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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ramsey Milholland, by Booth Tarkington
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ramsey Milholland
+
+Author: Booth Tarkington
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2006 [EBook #2595]
+Last Updated: March 3, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMSEY MILHOLLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Earle Beach and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+RAMSEY MILHOLLAND
+
+
+by Booth Tarkington
+
+
+
+
+To the Memory of Billy Miller (William Henry Harrison Miller II) 1908 -
+1918 Little Patriot, Good Citizen Friend of Mankind
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+     When Johnnie comes marching home again,
+     Hurrah!  Hurrah!
+     We'll give him a hearty welcome then,
+     Hurrah!  Hurrah!
+     The men with the cheers, the boys with shouts,
+     The ladies they will all turn out,
+     And we'll all feel gay, when Johnnie comes marching home again!
+
+The old man and the little boy, his grandson, sat together in the shade
+of the big walnut tree in the front yard, watching the “Decoration
+Day Parade,” as it passed up the long street; and when the last of the
+veterans was out of sight the grandfather murmured the words of the tune
+that came drifting back from the now distant band at the head of the
+procession.
+
+“Yes, we'll all feel gay when Johnnie comes marching home again,” he
+finished, with a musing chuckle.
+
+“Did you, Grandpa?” the boy asked.
+
+“Did I what?”
+
+“Did you all feel gay when the army got home?”
+
+“It didn't get home all at once, precisely,” the grandfather explained.
+“When the war was over I suppose we felt relieved, more than anything
+else.”
+
+“You didn't feel so gay when the war _was_, though, I guess!” the boy
+ventured.
+
+“I guess we didn't.”
+
+“Were you scared, Grandpa? Were you ever scared the Rebels would win?”
+
+“No. We weren't ever afraid of that.”
+
+“Not any at all?”
+
+“No. Not any at all.”
+
+“Well, weren't you ever scared yourself, Grandpa? I mean when you were
+in a battle.”
+
+“Oh, yes; _then_ I was.” The old man laughed. “Scared plenty!”
+
+“I don't see why,” the boy said promptly. “I wouldn't be scared in a
+battle.”
+
+“Wouldn't you?”
+
+“'Course not! Grandpa, why don't you march in the Decoration Day Parade?
+Wouldn't they let you?”
+
+“I'm not able to march any more. Too short of breath and too shaky in
+the legs and too blind.”
+
+“I wouldn't care,” said the boy. “I'd be in the parade anyway, if I was
+you. They had some sittin' in carriages, 'way at the tail end; but I
+wouldn't like that. If I'd been in your place, Grandpa, and they'd let
+me be in that parade, I'd been right up by the band. Look, Grandpa!
+Watch me, Grandpa! This is the way I'd be, Grandpa.”
+
+He rose from the garden bench where they sat, and gave a complex
+imitation of what had most appealed to him as the grandeurs of the
+procession, his prancing legs simulating those of the horse of the grand
+marshal, while his upper parts rendered the drums and bugles of the
+band, as well as the officers and privates of the militia company which
+had been a feature of the parade. The only thing he left out was the
+detachment of veterans.
+
+“Putty-boom! Putty-boom! Putty-boom-boom-boom!” he vociferated, as the
+drums--and then as the bugles: “Ta, ta, ra, tara!” He addressed his
+restive legs: “_Whoa_, there, you Whitey! Gee! Haw! Git up!” Then,
+waving an imaginary sword: “Col-lumn right! Farwud _March!_ Halt! Carry
+_harms!_” He “carried arms.” “Show-dler _harms!_” He “shouldered arms,”
+ and returned to his seat.
+
+“That'd be me, Grandpa. That's the way I'd do.” And as the grandfather
+nodded, seeming to agree, a thought recently dismissed returned to the
+mind of the composite procession and he asked:
+
+“Well, _why_ weren't you ever afraid the Rebels would whip the Unions,
+Grandpa?”
+
+“Oh, we knew they couldn't.”
+
+“I guess so.” The little boy laughed disdainfully, thinking his question
+satisfactorily answered. “I guess those ole Rebels couldn't whipped a
+flea! They didn't know how to fight any at all, did they, Grandpa?”
+
+“Oh, yes, they did!”
+
+“What?” The boy was astounded. “Weren't they all just reg'lar ole
+cowards, Grandpa?”
+
+“No,” said the grandfather. “They were pretty fine soldiers.”
+
+“They were? Well, they ran away whenever you began shootin' at 'em,
+didn't they?”
+
+“Sometimes they did, but most times they didn't. Sometimes they fought
+like wildcats--and sometimes we were the ones that ran away.”
+
+“What for?”
+
+“To keep from getting killed, or maybe to keep from getting captured.”
+
+“But the Rebels were bad men, weren't they, Grandpa?”
+
+“No.”
+
+The boy's forehead, customarily vacant, showed some little vertical
+shadows, produced by a struggle to think. “Well, but--” he began,
+slowly. “Listen, Grandpa, listen here!”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Listen! Well, you said--you said you never got scared the ole Rebels
+were goin' to win.”
+
+“They did win pretty often,” said the grandfather. “They won a good many
+battles.”
+
+“I mean, you said you never got scared they'd win the war.”
+
+“No, we were never afraid of that.”
+
+“Well, but if they were good men and fought like wildcats, Grandpa, and
+kep' winning battles and everything, how could that be? How could you
+_help_ bein' scared they'd win the war?”
+
+The grandfather's feeble eyes twinkled brightly. “Why, we _knew_ they
+couldn't, Ramsey.”
+
+At this, the little vertical shadows on Ramsey's forehead became more
+pronounced, for he had succeeded in thinking. “Well, _they_ didn't know
+they couldn't, did they?” he argued. “They thought they were goin' to
+win, didn't they?”
+
+“Yes, I guess they did. Up till toward the last, I suppose they probably
+did. But you see they were wrong.”
+
+“Well, but--” Ramsey struggled. “Listen! Listen here, Grandpa! Well,
+anyway, if they never got scared _we'd_ win, and nobody got scared
+_they'd_ win--well, I don't see--”
+
+“You don't see what?”
+
+But Ramsey found himself unable to continue his concentration; he
+slumped down upon the small of his back, and his brow relaxed to its
+more comfortable placidity, while his eyes wandered with a new butterfly
+fluttering over the irises that bordered the iron picket fence at the
+south side of the yard. “Oh, nothin' much,” he murmured.
+
+“I see.” And his grandfather laughed again. “You mean: If the Rebels
+felt just as sure of winning the war as we did, and kept winning battles
+why shouldn't we ever have had any doubts that we were going to win?
+That's it, isn't it?”
+
+“I guess so, Grandpa.”
+
+“Well, I think it was mostly because we were certain that we were
+right.”
+
+“I see,” said Ramsey. “The Rebels knew they were on the side of the
+Devil.” But at this, the grandfather's laugh was louder than it had been
+before, and Ramsey looked hurt. “Well, you can laugh if you want to!” he
+objected in an aggrieved voice. “Anyway, the Sunday-school sup'intendent
+told us when people knew they were on the Devil's side they always--”
+
+“I dare say, I dare say,” the old man interrupted, a little impatiently.
+“But in this world mighty few people think they're on the Devil's side,
+Ramsey. There was a Frenchman once, in olden times; he said people were
+crazy because, though they couldn't even make worms, they believed they
+could make gods. And so whenever countries or parts of a country get
+into a war, each side makes a god and a devil, and says: 'God's on our
+side and the Devil's on the other.' The South thought the Devil was on
+our side, you see.”
+
+“Well, that kind o' mixes it all up more'n ever.”
+
+“Yes, it seems so; but Abraham Lincoln wasn't mixed up about it. When
+some people told him that God was on our side, he said the important
+thing was to find out if we were on God's side. That was the whole
+question, you see; because either side could make up a god, the kind of
+a god they liked and wanted; and then they'd believe in him, too, and
+fight for him--but if he was only a made-up god they'd lose. President
+Lincoln didn't want to have a made-up god on his side; he wanted to find
+God Himself and find out what he wanted, and then do it. And that's what
+Lincoln did.”
+
+“Well, I don't understand much of all _that_!”
+
+“No? Then suppose you look at it this way: The South was fighting
+for what it believed to be its rights, but we weren't fighting for our
+rights; we were fighting for the right. The South was fighting for
+what it believed to be its right to split the Union and be a country by
+itself; but we were fighting for 'Liberty and Union, now and forever,
+one and inseparable.' It wasn't only the Union we fought for; it was
+Freedom. The South wanted freedom to leave the Union; but the reason the
+South wanted that freedom to separate from us was because _we_ wanted
+the Freedom of Man. _There's_ the reason we had the certain knowledge
+that we were going to win the war. How plain and simple it is!”
+
+Ramsey didn't think so. He had begun to feel bored by the conversation,
+and to undergo the oppression he usually suffered in school; yet he took
+a little interest in the inexplicable increase of fervour with which his
+grandfather spoke, and in a shoot of sunshine which somehow got through
+the foliage of the walnut tree and made a bedazzlement of glinting fine
+lines in one spot, about the size of a saucer, upon the old man's head
+of thick white hair. Half closing his eyes, drowsily, Ramsey played that
+this sunshine spot was a white bird's-nest and, and he had a momentary
+half dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue
+soldier cap on its head. The earnest old voice of the veteran was only a
+sound in the boy's ears.
+
+“Yes, it's simple and plain enough now, though then we didn't often
+think of it in exactly this way, but just went on fighting and
+never doubted. We knew the struggle and suffering of our fathers and
+grandfathers to make a great country here for Freedom, and we knew that
+all this wasn't just the whim of a foolish god, willing to waste such
+great things--we knew that such a country couldn't have been building up
+just to be wasted. But, more than that, we knew that armies fighting
+for the Freedom of Man _had_ to win, in the long run, over armies that
+fought for what they considered their rights.
+
+“We didn't set out to free the slaves, so far as we knew. Yet our being
+against slavery was what made the war, and we had the consciousness
+that we were on the side of God's plan, because His plan is clearly the
+Freedom of Man. Long ago we began to see the hints of His plan--a little
+like the way you can see what's coming in August from what happens in
+April, but man has to win his freedom from himself--men in the light
+have to fight against men in the dark of their own shadow. That light is
+the answer; we had the light that made us never doubt. Ours was the true
+light, and so we--”
+
+
+“Boom--” The veterans had begun to fire their cannon on the crest of
+the low hill, out at the cemetery; and from a little way down the street
+came the rat-a-tat of a toy drum and sounds of a fife played execrably.
+A file of children in cocked hats made of newspapers came marching
+importantly up the sidewalk under the maple shade trees; and in advance,
+upon a velocipede, rode a tin-sworded personage, shrieking incessant
+commands but not concerning himself with whether or not any military
+obedience was thereby obtained. Here was a revivifying effect upon young
+Ramsey; his sluggard eyelids opened electrically; he leaped to his feet
+and, abandoning his grandfather without preface or apology, sped across
+the lawn and out of the gate, charging headlong upon the commander of
+the company.
+
+“You get off that 'locipede, Wesley Bender!” he bellowed. “You gimme
+that sword! What rights you got to go bein' captain o' my army, I'd like
+to know! Who got up this army, in the first place, I'd like to know! I
+did, myself yesterd'y afternoon, and you get back in line or I won't let
+you b'long to it at all!”
+
+The pretender succumbed; he instantly dismounted, being out-shouted and
+overawed. On foot he took his place in the ranks, while Ramsey became
+sternly vociferous. “In-tention, company! Farwud _march_! Col-lumn
+_right_! Right-showdler _harms_! Halt! Far-wud _march_. Carry harms--”
+
+The Army went trudging away under the continuous but unheeded fire of
+orders, and presently disappeared round a corner, leaving the veteran
+chuckling feebly under his walnut tree and alone with the empty street.
+All trace of what he had said seemed to have been wiped from the
+grandson's mind; but memory has curious ways. Ramsey had understood
+not a fifth nor a tenth of his grandfather's talk, and already he had
+“forgotten” all of it--yet not only were there many, many times in the
+boy's later life when, without ascertainable cause, he would remember
+the sunlight falling upon the old man's white head, to make that
+semblance of a glittering bird's-nest there, but with the picture came
+recollections of words and sentences spoken by the grandfather, though
+the listener, half-drowsily, had heard but the sound of an old,
+earnest voice--and even the veteran's meaning finally took on a greater
+definiteness till it became, in the grandson's thoughts, something clear
+and bright and beautiful that he knew without being just sure where or
+how he had learned it.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+Ramsey Milholland sat miserably in school, his conscious being
+consisting principally of a dull hate. Torpor was a little dispersed
+during a fifteen-minute interval of “Music,” when he and all the other
+pupils in the large room of the “Five B. Grade” sang repeated fractions
+of what they enunciated as “The Star Span-guh-hulled Banner”; but
+afterward he relapsed into the low spirits and animosity natural to
+anybody during enforced confinement under instruction. No alleviation
+was accomplished by an invader's temporary usurpation of the teacher's
+platform, a brisk and unsympathetically cheerful young woman mounting
+thereon to “teach German.”
+
+For a long time mathematics and German had been about equally repulsive
+to Ramsey, who found himself daily in the compulsory presence of both;
+but he was gradually coming to regard German with the greater horror,
+because, after months of patient mental resistance, he at last began to
+comprehend that the German language has sixteen special and particular
+ways of using the German article corresponding to that flexible bit of a
+word so easily managed English--_the_. What in the world was the use of
+having sixteen ways of doing a thing that could just as well be done in
+one? If the Germans had contented themselves with insisting upon sixteen
+useless variations for infrequent words, such as _hippopotamus_, for
+instance, Ramsey might have thought the affair unreasonable but not
+necessarily vicious--it would be easy enough to avoid talking about
+a hippopotamus if he ever had to go to Germany. But the fact that the
+Germans picked out _a_ and _the_ and many other little words in use all
+the time, and gave every one of them sixteen forms, and expected Ramsey
+Milholland to learn this dizzying uselessness down to the last crotchety
+detail, with “When to employ Which” as a nausea to prepare for the
+final convulsion when one _didn't_ use Which, because it was an
+“Exception”--there was a fashion of making easy matters hard that was
+merely hellish.
+
+The teacher was strict but enthusiastic; she told the children, over and
+over, that German was a beautiful language, and her face always had a
+glow when she said this. At such times the children looked patient; they
+supposed it must be so, because she was an adult and their teacher; and
+they believed her with the same manner of believing which those of them
+who went to Sunday-school used there when the Sunday-school teachers
+were pushed into explanations of various matters set forth in the Old
+Testament, or gave reckless descriptions of heaven. That is to say, the
+children did not challenge or deny; already they had been driven into
+habits of resignation and were passing out of the age when childhood is
+able to reject adult nonsense.
+
+Thus, to Ramsey Milholland, the German language seemed to be a
+collection of perverse inventions for undeserved torment; it was full of
+revolting surprises in the way of genders; vocally it often necessitated
+the employment of noises suggestive of an incompletely mastered
+knowledge of etiquette; and far inside him there was something faintly
+but constantly antagonistic to it--yet, when the teacher declared that
+German was incomparably the most beautiful language in the world, one of
+the many facets of his mind submissively absorbed the statement as light
+to be passed inward; it was part of the lesson to be learned. He did not
+know whether the English language was beautiful or not; he never thought
+about that, and no one ever said anything to him about it. Moreover,
+though his deeper inward hated “German,” he liked his German teacher,
+and it was pleasant to look at her when that glow came upon her face.
+
+Sometimes, too, there were moments of relaxation in her class, when
+she would stop the lesson and tell the children about Germany: what a
+beautiful, good country it was, so trim and orderly, with such pleasant
+customs, and all the people sensible and energetic and healthy. There
+was “Music” again in the German class, which was another alleviation;
+though it was the same old “Star Spangled Banner” over again. Ramsey
+was tired of the song and tired of “My Country 'Tis of Thee”; they were
+bores, but it was amusing to sing them in German. In German they sounded
+“sort o' funny,” so he didn't mind this bit of the day's work.
+
+Half an hour later there arrived his supreme trial of this particular
+morning. Arithmetic then being the order of business before the house,
+he was sent alone to the blackboard, supposedly to make lucid the proper
+reply to a fatal conundrum in decimals, and under the glare and focus of
+the whole room he breathed heavily and itched everywhere; his brain at
+once became sheer hash. He consumed as much time as possible in getting
+the terms of the problem stated in chalk; then, affecting to be critical
+of his own handiwork, erased what he had done and carefully wrote it
+again. After that, he erased half of it, slowly retraced the figures,
+and stepped back as if to see whether perspective improved their
+appearance. Again he lifted the eraser.
+
+“Ramsey Milholland!”
+
+“Ma'am?”
+
+“Put down that eraser!”
+
+“Yes'm. I just thought--”
+
+Sharply bidden to get forward with his task, he explained in a feeble
+voice that he had first to tie a shoe string and stooped to do so, but
+was not permitted. Miss Ridgely tried to stimulate him with hints and
+suggestion; found him, so far as decimals went, mere protoplasm, and,
+wondering how so helpless a thing could live, summoned to the board
+little Dora Yocum, the star of the class, whereupon Ramsey moved toward
+his seat.
+
+“Stand still, Ramsey! You stay right where you are and try to learn
+something from the way Dora does it.”
+
+The class giggled, and Ramsey stood, but learned nothing. His
+conspicuousness was unendurable, because all of his schoolmates
+naturally found more entertainment in watching him than in following
+the performance of the capable Dora. He put his hands in and out of his
+pockets; was bidden to hold them still, also not to shuffle his feet;
+and when in a false assumption of ease he would have scratched his head
+Miss Ridgely's severity increased, so that he was compelled to give over
+the attempt.
+
+Instructed to watch every figure chalked up by the mathematical wonder,
+his eyes, grown sodden, were unable to remove themselves from the part
+in her hair at the back of her head, where two little braids began their
+separate careers to end in a couple of blue-and-red checked bits of
+ribbon, one upon each of her thin shoulder blades. He was conscious that
+the part in Dora's shining brown hair was odious, but he was unconscious
+of anything arithmetical. His sensations clogged his intellect; he
+suffered from unsought notoriety, and hated Dora Yocum; most of all he
+hated her busy little shoulder blades.
+
+He had to be “kept in” after school; and when he was allowed to go home
+he averted his eyes as he went by the house where Dora lived. She was
+out in the yard, eating a doughnut, and he knew it; but he had passed
+the age when it is just as permissible to throw a rock at a girl as at a
+boy; and stifling his normal inclinations, he walked sturdily on, though
+he indulged himself so far as to engage in a murmured conversation with
+one of the familiar spirits dwelling somewhere within him. “Pfa!” said
+Ramsey to himself--or himself to Ramsey, since it is difficult to say
+which was which. “Pfa! Thinks she's smart, don't she?”... “Well, I guess
+she does, but she ain't!” ... “I hate her, don't you?”... “You bet
+your life I hate her!”... “Teacher's Pet, that's what _I_ call her!”...
+“Well, that's what _I_ call her, too, don't I?” “Well, _I_ do; that's
+all she is, anyway--dirty ole Teacher's Pet!”
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+He had not forgiven her four years later when he entered high school
+in her company, for somehow Ramsey managed to shovel his way through
+examinations and stayed with the class. By this time he had a long
+accumulation of reasons for hating her: Dora's persistent and increasing
+competency was not short of flamboyant, and teachers naturally got the
+habit of flinging their quickest pupil in the face of their slowest and
+“dumbest.” Nevertheless, Ramsey was unable to deny that she had become
+less awful lookin' than she used to be. At least, he was honest enough
+to make a partial retraction when his friend and classmate, Fred
+Mitchell, insisted that an amelioration of Dora's appearance could be
+actually proven.
+
+“Well, I'll take it back. I don't claim she's every last bit as awful
+lookin' as she always has been,” said Ramsey, toward the conclusion of
+the argument. “I'll say this for her, she's awful lookin', but she may
+not be as awful lookin' as she was. She don't come to school with the
+edge of some of her underclo'es showin' below her dress any more, about
+every other day, and her eyewinkers have got to stickin' out some, and
+she may not be so abbasa_loot_ly skinny, but she'll haf to wait a mighty
+long while before _I_ want to look at her without gettin' sick!”
+
+The implication that Miss Yocum cared to have Ramsey look at her, either
+with or without gettin' sick, was mere rhetoric, and recognized as such
+by the producer of it; she had never given the slightest evidence of
+any desire that his gaze be bent upon her. What truth lay underneath his
+flourish rested upon the fact that he could not look at her without some
+symptoms of the sort he had tersely sketched to his friend; and yet, so
+pungent is the fascination of self-inflicted misery, he did look at her,
+during periods of study, often for three or four minutes at a stretch.
+His expression at such times indeed resembled that of one who has dined
+unwisely; but Dora Yocum was always too eagerly busy to notice it. He
+was almost never in her eye, but she was continually in his; moreover,
+as the banner pupil she was with hourly frequency an exhibit before the
+whole class.
+
+Ramsey found her worst of all when her turn came in “Declamation,”
+ on Friday afternoons. When she ascended the platform, bobbed a little
+preliminary bow and began, “Listen, my children, and you shall hear,”
+ Ramsey included Paul Revere and the Old North Church and the whole
+Revolutionary War in his antipathy, since they somehow appeared to
+be the property of the Teacher's Pet. For Dora held this post in
+“Declamation” as well as in everything else; here, as elsewhere, the
+hateful child's prowess surpassed that of all others; and the teacher
+always entrusted her with the rendition of the “patriotic selections”:
+Dora seemed to take fire herself when she declared:
+
+     “The fate of a nation was riding that night;
+     And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight,
+     Kindled the land into flame with its heat.”
+
+Ramsey himself was in the same section of declaimers, and performed
+next--a ghastly contrast. He gave a “selection from Shakespeare,”
+ assigned by the teacher; and he began this continuous misfortune by
+stumbling violently as he ascended the platform, which stimulated a
+general giggle already in being at the mere calling of his name. All of
+the class were bright with happy anticipation, for the miserable Ramsey
+seldom failed their hopes, particularly in “Declamation.” He faced them,
+his complexion wan, his expression both baleful and horrified; and he
+began in a loud, hurried voice, from which every hint of intelligence
+was excluded:
+
+“Most pottent, grave, and rev--”
+
+The teacher tapped sharply on her desk, and stopped him. “You've
+forgotten to bow,” she said. “And don't say 'pottent.' The word is
+'potent'.”
+
+Ramsey flopped his head at the rear wall of the room, and began again:
+
+“Most pottent potent gray and revenerd signers my very nobe and approve
+good masters that I have tan away this sole man's dutter it is mose true
+true I have marry dur the very headman frun tuv my fending hath this
+extent no more rude am I in speech--in speech--rude am I in speech--in
+speech--in speech--in speech--”
+
+He had stalled. Perhaps the fatal truth of that phrase, and some sense
+of its applicability to the occasion had interfered with the mechanism
+which he had set in operation to get rid of the “recitation” for him.
+At all events, the machine had to run off its job all at once, or it
+wouldn't run at all. Stopped, it stayed stopped, and backing off granted
+no new impetus, though he tried, again and again. “Hath this extent
+no more rude am I in speech--” He gulped audibly. “Rude rude rude am
+I--rude am I in speech--in speech--in speech. Rude am I in speech--”
+
+“Yes,” the irritated teacher said, as Ramsey's failing voice continued
+huskily to insist upon this point. “I think you are!” And her nerves
+were a little soothed by the shout of laughter from the school--it was
+never difficult for teachers to be witty. “Go sit down, Ramsey, and do
+it after school.”
+
+His ears roaring, the unfortunate went to his seat, and, among all
+the hilarious faces, one stood out--Dora Yocum's. Her laughter was
+precocious; it was that of a confirmed superior, insufferably adult--she
+was laughing at him as a grown person laughs at a child. Conspicuously
+and unmistakably, there was something indulgent in her amusement. He
+choked. Here was a little squirt of a high-school girl who would trot
+up to George Washington himself and show off around him, given the
+opportunity; and George Washington would probably pat her on the head,
+or give her a medal--or something. Well, let him! Ramsey didn't care.
+He didn't care for George Washington, or Paul Revere, or Shakespeare, or
+any of 'em. They could all go to the dickens with Dora Yocum. They were
+all a lot of smarties anyway and he hated the whole stew of 'em!
+
+There was one, however, whom he somehow couldn't manage to hate, even
+though this one officially seemed to be as intimately associated with
+Dora Yocum and superiority as the others were. Ramsey couldn't hate
+Abraham Lincoln, even when Dora was chosen to deliver the “Gettysburg
+Address” on the twelfth of February. Vaguely, yet reassuringly, Ramsey
+felt that Lincoln had resisted adoption by the intellectuals. Lincoln
+had said “Government of the people, by the people, for the people,” and
+that didn't mean government by the teacher and the Teacher's Pet
+and Paul Revere and Shakespeare and suchlike; it meant government by
+everybody, and therefore Ramsey had as much to do with it as anybody
+else had. This was friendly; and he believed that if Abraham Lincoln
+could have walked into the schoolroom, Lincoln would have been as
+friendly with him as with Dora and the teacher herself. Beyond a doubt,
+Dora and the teacher _thought_ Lincoln belonged to them and their crowd
+of exclusives; they seemed to think they owned the whole United States;
+but Ramsey was sure they were mistaken about Abraham Lincoln.
+
+He felt that it was just like this little Yocum snippet to assume such a
+thing, and it made him sicker than ever to look at her.
+
+Then, one day, he noticed that her eye-winkers were stickin' out farther
+and farther.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+His discovery irritated him the more. Next thing, this ole Teacher's Pet
+would do she'd get to thinkin' she was pretty! If _that_ happened, well,
+nobody _could_ stand her! The long lashes made her eyes shadowy, and it
+was a fact that her shoulder blades ceased to insist upon notoriety; you
+couldn't tell where they were at all, any more. Her back seemed to be
+just a regular back, not made up of a lot of implements like shoulder
+blades and things.
