r he may, by his own industry or good fortune, or the gift of others, have honestly acquired" (Hobson, 1963, p. 13). Veblen's intellectual awakening at Carleton was spurred more by his voracious appetite for independent reading than by the college curriculum. Veblen did, however, establish a friendship with teacher John Bates Clark, who was later to become a distinguished economist.
Veblen did not fit in well at Carleton College. Part of the problem was the frugality with which he and two of his siblings who also attended the college were forced to live. Veblen's father built them a small house to live in on a lot near campus, and they all dressed in clothes made by their mother: "These obvious signs of poverty and their natural rusticity set them off as a class apart from the proper Yankee tradition of Carleton" (Seckler, 1975, p. 26). Veblen's reputation as a misfit was exacerbated by his tendency to espouse unpopular ideals. At Carleton's weekly rhetorical exercises, he gained an unsavory reputation for delivering such speeches as "A Plea for Cannibalism" and "An Apology for Toper," a discourse which justified the behavior of drunkards.
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