Edwin Grozier’s rising frustration.
“I do not see what you could do to help the young man, as you kindly offer,” the elder Grozier wrote. “It is up to him to help himself. That is what I am earnestly urging him to do, and hope to succeed. I am confident that he has his full share of natural ability, but to keep him down to the actual work in hand is the difficulty.”
A month later, in June 1908, at the end of Richard’s junior year, his third probation turned into his third separation. Hurlbut suggested that it was the last time.
“You are, I am sorry to say, dropped for two reasons; first, because of your unsatisfactory work for the year, and secondly, because of your failure to secure the necessary total of grades requisite for promotion to the Senior Class,” Hurlbut wrote to Richard. A special vote of the Administrative Board would be required for readmission, but Hurlbut thought that unlikely. “Personally I feel that experience out in the world would be better for you than a further attempt to succeed here at Cambridge.”
To Edwin Grozier, Hurlbut wrote: “I believe that it would be best to put the boy at work.” After some pleasantries and sympathies, he reinforced his point: “Were he my son I should put him at work.”
The wrought-iron gates to Harvard were closing. But Edwin Grozier, for whom a relentless work ethic was a defining trait, was determined to keep them open. And, as editor and publisher of the Post, he undoubtedly knew that his voice would carry weight, even among the dons of Harvard. “I am much disappointed and grieved that my son Richard should continue to do so poorly in his college studies,” he wrote Hurlbut. “Without doubt your advice to put him to work is sound, but, while there is any chance remaining of his completing his college course, I hesitate to abandon the effort.” He sent Richard to Harvard’s summer engineering camp, exiling the cosmopolitan young man to a world of trees and blackflies at Squam Lake, in New Hampshire. His orders were to return home with passing grades.
“Good work at camp will certainly be an important