+
+A contemptible thing happened. Wesley Bender was well known to be the
+most untidy boy in the class and had never shown any remorse for his
+reputation or made the slightest effort either to improve or to dispute
+it. He was content: it failed to lower his standing with his fellows
+or to impress them unfavourably. In fact, he was treated as one who has
+attained a slight distinction. At least, he owned one superlative, no
+matter what its quality, and it lifted him out of the commonplace. It
+helped him to become better known, and boys liked to be seen with him.
+But one day, there was a rearrangement of the seating in the schoolroom:
+Wesley Bender was given a desk next in front of Dora Yocum's; and within
+a week the whole room knew that Wesley had begun voluntarily to wash his
+neck--the back of it, anyhow.
+
+This was at the bottom of the fight between Ramsey Milholland and Wesley
+Bender, and the diplomatic exchanges immediately preceding hostilities
+were charmingly frank and unhyprocitical, although quite as mixed-up
+and off-the-issue as if they had been prepared by professional foreign
+office men. Ramsey and Fred Mitchell and four other boys waylaid young
+Bender on the street after school, intending jocosities rather than
+violence, but the victim proved sensitive. “You take your ole hands off
+o' me!” he said fiercely, as they began to push him about among them.
+
+“Ole dirty Wes!” they hoarsely bellowed and squawked, in their changing
+voices. “Washes his ears!”... “Washes his _neck!_”... “Dora Yocum told
+his mama to turn the hose on him!”... “Yay-ho! Ole dirty Wes tryin to be
+a duke!”
+
+Wesley broke from them and backed away, swinging his strapped books in
+a dangerous circle. “You keep off!” he warned them. “I got as much right
+to my pers'nal appearance as anybody!”
+
+This richly fed their humour, and they rioted round him, keeping outside
+the swinging books at the end of the strap. “Pers'nal appearance!”...
+“Who went and bought it for you, Wes?”... “Nobody bought it for him.
+Dora Yocum took and give him one!”
+
+“You leave ladies' names alone!” cried the chivalrous Wesley. “You ought
+to know better, on the public street, you--pups!”
+
+Here was a serious affront, at least to Ramsey Milholland's way
+of thinking; for Ramsey, also, now proved sensitive. He quoted his
+friends--“Shut up!”--and advanced toward Wesley. “You look here! Who you
+callin' 'pups'?”
+
+“Everybody!” Wesley hotly returned. “Everybody that hasn't got any
+more decency than to go around mentioning ladies' names on the public
+streets. Everybody that goes around mentioning ladies' names on the
+public streets are pups!”
+
+“They are, are they?” Ramsey as hotly demanded. “Well, you just look
+here a minute; my own father mentions my mother's name on the public
+streets whenever he wants to, and you just try callin' my father a pup,
+and you won't know what happened to you!”
+
+“What'll _you_ do about it?”
+
+“I'll put a new head on you,” said Ramsey. “That's what I'll do, because
+anybody that calls my father or mother a pup--”
+
+“Oh, shut up! I wasn't talking about your ole father and mother. I said
+everybody that mentioned Dora Yocum's name on the public streets was
+a pup, and I mean it! Everybody that mentions Dora Yocum's name on the
+pub--”
+
+“Dora Yocum!” said Ramsey. “I got a perfect right to say it anywhere I
+want to. Dora Yocum, Dora Yocum, Dora Yocum!--”
+
+“All right, then you're a pup!”
+
+Ramsey charged upon him and received a suffocating blow full in the
+face, not from Mr. Bender's fist but from the solid bundle of books
+at the end of the strap. Ramsey saw eight or ten objectives instantly:
+there were Wesley Benders standing full length in the air on top of
+other Wesley Benders, and more Wesley Benders zigzagged out sideways
+from still other Wesley Benders; nevertheless, he found one of these and
+it proved to be flesh. He engaged it wildly at fisticuffs; pounded
+it upon the countenance and drove it away. Then he sat down upon the
+curbstone, and, with his dizzy eyes shut, leaned forward for the better
+accommodation of his ensanguined nose.
+
+Wesley had retreated to the other side of the street holding a grimy
+handkerchief to the midmost parts of his pallid face. “There, you ole
+damn pup!” he shouted, in a voice which threatened to sob. “I guess
+_that'll_ teach you to be careful how you mention Dora Yocum's name on
+the public streets!”
+
+At this, Ramsey made a motion as if to rise and pursue, whereupon Wesley
+fled, wailing back over his shoulder as he ran, “You wait till I ketch
+you out alone on the public streets and I'll--”
+
+His voice was lost in an outburst of hooting from his former friends,
+who sympathetically surrounded the wounded Ramsey. But in a measure,
+at least, the chivalrous fugitive had won his point. He was routed and
+outdone, yet what survived the day was a rumour, which became a sort of
+tenuous legend among those interested. There had been a fight over Dora
+Yocum, it appeared, and Ramsey Milholland had attempted to maintain
+something derogatory to the lady, while Wesley defended her as a
+knightly youth should. The something derogatory was left vague; nobody
+attempted to say just what it was, and the effects of the legend divided
+the schoolroom strictly according to gender.
+
+The boys, unmindful of proper gallantry, supported Ramsey on account of
+the way he had persisted in lickin' the stuffin' out of Wesley Bender
+after receiving that preliminary wallop from Wesley's blackjack
+bundle of books. The girls petted and championed Wesley; they talked
+outrageously of his conqueror, fiercely declaring that he ought to be
+arrested; and for weeks they maintained a new manner toward him. They
+kept their facial expressions hostile, but perhaps this was more for one
+another's benefit than for Ramsey's; and several of them went so far out
+of their way to find even private opportunities for reproving him that
+an alert observer might have suspected them to have been less indignant
+than they seemed--but not Ramsey. He thought they all hated him, and
+said he was glad of it.
+
+Dora was a non-partisan. The little prig was so diligent at her books
+she gave never the slightest sign of comprehending that there had been
+a fight about her. Having no real cognizance of Messrs. Bender and
+Milholland except as impediments to the advance of learning, she did not
+even look demure.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+With Wesley Bender, Ramsey was again upon fair terms before the winter
+had run its course; the two were neighbours and, moreover, were drawn
+together by a community of interests which made their reconciliation a
+necessity. Ramsey played the guitar and Wesley played the mandolin.
+
+All ill feeling between them died with the first duet of spring, yet the
+twinkling they made had no charm to soothe the savage breast of Ramsey
+whenever the Teacher's Pet came into his thoughts. He daydreamed a
+thousand ways of putting her in her place, but was unable to carry
+out any of them, and had but a cobwebby satisfaction in imagining
+discomfitures for her which remained imaginary. With a yearning so
+poignant that it hurt, he yearned and yearned to show her what she
+really was. “Just once!” he said to Fred Mitchell. “That's all I ask,
+just once. Just gimme one chance to show that girl what she really is.
+I guess if I ever get the chance she'll find out what's the matter with
+her, for _once_ in her life, anyway!” Thus it came to be talked about
+and understood and expected in Ramsey's circle, all male, that Dora
+Yocum's day was coming. The nature of the disaster was left vague, but
+there was no doubt in the world that retribution merely awaited its
+ideal opportunity. “You'll see!” said Ramsey. “The time'll come when
+that ole girl'll wish she'd moved o' this town before she ever got
+appointed monitor of _our_ class! Just you wait!”
+
+They waited, but conditions appeared to remain unfavourable
+indefinitely. Perhaps the great opportunity might have arrived if Ramsey
+had been able to achieve a startling importance in any of the “various
+divergent yet parallel lines of school endeavour”--one of the phrases by
+means of which teachers and principal clogged the minds of their unarmed
+auditors. But though he was far from being the dumb driven beast of
+misfortune that he seemed in the schoolroom, and, in fact, lived a
+double life, exhibiting in his out-of-school hours a remarkable example
+of “secondary personality”--a creature fearing nothing and capable
+of laughter; blue-eyed, fairly robust, and anything but dumb--he was
+nevertheless without endowment or attainment great enough to get him
+distinction.
+
+He “tried for” the high-school eleven, and “tried for” the nine, but
+the experts were not long in eliminating him from either of these
+competitions, and he had to content himself with cheering instead of
+getting cheered. He was by no manner of means athlete enough, or enough
+of anything else, to put Dora Yocum in her place, and so he and the
+great opportunity were still waiting in May, at the end of the second
+year of high school, when the class, now the “10 A,” reverted to an old
+fashion and decided to entertain itself with a woodland picnic.
+
+They gathered upon the sandy banks of a creek, in the blue shade of big,
+patchy-barked sycamores, with a dancing sky on top of everything and
+gold dust atwinkle over the water. Hither the napkin-covered baskets
+were brought from the wagons and assembled in the shade, where they
+appeared as an attractive little meadow of white napery, and gave both
+surprise and pleasure to communities of ants and to other original
+settlers of the neighbourhood.
+
+From this nucleus or headquarters of the picnic, various expeditions
+set forth up and down the creek and through the woods that bordered it.
+Camera work was constant; spring wild flowers were accumulated by groups
+of girls who trooped through the woods with eager eyes searching the
+thickets; two envied boy fishermen established themselves upon a bank
+up-stream, with hooks and lines thoughtfully brought with them, and
+poles which they fashioned from young saplings. They took mussels from
+the shallows, for bait, and having gone to all this trouble, declined
+to share with friends less energetic and provident the perquisites and
+pleasures secured to themselves.
+
+Albert Paxton was another person who proved his enterprise. Having
+visited the spot some days before, he had hired for his exclusive use
+throughout the duration of the picnic an old rowboat belonging to a
+shanty squatter; it was the only rowboat within a mile or two and Albert
+had his own uses for it. Albert was the class lover and, after first
+taking the three chaperon teachers “out for a row,” an excursion
+concluded in about ten minutes, he disembarked them; Sadie Clews stepped
+into the boat, a pocket camera in one hand, a tennis racket in the
+other; and the two spent the rest of the day, except for the luncheon
+interval, solemnly drifting along the banks or grounded on a shoal. Now
+and then Albert would row a few strokes, and at almost any time when the
+populated shore glanced toward them, Sadie would be seen photographing
+Albert, or Albert would be seen photographing Sadie, but the tennis
+racket remained an enigma. Oarsman and passenger appeared to have no
+conversation whatever--not once was either seen or heard to address a
+remark to the other; and they looked as placid as their own upside-down
+reflections in one of the still pools they slowly floated over. They
+were sixteen, and had been “engaged” more than two years.
+
+On the borders of the little meadow of baskets there had been deposited
+two black shapes, which remained undisturbed throughout the day, a
+closed guitar case and a closed mandolin case, no doubt containing each
+its proper instrument. So far as any use of these went they seemed to be
+of the same leisure class to which Sadie's tennis racket belonged, for
+when one of the teachers suggested music, the musicians proved shy.
+Wesley Bender said they hadn't learned to play anything much and,
+besides, he had a couple o' broken strings he didn't know as he could
+fix up; and Ramsey said he guessed it seemed kind o' too hot to play
+much. Joining friends, they organized a contest in marksmanship, the
+target being a floating can which they assailed with pebbles; and after
+that they “skipped” flat stones upon the surface of the water, then went
+to join a group gathered about Willis Parker and Heinie Krusemeyer.
+
+No fish had been caught, a lack of luck crossly attributed by the
+fishermen to the noise made by constant advice on the part of their
+attendant gallery. Messrs. Milholland, Bender, and the other rock
+throwers came up shouting, and were ill received.
+
+“For heaven's sakes,” Heinie Krusemeyer demanded, “can't you shut up?
+Here we just first got the girls to keep their mouths shut a minute and
+I almost had a big pickerel or something on my hook, and here you got
+to up and yell so he chases himself away! Why can't nobody show a little
+sense sometimes when they ought to?”
+
+“I should say so!” his comrade exclaimed. “If people would only just
+take and think of all the trouble we been to, it seems funny somebody
+couldn't let us have half a chance to get a few good fish. What chance
+they got to bite with a lot o' _girls_ gabbin' away, and then, just as
+we get 'em quieted down, all you men got to come bustin' up here yellin'
+your heads off. A fish isn't goin' to bite when he can't even hear
+himself think! Anybody ought to know that much.”
+
+But the new arrivals hooted. _“Fish!”_ Ramsey vociferated. “I'll bet
+a hundred dollars there hasn't been even a minny in this creek for the
+last sixty years!”
+
+“There is, too!” said Heinie, bitterly. “But I wouldn't be surprised
+there wouldn't be no longer if you got to keep up this noise. If you'd
+shut up just a minute you could see yourself there's fish here.”
+
+In whispers several of the tamed girls at once heartily corroborated
+this statement, whereupon the newcomers ceased to gibe and consented to
+silence. Ramsey leaned forth over the edge of the overhanging bank,
+a dirt precipice five feet above the water, and peered into the
+indeterminable depths below. The pool had been stirred, partly by the
+inexpert pokings of the fishermen and partly by small clods and bits
+of dirt dislodged from above by the feet of the audience. The water,
+consequently, was but brownly translucent and revealed its secrets
+reluctantly; nevertheless certain dim little shapes had been observed
+to move within it, and were still there. Ramsey failed to see them at
+first.
+
+“Where's any ole fish?” he inquired, scornfully.
+
+“Oh, my goodness!” Heinie Krusemeyer moaned. “_Can't_ you shut up?”
+
+“Look!” whispered the girl who stood nearest to Ramsey. She pointed.
+“There's one. Right down there by Willis's hook. Don't you see him?”
+
+Ramsey was impressed enough to whisper. “Is there? I don't see him. I
+can't--”
+
+The girl came closer to him, and, the better to show him, leaned out
+over the edge of the bank, and, for safety in maintaining her balance,
+rested her left hand upon his shoulder while she pointed with her right.
+Thereupon something happened to Ramsey. The touch upon his shoulder was
+almost nothing, and he had never taken the slightest interest in Milla
+Rust (to whom that small warm hand belonged), though she was the class
+beauty, and long established in the office. Now, all at once, a peculiar
+and heretofore entirely unfamiliar sensation suddenly became important
+in the upper part of his chest. For a moment he held his breath, an
+involuntary action;--he seemed to be standing in a shower of flowers.
+
+“Don't you see it, Ramsey?” Milla whispered. “It's a great big one. Why,
+it must be as long as--as your shoe! Look!”
+
+Ramsey saw nothing but the thick round curl on Milla's shoulder. Milla
+had a group of curls on each of her shoulders, for she got her modes at
+the Movies and had that sort of prettiness: large, gentle, calculating
+eyes, and a full, softly modelled face, implacably sweet. Ramsey was
+accustomed to all this charm, and Milla had never before been of more
+importance to him than an equal weight of school furniture--but all at
+once some magic had enveloped her. That curl upon the shoulder
+nearest him was shot with dazzling fibres of sunshine. He seemed to be
+trembling.
+
+“I don't see it,” he murmured, huskily, afraid that she might remove her
+hand. “I can't see any fish, Milla.”
+
+She leaned farther out over the bank. “Why, there, goosie!” she
+whispered. “Right there.”
+
+“I can't see it.”
+
+She leaned still farther, bending down to point. “Why right th--”
+
+At this moment she removed her hand from his shoulder, though
+unwillingly. She clutched at him, in fact, but without avail. She had
+been too amiable.
+
+A loud shriek was uttered by throats abler to vocalize, just then, than
+Milla's, for in her great surprise she said nothing whatever--the shriek
+came from the other girls as Milla left the crest of the overhanging
+bank and almost horizontally disappeared into the brown water. There
+was a tumultuous splash, and then of Milla Rust and her well-known
+beautifulness there was nothing visible in the superficial world, nor
+upon the surface of that creek. The vanishment was total.
+
+“_Save_ her!”
+
+Several girls afterward admitted having used this expression, and little
+Miss Floy Williams, the youngest and smallest member of the class, was
+unable to deny that she had said, “Oh, God!” Nothing could have been
+more natural, and the matter need not have been brought before her with
+such insistence and frequency, during the two remaining years of her
+undergraduate career.
+
+Ramsey was one of those who heard this exclamation, later so famous,
+and perhaps it was what roused him to heroism. He dived from the bank,
+headlong, and the strange thought in his mind was “I guess _this_'ll
+show Dora Yocum!” He should have been thinking of Milla, of course, at
+such a time, particularly after the little enchantment just laid upon
+him by Milla's touch and Milla's curls; and he knew well enough that
+Miss Yocum was not among the spectators. She was half a mile away, as
+it happened, gathering “botanical specimens” with one of the
+teachers--which was her idea of what to do at a picnic!
+
+Ramsey struck the water hard, and in the same instant struck something
+harder. Wesley Bender's bundle of books had given him no such shock
+as he received now, and if the creek bottom had not been of mud, just
+there, the top of his young head might have declined the strain. Half
+stunned, choking, spluttering he somehow floundered to his feet; and
+when he could get his eyes a little cleared of water he found himself
+wavering face to face with a blurred vision of Milla Rust. She had risen
+up out of the pond and stood knee deep, like a lovely drenched figure in
+a fountain.
+
+Upon the bank above them, Willis Parker was jumping up and down,
+gesticulating and shouting fiercely. “Now I guess you're satisfied our
+fishin' _is_ spoilt! Whyn't you listen me? I _told_ you it wasn't more'n
+three feet deep! I and Heinie waded all over this creek gettin' our
+bait. You're a pretty sight!”
+
+Of Milla he spoke unwittingly the literal truth. Even with her hair thus
+wild and sodden, Milla rose from immersion blushing and prettier than
+ever; and she was prettiest of all when she stretched out her hand
+helplessly to Ramsey and he led her up out of the waters. They had
+plenty of assistance to scramble to the top of the bank, and there Milla
+was surrounded and borne away with a great clacketing and tumult. Ramsey
+gave his coat into the hands of friends, who twisted the water out of
+it for him, while he sat upon the grass in the sun, rubbed his head, and
+experimented with his neck to see if it would “work.” The sunshine was
+strong and hot; in half an hour he and his clothes were dry--or at least
+“dry enough,” as he said, and except for some soreness of head and neck,
+and the general crumpledness of his apparel, he seemed to be in all
+ways much as usual when shouts and whistlings summoned all the party
+to luncheon at the rendezvous. The change that made him different was
+invisible.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+The change in Ramsey was invisible, and yet something must have been
+seen, for everyone appeared to take it for granted that he was to
+sit next to Milla at the pastoral meal. She herself understood it,
+evidently, for she drew in her puckered skirts and without any words
+make a place for him beside her as he driftingly approached her,
+affecting to whistle and keeping his eyes on the foliage overhead. He
+still looked upward, even in the act of sitting down.
+
+“Squirrel or something,” he said, feebly, as if in explanation.
+
+“Where?” Milla asked.
+
+“Up there on a branch.” He accepted a plate from her (she had provided
+herself with an extra one), but he did not look at it or her. “I'm not
+just exactly sure it's a squirrel,” he said. “Kind of hard to make out
+exactly what it is.” He continued to keep his eyes aloft, because he
+imagined that all of the class were looking at him and Milla, and he
+felt unable to meet such publicity. It was to him as if the whole United
+States had been scandalized to attention by this act of his in going
+to sit beside Milla; he gazed upward so long that his eyeballs became
+sensitive under the strain. He began to blink. “I can't make out whether
+it's a squirrel or just some leaves that kind o' got fixed like one,”
+ he said. “I can't make out yet which it is, but I guess when there's a
+breeze, if it's a squirrel he'll prob'ly hop around some then, if he's
+alive or anything.”
+
+It had begun to seem that his eyes must remain fixed in that upward
+stare forever; he wanted to bring them down, but could not face the
+glare of the world. So the fugitive ostrich is said to bury his head in
+the sand; he does it, not believing himself thereby hidden but trying to
+banish from his own cognizance terrible facts which his unsheltered eyes
+have seemed to reveal. So, too, do nervous children seek to bury their
+eyes under pillows, and nervous statesmen theirs under oratory. Ramsey's
+ostrichings can happen to anybody. But finally the brightness of the sky
+between the leaves settled matters for him; he sneezed, wept, and for
+a little moment again faced his fellowmen. No one was looking at him;
+everybody except Milla had other things to do.
+
+Having sneezed involuntarily, he added a spell of coughing for which
+there was no necessity. “I guess I must be wrong,” he muttered thickly.
+
+“What about, Ramsey?”
+
+“About it bein' a squirrel.” With infinite timidity he turned his head
+and encountered a gaze so soft, so hallowed, that it disconcerted him,
+and he dropped a “drumstick” of fried chicken, well dotted with ants,
+from his plate. Scarlet he picked it up, but did not eat it. For the
+first time in his life he felt that eating fried chicken held in the
+fingers was not to be thought of. He replaced the “drumstick” upon his
+plate and allowed it to remain there untouched, in spite of a great
+hunger for it.
+
+Having looked down, he now found difficulty in looking up, but gazed
+steadily at his plate, and into this limited circle of vision came
+Milla's delicate and rosy fingers, bearing a gift. “There,” she said in
+a motherly little voice. “It's a tomato mayonnaise sandwich and I made
+it myself. I want you to eat it, Ramsey.”
+
+His own fingers approached tremulousness as he accepted the thick
+sandwich from her and conveyed it to his mouth. A moment later his soul
+filled with horror, for a spurt of mayonnaise dressing had caused a
+catastrophe the scene of which occupied no inconsiderable area of his
+right cheek; which was the cheek toward Milla. He groped wretchedly for
+his handkerchief but could not find it; he had lost it. Sudden death
+would have been relief; he was sure that after such grotesquerie Milla
+could never bear to have anything more to do with him; he was ruined.
+
+In his anguish he felt a paper napkin pressed gently into his hand; a
+soft voice said in his ear, “Wipe it off with this, Ramsey. Nobody's
+noticing.”
+
+So this incredibly charitable creature was still able to be his friend,
+even after seeing him mayonnaised! Humbly marvelling, he did as she told
+him, but avoided all further risks. He ate nothing more.
+
+He sighed his first sigh of inexpressibleness, had a chill or so along
+the spine, and at intervals his brow was bedewed.
+
+Within his averted eyes there dwelt not the Milla Rust who sat beside
+him, but an iridescent, fragile creature who had become angelic.
+
+He spent the rest of the day dawdling helplessly about her; wherever she
+went he was near, as near as possible, but of no deliberate volition of
+his own. Something seemed to tie him to her, and Milla was nothing loth.
+He seldom looked at her directly, or for longer than an instant, and
+more rarely still did he speak to her except as a reply. What few
+remarks he ventured upon his own initiative nearly all concerned the
+landscape, which he commended repeatedly in a weak voice, as “kind of
+pretty,” though once he said he guessed there might be bugs in the bark
+of a log on which they sat; and he became so immoderately personal as to
+declare that if the bugs had to get on anybody he'd rather they got on
+him than on Milla. She said that was “just perfectly lovely” of him,
+asked where he got his sweet nature, and in other ways encouraged him to
+continue the revelation, but Ramsey was unable to get forward with it,
+though he opened and closed his mouth a great many times in the effort
+to do so.
+
+At five o'clock everybody was summoned again to the rendezvous for a
+ceremony preliminary to departure: the class found itself in a large
+circle, standing, and sang “The Star Spangled Banner.” Ordinarily, on
+such an open-air and out-of-school occasion, Ramsey would have joined
+the chorus uproariously with the utmost blatancy of which his vocal
+apparatus was capable; and most of the other boys expressed their humour
+by drowning out the serious efforts of the girls; but he sang feebly,
+not much more than humming through his teeth. Standing beside Milla,
+he was incapable of his former inelegancies and his voice was in a
+semi-paralyzed condition, like the rest of him.
+
+
+Opposite him, across the circle, Dora Yocum stood a little in advance of
+those near her, for of course she led the singing. Her clear and earnest
+voice was distinguishable from all others, and though she did not
+glance toward Ramsey he had a queer feeling that she was assuming more
+superiority than ever, and that she was icily scornful of him and Milla.
+The old resentment rose--he'd “show” that girl yet, some day!
+
+When the song was over, cheers were given for the class, “the good
+ole class of Nineteen Fourteen,” the school, the teachers, and for the
+picnic, thus officially concluded; and then the picnickers, carrying
+their baskets and faded wild flowers and other souvenirs and burdens,
+moved toward the big “express wagons” which were to take them back into
+the town. Ramsey got his guitar case, and turned to Milla.
+
+“Well--” he said.
+
+“Well what, Ramsey?”
+
+“Well--g'bye.”
+
+“Why, no,” said Milla. “Anyways not yet. You can go back in the same
+wagon with me. It's going to stop at the school and let us out there,
+and then you could walk home with me if you felt like it. You could come
+all the way to our gate with me, I expect, unless you'd be late home for
+your supper.”
+
+“Well--well, I'd be perfectly willing,” Ramsey said. “Only I heard we
+all had to go back in whatever wagon we came out in, and I didn't come
+in the same wagon with you, so--”
+
+Milla laughed and leaned toward him a little. “I already 'tended to
+that,” she said confidentially. “I asked Johnnie Fiske, that came out in
+my wagon, to go back in yours, so that makes room for you.”
+
+“Well--then I guess I could do it.” He moved toward the wagon with her.
+“I expect it don't make much difference one way or the other.”
+
+“And you can carry my basket if you want to,” she said, adding
+solicitously, “Unless it's too heavy when you already got your guitar
+case to carry, Ramsey.”
+
+This thoughtfulness of hers almost overcame him; she seemed divine.
+He gulped, and emotion made him even pinker than he had been under the
+mayonnaise.
+
+“I--I'll be glad to carry the basket, too,” he faltered. “It-it don't
+weigh anything much.”
+
+“Well, let's hurry, so's we can get places together.”
+
+Then, as she manoeuvred him through the little crowd about the wagon,
+with a soft push this way and a gentle pull that, and hurried him up the
+improvised steps and found a place where there was room for them to sit,
+Ramsey had another breathless sensation heretofore unknown to him.
+He found himself taken under a dovelike protectorship; a wonderful,
+inexpressible Being seemed to have become his proprietor.
+
+“Isn't this just perfectly lovely?” she said cozily, close to his ear.
