ll team at Oak Park High School. As a student, Ernest was a perfectionist about his grammar and studied English with a fervor. He contributed articles to the weekly school newspaper. It seems that the principal did not approve of Ernest's writings and he complained, often, about the content of Ernest's articles. Ernest was clear about his writing; he wanted people to "see and feel" and he wanted to enjoy himself while writing. Ernest loved having fun. If nothing was happening, mischievous Ernest made something happen. He would sometimes use forbidden words just to create a ruckus. Ernest, though wild and crazy, was a warm, caring individual. He loved the sea, mountains and the stars and hated anyone who he saw as a phoney. During World War I, Ernest, rejected from service because of a bad left eye, was an ambulance driver, in Italy, for the Red Cross. Very much like the hero of A Farewell to Arms, Ernest is shot in his knee and recuperates in a hospital, tended by a caring nurse named Agnes. Like Frederick Henry, in the book, he fell in love with the nurse and was given a medal for his heroism. Ernest returned home after the war, rejected by the nurse with whom he fell in love. He would party late into the night and invite, to his house, people his parents disapproved of. Ernest's mother rejected him and he felt that he had to move from home. He moved in with a friend living in Chicago and he wrote articles for The Toronto Star. In Chicago he met and then married Hadley Richardson. She believed that he should spend all his time in writing, and bought him a typewriter for his birthday. They decided that the best place for a writer to live was Paris, where he could devote himself to his writing. He said, at the time, that the most difficult thing to write about was being a man. They could not live on income from his stories and so Ernest, again, wrote for The Toronto Star. ...