+
+He swallowed, but found no words, for he had no thoughts; he was only an
+incoherent tumult. This was his first love.
+
+“Isn't it, Ramsey?” she urged. The cozy voice had just the hint of a
+reproach. “Don't you think it's just perfectly lovely, Ramsey?”
+
+“Yes'm.”
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+The next morning Ramsey came into his father's room while Mr. Milholland
+was shaving, an hour before church time, and it became apparent that the
+son had someting on his mind, though for a while he said nothing.
+
+“Did you want anything, Ramsey?”
+
+“Well--”
+
+“Didn't want to borrow my razors?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+Mr. Milholland chuckled. “I hardly supposed so, seriously! Shaving is
+a great nuisance and the longer you keep away from it, the better. And
+when you do, you let my razors alone, young feller!”
+
+“Yes, sir.” (Mr. Milholland's razors were safe, Ramsey had already
+achieved one of his own, but he practised the art in secret.) He passed
+his hand thoughtfully over his cheeks, and traces of white powder were
+left upon his fingers, whereupon he wiped his hand surreptitiously, and
+stood irresolutely waiting.
+
+“What is it you really want, Ramsey?”
+
+“I guess I don't want anything.”
+
+“Money?”
+
+“No, sir. You gay' me some Friday.”
+
+Mr. Milholland turned from his mirror and looked over the edge of a
+towel at his son. In the boy's eyes there was such a dumb agony of
+interrogation that the father was a little startled.
+
+“Why, what is it, Ramsey? Have you--” He paused, frowning and wondering.
+“You haven't been getting into some mess you want to tell me about, have
+you?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+His tone was meek, but a mute distress lurked within it, bringing to the
+father's mind disturbing suspicions, and foreshadowings of indignation
+and of pity. “See here, Ramsey,” he said, “if there's anything you want
+to ask me, or to tell me, you'd better out with it and get it over. Now,
+what is it?”
+
+“Well--it isn't anything.”
+
+“Are you _sure?_”
+
+Ramsey's eyes fell before the severe and piercing gaze of his father.
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+Mr. Milholland shook his head doubtfully; then, as his son walked slowly
+out of the room, he turned to complete his toilet in a somewhat uneasy
+frame of mind. Ramsey had undoubtedly wanted to say something to him and
+the boy's expression had shown that the matter in question was serious,
+distressing, and, it might be, even critical.
+
+In fact it was--to Ramsey. Having begun within only the last few hours
+to regard haberdashery as of vital importance, and believing his father
+to be possessed of the experience and authority lacking in himself,
+Ramsey had come to get him to settle a question which had been upsetting
+him badly, in his own room, since breakfast. What he wanted to know was:
+Whether it was right to wear an extra handkerchief showing out of the
+coat breast pocket or not, and, if it was right--ought the handkerchief
+to have a coloured border or to be plain white? But he had never before
+brought any such perplexities to his father, and found himself too
+diffident to set them forth.
+
+However, when he left the house, a few minutes later, he boldly showed
+an inch of purple border above the pocket; then, as he was himself about
+to encounter several old lady pedestrians, he blushed and thrust the
+handkerchief down into deep concealment. Having gone a block farther, he
+pulled it up again; and so continued to operate this badge of fashion,
+or unfashion, throughout the morning; and suffered a great deal thereby.
+
+Meantime, his father, rather relieved that Ramsey had not told his
+secret, whatever it was, dismissed the episode from his mind and joined
+Mrs. Milholland at the front door, ready for church.
+
+“Where's Ramsey?” he asked.
+
+“He's gone ahead,” she answered, buttoning her gloves as they went
+along. “I heard the door quite a little while ago. Perhaps he went over
+to walk down with Charlotte and Vance. Did you notice how neat he looks
+this morning?”
+
+“Why, no, I didn't; not particularly. Does he?”
+
+“I never saw anything like it before,” said Mrs. Milholland. “He went
+down in the cellar and polished his own shoes.”
+
+“What!”
+
+“For about an hour, I think,” she said, as one remaining calm before a
+miracle. “And he only has three neckties, but I saw him several times in
+each of them. He must have kept changing and changing. I wonder--” She
+paused.
+
+“I'm glad he's begun to take a little care of his appearance at last.
+Business men think a good deal about that, these days, when he comes to
+make his start in the world. I'll have to take a look at him and give
+him a word of praise. I suppose he'll be in the pew when we get there.”
+
+But Ramsey wasn't in the pew; and Charlotte, his sister, and her
+husband, who were there, said they hadn't seen anything of him. It was
+not until the members of the family were on their way home after the
+services that they caught a glimpse of him.
+
+They were passing a church a little distance from their own; here the
+congregation was just emerging to the open, and among the sedate throng
+descending the broad stone steps appeared an accompanied Ramsey--and a
+red, red Ramsey he was when he beheld his father and mother and sister
+and brother-in-law staring up at him from the pavement below. They were
+kind enough not to come to an absolute halt, but passed slowly on, so
+that he was just able to avoid parading up the street in front of
+them. The expressions of his father, mother, and sister were of a
+dumfoundedness painful to bear, while such lurking jocosity as that
+apparent all over his brother-in-law no dignified man should either
+exhibit or be called upon to ignore.
+
+In hoarse whispers, Mrs. Milholland chided her husband for an
+exclamation he had uttered. “John! On Sunday! You ought to be ashamed.”
+
+“I couldn't help it,” he exclaimed. “Who on earth is his clinging vine?
+Why, she's got _lavender_ tops on her shoes and--”
+
+“Don't look round!” she warned him sharply. “Don't--”
+
+“Well, what's he doing at a Baptist church? What's he fidgeting at his
+handkerchief about? Why can't he walk like people? Does he think it's
+obligatory to walk home from church anchored arm-in-arm like Swedes on a
+Sunday Out? Who _is_ this cow-eyed fat girl that's got him, anyhow?”
+
+“Hush! Don't look round again, John.”
+
+“Never fear!” said her husband, having disobeyed. “They've turned off;
+they're crossing over to Bullard Street. Who is it?”
+
+“I think her name's Rust,” Mrs. Milholland informed him. “I don't know
+what her father does. She's one of the girls in his class at school.”
+
+“Well, that's just like a boy; pick out some putty-faced flirt to take
+to church!”
+
+“Oh, she's quite pretty--in that way!” said his wife, deprecatingly. “Of
+course that's the danger with public schools. It would be pleasanter if
+he'd taken a fancy to someone whose family belongs to our own circle.”
+
+“'Taken a fancy'!” he echoed, hooting. “Why, he's terrible! He looked
+like a red-gilled goldfish that's flopped itself out of the bowl. Why,
+he--”
+
+“I _say_ I wish if he felt that he had to take girls anywhere,” said
+Mrs. Milholland, with the primmest air of speaking to the point--“if
+this sort of thing _must_ begin, I wish he might have selected some
+nice girl among the daughters of our own friends, like Dora Yocum, for
+instance.”
+
+Upon the spot she began to undergo the mortification of a mother who has
+expected her son, just out of infancy, to look about him with the eye of
+a critical matron of forty-five. Moreover, she was indiscreet enough
+to express her views to Ramsey, a week later, producing thus a scene of
+useless great fury and no little sound.
+
+“I do think it's in _very_ poor taste to see so much of any one girl,
+Ramsey,” she said, and, not heeding his protest that he only walked home
+from school with Milla, “about every other day,” and that it didn't seem
+any crime to him just to go to church with her a couple o' times, Mrs.
+Milholland went on: “But if you think you really _must_ be dangling
+around somebody quite this much--though what in the world you find to
+_talk_ about with this funny little Milla Rust you poor father says he
+really cannot see--and of course it seems very queer to us that you'd
+be willing to waste so much time just now when your mind ought to be
+entirely on your studies, and especially with such an absurd _looking_
+little thing--
+
+“No, you must listen, Ramsey, and let me speak now. What I meant was
+that we shouldn't be _quite_ so much distressed by your being seen with
+a girl who dressed in better taste and seemed to have some notion of
+refinement, though of course it's only natural she _wouldn't_, with a
+father who is just a sort of ward politician, I understand, and a mother
+we don't know, and of course shouldn't care to. But, oh, Ramsey! if you
+_had_ to make yourself so conspicuous why couldn't you be a little _bit_
+more fastidious? Your father wouldn't have minded nearly so much if it
+had been a self-respecting, intellectual girl. We both say that if you
+_must_ be so ridiculous at your age as to persist in seeing more of one
+girl than another, why, oh why, don't you go and see some really nice
+girl like Dora Yocum?”
+
+Ramsey was already dangerously distended, as an effect of the earlier
+part of her discourse, and the word “fastidious” almost exploded him;
+but upon the climax, “Dora Yocum,” he blew up with a shattering report
+and, leaving fragments of incoherence ricocheting behind him, fled
+shuddering from the house.
+
+For the rest of the school term he walked home with Milla every
+afternoon and on Sundays appeared to have become a resolute Baptist. It
+was supposed (by the interested members of the high-school class) that
+Ramsey and Milla were “engaged.” Ramsey sometimes rather supposed they
+were himself, and the dim idea gave him a sensation partly pleasant, but
+mostly apprehensive: he was afraid.
+
+He was afraid that the day was coming when he ought to kiss her.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+Vacation, in spite of increased leisure, may bring inconvenience to
+people in Ramsey's strange but not uncommon condition. At home his
+constant air was that of a badgered captive plaintively silent under
+injustice; and he found it difficult to reply calmly when asked where
+he was going--an inquiry addressed to him, he asserted, every time he
+touched his cap, even to hang it up!
+
+The amount of evening walking he did must also have been a trial to his
+nerves, on account of fatigue, though the ground covered was not vast.
+Milla's mother and father were friendly people but saw no reason
+to “move out of house and home,” as Mr. Rust said, when Milla had
+“callers”; and on account of the intimate plan of their small dwelling
+a visitor's only alternative to spending the evening with Mr. and Mrs.
+Rust as well as with Milla, was to invite her to “go out walking.”
+
+Evening after evening they walked and walked and walked, usually in
+company--at perhaps the distance of half a block--with Albert Paxton and
+Sadie Clews, though Ramsey now and then felt disgraced by having fallen
+into this class; for sometimes it was apparent that Albert casually had
+his arm about Sadie's waist. This allured Ramsey somewhat, but terrified
+him more. He didn't know how such matters were managed.
+
+Usually the quartet had no destination; they just went “out walking”
+ until ten o'clock, when both girls had to be home--and the boys did,
+too, but never admitted it. On Friday evenings there was a “public
+open-air concert” by a brass band in a small park, and the four were
+always there. A political speechmaker occupied the bandstand one night,
+and they stood for an hour in the midst of the crowd, listening vaguely.
+
+The orator saddled his politics upon patriotism. “Do you intend to let
+this glorious country go to wrack and ruin, oh, my good friends,” he
+demanded, “or do you intend to save her? Look forth upon this country of
+ours, I bid you, oh, my countrymen, and tell me what you see. You see
+a fair domain of forest, mountain, plain, and fertile valleys, sweeping
+from ocean to ocean. Look from the sturdy rocks of old New England,
+pledged to posterity by the stern religious hardihood of the Pilgrim
+Fathers, across the corn-bearing midland country, that land of milk
+and honey, won for us by the pluck and endurance of the indomitable
+pioneers, to where in sunshine roll the smiling Sierras of golden
+California, given to our heritage by the unconquerable energy of those
+brave men and women who braved the tomahawk on the Great Plains, the
+tempest, of Cape Horn, and the fevers of Panama, to make American soil
+of El Dorado! America! Oh, my America, how glorious you stand! Country
+of Washington and Valley Forge, out of what martyrdoms hast thou arisen!
+Country of Lincoln in his box at Ford's theatre, his lifeblood staining
+to a brighter, holier red the red, white, and blue of the Old Flag!
+Always and always I see the Old Flag fluttering the more sacredly
+encrimsoned in the breeze for the martyrs who have upheld it! Always I
+see that Old Flag--”
+
+Milla gave Ramsey's arm, within her own, a little tug. “Come on,” she
+said. “Sade says she don't want to hang around here any longer. It's
+awful tiresome. Let's go.”
+
+He consented, placidly. The oration meant nothing to him and stirred no
+one in the audience. The orator was impassioned; he shouted himself into
+coughing fits, gesticulated, grew purple; he was so hot that his
+collar caved in and finally swooned upon his neck in soggy exhaustion,
+prostrate round his thunderings. Meanwhile, the people listened with an
+air of patience, yawning here and there, and gradually growing fewer. It
+was the old, old usual thing, made up of phrases that Ramsey had heard
+dinning away on a thousand such occasions, and other kinds of occasions,
+until they meant to him no more than so much sound. He was bored, and
+glad to leave.
+
+“Kind o' funny,” he said, as they sagged along the street at their usual
+tortoise gait.
+
+“What is it, Ramsey?”
+
+“Seems kind o' funny they never have anything to say any one can
+take any interest in. Always the same ole whoopety-whoop about George
+Washington and Pilgrim Fathers and so on. I bet five dollars before
+long we'd of heard him goin' on about our martyred Presidents, William
+McKinley and James A. Garfield and Benjamin Harrison and all so on, and
+then some more about the ole Red, White, and Blue. Don't you wish they'd
+_quit_, sometimes, about the 'Ole Flag'?”
+
+“I dunno,” said Milla. “I wasn't listening any at all. I hate speeches.”
+
+“Well, I could _stand_ 'em,” Ramsey said, more generously, “if they'd
+ever give anybody a little to think about. What's the use always
+draggin' in George Warshington and the Ole Flag? And who wants to
+hear any more ole truck about 'from ole rocky New England to golden
+California,' and how big and fine the United States is and how it's the
+land of the Free and all that? Why don't they ever say anything new?
+That's what I'd like to know.”
+
+Milla laughed, and when he asked why, she told him she'd never heard
+him talk so much “at one stretch.” “I guess that speech got you kind of
+wound up,” she said. “Let's talk about something different.”
+
+“I just soon,” he agreed. And so they walked on in silence, which
+seemed to suit Milla. She hung weightily upon his arm, and they dawdled,
+drifting from one side of the pavement to the other as they slowly
+advanced. Albert and Sadie, ahead of them, called “good-night” from a
+corner, before turning down the side street where Sadie lived; and then,
+presently, Ramsey and Milla were at the latter's gate. He went in with
+her, halting at the front steps.
+
+“Well, g'night, Milla,” he said. “Want to go out walking to-morrow
+night? Albert and Sadie are.”
+
+“I can't to-morrow night,” she told him with obvious regret. “Isn't it
+the worst luck! I got an aunt comin' to visit from Chicago, and she's
+crazy about playing 'Five Hundred,' and Mama and Papa said I haf to stay
+in to make four to play it. She's liable to be here three or four days,
+and I guess I got to be around home pretty much all the time she's here.
+It's the worst luck!”
+
+He was doleful, but ventured to be literary. “Well, what can't be helped
+must be endured. I'll come around when she's gone.”
+
+He moved as if to depart, but she still retained his arm and did not
+prepare to relinquish it.
+
+“Well--” he said.
+
+“Well what, Ramsey?”
+
+“Well--g'night.”
+
+She glanced up at the dark front of the house. “I guess the family's
+gone to bed,” she said, absently.
+
+“I s'pose so.”
+
+“Well, good-night, Ramsey.” She said this but still did not release his
+arm, and suddenly, in a fluster, he felt that the time he dreaded had
+come. Somehow, without knowing where, except that it was somewhere upon
+what seemed to be a blurred face too full of obstructing features, he
+kissed her.
+
+She turned instantly away in the darkness, her hands over her cheeks;
+and in a panic Ramsey wondered if he hadn't made a dreadful mistake.
+
+“S'cuse me!” he said, stumbling toward the gate. “Well, I guess I got to
+be gettin' along back home.”
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+He woke in the morning to a great self-loathing: he had kissed a girl.
+Mingled with the loathing was a curious pride in the very fact that
+caused the loathing, but the pride did not last long. He came downstairs
+morbid to breakfast, and continued this mood afterward. At noon Albert
+Paxton brought him a note which Milla had asked Sadie to ask Albert to
+give him.
+
+Dearie: I am just wondering if you thought as much about something so
+sweet that happened last night as I did you know what. I think it was
+the sweetest thing. I send you one with this note and I hope you will
+think it is a sweet one. I would give you a real one if you were here
+now and I hope you would think it was sweeter still than the one I put
+in this note. It is the sweetest thing now you are mine and I am yours
+forever kiddo. If you come around about friday eve it will be all right.
+aunt Jess will be gone back home by then so come early and we will get
+Sade and Alb and go to the band Concert. Don't forget what I said about
+my putting something sweet in this note, and I hope you will think it is
+a sweet one but not as sweet as the _real_ sweet one I would like to--
+
+At this point Ramsey impulsively tore the note into small pieces. He
+turned cold as his imagination projected a sketch of his mother in
+the act of reading this missive, and of her expression as she read the
+sentence: “It is the sweetest thing now you are mine and I am yours
+forever kiddo.” He wished that Milla hadn't written “kiddo.” She called
+him that, sometimes, but in her warm little voice the word seemed not at
+all what it did in ink. He wished, too, that she hadn't said she was his
+forever.
+
+Suddenly he was seized with a horror of her.
+
+Moisture broke out heavily upon him; he felt a definite sickness, and,
+wishing for death, went forth upon the streets to walk and walk. He
+cared not whither, so that his feet took him in any direction away from
+Milla, since they were unable to take him away from himself--of whom he
+had as great a horror. Her loving face was continually before him, and
+its sweetness made his flesh creep. Milla had been too sweet.
+
+When he met or passed people, it seemed to him that perhaps they were
+able to recognize upon him somewhere the marks of his low quality.
+“Softy! Ole sloppy fool!” he muttered, addressing himself. “Slushy ole
+mush!... _Spooner!_” And he added, “Yours forever, kiddo!” Convulsions
+seemed about to seize him.
+
+Turning a corner with his head down, he almost charged into Dora Yocum.
+She was homeward bound from a piano lesson, and carried a rolled leather
+case of sheet music--something he couldn't imagine Milla carrying--and
+in her young girl's dress, which attempted to be nothing else, she
+looked as wholesome as cold spring water. Ramsey had always felt
+that she despised him and now, all at once, he thought that she was
+justified. Leper that he had become, he was unworthy to be even touching
+his cap to her! And as she nodded and went briskly on, he would have
+given anything to turn and walk a little way with her, for it seemed to
+him that this might fumigate his morals. But he lacked the courage, and,
+besides, he considered himself unfit to be seen walking with her.
+
+He had a long afternoon of anguishes, these becoming most violent when
+he tried to face the problem of his future course toward Milla. He did
+not face it at all, in fact, but merely writhed, and had evolved nothing
+when Friday evening was upon him and Milla waiting for him to take her
+to the “band concert” with “Alb and Sade.” In his thoughts, by that
+time, this harmless young pair shared the contamination of his own
+crime, and he regarded them with aversion; however, he made shift to
+seek a short interview with Albert, just before dinner.
+
+“I got a pretty rotten headache, and my stomach's upset, too,” he said,
+drooping upon the Paxton's fence. “I been gettin' worse every minute.
+You and Sadie go by Milla's, Albert, and tell her if I'm not there by
+ha'-pas'-seven, tell her not to wait for me any longer.”
+
+“How do you mean 'wait'?” Albert inquired. “You don't expect her to come
+pokin' along with Sadie and me, do you? She'll keep on sittin' there at
+home just the same, because she wouldn't have anything else to do, if
+you don't come like she expects you to. She hasn't got any way to _stop_
+waitin'!”
+
+At this, Ramsey moaned, without affectation. “I don't expect I _can_,
+Albert,” he said. “I'd like to if I could, but the way it looks now,
+you tell her I wouldn't be much surprised maybe I was startin' in with
+typhoid fever or pretty near anything at all. You tell her I'm pretty
+near as disappointed as she's goin' to be herself, and I'd come if I
+could--and I _will_ come if I get a good deal better, or anything--but
+the way it's gettin' to look now, I kind o' feel as if I might be
+breaking out with something any minute.” He moved away, concluding,
+feebly: “I guess I better crawl on home, Albert, while I'm still able
+to walk some. You tell her the way it looks now I'm liable to be right
+sick.”
+
+And the next morning he woke to the chafings of remorse, picturing a
+Milla somewhat restored in charm waiting hopefully at the gate, even
+after half-past seven, and then, as time passed and the sound of the
+distant horns came faintly through the darkness, going sadly to her
+room--perhaps weeping there. It was a picture to wring him with shame
+and pity, but was followed by another which electrified him, for out
+of school he did not lack imagination. What if Albert had reported his
+illness too vividly to Milla? Milla was so fond! What if, in her alarm,
+she should come here to the house to inquire of his mother about him?
+What if she told Mrs. Milholland they were “engaged”? The next moment
+Ramsey was projecting a conversation between his mother and Milla in
+which the latter stated that she and Ramsey were soon to be married;
+that she regarded him as already virtually her husband, and demanded to
+nurse him.
+
+In a panic he fled from the house before breakfast, going out by way of
+a side door, and he crossed back yards and climbed back fences to reach
+Albert Paxton the more swiftly. This creature, a ladies' man almost
+professionally, was found exercising with an electric iron and a pair of
+flannel trousers in a basement laundry, by way of stirring his appetite
+for the morning meal.
+
+“See here, Albert,” his friend said breathlessly. “I got a favour. I
+want you to go over to Milla's--”
+
+“I'm goin' to finish pressin' these trousers,” Albert interrupted. “Then
+I've got my breakfast to eat.”
+
+“Well, you could do this first,” said Ramsey, hurriedly. “It wouldn't
+hurt you to do me this little favour first. You just slip over and see
+Milla for me, if she's up yet, and if she isn't, you better wait around
+there till she is, because I want you to tell her I'm a whole lot better
+this morning. Tell her I'm pretty near practick'ly all right again,
+Albert, and I'll prob'ly write her a note or something right soon--or in
+a week or so, anyhow. You tell her--”
+
+“Well, you act pretty funny!” Albert exclaimed, fumbling in the pockets
+of his coat. “Why can't you go on over and tell her yourself?”
+
+“I would,” said Ramsey. “I'd be perfectly willing to go only I got to
+get back home to breakfast.”
+
+Albert stared. “Well, I got to go upstairs and eat my own breakfast in
+about a minute, haven't I? But just as it happens there wouldn't be any
+use your goin' over there, or me, either.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Milla ain't there,” said Albert, still searching the pockets of his
+coat. “When we went by her house last night to tell her about your
+headache and stomach and all, why, her mother told us Milla'd gone up to
+Chicago yesterday afternoon with her aunt, and said she left a note for
+you, and she said if you were sick I better take it and give it to you.
+I was goin' to bring it over to your house after breakfast.” He found
+it. “Here!”
+
+Ramsey thanked him feebly, and departed in a state of partial
+stupefaction, brought on by a glimpse of the instabilities of life. He
+had also, not relief, but a sense of vacancy and loss; for Milla, out of
+his reach, once more became mysteriously lovely.
+
+Pausing in an alley, he read her note.
+
+Dearie: Thought I ought to call you up but over the 'phone is just nix
+for explanations as Mama and Aunt Jess would hear everything and thought
+I might seem cold to you not saying anything sweet on account of them
+listening and you would wonder why I was so cold when telling you
+good-by for a wile maybe weeks. It is this way Uncle Purv wired Aunt
+Jess he has just taken in a big touring car on a debt and his vacation
+starts to-morrow so if they were going to take a trip they better start
+right way so Aunt Jess invited me. It is going to be a big trip up
+around the lakes and I have always wanted to go touring more than
+anything in the world stopping at hotels and all and Mama said I ought
+to it would be so splendid for my health as she thinks I am failing some
+lately. Now dearie I have to pack and write this in a hurry so you will
+not be disappointed when you come by for the B. C. to-night. Do not go
+get some other girl and take her for I would hate her and nothing in
+this world make me false for one second to my kiddo boy. I do not know
+just when home again as the folks think I better stay up there for a
+visit at Aunt Jess and Uncle Purvs home in Chicago after the trip is
+over. But I will think of you all the time and you must think of me
+every minute and believe your own dearie she will never no not for one
+second be false. So tell Sade and Alb good-by for me and do not be
+false to me any more than I would be to you and it will not be long till
+nothing more will interrupt our sweet friendship.
+
+As a measure of domestic prudence, Ramsey tore the note into irreparable
+fragments, but he did this slowly, and without experiencing any of the
+revulsion created by Milla's former missive.
+
+He was melancholy, aggrieved that she should treat him so.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+He never saw her again. She sent him a “picture postal” from Oconomowoc,
+Wisconsin, which his father disengaged from the family mail, one morning
+at breakfast, and considerately handed to him without audible comment.
+Upon it was written, _“Oh, you Ramsey!”_ This was the last of Milla.
+
+Just before school opened, in the autumn, Sadie Clews made some
+revelations. “Milla did like you,” said Sadie. “After that time you
+jumped in the creek to save her she liked you better than any boy in
+town, and I guess if it wasn't for her cousin Milt up in Chicago she
+would of liked you the best anywhere. I guess she did, anyway, because
+she hadn't seen him for about a year then.
+
+“Well, that afternoon she went away I was over there and took in
+everything that was goin' on, only she made me promise on my word of
+honour I wouldn't even tell Albert. They didn't get any wire from her
+uncle about the touring car; it was her cousin Milt that jumped on the
+train and came down and fixed it all up for Milla to go on the trip, and
+everything. You see, Ramsey, she was turned back a couple of times in
+school before she came in our class and I don't exactly know how old
+she is and she don't _look_ old yet, but I'm pretty sure she's at least
+eighteen, and she might be over. Her mother kept tellin' her all the
+time you were just a kid, and didn't have anything to support her on,
+and lots of things like that. I didn't think such a great deal of this
+Milt's looks, myself, but he's anyway twenty-one years old, and got a
+good position, and all their family seem to think he's just fine! It
+wasn't his father that took in the touring car on debt, like she said
+she was writing to you; it was Milt himself. He started out in business
+when he was only fifteen years old, and this trip he was gettin' up for
+his father and mother and Milla was the first vacation he ever took.
+Well, of course she wouldn't like my tellin' you, but I can't see the
+harm of it, now everything's all over.”
+
+“All--all over? You mean Milla's going to be--to be married?”
+
+“She already is,” said Sadie. “They got married at her Aunt Jess and
+Uncle Purv's house, up in Chicago, last Thursday. Yes, sir; that quiet
+little Milla's a regular old married woman by this time, I expect,
+Ramsey!”
+
+When he got over the shock, which was not until the next day, one
+predominating feeling remained: it was a gloomy pride--a pride in his
+proven maturity. He was old enough, it appeared, to have been the same
+thing as engaged to a person who was now a Married Woman. His manner
+thenceforth showed an added trace of seriousness and self-consideration.
+
+Having recovered his equipoise and something more, he entirely forgot
+that moment of humble admiration he had felt for Dora Yocum on the day
+of his flattest prostration. When he saw her sitting in the classroom,
+smiling brightly up at the teacher, the morning of the school's opening
+in the autumn, all his humility had long since vanished and she appeared
+to him not otherwise than as the scholar whose complete proficiency had
+always been so irksome to him.
+
+“Look at her!” he muttered to himself. “Same ole Teacher's Pet!”
+
+Now and then, as the days and seasons passed, and Dora's serene progress
+continued, never checked or even flawed, there stirred within some
+lingerings of the old determination to “show” her; and he would conjure
+up a day-dream of Dora in loud lamentation, while he led the laughter of
+the spectators. But gradually his feelings about her came to be merely a
+dull oppression. He was tired of having to look at her (as he stated it)
+and he thanked the Lord that the time wouldn't be so long now until he'd
+be out of that ole school, and then all he'd have to do he'd just take
+care never to walk by her house; it was easy enough to use some other
+street when he had to go down-town.
+
+“The good ole class of Nineteen-Fourteen is about gone,” he said to Fred
+Mitchell, who was still his most intimate friend when they reached the
+senior year. “Yes, sir; it's held together a good many years, Fred, but
+after June it'll be busted plum up, and I hope nobody starts a move to
+have any reunions. There's a good many members of the ole class that I
+can stand and there's some I can't, but there's one I just won't! If we
+ever did call a reunion, that ole Yocum girl would start in right away
+and run the whole shebang, and that's where I'd resign! You know, Fred,
+the thing _I_ think is the one biggest benefit of graduating from this
+ole school? It's never seein' Dora Yocum again.”
+
+This was again his theme as he sat by the same friend's side, in the
+rear row of the class at Commencement, listening to the delivery of
+the Valedictory. “Thinks she's just sooblime, don't she!” he whispered
+morosely. “She wouldn't trade with the President of the United States
+right now. She prob'ly thinks bein' Valedictorian is more important than
+Captain of the State University Eleven. Never mind!” And here his tone
+became huskily jubilant. “Never mind! Just about a half-an-hour more
+and that's the last o' _you_, ole girl! Yes, sir, Fred; one thing we can
+feel pretty good over: this is where we get through with Dora Yocum!”
+
+Ramsey and Fred had arranged to room together at Greenfield, the seat
+of the state university, and they made the short journey in company the
+following September. They arrived hilarious, anticipating pleasurable
+excitements in the way of “fraternity” pledgings and initiations,
+encounters with sophomores, class meetings, and elections; and, also,
+they were not absolutely without interest in the matter of Girls, for
+the state university was co-educational, and it was but natural to
+expect in so broad a field, all new to them, a possible vision of
+something rather thrilling. They whispered cheerfully of all these
+things during the process of matriculation, and signed the registrar's
+book on a fresh page; but when Fred had written his name under Ramsey's,
+and blotted it, he took the liberty of turning over the leaf to examine
+some of the autographs of their future classmates, written on the other
+side. Then he uttered an exclamation, more droll than dolorous, though
+it affected to be wholly the latter; for the shock to Fred was by no
+means so painful as it was to his friend.
+
+Ramsey leaned forward and read the name indicated by Fred's forefinger.
+
+_Dora Yocum._
+
+...When they got back to their pleasant quarters at Mrs. Meig's, facing
+the campus, Ramsey was still unable to talk of anything except the
+lamentable discovery; nor were his companion's burlesquing efforts to
+console him of great avail, though Fred did become serious enough to
+point out that a university was different from a high school.
+
+“It's not like havin' to use one big room as a headquarters, you know,
+Ramsey. Everything's all split up, and she might happen not to be in a
+single of your classes.”
+
+“You don't know my luck!” the afflicted boy protested. “I wish I'd gone
+to Harvard, the way my father wanted me to. Why, this is just the worst
+nuisance I ever struck! You'll see! She'll be in everything there is,
+just the way she was back home.”
+
+He appeared to be corroborated by the events of the next day, when they
+attended the first meeting to organize the new class. The masculine
+element predominated, but Dora Yocum was elected vice-president. “You
+see?” Ramsey said. “Didn't I tell you? You see what happens?”
+
+But after that she ceased for a time to intrude upon his life, and he
+admitted that his harassment was less grave than he had anticipated.
+There were about five hundred students in the freshman class; he seldom
+saw her, and when he did it was not more than a distant glimpse of her
+on one of the campus paths, her thoughtful head bent over a book as
+she hurried to a classroom. This was bearable; and in the flattering
+agitations of being sought, and even hunted, by several “fraternities”
+ simultaneously desirous of his becoming a sworn Brother, he almost
+forgot her. After a hazardous month the roommates fell into the arms of
+the last “frat” to seek them, and having undergone an evening of outrage
+which concluded with touching rhetoric and an oath taken at midnight,
+they proudly wore jewelled symbols on their breasts and were free to
+turn part of their attention to other affairs, especially the affairs of
+the Eleven.
+
+However, they were instructed by the older brethren of their Order,
+whose duty it was to assist in the proper manoeuvring of their young
+careers, that, although support of the 'varsity teams was important,
+they must neglect neither the spiritual nor the intellectual by-products
+of undergraduate doings. Therefore they became members of the college
+Y.M.C.A. and of the “Lumen Society.”
+
+According to the charter which it had granted itself, the “Lumen
+Society” was an “Organization of male and female students”--so
+“advanced” was this university--“for the development of the powers of
+debate and oratory, intellectual and sociological progress, and
+the discussion of all matters relating to philosophy, metaphysics,
+literature, art, and current events.” A statement so formidable was not
+without a hushing effect upon Messrs. Milholland and Mitchell; they went
+to their first “Lumen” meeting in a state of fear and came away little
+reassured.
+
+“I couldn't get up there,” Ramsey declared, “I couldn't stand up there
+before all that crowd and make a speech, or debate in a debate, to save
+my soul and gizzard! Why, I'd just keel right over and haf to be carried
+out.”
+
+“Well, the way I understand it,” said Fred, “we can't get out of it.
+The seniors in the 'frat' said we had to join, and they said we couldn't
+resign, either, after we had joined. They said we just had to go through
+it, and after a while we'd get used to it and not mind it much.”
+
+“_I_ will!” Ramsey insisted. “I couldn't any more stand up there on my
+feet and get to spoutin' about sociology and the radical metempsychorus
+of the metaphysical bazoozum than I could fly a flyin' machine. Why,
+I--”
+
+“Oh, that wasn't anything,” Fred interrupted. “The only one that talked
+like that, he was that Blickens; he's a tutor, or something, and really
+a member of the faculty. Most o' the others just kind of blah-blahhed
+around, and what any of 'em tried to get off their chests hardly
+amounted to terribly much.”
+
+“I don't care. I couldn't do it at _all!_”
+
+“Well, the way it looks to me,” Fred observed, “we simply _got_ to! From
+what they tell me, the freshmen got to do more than anybody. Every other
+Friday night, it's all freshmen and nothin' else. You get a postal card
+on Monday morning in your mail, and it says 'Assignment' on it, and
+then it's got written underneath what you haf to do the next Friday
+night--oration or debate, or maybe just read from some old book or
+something. I guess we got to stand up there and _try_, anyway.”
+
+“All right,” said Ramsey. “If they want me to commit suicide they can
+send me one o' their ole 'Assignments.' I won't need to commit suicide,
+though, I guess. All I'll do, I'll just fall over in a fit, and stay in
+it.”
+
+And, in truth, when he received his first “Assignment,” one Monday
+morning, a month later, he seemed in a fair way to fulfil his prophecy.
+The attention of his roommate, who sat at a window of their study, was
+attracted by sounds of strangulation.
+
+“What on earth's the matter, Ramsey?”
+
+“Look! Look at _this!_”
+
+Fred took the card and examined it with an amazement gradually merging
+into a pleasure altogether too perceptible:
+
+ASSIGNMENT
+
+TWELVE-MINUTE DEBATE, CLASS OF 1918. _Subject, Resolved:_ That Germany
+is both legally and morally justified in her invasion of Belgium.
+
+(Debaters are notified that each will be held strictly to the following
+schedule: Affirmative, 4 min., first. Negative, 4 min., first. Affirm, 2
+min., second. Neg., 2 min., second.)
+
+Affirmative Negative R. MILHOLLAND, '18 D. YOCUM, '18
+
+Concluding his reading, which was oral, the volatile Mitchell made use
+of his voice in a manner of heathenish boisterousness, and presently
+reclined upon a lounge to laugh the better. His stricken comrade,
+meanwhile, recovered so far as to pace the floor. “I'm goin' to pack up
+and light out for home!” he declared, over and over. And even oftener
+he read and reread the card to make sure of the actuality of that fatal
+coincidence, “D. Yocum, '18.”
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+“If I _could_ do it,” he vociferated, “if I _could_ stand up there and
+debate one o' their darn ole debates in the first place--if I had the
+gall to even try it, why, my gosh! you don't suppose I'm goin' to get
+up there and argue with _that girl_, do you? That's a hot way to get
+an education: stand up there and argue with a girl before a couple o'
+hundred people! My _gosh!_”
+
+“You got to!” his prostrate companion cackled, weakly. “You can't get
+out of it. You're a goner, ole Buddy!”
+
+
+“I'll be sick. I'll be sick as a dog! I'll be sick as the sickest dog
+that ever--”
+
+“No use, ole man. The frat seniors'll be on the job. They'll know
+whether you're sick or not, and they'll have you there, right on the
+spot to the minute!”
+
+The prediction was accurate. The too fatherly “frat seniors” did all
+that Fred said they would, and more. For the honour of the “frat,” they
+coached the desperate Ramsey in the technic of Lumen debate, told him
+many more things to say than could be said in six minutes, and produced
+him, despairing, ghastly, and bedewed, in the large hall of the Lumen
+Society at eight o'clock on Friday evening.
+
+Four other “twelve-minute debates” preceded his and the sound of these,
+in Ramsey's ears, was the sound of Gabriel practising on his horn in
+the early morning of Judgment Day. The members of the society sat, three
+rows deep, along the walls of the room, leaving a clear oblong of green
+carpet in the centre, where were two small desks, twenty feet apart, the
+rostrums of the debaters. Upon a platform at the head of the room sat
+dreadful seniors, the officers of the society, and, upon benches near
+the platform, the debaters of the evening were aligned. One of the
+fraternal seniors sat with sweltering Ramsey; and the latter, as his
+time relentlessly came nearer, made a last miserable squirm.
+
+“Look here, Brother Colburn, I got to get out o' here.”
+
+“No, you don't, young fellow.”
+
+“Yes, I do!” Ramsey whispered, passionately. “Honest, I do. Honest,
+Brother Colburn, I got to get a drink of water. I _got_ to!”
+
+“No. You can't.”
+
+“Honest, Colburn, I _got_--”
+
+“Hush!”
+
+Ramsey grunted feebly, and cast his dilating eyes along the rows of
+faces. Most of them were but as blurs, swimming, yet he was aware (he
+thought) of a formidable and horrible impassive scrutiny of himself, a
+glare seeming to pierce through him to the back of the belt round his
+waist, so that he began to have fearful doubts about that belt, about
+every fastening and adjustment of his garments, about the expression of
+his countenance, and about many other things jumbling together in his
+consciousness. Over and over he whispered gaspingly to himself the
+opening words of the sentence with which Colburn had advised him to
+begin his argument. And as the moment of supreme agony drew close, this
+whispering became continuous: “In making my first appearance before
+this honor'ble membership I feel constrained to say in making my first
+appearance before this honor'ble membership I feel constrained to say in
+making my first appearance before this honor'ble mem--”
+
+...It had come. The chairman announced the subject of the fourth
+freshman twelve-minute debate; and Dora Yocum, hitherto unperceived
+by Ramsey, rose and went forward to one of the small desks in the open
+space, where she stood composedly, a slim, pretty figure in white.
+Members in Ramsey's neighbourhood were aware of a brief and hushed
+commotion, and of Colburn's fierce whisper, “You can't! You get up
+there!” And the blanched Ramsey came forth and placed himself at the
+other desk.
+
+He stood before the silent populace of that morgue, and it seemed to him
+that his features had forgotten that he was supposed to be their owner
+and in control of them; he felt that they were slipping all over his
+face, regardless of his wishes. His head, as a whole, was subject to
+an agitation not before known by him; it desired to move rustily in
+eccentric ways of its own devising; his legs alternately limbered and
+straightened under no direction but their own; and his hands clutched
+each other fiercely behind his back; he was not one cohesive person,
+evidently, but an assembled collection of parts which had relapsed each
+into its own individuality. In spite of them, he somehow contrived the
+semblance of a bow toward the chairman and the semblance of another
+toward Dora, of whom he was but hazily conscious. Then he opened his
+mouth, and, not knowing how he had started his voice going, heard it as
+if from a distance.
+
+“In making my first appearance before this honor'ble membership I feel
+restrained to say--” He stopped short, and thenceforward shook visibly.
+After a long pause, he managed to repeat his opening, stopped again,
+swallowed many times, produced a handkerchief and wiped his face, an act
+of necessity--then had an inspiration.
+
+“The subject assigned to me,” he said, “is resolved that Germany is
+mor'ly and legally justified in Belgians--Belgiums! This subject was
+assigned to me to be the subject of this debate.” He interrupted himself
+to gasp piteously; found breathing difficult, but faltered again: “This
+subject is the subject. It is the subject that was assigned to me on
+a postal card.” Then, for a moment or so, he had a miraculous spurt of
+confidence, and continued rather rapidly: “I feel constrained to say
+that the country of Belgian--Belgium, I mean--this country has been
+constrained by the--invaded I mean--invaded by the imperial German
+Impire and my subject in this debate is whether it ought to or not, my
+being the infernative--affirmative, I mean--that I got to prove that
+Germany is mor'ly and legally justified. I wish to state that--”
+
+He paused again, lengthily, then struggled on. “I have been requested
+to state that the German Imp--Empire--that it certainly isn't right
+for those Dutch--Germans, I mean--they haven't got any more business in
+Belgium than I have myself, but I--I feel constrained to say that I had
+to accept whatever side of this debate I got on the postal card, and so
+I am constrained to take the side of the Dutch. I mean the Germans. The
+Dutch are sometimes called--I mean the Germans are sometimes called the
+Dutch in this country, but they aren't Dutch, though sometimes called
+Dutch in this country. Well, and so--so, well, the war began last August
+or about then, anyway, and the German army invaded the Belgian army.
+After they got there, the invasion began. First, they came around there
+and then they commenced invading. Well, what I feel constrained--”
+
+He came to the longest of all his pauses here, and the awful gravity of
+the audience almost suffocated him. “Well,” he concluded, “it don't look
+right to me.”
+
+“Four minutes!” the chairman announced, for Ramsey's pauses had worn
+away a great deal more of this terrible interval than had his eloquence.
+“Opening statement for the negative: Miss D. Yocum. Four minutes.”
+
+As Dora began to speak, Ramsey experienced a little relief, but only
+a little--about the same amount of relief as that felt by a bridegroom
+when it is the bride's turn to “respond,” not really relief at all, but
+merely the slight relaxation of a continuing strain. The audience now
+looked at Ramsey no more than people look at a bridegroom, but he failed
+to perceive any substantial mitigation of his frightful conspicuousness.
+He had not the remotest idea of what he had said in setting forth his
+case for Germany, and he knew that it was his duty to listen closely
+to Dora, in order to be able to refute her argument when his two-minute
+closing speech fell due but he was conscious of little more than his own
+condition. His legs had now gone wild beyond all devilry, and he had
+to keep shifting his weight from one to the other in order even to hope
+that their frenzy might escape general attention.
+
+He realized that Dora was speaking rapidly and confidently, and that
+somewhere in his ill-assembled parts lurked a familiar bit of him that
+objected to her even more than usual; but she had used half of her time,
+at least, before he was able to gather any coherent meaning from what
+she was saying. Even then he caught only a fragment, here and there,
+and for the rest--so far as Ramsey was concerned--she might as well have
+been reciting the Swedish alphabet.
+
+In spite of the rather startling feebleness of her opponent's statement,
+Dora went at her task as earnestly as if it were to confute some monster
+of casuistry. “Thus, having demonstrated that _all_ war is wrong,” she
+said, approaching her conclusion, “it is scarcely necessary to point out
+that whatever the actual circumstances of the invasion, and whatever the
+status of the case in international law, or by reason of treaty, or the
+German oath to respect the neutrality of Belgium, which of course was
+grossly and dishonorably violated--all this, I say, ladies and gentlemen
+of the Lumen Society, all this is beside the point of morals. Since, as
+I have shown, _all_ war is wrong, the case may be simplified as follows:
+All war is morally wrong. _Quod erat demonstrandum_. Germany invaded
+Belgium. Invasion is war. Germany, therefore, did moral wrong. Upon
+the legal side, as I began by pointing out, Germany confessed in the
+Reichstag the violation of law. Therefore, Germany was justified in the
+invasion neither morally nor legally; but was both morally and legally
+wrong and evil. Ladies and gentlemen of the Lumen Society, I await the
+refutation of my opponent!”
+
+Her opponent appeared to be having enough trouble with his legs, without
+taking any added cares upon himself in the way of refutations. But the
+marvellous Dora had calculated the length of her statement with such
+nicety that the chairman announced “Four minutes,” almost upon the
+instant of her final syllable; and all faces turned once more to
+the upholder of the affirmative. “Refutation and conclusion by the
+affirmative,” said the chairman. “Mr. R. Milholland. Two minutes.”
+
+Therewith, Ramsey coughed as long as he could cough, and when he felt
+that no more should be done in this way, he wiped his face--again an act
+of necessity--and quaveringly began:
+
+“Gentlemen and ladies, or ladies and gentlemen, in making the refutation
+of my opponent, I feel that--I feel that hardly anything more ought to
+be said.”
+
+He paused, looked helplessly at his uncontrollable legs, and resumed:
+“I am supposed to make the reputa--the refutation of my opponent, and I
+feel that I ought to say quite a good deal more. In the first place, I
+feel that the invasion has taken place. I am supposed--anyhow I got a
+postal card that I am supposed to be here to-night. Well, in talking
+over this matter with a couple of seniors, they told me I was supposed
+to claim this invasion was mor'ly and legally all right. Well--” Here,
+by some chance, the recollection of a word of Dora's flickered into his
+chaotic mind, and he had a brighter moment. “My opponent said she proved
+all war is wrong--or something like that, anyhow. She said she proved it
+was wrong to fight, no matter what. Well, if she wasn't a girl, anybody
+that wanted to get her into a fight could prob'ly do it.” He did not
+add that he would like to be the person to make the experiment (if Dora
+weren't a girl), nor did the thought enter his mind until an hour or so
+later. “Well,” he added, “I suppose there is little more to be said.”
+
+He was so right, in regard to his own performance, at least, that,
+thereupon drying up utterly, he proceeded to stand, a speechless
+figure in the midst of a multitudinous silence, for an eternity lasting
+forty-five seconds. He made a racking effort, and at the end of this
+epoch found words again. “In making my argument in this debate, I would
+state that--”
+
+“Two minutes!” said the chairman. “Refutation by the negative. Miss D.
+Yocum. Two minutes.”
+
+“I waive them,” said Dora, primly. “I submit that the affirmative has
+not refuted the argument of the negative.”
+
+“Very well.” With his gavel the chairman sharply tapped the desk before
+him, “The question is now before the house. 'Resolved, that Germany
+is both morally and legally justified in her invasion of Belgium.' All
+those in favour of the--”
+
+But here there was an interruption of a kind never before witnessed
+during any proceedings of the Lumen Society. It came from neither of
+the debaters, who still remained standing at their desks until the
+vote settling their comparative merits in argument should be taken. The
+interruption was from the rear row of seats along the wall, where
+sat new members of the society, freshmen not upon the program for the
+evening. A loud voice was heard from this quarter, a loud but nasal
+voice, shrill as well as nasal, and full of a strange hot passion. “Mr.
+Chairman!” it cried. “Look-a-here, Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman, I demand
+to be heard! You gotta gimme my say, Mr. Chairman! I'm a-gunna have my
+_say_! You look-a-here, Mr. Chairman!”
+
+Shocked by such a breach of order, and by the unseemly violence of the
+speaker, not only the chairman but everyone else looked there. A short,
+strong figure was on its feet, gesticulating fiercely; and the head
+belonging to it was a large one with too much curly black hair, a flat,
+swarthy face, shiny and not immaculately shaven; there was an impression
+of ill-chosen clothes, too much fat red lip, too much tooth, too much
+eyeball. Fred Mitchell, half-sorrowing, yet struggling to conceal tears
+of choked mirth over his roommate's late exhibition, recognized this
+violent interrupter as one Linski, a fellow freshman who sat next to him
+in one of his classes. “What's _that_ cuss up to?” Fred wondered, and so
+did others. Linski showed them.
+
+He pressed forward, shoving himself through the two rows in front of him
+till he emerged upon the green carpet of the open space, and as he came,
+he was cyclonic with words.
+
+“You don't put no such stuff as this over, I tell you!” he shouted in
+his hot, nasal voice. “This here's a free country, and you call yourself
+a debating society, do you? Lemme tell you _I_ belong to a debating
+society in Chicago, where I come from, and them fellas up there, they'd
+think they'd oughta be shot fer a fake like what you people are
+tryin' to put over, here, to-night. I come down here to git some more
+education, and pay fer it, too, in good hard money I've made sweatin'
+in a machine shop up there in Chicago; but if _this_ is the kind of
+education I'm a-gunna git, I better go on back there. You call this a
+square debate, do you?”
+
+He advanced toward the chairman's platform, shaking a frantic fist.
+“Well, if you do, you got another think comin', my capitalis' frien'!
+you went and give out the question whether it's right fer Choimuny to go
+through Belgium; and what do you do fer the Choimun side? You pick out
+this here big stiff”--he waved his passionate hand at the paralyzed
+Ramsey--“you pick out a boob like that for the Choimun side, a poor fish
+that gits stagefright so bad he don't know whether he's talkin' or dead;
+or else he fakes it; because he's a speaker so bum it looks more to me
+like he was faking. You get this big stiff to fake the Choimun side, and
+then you go and stick up a goil agains' him that's got brains and makes
+a pacifis' argument that wins the case agains' the Choimuns like cuttin'
+through hog lard! But you ain't a-gunna git away with it, mister!
+Lemme tell you right here and now, I may be a mix blood, but I got some
+Choimun in me with the rest what I got, and before you vote on this here
+question you gotta hear a few woids from somebody that can _talk!_ This
+whole war is a capitalis' war, Belgium as much as Choimuny, and the
+United States is sellin' its soul to the capitalis' right now, I tell
+you, takin' sides agains' Choimuny. Orders fer explosives and ammanition
+and guns and Red Cross supplies is comin' into this country by the
+millions, and the capitalis' United States is fat already on the blood
+of the workers of Europe! Yes, it is, and I'll have my _say,_ you
+boorjaw faker, and you can hammer your ole gavel to pieces at me!”
+
+He had begun to shriek; moisture fell from his brow and his mouth; the
+scandalized society was on its feet, nervously into groups. Evidently
+the meeting was about to disintegrate. “I'll have my _say_!” the
+frenzied Linski screamed. “You try to put up this capitalis' trick and
+work a fake to carry over this debate agains' Choimuny, but you can't
+work it on _me_, lemme tell you! I'll have my _say!_”
+
+The outraged chairman was wholly at a loss how to deal with the
+“unprecedented situation”--so he defined it, quite truthfully; and he
+continued to pound upon the desk, while other clamours began to rival
+Linski's; shouts of “Put him out!” “Order!” “Shut up, Freshman!” “Turn
+him over to the sophomores!”
+
+“This meeting is _adjourned!_” bellowed the chairman, and there was a
+thronging toward the doors, while the frothing Linski asseverated: “I'm
+a-gunna git my say, I tell you! I'll have my say! I'll have my _say!_”
+
+He had more than that, before the hour was over. A moment after he
+emerged from the building and came out, still hot, upon the cool, dark
+campus, he found himself the centre of a group of his own classmates
+whom he at first mistook for sophomores, such was their manner.
+
+...As this group broke up, a few minutes later, a youth running to
+join it, scenting somewhat of interest, detained one of those who were
+departing.
+
+“What's up? What was that squealing?”
+
+“Oh, nothing. We just talked to that Linski. Nobody else touched him,
+but Ramsey Milholland gave him a _peach_ of a punch on the snoot.”
+
+“Whoopee!”
+
+Ramsey was laconic in response to inquiries upon this subject. When
+someone remarked: “You served him right for calling you a boob and a
+poor fish and so on before all the society, girls and all,” Ramsey only
+said:
+
+“That wasn't what I hit him for.”
+
+He declined to explain further.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+“The way I look at it, Ramsey,” Fred Mitchell said, when they reached
+their apartment, whither the benevolent Colburn accompanied them, “the
+way I look at it, this Linski kind of paid you a compliment, after all,
+when he called you a fake. He must have thought you anyway _looked_ as
+if you could make a better speech than you did. Oh, golly!”
+
+And as Ramsey groaned, the jovial Mitchell gave himself up to the divan
+and the mirth. “Oh, oh, oh, _golly_!” he sputtered.
+
+“Never you mind, Brother Milholland,” Colburn said gently. “The Lumen is
+used to nervous beginners. I've seen dozens in my time, just like you;
+and some of 'em got to be first rate before they quit. Besides, this
+crazy Linski is all that anybody'll ever remember about to-night's
+meeting, anyhow. There never was any such outbreak as that in _my_ time,
+and I guess there never was in the whole history of the society. We'll
+probably suspend him until he apologizes to the society--I'm on the
+board, and I'm in favour of it. Who is the bird, anyhow? He's in your
+class.”
+
+“I never saw him before,” Ramsey responded from the deep chair, where
+he had moodily thrown himself; and, returning to his brooding upon his
+oratory. “Oh, murder!” he moaned.
+
+“Well,” said the senior, “you'll know him when you see him again. You
+put your mark on him where you can see it, all right!” He chuckled. “I
+suppose I really ought to have interfered in that, but I decided to do
+a little astronomical observation, about fifty feet away, for a few
+minutes. I'm 'way behind in my astronomy, anyhow. Do you know this
+Linski, Brother Mitchell?”
+
+“I've talked to him a couple o' times on the campus,” said Fred. “He's
+in one of my classes. He's about the oldest in our class, I guess--a
+lot older than us, anyhow. He's kind of an anarchist or something; can't
+talk more'n five minutes any time without gettin off some bug stuff
+about 'capitalism.' He said the course in political economy was all
+'capitalism' and the prof was bought by Wall Street.”
+
+“Poor old Prof. Craig!” Colburn laughed. “He gets fifteen hundred a
+year.”
+
+“Yes; I'd heard that myself, and I told Linski, and he said he had an
+uncle workin' in a steel mill got twice that much; but it didn't
+make any difference, ole Craig was bought by Wall Street. He said
+'capitalism' better look out; he and the foreign-born workmen were goin'
+to _take_ this country some day, and that was one of the reasons he was
+after an education. He talked pretty strong pro-German, too--about
+the war in Europe--but I sort of thought that was more because he'd be
+pro-anything that he thought would help upset the United States than
+because he cared much about Germany.”
+
+“Yes,” said Colburn, “that's how he sounded to-night. I guess there's
+plenty more like him in the cities, too. That reminds me, I'd better
+arrange a debate on immigration for the Lumen. We'll put Brother
+Milholland for the negative, this time.”
+
+Ramsey started violently. “See here--”
+
+But the senior reassured him. “Just wanted to see you jump,” he
+explained. “Don't fear; you've done your share.”
+
+“I should think I have!” Ramsey groaned.
+
+“Yes, you won't be called on again this term. By the way,” said Colburn,
+thoughtfully, “that was a clever girl you had against you to-night. I
+don't believe in pacificism much, myself, but she used it very niftily
+for her argument. Isn't she from your town, this Miss Yocum?”
+
+Fred nodded.
+
+“Well, she's a clever young thing,” said the senior, still thoughtful.
+And he added: “Graceful girl, she is.”
+
+At this, the roommates looked at him with startled attention. Ramsey was
+so roused as to forget his troubles and sit forward in his chair.
+
+“Yes,” said the musing Colburn, “she's a mighty pretty girl.”
+
+“What!”
+
+This exclamation was a simultaneous one; the astounded pair stared at
+him in blank incredulity.
+
+“Why, don't you think so?” Colburn mildly inquired. “She seems to me
+very unusual looking.”
+
+“Well, yes,” Fred assented, emphatically. “We're with you there!”
+
+“Extraordinary eyes,” continued Colburn. “Lovely figure, too; altogether
+a strikingly pretty girl. Handsome, I should say, perhaps. Yes,
+'handsome' rather than 'pretty'.” He looked up from a brief reverie.
+“You fellows known her long?”
+
+“You bet!” said Ramsey.
+
+“She made a splendid impression on the Lumen,” Colburn went on. “I don't
+remember that I ever saw a first appearance there that quite equalled
+it. She'll probably have a brilliant career in the society, and in the
+university, too. She must be a very fine sort of person.” He deliberated
+within himself a few moments longer, then, realizing that his hosts
+and Brethren did not respond with any heartiness--or with anything at
+all--to the theme, he changed it, and asked them what they thought about
+the war in Europe.
+
+They talked of the war rather drowsily for a while; it was an
+interesting but not an exciting topic: the thing they spoke of was so
+far away. It was in foreign countries where they had never been and
+had no acquaintances; and both the cause and the issue seemed to be in
+confusion, though evidently Germany had “started” the trouble. Only
+one thing emerged as absolutely clear and proved: there could be no
+disagreement about Germany's “dirty work,” as Fred defined it, in
+violating Belgium. And this stirred Ramsey to declare with justice that
+“dirty work” had likewise been done upon himself by the official
+person, whoever he or she was, who had given him the German side of
+the evening's debate. After this moment of fervour, the conversation
+languished, and Brother Colburn rose to go.
+
+“Well, I'm glad you gave that Linski a fine little punch, Brother
+Milholland,” he said, at the door. “It won't do you any harm in the
+'frat,' or with the Lumen either. And don't be discouraged about your
+debating. You'll learn. Anybody might have got rattled by having to
+argue against as clever and good-looking a girl as that!”
+
+The roommates gave each other a look of serious puzzlement as the door
+closed. “Well, Brother Colburn is a mighty nice fellow,” Fred said.
+“He's kind of funny, though.”
+
+Ramsey assented, and then, as the two prepared for bed, they entered
+into a further discussion of their senior friend. They liked him “all
+right,” they said, but he certainly must be kind of queer, and they
+couldn't just see how he had “ever managed to get where he was” in the
+“frat” and the Lumen and the university.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+Ramsey passed the slightly disfigured Linski on the campus next day
+without betraying any embarrassment or making a sign of recognition.
+Fred Mitchell told his roommate, chuckling, that Linski had sworn
+to “get” him, and, not knowing Fred's affiliations, had made him the
+confidant of his oath. Fred had given his blessing, he said, upon the
+enterprise, and advised Linski to use a brick. “He'll hit you on the
+head with it,” said the light-hearted Fred, falling back upon this old
+joke. “Then you can catch it as it bounces off and throw it back at
+him.”
+
+However, Linski proved to be merely an episode, not only so far as
+Ramsey was concerned but in the Lumen and in the university as well. His
+suspension from the Lumen was for a year, and so cruel a punishment it
+proved for this born debater that he noisily declared he would found
+a debating society himself, and had a poster printed and distributed
+announcing the first meeting of “The Free Speech and Masses' Rights
+Council.” Several town loafers attended the meeting, but the only
+person connected with the university who came was an oriental student,
+a Chinese youth of almost intrusive amiability. Linski made a fiery
+address, the townsmen loudly appluading his advocacy of an embargo
+on munitions and the distribution of everybody's “property,” but the
+Chinaman, accustomed to see students so madly in earnest only when
+they were burlesquing, took the whole affair to be intended humour, and
+tittered politely without cessation--except at such times as he thought
+it proper to appear quite wrung with laughter. Then he would rock
+himself, clasp his mouth with both hands and splutter through his
+fingers. Linski accused him of being in the pay of “capital.”
+
+Next day the orator was unable to show himself upon the campus without
+causing demonstrations; whenever he was seen a file of quickly gathering
+students marched behind him chanting repeatedly and deafeningly in
+chorus: “Down with Wall Street! Hoch der Kaiser! Who loves Linski? Who,
+who, who? Hoo Lun! Who loves Linski? Who, who, who? Hoo Lun!”
+
+Linski was disgusted, resigned from the university, and disappeared.
+
+“Well, here it isn't mid-year Exams yet, and the good ole class of
+Nineteen-Eighteen's already lost a member,” said Fred Mitchell. “I guess
+we can bear the break-up!”
+
+“I guess so,” Ramsey assented. “That Linski might just as well stayed
+here, though.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“He couldn't do any harm here. He'll prob'ly get more people to listen
+to him in cities where there's so many new immigrants and all such that
+don't know anything, comin' in all the time.”
+
+“Oh, well,” said Fred. “What do _we_ care what happens to Chicago! Come
+on, let's behave real wild, and go on over to the 'Teria and get us a
+couple egg sandwiches and sassprilly.”
+
+Ramsey was willing.
+
+After the strain of the “mid-year Exams” in February, they lived a
+free-hearted life. They had settled into the ways of their world; they
+had grown used to it, and it had grown used to them; there was no
+longer any ignominy in being a freshman. They romped upon the campus
+and sometimes rioted harmlessly about the streets of the town. In the
+evenings they visited their fellows and Brethren and were visited in
+turn, and sometimes they looked so far ahead as to talk vaguely of their
+plans for professions or business--though to a freshman this concerned
+an almost unthinkably distant prospect. “I guess I'll go in with my
+father, in the wholesale drug business,” said Fred. “My married brother
+already is in the firm, and I suppose they'll give me a show--send me
+out on the road a year or two first, maybe, to try me. Then I'm going to
+marry some little cutie and settle down. What you goin' to do, Ramsey?
+Go to Law School, and then come back and go in your father's office?”
+
+“I don't know. Guess so.”
+
+It was always Fred who did most of the talking; Ramsey was quiet. Fred
+told the “frat seniors” that Ramsey was “developing a whole lot these
+days”; and he told Ramsey himself that he could see a “big change” in
+him, adding that the improvement was probably due to Ramsey's having
+passed through “terrible trials like that debate.”
+
+Ramsey kept to their rooms more than his comrade did, one reason for
+this domesticity being that he “had to study longer than Fred did, to
+keep up”; and another reason may have been a greater shyness than Fred
+possessed--if, indeed, Fred possessed any shyness at all. For Fred was
+a cheery spirit difficult to abash, and by the coming of spring knew all
+of the best-looking girl students in the place--knew them well enough,
+it appeared, to speak of them not merely by their first names but by
+abbreviations of these. He had become fashion's sprig, a “fusser” and
+butterfly, and he reproached his roommate for shunning the ladies.
+
+“Well, the truth is, Fred,” said Ramsey one day, responding
+darkly;--“well, you see the truth is, Fred, I've had a--a--I've had an
+experience--”
+
+So, only, did he refer to Milla.
+
+Fred said no more; and it was comprehended between them that the past
+need never be definitely referred to again, but that it stood between
+Ramsey and any entertainment to be obtained of the gentler but less
+trustworthy sex. And when other Brethren of the “frat” would have
+pressed Ramsey to join them in various frivolous enterprises concerning
+“co-eds,” or to be shared by “co-eds,” Fred thought it better to explain
+to them privately (all being sacred among Brethren) how Ramsey's life,
+so far as Girls went, had been toyed with by one now a Married Woman.
+
+This created a great deal of respect for Ramsey. It became understood
+everywhere that he was a woman-hater.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+That early spring of 1915 the two boys and their friends and Brethren
+talked more of the war than they had in the autumn, though the subject
+was not an all at absorbing one; for the trenches in Flanders and France
+were still of the immense, remote distance. By no stretch of imagination
+could these wet trenches be thought greatly to concern the “frat,” the
+Lumen, or the university. Really important matters were the doings of
+the “Track Team,” now training in the “Gym” and on the 'Varsity Field,
+and, more vital still, the prospects of the Nine. But in May there came
+a shock which changed things for a time.
+
+The _Lusitania_ brought to every American a revelation of what had lain
+so deep in his own heart that often he had not realized it was there.
+When the Germans hid in the sea and sent down the great merchant ship,
+with American babies and their mothers, and gallantly dying American
+gentlemen, there came a change even to girls and boys and professors,
+until then so preoccupied with their own little aloof world thousands of
+miles from the murder.
+
+Fred Mitchell, ever volatile and generous, was one of those who went
+quite wild. No orator, he nevertheless made a frantic speech at the
+week's “frat meetings,” cursing the Germans in the simple old English
+words that their performance had demonstrated to be applicable, and
+going on to demand that the fraternity prepare for its own share in the
+action of the country. “I don't care _how_ insignificant we few fellows
+here to-night may seem,” he cried; “we can do our little, and if
+everybody in this country's ready to do their own little, why, that'll
+be plenty! Brothers, don't you realize that all _over_ the United States
+to-night the people are feeling just the way we are here? Millions and
+millions and millions of them! Wherever there's an American he's _with_
+us--and you bet your bottom dollar there are just a few more Americans
+in this country of ours than there are big-mouthed lobsters like that
+fellow Linski! I tell you, if Congress only gives the word, there could
+be an army of five million men in this country to-morrow, and those
+dirty baby-killin' dachshunds would hear a word or two from your Uncle
+Samuel! Brothers, I demand that something be done right here and now,
+and by us! I move we telegraph the Secretary of War to-night and offer
+him a regiment from this university to go over and help _hang_ their
+damn Kaiser.”
+
+The motion was hotly seconded and instantly carried. Then followed
+a much flustered discussion of the form and phrasing of the proposed
+telegram, but, after everything seemed to have been settled, someone
+ascertained by telephone that the telegraph company would not accept
+messages containing words customarily defined as profane; so the
+telegram had to be rewritten. This led to further amendment, and it was
+finally decided to address the senators from that state, instead of the
+Secretary of War, and thus in a somewhat modified form the message was
+finally despatched.
+
+Next day, news of what the “frat” had done made a great stir in the
+university; other “frats” sent telegrams, so did the “Barbarians,”
+ haters of the “frats” but joining them in this; while a small band of
+“German-American” students found it their duty to go before the faculty
+and report these “breaches of neutrality.” They protested heavily,
+demanding the expulsion of the “breachers” as disloyal citizens,
+therefore unfit students, but suffered a disappointment; for the faculty
+itself had been sending telegrams of similar spirit, addressing not
+only the senators and congressmen of the state but the President of the
+United States. Flabbergasted, the “German-Americans” retired; they were
+confused and disgusted by this higher-up outbreak of unneutrality--it
+overwhelmed them that citizens of the United States should not remain
+neutral in the dispute between the United States and Germany. All day
+the campus was in ferment.
+
+At twilight, Ramsey was walking meditatively on his way to dinner at
+the “frat house,” across the campus from his apartment at Mrs. Meig's.
+Everybody was quiet now, both town and gown; the students were at their
+dinners and so were the burghers. Ramsey was late but did not quicken
+his thoughtful steps, which were those of one lost in reverie. He had
+forgotten that spring-time was all about him, and, with his head down,
+walked unregardful of the new gayeties flung forth upon the air by great
+clusters of flowering shrubs, just come into white blossom and lavender.
+
+He was unconscious that somebody behind him, going the same way,
+came hastening to overtake him and called his name, “Ramsey! Ramsey
+Milholland!” Not until he had been called three times did he realize
+that he was being hailed--and in a girl's voice! By that time, the girl
+herself was beside him, and Ramsey halted, quite taken aback. The girl
+was Dora Yocum.
+
+She was pale, a little breathless, and her eyes were bright and severe.
+“I want to speak to you,” she said, quickly. “I want to ask you about
+something. Mr. Colburn and Fred Mitchell are the only people I know in
+your 'frat' except you, and I haven't seen either of them to-day, or I'd
+have asked one of them.”
+
+Most uncomfortably astonished, Ramsey took his hands out of his pockets,
+picked a leaf from a lilac bush beside the path, and put the stem of the
+leaf seriously into a corner of his mouth, before finding anything to
+say. “Well--well, all right,” he finally responded. “I'll tell you--if
+it's anything I know about.”
+
+“You know about it,” said Dora. “That is, you certainly do if you were
+at your 'frat' meeting last night. Were you?”
+
+“Yes, I was there,” Ramsey answered, wondering what in the world she
+wanted to know, though he supposed vaguely that it must be something
+about Colburn, whom he had several times seen walking with her. “Of
+course I couldn't tell you much,” he added, with an afterthought. “You
+see, a good deal that goes on at a 'frat' meeting isn't supposed to be
+talked about.”
+
+“Yes,” she said, smiling faintly, though with a satire that missed him.
+“I've been a member of a sorority since September, and I think I have an
+idea of what could be told or not told. Suppose we walk on, if you don't
+mind. My question needn't embarrass you.”
+
+Nevertheless, as they slowly went on together, Ramsey was embarrassed.
+He felt “queer.” They had known each other so long; in a way had shared
+so much, sitting daily for years near each other and undergoing the same
+outward experiences; they had almost “grown up together,” yet this was
+the first time they had ever talked together or walked together.
+
+“Well--” he said. “If you want to ask anything it's all right for me to
+tell you--well, I just as soon, I guess.”
+
+“It has nothing to do with the secret proceedings of your 'frat',” said
+Dora, primly. “What I want to ask about has been talked of all over the
+place to-day. Everyone has been saying it was _your_ 'frat' that sent
+the first telegram to members of the Government offering support in case
+of war with Germany. They say you didn't even wait until to-day, but
+sent off a message last night. What I wanted to ask you was whether this
+story is true or not?”
+
+“Why, yes,” said Ramsey, mildly. “That's what we did.”
+
+She uttered an exclamation, a sound of grief and of suspicion confirmed.
+“Ah! I was afraid so!”
+
+“'Afraid so'? What's the matter?” he asked, and because she seemed
+excited and troubled, he found himself not quite so embarrassed as he
+had been at first; for some reason her agitation made him feel easier.
+“What was wrong about that?”
+
+“Oh, it's all so shocking and wicked and mistaken!” she cried. “Even the
+faculty has been doing it, and half the other 'frats' and sororities!
+And it was yours that started it.”
+
+“Yes, we did,” he said, throughly puzzled. “We're the oldest 'frat'
+here, and of course”--he chuckled modestly--“of course we think we're
+the best. Do you mean you believe we ought to've sat back and let
+somebody else start it?”
+
+“Oh, _no_!” she answered, vehemently. “Nobody ought to have started it!
+That's the trouble; don't you see? If nobody had started it none of it
+might have happened. The rest mightn't have caught it. It mightn't have
+got into their heads. A war thought is the most contagious thought in
+the world; but if it can be kept from starting, it can be kept from
+being contagious. It's just when people have got into an emotional
+state, or a state of smouldering rage, that everybody ought to be so
+terribly careful not to think war thoughts or make war speeches--or send
+war telegrams! I thought--oh, I was so sure I'd convinced Mr. Colburn of
+all this, the last time we talked of it! He seemed to understand, and I
+was sure he agreed with me.” She bit her lip. “He was only pretending--I
+see that now!”
+
+“I guess he must 'a' been,” said Ramsey, with admirable simplicity. “He
+didn't talk about anything like that last night. He was as much for it
+as anybody.”
+
+“I've no doubt!”
+
+Ramsey made bold to look at her out of the side of his eye, and as she
+was gazing tensely forward he continued his observation for some time.
+She was obviously controlling agitation, almost controlling tears, which
+seemed to threaten her very wide-open eyes; for those now fully
+grown and noticeable eyewinkers of hers were subject to fluctuations
+indicating such a threat. She looked “hurt,” and Ramsey was touched;
+there was something human about her, then, after all. And if he had put
+his feeling into words at the moment, he would have said that he guessed
+maybe he could stand this ole girl, for a few minutes sometimes, better
+than he'd always thought he could.
+
+“Well,” he said, “Colburn prob'ly wouldn't want to hurt your feelings or
+anything. Colburn--”
+
+“He? He didn't! I haven't the faintest personal interest in what he
+did.”
+
+“Oh!” said Ramsey. “Well, excuse me; I thought prob'ly you were sore
+because he'd jollied you about this pacifist stuff, and then--”
+
+“No!” she said, sharply. “I'm not thinking of his having agreed with
+_me_ and fooling _me_ about it. He just wanted to make a pleasant
+impression on a girl, and said anything he thought would please her. I
+don't care whether he does things like that or not. What I care about
+is that the _principle_ didn't reach him and that he mocked it! I don't
+care about a petty treachery to me, personally, but I--”
+
+Fraternal loyalty could not quite brook this. “Brother Colburn is a
+perfectly honor'ble man,” said Ramsey, solemnly. “He is one of the most
+honor'ble men in this--”
+
+“Of course!” she cried. “Oh, can't I make you understand that I'm not
+condemning him for a little flattery to me? I don't care two straws
+for his showing that _I_ didn't influence him. He doesn't interest me,
+please understand.”
+
+Ramsey was altogether perplexed. “Well, I don't see what makes you go
+for him so hard, then.”
+
+“I don't.”
+
+“But you said he was treach--”
+
+“I don't _condemn_ him for it,” she insisted, despairingly. “Don't you
+see the difference? I'm not condemning anybody; I'm only lamenting.
+
+“What about?
+
+“About all of you that want _war_!”
+
+“My golly!” Ramsey exclaimed. “You don't think those Dutchmen were right
+to drown babies and--”
+
+“No! I think they were ghastly murderers! I think they were detestable
+and fiendish and monstrous and--”
+
+“Well, then, my goodness! What do you want?”
+
+“I don't want war!”
+
+“You don't?”
+
+“I want Christianity!” she cried. “I can't think of the Germans without
+hating them, and so to-day, when all the world is hating them, I keep
+myself from thinking of them as much as I can. Already half the world is
+full of war; you want to go to war to make things right, but it won't;
+it will only make more war!”
+
+“Well, I--”
+
+“Don't you see what you've done, you boys?” she said. “Don't you see
+what you've done with your absurd telegram? That started the rest; they
+thought they _all_ had to send telegrams like that.”
+
+“Well, the faculty--”
+
+“Even they mightn't have thought of it if it hadn't been for the first
+one. Vengeance is the most terrible thought; once you put it into
+people's minds that they ought to have it, it runs away with them.”
+
+“Well, it isn't mostly vengeance we're after, at all. There's a lot more
+to it than just getting even with--”
+
+She did not heed him. “You're all blind! You don't see what you're
+doing; you don't even see what you've done to this peaceful place here.
+You've filled it full of thoughts of fury and killing and massacre--”
+
+“Why, no,” said Ramsey. “It was those Dutch did that to us; and,
+besides, there's more to it than you--”
+
+“No, there isn't,” she interrupted. “It's just the old brutal spirit
+that nations inherit from the time they were only tribes; it's the tribe
+spirit, and an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It's those things
+and the love of fighting--men have always loved to fight. Civilization
+hasn't taken it out of them; men still have the brute in them that loves
+to fight!”
+
+“I don't think so,” said Ramsey. “Americans don't love to fight; I don't
+know about other countries, but we don't. Of course, here and there,
+there's some fellow that likes to hunt around for scrapes, but I never
+saw more than three or four in my life that acted that way. Of course a
+football team often has a scrapper or two on it, but that's different.”
+
+“No,” she said. “I think you all really love to fight.”
+
+Ramsey was roused to become argumentative. “I don't see where you get
+the idea. Colburn isn't that way, and back at school there wasn't a
+single boy that was anything like that.”
+
+“What!” She stopped, and turned suddenly to face him.
+
+“What's the matter?” he said, stopping, too. Something he said had
+startled her, evidently.
+
+“How can you say such a thing?” she cried. “_You_ love to fight!”
+
+“Me?”
+
+“You do! You love fighting. You always have loved fighting.”
+
+He was dumbfounded. “Why, I never had a fight in my life!”
+
+She cried out in protest of such prevarication.
+
+“Well, I never did,” he insisted, mildly.
+
+“Why, you had a fight about _me_!”
+
+“No, I didn't.”
+
+“With Wesley Bender!”
+
+Ramsey chuckled. “_That_ wasn't a fight!”
+
+“It wasn't?”
+
+“Nothing like one. We were just guyin' him about--about gettin' slicked
+up, kind of, because he sat in front of you; and he hit me with his book
+strap and I chased him off. Gracious, no; _that_ wasn't a fight!”
+
+“But you fought Linski only last fall.”
+
+Ramsey chuckled again. “That wasn't even as much like a fight as the one
+with Wesley. I just told this Linski I was goin' to give him a punch in
+the sn-- I just told him to look out because I was goin' to hit him, and
+then I did it, and waited to see if he wanted to do anything about it,
+and he didn't. That's all there was to it, and it wasn't any more like
+fighting than--than feeding chickens is.”
+
+She laughed dolefully. “It seems to me rather more like it than that!”
+
+“Well, it wasn't.”
+
+They had begun to walk on again, and Ramsey was aware that they had
+passed the “frat house,” where his dinner was probably growing cold. He
+was aware of this, but not sharply or insistently. Curiously enough, he
+did not think about it. He had begun to find something pleasant in the
+odd interview, and in walking beside a girl, even though the girl was
+Dora Yocum. He made no attempt to account to himself for anything so
+peculiar.
+
+For a while they went slowly together, not speaking, and without
+destination, though Ramsey vaguely took it for granted that Dora was
+going somewhere. But she wasn't. They emerged from the part of the
+small town closely built about the university and came out upon a bit
+of parked land overlooking the river; and here Dora's steps slowed to an
+indeterminate halt near a bench beneath a maple tree.
+
+“I think I'll stay here a while,” she said; and as he made no response,
+she asked, “Hadn't you better be going back to your 'frat house' for
+your dinner? I didn't mean for you to come out of your way with me; I
+only wanted to get an answer to my question. You'd better be running
+back.”
+
+“Well--”
+
+He stood irresolute, not sure that he wanted his dinner just then. It
+would have amazed him to face the fact deliberately that perhaps he
+preferred being with Dora Yocum to eating. However, he faced no such
+fact, nor any fact, but lingered.
+
+“Well--” he said again.
+
+“You'd better go.”
+
+“I guess I can get my dinner pretty near any time. I don't--” He had a
+thought. “Did you--”
+
+“Did I what?”
+
+“Did you have your dinner before I met you?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Well, aren't you--”
+
+She shook her head. “I don't want any.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“I don't think people have very much appetite to-day and yesterday,” she
+said, with the hint of a sad laugh, “all over America.”
+
+“No; I guess that's so.”
+
+“It's too terrible!” she said. “I can't sit and eat when I think of the
+_Lusitania_--of all those poor, poor people strangling in the water--”
+
+“No; I guess nobody can eat much, if they think about that.”
+
+“And of what it's going to bring, if we let it,” she went on. “As if
+this killing weren't enough, we want to add _our_ killing! Oh, that's
+the most terrible thing of all--the thing it makes within us! Don't you
+understand?”
+
+She turned to him appealingly, and he felt queerer than ever. Dusk had
+fallen. Where they stood, under the young-leaved maple tree, there
+was but a faint lingering of afterglow, and in this mystery her face
+glimmered wan and sweet; so that Ramsey, just then, was like one who
+discovers an old pan, used in the kitchen, to be made of chased silver.
+
+“Well, I don't feel much like dinner right now,” he said. “We--we could
+sit here awhile on this bench, prob'ly.”
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+Ramsey kept very few things from Fred Mitchell, and usually his
+confidences were immediate upon the occasion of them; but allowed
+several weeks to elapse before sketching for his roommate the outlines
+of this adventure.
+
+“One thing that was kind o' funny about it, Fred,” he said, “I didn't
+know what to call her.”
+
+Mr. Mitchell, stretched upon the window seat in their “study,” and
+looking out over the town street below and the campus beyond the street,
+had already thought it tactful to ambush his profound amusement by
+turning upon his side, so that his face was toward the window and away
+from his companion. “What did you want to call her?” he inquired in a
+serious voice. “Names?”
+
+“No. You know what I mean. I mean I had to just keep callin' her 'you';
+and that gets kind of freaky when you're talkin' to anybody a good while
+like that. When she'd be lookin' away from me, and I'd want to start
+sayin' something to her, you know, why, I wouldn't know how to get
+started exactly, without callin' her something. A person doesn't want to
+be always startin' off with 'See here,' or things like that.”
+
+“I don't see why you let it trouble you,” said Fred. “From how you've
+always talked about her, you had a perfectly handy way to start off with
+anything you wanted to say to her.”
+
+“What with?”
+
+“Why didn't you just say, 'Oh, you Teacher's Pet!' That would--”
+
+“Get out! What I mean is, she called me 'Ramsey' without any bother; it
+seems funny I got stumped every time I started to say 'Dora.' Someway I
+couldn't land it, and it certainly would 'a' sounded crazy to call her
+'Miss Yocum' after sittin' in the same room with her every day from the
+baby class clear on up through the end of high school. That _would_ 'a'
+made me out an idiot!”
+
+“What did you call her?” Fred asked.
+
+“Just nothin' at all. I started to call her something or other a hundred
+times, I guess, and then I'd balk. I'd get all ready, and kind of make a
+sort of a sound, and then I'd have to quit.”
+
+“She may have thought you had a cold,” said Fred, still keeping his back
+turned.
+
+“I expect maybe she did--though I don't know; most of the time she
+didn't seem to notice me much, kind of.”
+
+“She didn't?”
+
+“No. She was too upset, I guess, by what she was thinkin' about.”
+
+“But if it hadn't been for that,” Fred suggested, “you mean she'd have
+certainly paid more attention to who was sitting on the bench with her?”
+
+“Get out! You know how it was. Everybody those few days thought we were
+goin' to have war, and she was just sure of it, and it upset her. Of
+course most people were a lot more upset by what those Dutchmen did
+to the _Lusitania_ than by the idea of war; and she seemed to feel as
+broken up as anybody could be about the _Lusitania_, but what got her
+the worst was the notion of her country wantin' to fight, she said. She
+really was upset, too, Fred; there wasn't any puttin' on about it. I
+guess that ole girl certainly must have a good deal of feeling, because,
+doggoned, after we'd been sittin' there a while if she didn't have to
+get out her handkerchief! She kept her face turned away from me--just
+the same as you're doin' now to keep from laughin'--but honestly, she
+cried like somebody at a funeral. I felt like the darndest fool!”
+
+“I'm not laughing,” said Fred, but he did not prove it by turning so
+that his face could be seen. “What did she say?”
+
+“Oh, she didn't say such an awful lot. She said one kind o' funny thing
+though: she said she was sorry she couldn't quite control herself, but
+if anybody had to see her cry she minded it less because it was an old
+schoolmate. What struck me so kind o' funny about that is--why, it looks
+as if she never knew the way I always hated her so.”
+
+“Yes,” said Fred. “It wasn't flattering!”
+
+“Well, sir, it _isn't_, kind of,” Ramsey agreed, musingly. “It certainly
+isn't when you look at it that way.”
+
+“What did you say when she said that?” Fred asked.
+
+“Nothin'. I started to, but I sort of balked again. Well, we kept on
+sitting there, and afterwhile she began to talk again and got kind of
+excited about how no war could do anything or anybody any good, and all
+war was wicked, no matter what it was about, and nothin' could be good
+that was founded on fear and hate, and every war that ever was fought
+was always founded on fear and hate. She said if the Germans wanted to
+fight us we ought to go to meet them and tell them we wouldn't fight.”
+
+“What did you say?”
+
+“Nothin'. I kind o' started to--but what's the use? She's got that
+in her head. Besides, how are you goin' to argue about a thing with
+a person that's crying about it? I tell you, Fred, I guess we got to
+admit, after all, that ole girl certainly must have a lots of heart
+about her, anyway. There may not be much _fun_ to her--though of course
+I wouldn't know hardly any way to tell about that--but there couldn't be
+hardly any doubt she's got a lot of feeling. Well, and then she went on
+and said old men made wars, but didn't fight; they left the fighting to
+the boys, and the suffering to the boy's mothers.”
+
+“Yes!” Fred exclaimed, and upon that he turned free of mirth for the
+moment. “That's the woman of it, I guess. Send the old men to do the
+fighting! For the matter of that, I guess my father'd about a thousand
+times go himself than see me and my brothers go; but Father's so fat he
+can't stoop! You got to be able to stoop to dig a trench, I guess! Well,
+suppose we sent our old men up against those Dutchmen; the Dutchmen
+would just kill the old men, and then come after the boys anyway, and
+the boys wouldn't be ready, and they'd get killed, too; and then there
+wouldn't be anybody but the Dutchmen left, and that'd be one fine world,
+wouldn't it?”
+
+“Yes,” said Ramsey. “Course I thought of that.”
+
+“Did you tell her?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“What did you say?”
+
+“Nothin'. I couldn't get started anyway, but, besides, what was the use?
+But she didn't want the old men to go; she didn't want anybody to go.”
+
+“What did she want the country to do?” Fred asked, impatiently.
+
+“Just what it has been doin', I suppose. Just let things simmer down,
+and poke along, and let them do what they like to us.”
+
+“I guess so!” said Fred. “Then, afterwhile, when they get some free time
+on their hands, they'll come over and make it _really_ interesting for
+us, because they know we won't do anything but talk. Yes, I guess the
+way things are settling down ought to suit Dora. There isn't goin' to be
+any war.”
+
+“She was pretty sure there was, though,” Ramsey said, thoughtfully.
+
+“Oh, of course she was then. We all thought so those few days.”
+
+“No. She said she thought it prob'ly wouldn't come right away, but now
+it was almost sure to come sometime. She said our telegrams and all the
+talk and so much feeling and everything showed her that the war thought
+that was always _in_ people somewhere had been stirred up so it would
+go on and on. She said she knew from the way she felt herself about the
+_Lusitania_ that a feeling like that in her would never be absolutely
+wiped out as long as she lived. But she said her other feeling about the
+horribleness of war taught her to keep the first feeling from breaking
+out, but with other people it wouldn't; and even if war didn't break
+out right then, it would always be ready to, all over the country, and
+sometime it would, though she was goin' to do her share to fight it,
+herself, as long as she could stand. She asked me wouldn't I be one of
+the ones to help her.”
+
+He paused, and after a moment Fred asked, “Well? What did you say to
+that?”
+
+“Nothin'. I started to, but--”
+
+Again Fred thought it tactful to turn and look out the window, while the
+agitation of his shoulders betrayed him.
+
+“Go on and laugh! Well, so we stayed there quite a while, but before we
+left she got kind of more like everyday, you know, the way people do. It
+was half-past nine when we walked back in town, and I was commencin'
+to feel kind of hungry, so I asked her if she wasn't, and she sort of
+laughed and seemed to be ashamed of it, as if it were a disgrace or
+something, but she said she guessed she was; so I left her by that hedge
+of lilacs near the observatory and went on over to the 'Teria and the
+fruit store, and got some stuffed eggs and olives and half-a-dozen
+peanut butter sandwiches and a box o' strawberries--kind of girl-food,
+you know--and went on back there, and we ate the stuff up. So then she
+said she was afraid she'd taken me away from my dinner and made me a lot
+of trouble, and so on, and she was sorry, and she told me good-night--”
+
+“What did you say then?”
+
+“Noth-- Oh, shut up! So then she skipped out to her Dorm, and I came on
+home.”
+
+“When did you see her next, Ramsey?”
+
+“I haven't seen her next,” said Ramsey. “I haven't seen her at all--not
+to speak to. I saw her on Main Street twice since then, but both times
+she was with some other girls, and they were across the street, and
+I couldn't tell if she was lookin' at me--I kind of thought not--so I
+thought it might look sort o' nutty to bow to her if she wasn't, so I
+didn't.”
+
+“And you didn't tell her you wouldn't be one of the ones to help her
+with her pacifism and anti-war stuff and all that?”
+
+“No. I started to, but-- Shut up!”
+
+Fred sat up, giggling. “So she thinks you _will_ help her. You didn't
+say anything at all, and she must think that means she converted you.
+Why didn't you speak up?”
+
+“Well, _I_ wouldn't argue with her,” said Ramsey. Then, after a silence,
+he seemed to be in need of sympathetic comprehension. “It _was_ kind o'
+funny, though, wasn't it?” he said, appealingly.
+
+“What was?”
+
+“The whole business.”
+
+“What 'whole bus'--”
+
+“Oh, get out! Her stoppin' me, and me goin' pokin' along with her, and
+her--well, her crying and everything, and me being around with her while
+she felt so upset, I mean. It seems--well, it does seem kind o' funny to
+me.”
+
+“Why does it?” Fred inquired, preserving his gravity. “Why should it
+seem funny to you?”
+
+“I don't mean funny like something's funny you laugh at,” Ramsey
+explained laboriously. “I mean funny like something that's out of the
+way, and you wonder how it ever happened to happen. I mean it seems
+funny I'd ever be sittin' there on a bench with that ole girl I never
+spoke to in my life or had anything to do with, and talkin' about the
+United States goin' to war. What we were talkin' about, why, that seems
+just as funny as the rest of it. Lookin' back to our class picnic, f'r
+instance, second year of high school, that day I jumped in the creek
+after-- Well, you know, it was when I started makin' a fool of myself
+over a girl. Thank goodness, I got _that_ out o' my system; it makes me
+just sick to look back on those days and think of the fool things I did,
+and all I thought about that girl. Why, she-- Well, I've got old enough
+to see now she was just about as ordinary a girl as there ever was, and
+if I saw her now I wouldn't even think she was pretty; I'd prob'ly think
+she was sort of loud-lookin'. Well, what's passed is past, and it isn't
+either here nor there. What I started to say was this: that the way it
+begins to look to me, it looks as if nobody can tell in this life a darn
+thing about what's goin' to happen, and the things that do happen are
+the very ones you'd swear were the last that could. I mean--you look
+back to that day of the picnic--my! but I was a rube then--well, I mean
+you look back to that day, and what do you suppose I'd have thought then
+if somebody'd told me the time would ever come when I'd be 'way off here
+at college sittin' on a bench with Dora Yocum--with _Dora Yocum_, in
+the first place--and her crying, and both of us talking about the United
+States goin' to war with Germany! Don't it seem pretty funny to you,
+Fred, too?”
+
+“But as near as I can make out,” Fred said, “that isn't what happened.”
+
+“Why isn't it?”
+
+“You say 'and both us talking' and so on. As near as I can make out,
+_you_ didn't say anything at all.”
+
+“Well, I didn't--much,” Ramsey admitted, and returned to his point with
+almost pathetic persistence. “But doesn't it seem kind o' funny to you,
+Fred?”
+
+“Well, I don't know.”
+
+“It does to me,” Ramsey insisted. “It certainly does to me.”
+
+“Yes,” said Fred cruelly. “I've noticed you said so, but it don't look
+any funnier than you do when you say it.”
+
+Suddenly he sent forth a startling shout. “_Wow!_ You're as red as a
+blushing beet.”
+
+“I am not!”
+
+“Y'are!” shouted Fred. “Wow! The ole woman-hater's got the flushes! Oh,
+look at the pretty posy!”
+
+And, jumping down from the window seat, he began to dance round his much
+perturbed comrade, bellowing. Ramsey bore with him for a moment, then
+sprang upon him; they wrestled vigorously, broke a chair, and went to
+the floor with a crash that gave the chandelier in Mrs. Meig's parlour,
+below, an attack of jingles.
+
+“You let me up!” Fred gasped.
+
+“You take your solemn oath to shut up? You goin' to swear it?”
+
+“All right. I give my solemn oath,” said Fred; and they rose, arranging
+their tousled attire.
+
+“Well,” said Fred, “when you goin' to call on her?”
+
+“You look here!” Ramsey approached him dangerously. “You just gave me
+your sol--”
+
+“I beg!” Fred cried, retreating. “I mean, aside from all that, why, I
+just thought maybe after such an evening you'd feel as a gentleman you
+ought to go and ask about her health.”
+
+“Now, see here--”
+
+“No, I mean it; you ought to,” Fred insisted, earnestly, and as
+his roommate glared at him with complete suspicion, he added, in
+explanation. “You ought to go next Caller's Night, and send in your
+card, and say you felt you ought to ask if she'd suffered any from the
+night air. Even if you couldn't manage to say that, you ought to start
+to say it, anyhow, because you-- Keep off o' me! I'm only tryin' to do
+you a good turn, ain't I?”
+
+“You save your good turns for yourself,” Ramsey growled, still advancing
+upon him.
+
+But the insidious Mitchell, evading him, fled to the other end of the
+room, picked up his cap, and changed his manner. “Come on, ole bag o'
+beans, let's be on our way to the 'frat house'; it's time. We'll call
+this all off.”
+
+“You better!” Ramsey warned him; and they trotted out together.
+
+But as they went along, Fred took Ramsey's arm confidentially, and said,
+“Now, honestly, Ram, ole man, when _are_ you goin' to--”
+
+Ramsey was still red. “You look here! Just say one more word--”
+
+“Oh, _no_,” Fred expostulated. “I mean _seriously_, Ramsey. Honestly, I
+mean seriously. Aren't you seriously goin' to call on her some Caller's
+Night?”
+
+“No, I'm not!”
+
+“But why not?”
+
+“Because I don't want to.”
+
+“Well, seriously, Ramsey, there's only one Caller's Night before
+vacation, and so I suppose it hardly will be worth while; but I expect
+you'll see quite a little of her at home this summer?”
+
+“No, I won't. I won't see her at all. She isn't goin' to be home this
+summer, and I wouldn't see anything of her if she was.”
+
+“Where's she goin' to be.”
+
+“In Chicago.”
+
+“She is?” said Fred, slyly. “When'd she tell you?”
+
+Ramsey turned on him. “You look out! She didn't tell me. I just happened
+to see in the _Bulletin_ she's signed up with some other girls to go and
+do settlement work in Chicago. Anybody could see it. It was printed out
+plain. You could have seen it just as well as I could, if you'd read the
+_Bulletin_.”
+
+“Oh,” said Fred.
+
+“Now look here--”
+
+“Good heavens! Can't I even say 'oh'?”
+
+“It depends on the way you say it.”
+
+“I'll be careful,” Fred assured him, earnestly. “I really and honestly
+don't mean to get you excited about all this, Ramsey. I can see myself
+you haven't changed from your old opinion of Dora Yocum a bit. I was
+only tryin' to get a little rise out of you for a minute, because of
+course, seriously, why, I can see you hate her just the same as you
+always did.”
+
+“Yes,” said Ramsey, disarmed and guileless in the face of diplomacy. “I
+only told you about all this, Fred, because it seemed--well, it seemed
+so kind o' funny to me.”
+
+Fred affected not to hear. “What did you say, Ramsey?”
+
+Ramsey looked vaguely disturbed. “I said--why, I said it all seemed kind
+o'--” He paused, then repeated plaintively: “Well, to me, it all seemed
+kind o'--kind o' funny.”
+
+“What did?” Fred inquired, but as he glanced in seeming naivete at his
+companion, something he saw in the latter's eye warned him, and suddenly
+Fred thought it would be better to run.
+
+Ramsey chased him all the way to the “frat house.”
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+Ramsey was not quite athlete enough for any of the 'varsity teams;
+neither was he an antagonist safely encountered, whether in play or
+in earnest, and during the next few days he taught Fred Mitchell to be
+cautious. The chaffer learned that his own agility could not save him
+from Ramsey, and so found it wiser to contain an effervescence which
+sometimes threatened to burst him. Ramsey as a victim was a continuous
+temptation, he was so good-natured and yet so furious.
+
+After Commencement, when the roommates had gone home, Mr. Mitchell's
+caution extended over the long sunshiny months of summer vacation; he
+broke it but once and then in well-advised safety, for the occasion was
+semi-public. The two were out for a stroll on a July Sunday afternoon;
+and up and down the street young couples lolled along, young families
+and baby carriages straggled to and from the houses of older relatives,
+and the rest of the world of that growing city was rocking and fanning
+itself on its front veranda.
+
+“Here's a right pretty place, isn't it, Ramsey? don't you think?” Fred
+remarked innocently, as they were passing a lawn of short-clipped,
+bright green grass before a genial-looking house, fresh in white paint
+and cool in green-and-white awnings. A broad veranda, well populated
+just now, crossed the front of the house; fine trees helped the awnings
+to give comfort against the sun; and Fred's remark was warranted.
+Nevertheless, he fell under the suspicion of his companion, who had
+begun to evince some nervousness before Fred spoke.
+
+“What place do you mean?”
+
+“The Yocum place,” said Mr. Mitchell. “I hear the old gentleman's mighty
+prosperous these days. They keep things up to the mark, don't they,
+Ramsey?”
+
+“I don't know whether they do or whether they don't,” Ramsey returned
+shortly.
+
+Fred appeared to muse regretfully. “It looks kind of _empty_ now,
+though,” he said, “with only Mr. and Mrs. Yocum and their three married
+daughters, and eight or nine children on the front porch!”
+
+“You wait till I get you where they can't see us!” Ramsey warned him,
+fiercely.
+
+“You can't do it!” said Fred, manifesting triumph. “We'll both stop
+right here in plain sight of the whole Yocum family connection till you
+promise not to touch me.”
+
+And he halted, leaning back implacably against the Yocum's iron fence.
+Ramsey was scandalized.
+
+“Come on!” he said, hoarsely. “Don't stop _here_!”
+
+“I will, and if you go on alone I'll yell at you. You got to stand right
+here with all of 'em lookin' at you until--”
+
+“I promise! My heavens, come _on_!”
+
+Fred consented to end the moment of agony; and for the rest of the
+summer found it impossible to persuade Ramsey to pass that house in his
+company. “I won't do it!” Ramsey told him. “Your word of honour means
+nothin' to me; you're liable to do anything that comes into your head,
+and I'm gettin' old enough to not get a reputation for bein' seen with
+people that act the idiot on the public streets. No, sir; we'll walk
+around the block--at least, we will if you're goin' with _me_!”
+
+And to Fred's delight, though he concealed it, they would make this
+detour.
+
+The evening after their return to the university both were busy with
+their trunks and various orderings and disorderings of their apartment,
+but Fred several times expressed surprise that his roommate should
+be content to remain at home; and finally Ramsey comprehended the
+implications. Mrs. Meigs's chandelier immediately jingled with the shock
+of another crash upon the floor above.
+
+“You let me up!” Fred commanded thickly, his voice muffled by the pile
+of flannels, sweaters, underwear, and raincoats wherein his head
+was being forced to burrow. “You let me up, darn you! _I_ didn't say
+anything.” And upon his release he complained that the attack was
+unprovoked. “I didn't say anything on earth to even hint you might want
+to go out and look around to see if anybody in particular had got back
+to college yet. I didn't even mention the _name_ of Dora Yo-- Keep off
+o' me! My goodness, but you are sensitive!”
+
+As a matter of fact, neither of them saw Dora until the first meeting of
+the Lumen, whither they went as sophomores to take their pleasure in the
+agony of freshmen debaters. Ramsey was now able to attend the Lumen, not
+with complacence but at least without shuddering over the recollection
+of his own spectacular first appearance there. He had made subsequent
+appearances, far from brilliant yet not disgraceful, and as a spectator,
+at least, he usually felt rather at his ease in the place. It cannot be
+asserted, however, that he appeared entirely at his ease this evening
+after he had read the “Programme” chalked upon the large easel
+blackboard beside the chairman's desk. Three “Freshmen Debates” were
+announced, and a “Sophomore Oration,” this last being followed by the
+name, “D. Yocum, '18.” Ramsey made immediate and conspicuous efforts
+to avoid sitting next to his roommate, but was not so adroit as to be
+successful. However, Fred was merciful: the fluctuations of his friend's
+complexion were an inspiration more to pity than to badinage.
+
+The three debates all concerned the “Causes of the War in Europe,” and
+honours appeared to rest with a small and stout, stolidly “pro-German”
+ girl debater, who had brought with her and translated at sight absa-loot
+proofs (so she called them), printed in German, that Germany had been
+attacked by Belgium at the low instigation of the envious English.
+Everybody knew it wasn't true; but she made an impression and
+established herself as a debater, especially as her opponent was quite
+confounded by her introduction of printed matter.
+
+When the debates and the verdicts were concluded, the orator appeared,
+and Fred's compassion extended itself so far that he even refrained from
+looking inquisitively at the boy in the seat next to his; but he made
+one side wager, mentally--that if Ramsey had consented to be thoroughly
+confidential just then, he would have confessed to feeling kind o'
+funny.
+
+Dora was charmingly dressed, and she was pale; but those notable
+eyelashes of hers were all the more notable against her pallor. And as
+she spoke with fire, it was natural that her colour should come back
+quite flamingly and that her eyes should flash in shelter of the lashes.
+“The Christian Spirit and Internationalism” was her subject, yet she
+showed no meek sample of a Christian Spirit herself when she came to
+attacking war-makers generally, as well as all those “half-developed
+tribesmen,” and “victims of herd instinct” who believed that war might
+ever be justified under any circumstances of atrocity. She was eloquent
+truly, and a picture of grace and girlish dignity, even when she
+was most vigorous. Nothing could have been more militant than her
+denunciation of militancy.
+
+“She's an actual wonder,” Fred said, when the two had got back to Mrs.
+Meigs's, afterward. “Don't you look at me like that: I'm talkin' about
+her as a public character, and there's nothin' personal about it. You
+let me alone.”
+
+Ramsey was not clear as to his duty. “Well--”
+
+“If any person makes a public speech,” Fred protested, “I got a perfect
+right to discuss 'em, no matter what you think of 'em”--and he added
+hastily--“or _don't_ think of 'em!”
+
+“Look here--”
+
+“Good heavens!” Fred exclaimed. “You aren't expecting to interfere with
+me if I say anything about that little fat Werder girl that argued for
+Germany, are you? Or any of the other speakers? I got a right to talk
+about 'em just as public speakers, haven't I? Well, what I say is:
+Dora Yocum as an orator is just an actual perfect wonder. Got any
+objections?”
+
+“N-no.”
+
+“All right then.” Fred settled himself upon the window seat with a pipe,
+and proceeded, “There's something about her, when she stands there, she
+stands so straight and knows just what she's up to, and everything, why,
+there's something about her makes the cold chills go down your
+spine--I mean _my_ spine, not yours particularly! You sit down--I
+mean _anybody's_ spine, doggone it!” And as Ramsey increased the
+manifestations of his suspicions, lifting a tennis racket over the
+prostrate figure, “Oh, murder,” Fred said, resignedly. “All right, we'll
+change the subject. That fat little Werder cutie made out a pretty good
+case for Germany, didn't she?”
+
+Ramsey tossed the racket away, disposed himself in an easy chair with
+his feet upon the table, and presently chuckled. “You remember the time
+I had the fuss with Wesley Bender, back in the ole school days?”
+
+“Yep.”
+
+“All the flubdub this Werder girl got off to-night puts me in mind of
+the way I talked that day. I can remember it as well as anything! Wesley
+kept yelpin' that whoever mentioned a lady's name in a public place was
+a pup, and of course I didn't want to hit him for that; a boy's got
+a reg'lar instinct for tryin' to make out he's on the right side in a
+scrap, and he'll always try to do something, or say something, or he'll
+get the other boy to say someting to make it look as if the other boy
+was in the wrong and began the trouble. So I told poor ole Wes that my
+father spoke my mother's name in a public place whenever he wanted
+to, and I dared him to say my father was a pup. And all so on. A boy
+startin' up a scrap, why, half the time he'll drag his father and mother
+if there's any chance to do it. He'll fix up some way so he can say,
+'Well, that's just the same as if you called my father and mother a
+fool,' or something like that. Then, afterward, he can claim he was
+scrappin' because he had to defend his father and mother, and of course
+he'll more than half believe it himself.
+
+“Well, you take a Government--it's only just some _men_, the way I see
+it, and if they're goin' to start some big trouble like this war, why,
+of course they'll play just about the same ole boy trick, because it's
+instinct to do it, just the same for a man as it is for a boy--or else
+the principle's just the same, or something. Well, anyhow, if you want
+to know who started a scrap and worked it up, you got to forget all the
+_talk_ there is about it, and all what each side _says_, and just look
+at two things: Who was fixed for it first, or thought they were, and who
+hit first? When you get the answer to those two questions everything's
+settled about all this being 'attacked' business. Both sides, just the
+same as boys, they'll both claim they _had_ to fight; but if you want to
+know which one _did_ have to, why forget all the arguing and don't take
+your eye off just what _happened_. As near as I can make out, this
+war began with Germany and Austria startin' in to wipe out two little
+countries; Austria began shootin' up Serbia, and Germany began shootin'
+up Belgium. I don't need to notice any more than that, myself--all
+the Werder girls in the country can debate their heads off, they can't
+change what happened and they can't excuse it, either.”
+
+He was silent, appearing to feel that he had concluded conclusively, and
+the young gentleman on the window seat, after staring at him for several
+moments of genuine thoughtfulness, was gracious enough to observe,
+“Well, ole Ram, you may be a little slow in class, but when you think
+things out with yourself you do show signs of something pretty near like
+real horse-sense sometimes. Why don't you ever say anything like that
+to--to some of your pacifist friends?”
+
+“What do you mean? Who you talkin' about? Whose 'pacifist friends'?”
+
+“See here!” Fred exclaimed, as Ramsey seemed about to rise. “You keep
+sitting just where you are, and don't look at me out of the side of your
+eye like that--pretendin' you're a bad horse. I'm _really_ serious now,
+and you listen to me. I don't think argufying and debating like that
+little Fraulein Werder's does much harm. She's a right nifty young
+rolypoly, by the way, though you didn't notice, of course.”
+
+“Why didn't I?” Ramsey demanded, sharply. “Why didn't I notice?”
+
+“Oh, nothing. But, as I was saying, I don't think that sort of talk does
+much harm: everybody knows it goes on among the pro-Germans, and it's
+all hot air, anyhow. But I think Linski's sort of talk does do harm,
+prob'ly among people that don't know much; and what's more, I think Dora
+Yocum's does some, too. Well, you hit Linski in the snoot, so what are
+you-- Sit still! My lord! You don't think I'm askin' you to go and hit
+Dora, do you? I mean: Aren't you ever goin' to talk to her about it and
+tell her what's what?”
+
+“Oh, you go on to bed!”
+
+“No, I'm in earnest,” Fred urged. “Honestly, aren't you ever goin' to?”
+
+“How could I do anything like that?” Ramsey demanded explosively. “I
+never see her--to speak to, that is. I prob'ly won't happen to have
+another talk with her, or anything, all the time we're in college.”
+
+“No,” Fred admitted, “I suppose not. Of course, if you did, then you
+would give her quite a talking-to, just the way you did the other time,
+wouldn't you?” But upon that, another resumption of physical violence
+put an end to the conversation.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+Throughout the term Ramsey's calculation of probabilities against the
+happening of another interview with Dora seemed to be well founded, but
+at the beginning of the second “semester” he found her to be a fellow
+member of a class in biology. More than that, this class had every week
+a two-hour session in the botanical laboratory, where the structure of
+plants was studied under microscopic dissection. The students worked in
+pairs, a special family of plants being assigned to each couple; and the
+instructor selected the couples with an eye to combinations of the quick
+with the slow. D. Yocum and R. Milholland (the latter in a strange state
+of mind and complexion) were given two chairs, but only one desk and one
+microscope. Their conversation was strictly botanical.
+
+Thenceforth it became the most pressing care of Ramsey's life to prevent
+his roommate from learning that there was any conversation at all, even
+botanical. Fortunately, Fred was not taking the biological courses,
+though he appeared to be taking the sentimental ones with an astonishing
+thoroughness; and sometimes, to Fred's hilarious delight, Ramsey
+attempted to turn the tables and rally him upon whatever last affair
+seemed to be engaging his fancy. The old Victorian and pre-Victorian
+_blague_ word “petticoat” had been revived in Fred's vocabulary, and in
+others, as “skirt.” The lightsome sprig was hourly to be seen, even
+when university rulings forbade, dilly-dallying giddily along the campus
+paths or the town sidewalks with some new and pretty Skirt. And when
+Ramsey tried to fluster him about such a matter Fred would profess his
+ardent love for the new lady in shouts and impromptu song. Nothing
+could be done to him, and Ramsey, utterly unable to defend his own
+sensibilities in like manner, had always to retire in bafflement.
+Sometimes he would ponder upon the question thus suggested: Why couldn't
+he do this sort of thing, since Fred could? But he never discovered a
+satisfying answer.
+
+Ramsey's watchfulness was so careful (lest he make some impulsive
+admission in regard to the botanical laboratory, for instance) that
+Mr. Mitchell's curiosity gradually became almost quiescent; but
+there arrived a day in February when it was piqued into the liveliest
+activity. It was Sunday, and Fred, dressing with a fastidiousness
+ever his daily habit, noticed that Ramsey was exhibiting an unusual
+perplexity about neckties.
+
+“Keep the black one on,” Fred said, volunteering the suggestion, as
+Ramsey muttered fiercely at a mirror. “It's in better taste for church,
+anyhow. You're going to church, aren't you?”
+
+“Yes. Are you?”
+
+“No. I've got a luncheon engagement.”
+
+“Well, you could go to church first, couldn't you? You better; you've
+got a lot of church absences against you.”
+
+“Then one more won't hurt. No church in mine this morning, thanks! G'by,
+ole sox; see you at the 'frat house' for dinner.”
+
+He went forth, whistling syncopations, and began a brisk trudge into the
+open country. There was a professor's daughter who also was not going to
+church that morning; and she lived a little more than three miles
+beyond the outskirts of the town. Unfortunately, as the weather was
+threatening, all others of her family abandoned the idea of church that
+day, and Fred found her before a cozy fire, but surrounded by parents,
+little brothers, and big sisters. The professor was talkative; Fred's
+mind might have been greatly improved, but with a window in range he
+preferred a melancholy contemplation of the snow, which had begun
+to fall in quantity. The professor talked until luncheon, throughout
+luncheon, and was well under way to fill the whole afternoon with talk,
+when Fred, repenting all the errors of his life, got up to go.
+
+Heartily urged to remain, for there was now something just under a
+blizzard developing, he said No; he had a great deal of “cirriculum
+work” to get done before the morrow, and passed from the sound of
+the professor's hospitable voice and into the storm. He had a tedious
+struggle against the wind and thickening snow, but finally came in
+sight of the town, not long before dark. Here the road led down into a
+depression, and, lifting his head as he began the slight ascent on the
+other side, Fred was aware of two figures outlined upon the low ridge
+before him. They were dimmed by the driving snow and their backs were
+toward him, but he recognized them with perfect assurance. They were
+Dora Yocum and Ramsey Milholland.
+
+They were walking so slowly that their advance was almost imperceptible,
+but it could be seen that Dora was talking with great animation; and
+she was a graceful thing, thus gesticulating, in her long, slim fur coat
+with the white snow frosting her brown fur cap. Ramsey had his hands
+deep in his overcoat pockets and his manner was wholly that of an
+audience.
+
+Fred murmured to himself, “'What did you say to her?' 'Nothin'. I
+started to, but'--” Then he put on a burst of speed and passed them,
+sweeping off his hat with operatic deference, yet hurrying by as if
+fearful of being thought a killjoy if he lingered. He went to the
+“frat house,” found no one downstairs, and established himself in a red
+leather chair to smoke and ruminate merrily by a great fire in the hall.
+
+Half an hour later Ramsey entered, stamped off the snow, hung up his hat
+and coat, and sat himself down defiantly in the red leather chair on the
+other side of the fireplace.
+
+“Well, go on,” he said. “Commence!”
+
+“Not at all!” Fred returned, amiably. “Fine spring weather to-day.
+Lovely to see all the flowers and the birds as we go a-strolling by. The
+little bobolinks--”
+
+“You look here! That's the only walk I ever took with her in my life. I
+mean by--by asking her and her saying she would and so forth. That other
+time just sort of happened, and you know it. Well, the weather wasn't
+just the best in the world, maybe, but she's an awful conscientious girl
+and once she makes an engagement--”
+
+“Why, of course,” Fred finished for him, “She'd be too pious to break
+it just on account of a mere little blizzard or anything. Wonder how the
+weather will be next Sunday?”
+
+“I don't know and I don't care,” said Ramsey. “You don't suppose I asked
+her to go _again_, do you?”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Well, for one thing, you don't suppose I want her to think I'm a
+perfect fool, do you?”
+
+Fred mused a moment or two, looking at the fire. “What was the lecture?”
+ he asked, mildly.
+
+“What lecture?”
+
+“She seemed to me to be--”
+
+“That wasn't lecturing; she was just--”
+
+“Just what?”
+
+“Well; she thinks war for the United States is coming closer and
+closer--”
+
+“But it isn't.”
+
+“Well, she thinks so, anyhow,” said Ramsey, “and she's all broken up
+about it. Of course she thinks we oughtn't to fight and she's trying to
+get everybody else she can to keep working against it. She isn't goin'
+home again next summer, she's goin' back to that settlement work in
+Chicago and work there among those people against our goin' to war; and
+here in college she wants to get everybody she can to talk against it,
+and--”
+
+“What did you say?” Fred asked, and himself supplied the reply:
+“Nothin'. I started to, but--”
+
+Ramsey got up. “Now look here! You know the 'frat' passed a rule that if
+we broke any more furniture in this house with our scrappin' we'd both
+be fined the cost of repairs and five dollars apiece. Well, I can afford
+five dollars this month better than you can, and--”
+
+“I take it back!” Fred interposed, hastily. “But you just listen to me;
+you look out--letting her think you're on her side like that.”
+
+“I don't--”
+
+“You _don't?_”
+
+Ramsey looked dogged. “I'm not goin' around always arguin' about
+everything when arguin' would just hurt people's feelings about
+something they're all excited about, and wouldn't do a bit o' good
+in the world--and you know yourself just _talk_ hardly ever settles
+anything--so I don't--”
+
+“Aha!” Fred cried. “I thought so! Now you listen to me--”
+
+“I won't. I--”
+
+But at this moment they were interrupted. Someone slyly opened the door,
+and a snowball deftly thrown from without caught Ramsey upon the back
+of the neck and head, where it flattened and displayed itself as an
+ornamental star. Shouting fiercely, both boys sprang up, ran to the
+door, were caught there in a barrage of snowballs, ducked through it in
+spite of all damage, charged upon a dozen besweatered figures awaiting
+them and began a mad battle in the blizzard. Some of their opponents
+treacherously joined them, and turned upon the ambushers.
+
+In the dusk the merry conflict waged up and down the snow-covered
+lawn, and the combatants threw and threw, or surged back and forth, or
+clenched and toppled over into snow banks, yet all coming to chant an
+extemporized battle-cry in chorus, even as they fought the most wildly.
+
+“Who? Who? Who?” they chanted. “Who? Who? _Who_ says there ain't goin'
+to be no war?”
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+So everywhere over the country, that winter of 1916, there were
+light-hearted boys skylarking--at college, or on the farms; and in the
+towns the young machinists snowballed one another as they came from the
+shops; while on this Sunday of the “frat” snow fight probably several
+hundreds of thousands of youthful bachelors, between the two oceans,
+went walking, like Ramsey, each with a girl who could forget the
+weather. Yet boys of nineteen and in the twenties were not light-hearted
+all the time that winter and that spring and that summer. Most of them
+knew long, thoughtful moments, as Ramsey did, when they seemed to be
+thinking not of girls or work or play--nor of anything around them,
+but of some more vital matter or prospect. And at such times they were
+grave, but not ungentle.
+
+For the long strain was on the country; underneath all its outward
+seeming of things going on as usual there shook a deep vibration, like
+the air trembling to vast organ pipes in diapasons too profound to reach
+the ear as sound: one felt, not heard, thunder in the ground under
+one's feet. The succession of diplomatic Notes came to an end after the
+torpedoing of the _Sussex_; and at last the tricky ruling Germans in
+Berlin gave their word to murder no more, and people said, “This means
+peace for America, and all is well for us,” but everybody knew in his
+heart that nothing was well for us, that there was no peace.
+
+They said “All is well,” while that thunder in the ground never
+ceased--it grew deeper and heavier till all America shook with it and it
+became slowly audible as the voice of the old American soil wherein lay
+those who had defended it aforetime, a soil that bred those who would
+defend it again, for it was theirs; and the meaning of it--Life,
+Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--was theirs, and theirs to defend.
+And they knew they would defend it, and that more than the glory of a
+Nation was at stake. The Freedom of Man was at stake. So, gradually,
+the sacred thunder reached the ears of the young men and gave them those
+deep moments that came to them whether they sat in the classroom or
+the counting-room, or walked with the plow, or stood to the machine, or
+behind the ribbon counter. Thus the thunder shook them and tried them
+and slowly came into their lives and changed everything for them.
+
+Hate of the Germans was not bred; but a contempt for what Germany had
+shown in lieu of a national heart; a contempt as mighty and profound as
+the resolve that the German way and the German will should prevail in
+America, nor in any country of the world that would be free. And when
+the German Kaiser laid his command upon America, that no American should
+take his ship upon the free seas, death being the penalty for any who
+disobeyed, then the German Kaiser got his answer, not only to this
+new law he had made for us, but to many other thoughts of his. Yet the
+answer was for some time delayed.
+
+There was a bitter Sunday, and its bitterness went everywhere, to
+every place in the whole world that held high and generous hearts. Its
+bitterness came to the special meeting in the “Frat hall,” where there
+were hearts, indeed, of that right sort, and one of them became vocal
+in its bitterness. This was the heart of Fred Mitchell, who was now an
+authority, being president of the Junior Class, chairman of the Prom
+Committee, and other things pleasant to be and to live for at his age.
+
+“For me, Brothers,” he said, “I'd think I'd a great deal rather have
+been shot through the head than heard the news from Washington to-day! I
+tell you, I've spent the meanest afternoon I ever did in my life, and I
+guess it's been pretty much the same with all of us. The worst of it
+is, it looks as though there isn't a thing in the world we can do. The
+country's been betrayed by a few blatherskites and boneheads that had
+the power to do it, and all we can do we've just got to stand it. But
+there's some Americans that aren't just standing it, and I want to tell
+you a lot of 'em are men from the universities, just like us. They're
+_over there_ right now; they haven't said much--they just packed up and
+went. They're flying for France and for England and for Canada; they're
+fighting under every flag on the right side of the Western Front; and
+they're driving ambulances at Verdun and ammunition trucks at the Somme.
+Well, there's going to be a lot more American boys on all these jobs
+mighty soon, on account of what those men did in Congress to-day. If
+they won't give us a chance to do something under our own flag, then
+we'll have to go and do it under some other flag; and I want to tell you
+I'm one that's going to _go!_ I'll stick it out in college up to Easter,
+and then if there's still no chance to go under the Stars and Stripes
+I'll maybe have to go under the flag my great-great-grandfather fought
+against in 1776, but, anyhow, I'll _go!_”
+
+It was in speaking to Ramsey of this declaration that Dora said Fred was
+a “dangerous firebrand.” They were taking another February walk, but the
+February was February, 1917; and the day was dry and sunny. “It's just
+about a year ago,” she said.
+
+“What is?” Ramsey asked.
+
+“That first time we went walking. Don't you remember?”
+
+“Oh, _that_ day? Yes, I remember it was snowing.”
+
+“And so cold and blowy!” she added. “It seems a long time ago. I like
+walking with you, Ramsey. You're so quiet and solid--I've always felt
+I could talk to you just anyhow I pleased, and you wouldn't mind. I'll
+miss these walks with you when we're out of college.”
+
+He chuckled. “That's funny!”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because we've only taken four besides this: two last year, and another
+week before last, and another last week. This is only the fifth.”
+
+“Good gracious! Is that all? It seemed to me we'd gone ever so often!”
+ She laughed. “I'm afraid you won't think that seems much as if I'd liked
+going, but I really have. And, by the way, you've never called on me at
+all. Perhaps it's because I've forgotten to ask you.”
+
+“Oh, no,” Ramsey said, and scuffed his shoes on the path, presently
+explaining rather huskily that he “never _was_ much of a caller”; and he
+added, “or anything.”
+
+“Well, you must come if you ever care to,” she said, with a big-sister
+graciousness. “The Dorm chaperon sits there, of course, but ours is
+a jolly one and you'd like her. You've probably met her--Mrs.
+Hustings?--when you've called on other girls at our old shop.”
+
+“No,” said Ramsey. “I never was much of a--” He paused, fearing that he
+might be repeating himself, and too hastily amended his intention. “I
+never liked any girl enough to go and call on her.”
+
+“Ramsey Milholland!” she cried. “Why, when we were in school half the
+room used to be talking about how you and that pretty Milla--”
+
+“No, no!” Ramsey protested, again too hurriedly. “I never called on her.
+We just went walking.”
+
+A moment later his colour suddenly became fiery. “I don't mean--I
+mean--” he stammered. “It was walking, of course--I mean we did go out
+walking but it wasn't walking like--like this.” He concluded with a fit
+of coughing which seemed to rack him.
+
+Dora threw back her head and laughed delightfully. “Don't you
+apologize!” she said. “_I_ didn't when I said it seemed to me that we've
+gone walking so often, when in reality it's only four or five times
+altogether. I think I can explain, though: I think it came partly from
+a feeling I have that I can rely on you--that you're a good, solid,
+reliable sort of person. I remember from the time we were little
+children, you always had a sort of worried, honest look in school;
+and you used to make a dent in your forehead--you meant it for a
+frown--whenever I caught your eye. You hated me so honestly, and you
+were so honestly afraid I wouldn't see it!”
+
+“Oh, no--no--”
+
+“Oh, yes--yes!” she laughed, then grew serious. “My feeling about
+you--that you were a person to be relied on, I mean--I think it began
+that evening in our freshman year, after the _Lusitania_, when I stopped
+you on campus and you went with me, and I couldn't help crying, and you
+were so nice and quiet. I hardly realized then that it was the first
+time we'd ever really talked together--of course _I_ did all the
+talking!--and yet we'd known each other so many years. I thought of it
+afterward. But what gave me such a different view of you, I'd always
+thought you were one of that truculent sort of boys, always just
+bursting for a fight; but you showed me you'd really never had a fight
+in your life and hated fighting, and that you sympathized with my
+feeling about war.” She stopped speaking to draw in her breath with a
+sharp sigh. “Ah, don't you remember what I've told you all along? How
+it keeps coming closer and closer--and now it's almost here! Isn't it
+_unthinkable?_ And what can we do to stop it, we poor few who feel that
+we _must_ stop it?”
+
+“Well--” Ramsey began uncomfortably. “Of course I--I--”
+
+“You can't do much,” she said. “I know. None of us can. What can any
+little group do? There are so few of us among the undergraduates--and
+only one in the whole faculty. All the rest are for war. But we mustn't
+give up; we must never feel afterward that we left anything undone; we
+must fight to the last breath!”
+
+“'Fight'?” he repeated wonderingly, then chuckled.
+
+“Oh, as a figure of speech,” she said, impatiently. “Our language
+is full of barbaric figures left over from the dark ages. But, oh,
+Ramsey!”--she touched his sleeve--“I've heard that Fred Mitchell is
+saying that he's going to Canada after Easter, to try to get into the
+Canadian aviation corps. If it's true, he's a dangerous firebrand, I
+think. Is it true?”
+
+“I guess so. He's been talking that way some.”
+
+“But why do you _let_ him talk that way?” she cried. “He's your
+roommate; surely you have more influence with him than anybody else has.
+Couldn't you--”
+
+He shook his head slowly, while upon his face the faintly indicated
+modellings of a grin hinted of an inner laughter at some surreptitious
+thought. “Well, you know, Fred says himself sometimes, I don't seem to
+be much of a talker exactly!”
+
+“I know. But don't you see? That sort of thing is contagious. Others
+will think they ought to go if he does; he's popular and quite a leader.
+Can't you do anything with him?”
+
+She waited for him to answer. “Can't you?” she insisted.
+
+The grin had disappeared, and Ramsey grew red again. He seemed to wish
+to speak, to heave with speech that declined to be spoken and would not
+rouse up from his inwards. Finally he uttered words.
+
+“I--I--well, I--”
+
+“Oh, I know,” she said. “A man--or a boy!--always hates to be intruding
+his own convictions upon other men, especially in a case like this,
+where he might be afraid of some idiot's thinking him unmanlike. But
+Ramsey--” Suddenly she broke off and looked at him attentively; his
+discomfort had become so obvious that suspicion struck her. She spoke
+sharply. “Ramsey _you_ aren't dreaming of doing such a thing, are you?”
+
+“What such a thing?”
+
+“Fred hasn't influenced _you_, has he? You aren't planning to go with
+him, are you?”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“To join the Canadian aviation.”
+
+“No; I hadn't thought of doing it.”
+
+She sighed again, relieved. “I had a queer feeling about you just
+then--that you _were_ thinking of doing some such thing. You looked so
+odd--and you're always so quiet, anybody might not really know what you
+do think. But I'm not wrong about you, am I, Ramsey?”
+
+They had come to the foot of the steps that led up to the entrance of
+her dormitory, and their walk was at an end. As they stopped and
+faced each other, she looked at him earnestly; but he did not meet the
+scrutiny, his eyelids fell.
+
+“I'm not wrong, am I, Ramsey?”
+
+“About what?” he murmured, uncomfortably.
+
+“You are my friend, aren't you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then it's all right,” she said. “That relieves me and makes me happier
+than I was just now, for of course if you're my friend you wouldn't let
+me make any mistake about you. I believe you, and now, just before I go
+in and we won't see much of each other for a week--if you still want me
+to go with you again next Sunday--”
+
+“Yes--won't you, please?”
+
+“Yes, if you like. But I want to tell you now that I count on you in all
+this, even though you don't 'talk much,' as you say; I count on you
+more than I do on anybody else, and I trust you when you say you're my
+friend, and it makes me happy. And I think perhaps you're right about
+Fred Mitchell. Talk isn't everything, nobody knows that better than
+I, who talk so much! and I think that, instead of talking to Fred, a
+steady, quiet influence like yours would do more good than any amount of
+arguing. So I trust you, you see? And I'm sorry I had that queer doubt
+of you.” She held out her hand. “Unless I happen to see you on the
+campus for a minute, in the meantime, it's good-bye until a week from
+to-day. So--well, so, good-bye until then!”
+
+“Wait,” said Ramsey.
+
+“What is it?”
+
+He made a great struggle. “I'm not influencing Fred not to go,” he said.
+“I--don't want you to trust me to do anything like that.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“I think it's all right for him to go, if he wants to,” Ramsey said,
+miserably.
+
+“You do? For him to go to _fight?_”
+
+He swallowed. “Yes.”
+
+“_Oh!_” she cried, turned even redder than he, and ran up the stone
+steps. But before the storm doors closed upon her she looked down to
+where he stood, with his eyes still lowered, a lonely-seeming figure,
+upon the pavement below. Her voice caught upon a sob as she spoke.
+
+“If you feel like that, you might as well go and enlist, yourself,” she
+said, bitterly. “I can't--I couldn't--speak to you again after this!”
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+
+It was easy enough for him to evade Fred Mitchell's rallyings these
+days; the sprig's mood was truculent, not toward his roommate but toward
+Congress, which was less in fiery haste than he to be definitely at war
+with Germany. All through the university the change had come: athletics,
+in other years spotlighted at the centre of the stage, languished
+suddenly, threatened with abandonment; students working for senior
+honours forgot them; everything was forgotten except that growing
+thunder in the soil. Several weeks elapsed after Dora's bitter dismissal
+of Ramsey before she was mentioned between the comrades. Then, one
+evening, Fred asked, as he restlessly paced their study floor:
+
+“Have you seen your pacifist friend lately?”
+
+“No. Not exactly. Why?”
+
+“Well, for my part, I think she ought to be locked up,” Fred said,
+angrily. “Have you heard what she did this afternoon?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“It's all over college. She got up in the class in jurisprudence and
+made a speech. It's a big class, you know, over two hundred, under Dean
+Burney. He's a great lecturer, but he's a pacifist--the only one on the
+faculty--and a friend of Dora's. They say he encouraged her to make this
+break and led the subject around so she could do it, and then called on
+her for an opinion, as the highest-stand student in the class. She got up
+and claimed there wasn't any such thing as a legitimate cause for war,
+either legally or morally, and said it was a sign of weakness in a
+nation for it to believe that it did have cause for war.
+
+“Well, it was too much for that little, spunky Joe Stansbury, and he
+jumped up and argued with her. He made her admit all the Germans have
+done to us, the sea murders and the land murders, the blowing up of the
+factories, the propaganda, the strikes, trying to turn the United States
+into a German settlement, trying to get Japan and Mexico to make war on
+us, and all the rest. He even made her admit there was proof they mean
+to conquer us when they get through with the others, and that they've
+set out to rule the world for their own benefit, and make whoever else
+they kindly allow to live, to work for them.
+
+“She said it might be true, but since nothing at all could be a right
+cause for war, than all this couldn't be a cause of war. Of course she
+had her regular pacifist 'logic' working; she said that since war is
+the worst thing there is, why, all other evils were lesser, and a lesser
+evil can't be a just cause for a greater. She got terribly excited,
+they say, but kept right on, anyway. She said war was murder and there
+couldn't be any other way to look at it; and she'd heard there was
+already talk in the university of students thinking about enlisting,
+and whoever did such a thing was virtually enlisting to return murder for
+murder. Then Joe Stansbury asked her if she meant that she'd feel toward
+any student that enlisted the way she would toward a murderer, and she
+said, yes, she'd have a horror of any student that enlisted.
+
+“Well, that broke up the class; Joe turned from her to the platform and
+told old Burney that he was responsible for allowing such talk in his
+lecture-room, and Joe said so far as _he_ was concerned, he resigned
+from Burney's classes right there. That started it, and practically the
+whole class got up and walked out with Joe. They said Burney streaked
+off home, and Dora was left alone in there, with her head down on her
+desk--and I guess she certainly deserves it. A good many have already
+stopped speaking to her.”
+
+Ramsey fidgeted with a pen on the table by which he sat. “Well, I don't
+know,” he said, slowly; “I don't know if they ought to do that exactly.”
+
+“Why oughtn't they?” Fred demanded, sharply.
+
+“Well, it looks to me as if she was only fightin' for her principles.
+She believes in 'em. The more it costs a person to stick to their
+principles, why, the more I believe the person must have something
+pretty fine about 'em likely.”
+
+“Yes!” said the hot-headed Fred. “That may be in ordinary times, but not
+when a person's principles are liable to betray their country! We won't
+stand that kind of principles, I tell you, and we oughtn't to. Dora
+Yocum's finding that out, all right. She had the biggest position of
+any girl in this place, or any boy either, up to the last few weeks, and
+there wasn't any student or hardly even a member of the faculty that had
+the influence or was more admired and looked up to. She had the whole
+show! But now, since she's just the same as called any student a
+murderer if he enlists to fight for his country and his flag--well, now
+she hasn't got anything at all, and if she keeps on she'll have even
+less!”
+
+He paused in his walking to and fro and came to a halt behind his
+friend's chair, looking down compassionately upon the back of Ramsey's
+motionless head. His tone changed. “I guess it isn't just the ticket--me
+to be talking this way to you, is it?” he said, with a trace of
+huskiness.
+
+“Oh--it's all right,” Ramsey murmured, not altering his position.
+
+“I can't help blowing up,” Fred went on. “I want to say, though, I know
+I'm not very considerate to blow up about her to you this way. I've been
+playing horse with you about her ever since freshman year, but--well,
+you must have understood, Ram, I never meant anything that would really
+bother you much, and I thought--well, I _really_ thought it was a good
+thing, you--your--well, I mean about her, you know. I'm on, all right. I
+know it's pretty serious with you.” He paused.
+
+Ramsey did not move, except that his right hand still fidgeted with the
+pen upon the table.
+
+“Oh--well--” he said.
+
+“It's--it's kind of tough luck!” his friend contrived to say; and he
+began to pace the floor again.
+
+“Oh--well--”
+
+“See here, ole stick-in-the-mud,” Fred broke out abruptly. “After her
+saying what she did-- Well, it's none o' my business, but--but--”
+
+“Well, what?” Ramsey murmured. “I don't care what you say, if you want
+to say anything.”
+
+“Well, I _got_ to say it,” Fred half groaned and half blurted. “After
+she said _that_--and she meant it--why, if I were in your place I'd be
+darned if I'd be seen out walking with her again.”
+
+“I'm not going to be,” Ramsey said, quietly.
+
+“By George!” And now Fred halted in front of him, both being huskily
+solemn. “I think I understand a little of what that means to you, old
+Ramsey; I think I do. I think I know something of what it costs you to
+make that resolution for your country's sake.” Impulsively he extended
+his hand. “It's a pretty big thing for you to do. Will you shake hands?”
+
+But Ramsey shook his head. “I didn't do it. I wouldn't ever have done
+anything just on account of her talkin' that way. She shut the door on
+me--it was a good while ago.”
+
+“She did! What for?”
+
+“Well, I'm not much of a talker, you know, Fred,” said Ramsey, staring
+at the pen he played with. “I'm not much of anything, for that matter,
+prob'ly, but I--well--I--”
+
+“You what?”
+
+“Well, I had to tell her I didn't feel about things the way she did.
+She'd thought I had, all along, I guess. Anyway, it made her hate me
+or something, I guess; and she called it all off. I expect there wasn't
+much to call off, so far as she was concerned, anyhow.” He laughed
+feebly. “She told me I better go and enlist.”
+
+“Pleasant of her!” Fred muttered. “Especially as we know what she thinks
+enlisting means.” He raised his voice cheerfully. “Well, that's settled;
+and, thank God, old Mr. Bernstorff's on his way to his sweet little
+vine-clad cottage home! They're getting guns on the ships, and the big
+show's liable to commence any day. We can hold up our heads now, and
+we're going to see some great times, old Ramsey boy! It's hard on the
+home folks--Gosh! I don't like to think of that! And I guess it's going
+to be hard on a lot of boys that haven't understood what it's all about,
+and hard on some that their family affairs, and business, and so on,
+have got 'em tied up so it's hard to go--and of course there's plenty
+that just can't, and some that aren't husky enough--but the rest of
+us are going to have the big time in our lives. We got an awful lot to
+learn; it scares me to think of what I don't know about being any
+sort of a rear-rank private. Why, it's a regular _profession_, like
+practising law, or selling for a drug house on the road. Golly! Do you
+remember how we talked about that, 'way back in freshman year, what
+we were going to do when we got out of college? You were going to
+be practising law, for instance, and I--well, f'r instance, remember
+Colburn; he was going to be a doctor, and he did go to some medical
+school for one year. Now he's in the Red Cross, somewhere in _Persia_.
+Golly!”
+
+He paused to digest this impossibility, then chattered briskly on.
+“Well, there's _one_ good old boy was with our class for a while, back
+in freshman year; I bet we won't see him in any good old army! Old
+rough-neck Linski that you put the knob on his nose for. Tommie Hopper
+says he saw him last summer in Chicago soapboxin', yellin' his head off
+cussin' every government under the sun, but mostly ours and the Allies',
+you bet, and going to run the earth by revolution and representatives
+of unskilled labour immigrants, nobody that can read or write allowed
+to vote, except Linski. Tommie Hopper says he knows all about Linski;
+he never did a day's work in his life--too busy trying to get the
+workingmen stirred up against the people that exploit 'em! Tommie says
+he had a big crowd to hear him, though, and took up quite a little money
+for a 'cause' or something. Well, let him holler! I guess we can attend
+to him when we get back from over yonder. By George, old Ram, I'm
+gettin' kind of floppy in the gills!” He administered a resounding slap
+to his comrade's shoulder. “It certainly looks as if our big days were
+walking toward us!”
+
+
+He was right. The portentous days came on apace, and each one brought a
+new and greater portent. The faces of men lost a driven look besetting
+them in the days of badgered waiting, and instead of that heavy
+apprehension one saw the look men's faces must have worn in 1776 and
+1861, and the history of the old days grew clearer in the new. The
+President went to the Congress, and the true indictment he made there
+reached scoffing Potsdam with an unspoken prophecy somewhat chilling even
+to Potsdam, one guesses--and then through an April night went almost
+quietly the steady work: we were at war with Germany.
+
+The bugles sounded across the continent; drums and fifes played up and
+down the city streets and in town and village squares and through the
+countrysides. Faintly in all ears there was multitudinous noise like
+distant, hoarse cheering... and a sound like that was what Dora Yocum
+heard, one night, as she sat lonely in her room. The bugles and fifes
+and drums had been heard about the streets of the college town, that
+day, and she thought she must die of them, they hurt her so, and now to
+be haunted by this imaginary cheering--
+
+She started. Was it imaginary?
+
+She went downstairs and stood upon the steps of the dormitory in the
+open air. No; the cheering was real and loud. It came from the direction
+of the railway station, and the night air surged and beat with it.
+
+Below her stood the aged janitor of the building, listening. “What's the
+cheering for?” she asked, remembering grimly that the janitor was one of
+her acquaintances who had not yet stopped “speaking” to her. “What's the
+matter?”
+
+“It's a good matter,” the old man answered. “I guess there must be a
+big crowd of 'em down there. One of our students enlisted to-day, and
+they're givin' him a send-off. Listen to 'em, how they _do_ cheer. He's
+the first one to go.”
+
+She went back to her room, shivering, and spent the next day in bed with
+an aching head. She rose in the evening, however--a handbill had been
+slid under her door at five o'clock, calling a “Mass Meeting” of the
+university at eight, and she felt it her duty to go; but when she got to
+the great hall she found a seat in the dimmest corner, farthest from the
+rostrum.
+
+The president of the university addressed the tumultuous many hundreds
+before him, for tumultuous they were until he quieted them. He talked to
+them soberly of patriotism, and called upon them for “deliberation and
+a little patience.” There was danger of a stampede, he said, and he and
+the rest of the faculty were in a measure responsible to their fathers
+and mothers for them.
+
+“You must keep your heads,” he said. “God knows, I do not seek to judge
+your duty in this gravest moment of your lives, nor assume to tell you
+what you must or must not do. But by hurrying into service now, without
+careful thought or consideration, you may impair the extent of your
+possible usefulness to the very cause you are so anxious to serve.
+Hundreds of you are taking technical courses which should be
+completed--at least to the end of the term in June. Instructors from the
+United States Army are already on the way here, and military training
+will be begun at once for all who are physically eligible and of
+acceptable age. A special course will be given in preparation for
+flying, and those who wish to become aviators may enroll themselves for
+the course at once.
+
+“I speak to you in a crisis of the university's life, as well as that of
+the nation, and the warning I utter has been made necessary by what took
+place yesterday and to-day. Yesterday morning, a student in the junior
+class enlisted as a private in the United States Regular Army. Far be it
+from me to deplore his course in so doing; he spoke to me about it, and
+in such a way that I felt I had no right to dissuade him. I told him
+that it would be preferable for college men to wait until they could
+go as officers, and, aside from the fact of a greater prestige, I urged
+that men of education could perhaps be more useful in that capacity. He
+replied that if he were useful enough as a private a commission might in
+time come his way, and, as I say, I did not feel at liberty to attempt
+dissuasion. He left to join a regiment to which he had been assigned,
+and many of you were at the station to bid him farewell.
+
+“But enthusiasm may be too contagious; even a great and inspiring motive
+may work for harm, and the university must not become a desert. In the
+twenty-four hours since that young man went to join the army last night,
+one hundred and eleven of our young men students have left our walls;
+eighty-four of them went off together at three o'clock to catch an
+east-bound train at the junction and enlist for the Navy at Newport. We
+are, I say, in danger of a stampede.”
+
+He spoke on, but Dora was not listening; she had become obsessed by the
+idea which seemed to be carrying her to the border of tragedy. When the
+crowd poured forth from the building she went with it mechanically, and
+paused in the dark outside. She spoke to a girl whom she did not know.
+
+“I beg your pardon--”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“I wanted to ask: Do you know who was the student Doctor Corvis spoke
+of? I mean the one that was the first to enlist, and that they were
+cheering last night when he went away to be a private in the United
+States Army. Did you happen to hear his name?”
+
+“Yes, he was a junior.”
+
+“Who was it?”
+
+“Ramsey Milholland.”
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+
+Fred Mitchell, crossing the campus one morning, ten days later, saw Dora
+standing near the entrance of her dormitory, where he would pass her
+unless he altered his course; and as he drew nearer her and the details
+of her face grew into distinctness, he was indignant with himself
+for feeling less and less indignation toward her in proportion to the
+closeness of his approach. The pity that came over him was mingled with
+an unruly admiration, causing him to wonder what unpatriotic stuff
+he could be made of. She was marked, but not whipped; she still held
+herself straight under all the hammering and cutting which, to his
+knowledge, she had been getting.
+
+She stopped him, “for only a moment,” she said, adding with a wan
+profoundness: “That is, if you're not one of those who feel that I
+shouldn't be 'spoken to'?”
+
+“No,” said Fred, stiffly. “I may share their point of view, perhaps, but
+I don't feel called upon to obtrude it on you in that manner.”
+
+“I see,” she said, nodding. “I've wanted to speak with you about
+Ramsey.”
+
+“All right.”
+
+She bit her lip, then asked, abruptly: “What made him do it?”
+
+“Enlist as a private with the regulars?”
+
+“No. What made him enlist at all?”
+
+“Only because he's that sort,” Fred returned briskly. “He may be
+inexplicable to people who believe that his going out to fight for his
+country is the same thing as going out to commit a mur--”
+
+She lifted her hand. “Couldn't you--”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” Fred said at once. “I'm sorry, but I don't know
+just how to explain him to you.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+He laughed, apologetically. “Well, you see, as I understand it, you
+don't think it's possible for a person to have something within him that
+makes him care so much about his country that he--”
+
+“Wait!” she cried. “Don't you think I'm willing to suffer a little
+rather than to see my country in the wrong? Don't you think I'm doing
+it?”
+
+“Well, I don't want to be rude; but, of course, it seems to me that
+you're suffering because you think you know more about what's right and
+wrong than anybody else does.”
+
+“Oh, no. But I--”
+
+“We wouldn't get anywhere, probably, by arguing it,” Fred said. “You
+asked me.”
+
+“I asked you to tell my why he enlisted.”
+
+“The trouble is, I don't think I _can_ tell that to anybody who needs
+an answer. He just went, of course. There isn't any question about it. I
+always thought he'd be the first to go.”
+
+“Oh, no!” she said.
+
+“Yes, I always thought so.”
+
+“I think you were mistaken,” she said, decidedly. “It was a special
+reason--to make him act so cruelly.”
+
+“Cruelly!” Fred cried.
+
+“It _was!_”
+
+“Cruel to whom?”
+
+“Oh, to his mother--to his family. To have him go off that way, without
+a word--”
+
+“Oh, no' he'd been home,” Fred corrected her. “He went home the Saturday
+before he enlisted, and settled it with them. They're all broken up, of
+course; but when they saw he'd made up his mind, they quit opposing him,
+and I think they're proud of him about it, maybe, in spite of feeling
+anxious. You see, his father was an artilleryman in the war with
+Spain, and his grandfather was a Colonel at the end of the War of the
+Rebellion, though he went into it as a private, like Ramsey. He died
+when Ramsey was about twelve; but Ramsey remembers him; he was talking
+of him a little the night before he enlisted.”
+
+Dora made a gesture of despairing protest. “You don't understand!”
+
+“What is it I don't understand?”
+
+“Ramsey! _I_ know why he went--and it's just killing me!”
+
+Fred looked at her gravely. “I don't think you need worry about it,” he
+said. “There's nothing about his going that you are responsible for.”
+
+She repeated her despairing gesture. “You don't understand. But it's no
+use. It doesn't help any to try to talk of it, though I thought maybe
+it would, somehow.” She went a little nearer the dormitory entrance,
+leaving him where he was, then turned. “I suppose you won't see him?”
+
+“I don't know. Most probably not till we meet-if we should--in France.
+I don't know where he's stationed; and I'm going with the aviation--if
+it's ever ready! And he's with the regulars; he'll probably be among the
+first to go over.”
+
+“I see.” She turned sharply away, calling back over her shoulder in a
+choked voice. “Thank you. Good-bye!”
+
+But Fred's heart had melted; gazing after her, he saw that her
+proud young head had lowered now, and that her shoulders were moving
+convulsively; he ran after her and caught her as she began slowly to
+ascend the dormitory steps.
+
+“See here,” he cried. “Don't--”
+
+She lifted a wet face. “No, no! He went in bitterness because I told him
+to, in my own bitterness! I've killed him! Long ago, when he wasn't much
+more than a child, I heard he'd said that some day he'd 'show' me, and
+now he's done it!”
+
+Fred whistled low and long when she had disappeared. “Girls!” he
+murmured to himself. “Some girls, anyhow--they will be girls! You can't
+tell 'em what's what, and you can't change 'em, either!”
+
+Then, as more urgent matters again occupied his attention, he went on at
+an ardent and lively gait to attend his class in map-making.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI
+
+That thunder in the soil, at first too deep within it to be audible, had
+come to the surface now and gradually became heard as the thunder of
+a million feet upon the training grounds. The bugles rang sharper; the
+drums and fifes of town and village and countryside were the drums and
+fifes of a war that came closer and closer to every hearth between the
+two oceans.
+
+All the old symbols became symbols bright and new, as if no one had ever
+seen them before. “America” was like a new word, and the song “America”
+ was like a new song. All the dusty blatancies of orating candidates,
+seeking to rouse bored auditors with “the old flag”; all the mechanical
+patriotics of school and church and club; all these time-worn flaccid
+things leaped suddenly into living colour. The flag became brilliant and
+strange to see--strange with a meaning that seemed new, a meaning long
+known, yet never known till now.
+
+And so hearts that thought they knew themselves came upon ambushes of
+emotion and hidden indwellings of spirit not guessed before. Dora Yocum,
+listening to the “Star Spangled Banner,” sung by children of immigrants
+to an out-of-tune old piano in a mission clubroom, in Chicago, found
+herself crying with a soul-shaking heartiness in a way different from
+other ways that she had cried. Among the many things she thought of then
+was this: That the banner the children were singing about was in danger.
+The great country, almost a continent, had always seemed so untouchable,
+so safe and sure; she had never been able to conceive of a hostile
+power mighty enough to shake or even jar it. And since so great and
+fundamental a thing could not be injured, a war for its defence had
+appeared to be, in her eyes, not only wicked but ridiculous. At last,
+less and less vaguely, she had come to comprehend something of the
+colossal German threat, and the shadow that touched this bright banner
+of which the immigrants' children piped so briskly in the mission
+club-room.
+
+She had begun to understand, though she could not have told just why,
+or how, or at what moment understanding reached her. She began to
+understand that her country, threatened to the life, had flung its line
+those thousands of miles across the sea to stand and hold Hindenburg and
+Ludendorff and all their Kaisers, Kings, Dukes, and Crown Princes, their
+Krupp and Skoda monstrous engines, and their monstrous other engines of
+men made into armies. Through the long haze of misted sea-miles and the
+smoke of land-miles she perceived that brown line of ours, and knew it
+stood there that Freedom, and the Nation itself, might not perish from
+the earth.
+
+And so, a week later, she went home, and came nervously to Ramsey's
+mother and found how to direct the letter she wanted to write. He was in
+France.
+
+As the old phrase went, she poured out her heart. It seems to apply to
+her letter.
+
+She wrote:
+
+Don't misunderstand me. I felt that my bitter speech to you had driven
+you to take the step you did. I felt that I had sent you to be killed,
+and that I ought to be killed for doing it, but I knew that you had
+other motives, too. I knew, of course, that you thought of the country
+more than you did of me, or of any mad thing I would say--but I thought
+that what I said might have been the prompting thing, the word that
+threw you into it so hastily and before you were ready, perhaps. I
+dreaded to bear that terrible responsibility. I hope you understand.
+
+My great mistake has been--I thought I sas so “logical”--it's been in
+my starting everything with a thought I'd never proven; that war is the
+worst thing, and all other evils were lesser. I was wrong. I was wrong,
+because war isn't the worst evil. Slavery is the worse evil, and now
+I want to tell you I have come to see that you are making war on those
+that make slavery. Yes, you are fighting those that make both war and
+slavery, and you are right, and I humbly reverence and honour all of
+you who are in this right war. I have come home to work in the Red Cross
+here; I work there all day, and all day I keep saying to myself--but I
+really mean to _you_--it's what I pray, and oh, how I pray it: “God be
+with you and grant you the victory!” For you must win and you will win.
+
+Forgive me, oh, please--and if you will, could you write to me? I know
+you have things to do more important than “girls”--but oh, couldn't you,
+please?
+
+This letter, which she had taken care not to dampen, as she wrote, went
+in slow course to the “American Expeditionary Forces in France,” and
+finally found him whom it patiently sought. He delayed not long to
+answer, and in time she held in a shaking hand the pencilled missive he
+had sent her.
+
+You forget all that comic talk about me enlisting because of your
+telling me to. I'd written my father I was going at the first chance a
+month and a half before that day when you said it. My mind was made up
+at the first time there was any talk of war, and you had about as much
+responsibility for my going as some little sparrow or something. Of
+course I don't mean I didn't pay any attention to the different things
+you said, because I always did, and I used to worry over it because I
+was afraid some day it would get you in trouble, and I'm mighty glad
+you've cut it out. That's right; you be a regular girl now. You always
+were one, and I knew it all right. I'm not as scared to write to you as
+I was to talk to you, so I guess you know I was mighty tickled to get
+your letter. It sounded blue, but I was glad to get it. You _bet_ I'll
+write to you! I don't suppose you could have any idea how glad I was to
+get your letter. I could sit here and write to you all day if they'd let
+me, but I'm a corporal now. When you answer this, I wish you'd say how
+the old town looks and if the grass in the front yards is as green as it
+usually is, and everything. And tell me some more about everything you
+think of when you are working down at the Red Cross like you said.
+I guess I've read your letter five million times, and that part ten
+million. I mean where you underlined that “_you_” and what you said
+to yourself at the Red Cross. Oh, murder, but I was glad to read that!
+Don't forget about writing anything else you think of like that.
+
+Well, I was interrupted then and this is the next day. Of course, I
+can't tell you where we are, because that darned censor will read this
+letter, but I guess he will let this much by. Who do you think I ran
+across in a village yesterday? Two boys from the old school days, and
+we certainly did shake hands a few times! It was the old foolish Dutch
+Krusemeyer and Albert Paxton, both of them lieutenants. I heard Fred
+Mitchell is still training in the States and about crazy because they
+won't send him over yet.
+
+If you had any idea how glad I was to get your letter, you wouldn't lose
+any time answering this one. Anyhow, I'm going to write to you again
+every few days if I get the chance, because maybe you'll answer more
+than one of 'em.
+
+But see here, cut out that “sent you to be killed” stuff. You've got the
+wrong idea altogether. We've got the big job of our lives, we know that,
+but we're going to do it. There'll be mistakes and bad times, but we
+won't fall down. Now you'll excuse me for saying it this way, Dora, but
+I don't know just how to express myself except saying of course we know
+everybody isn't going to get back home--but listen, we didn't come
+over here to get killed particularly, we came over here to give these
+Dutchmen h--l!
+
+Perhaps you can excuse language if I write it with a blank like that,
+but before we get back we're going to do what we came for. They may not
+all of them be as bad as some of them--it's a good thing you don't know
+what we do, because some of it would make you sick. As I say, there may
+be quite a lot of good ones among them; but we know what they've done to
+this country, and we know what they mean to do to ours. So we're going
+to attend to them. Of course that's why I'm here. It wasn't you.
+
+Don't forget to write pretty soon, Dora. You say in your letter--I
+certainly was glad to get that letter--well, you say I have things to do
+more important than “girls.” Dora, I think you probably know without my
+saying so that of course while I have got important things to do, just
+as every man over here has, and everybody at home, for that matter,
+well, the thing that is most important in the world to me, next to
+helping win this war, it's reading the next letter from you.
+
+Don't forget how glad I'll be to get it, and don't forget you didn't
+have anything to do with my being over here. That was--it was something
+else. And you bet, whatever happens I'm glad I came! Don't ever forget
+_that_!
+
+Dora knew it was “something else.” Her memory went back to her first
+recollection of him in school: from that time on he had been just an
+ordinary, everyday boy, floundering somehow through his lessons in
+school and through his sweethearting with Milla, as the millions of
+other boys floundered along with their own lessons and their own
+Millas. She saw him swinging his books and romping homeward from the
+schoolhouse, or going whistling by her father's front yard, rattling
+a stick on the fence as he went, care-free and masterful, but shy as a
+deer if strangers looked at him, and always “not much of a talker.”
+
+She had always felt so superior to him, she shuddered as she thought of
+it. His quiet had been so much better than her talk. His intelligence
+was proven now, when it came to the great test, to be of a stronger sort
+than hers. He was wise and good and gentle--and a fighting man! “We know
+what they've done to this country and what they mean to do to ours. So
+we're going to attend to them.” She read this over, and she knew that
+Ramsey, wise and gentle and good, would fight like an unchained devil,
+and that he and his comrades would indeed and indeed do what they “came
+for.”
+
+“It wasn't you,” he said. She nodded gently, agreeing, and knew what it
+was that sent him. Yet Ramsey had his own secret there, and did not tell
+it. Sometimes there rose, faint in his memory, a whimsical picture, yet
+one that had always meant much to him. He would see an old man sitting
+with a little boy upon a rustic bench under a walnut tree to watch the
+“Decoration Day Parade” go by--and Ramsey would see a shoot of sunshine
+that had somehow got through the walnut tree and made a bedazzlement of
+glinting fine lines over a spot about the size of a saucer, upon the old
+man's thick white hair. And in Ramsey's memory, the little boy, sitting
+beside the veteran, would half close his eyes, drowsily, playing that
+this sunshine spot was a white bird's-nest, until he had a momentary
+dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue
+soldier cap on its head. And Ramsey would bring out of his memory
+thoughts that the old man had got into the child's head that day. “We
+knew that armies fighting for the Freedom of Man _had_ to win, in the
+long run.... We were on the side of God's Plan.... Long ago we began to
+see hints of His Plan.... Man has to win his freedom from himself--men
+in the light have to fight against men in the dark.... That light is the
+answer.... We had the light that made us never doubt.”
+
+
+A long while Dora sat with the letter in her hand before she answered it
+and took it upon her heart to wear. That was the place for it, since it
+was already within her heart, where he would find it when he came home
+again. And she beheld the revelation sent to her. This ordinary life of
+Ramsey's was but the outward glinting of a high and splendid spirit, as
+high and splendid as earth can show. And yet it was only the life of an
+everyday American boy. The streets of the town were full, now, of boys
+like Ramsey.
+
+At first they were just boys in uniform; then one saw that they were
+boys no more.
+
+They were soldiers.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ramsey Milholland, by Booth Tarkington
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diff --git a/2595-0.zip b/2595-0.zip
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Ramsey Milholland, by Booth Tarkington
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ramsey Milholland, by Booth Tarkington
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ramsey Milholland
+
+Author: Booth Tarkington
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2006 [EBook #2595]
+Last Updated: March 3, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMSEY MILHOLLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Earle Beach and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      RAMSEY MILHOLLAND
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      by Booth Tarkington
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      To the Memory of Billy Miller (William Henry Harrison Miller II) <br />
+      1908 - 1918 <br /> Little Patriot, Good Citizen, Friend of Mankind
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> Chapter I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> Chapter II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> Chapter III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> Chapter IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> Chapter V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> Chapter VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> Chapter VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> Chapter VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> Chapter IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> Chapter X </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0011"> Chapter XI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> Chapter XII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0013"> Chapter XIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0014"> Chapter XIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0015"> Chapter XV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0016"> Chapter XVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0017"> Chapter XVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0018"> Chapter XVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0019"> Chapter XIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0020"> Chapter XX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0021"> Chapter XXI </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter I
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     When Johnnie comes marching home again,
+          Hurrah!  Hurrah!
+     We'll give him a hearty welcome then,
+          Hurrah!  Hurrah!
+     The men with the cheers, the boys with shouts,
+          The ladies they will all turn out,
+     And we'll all feel gay, when Johnnie comes marching home again!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The old man and the little boy, his grandson, sat together in the shade of
+      the big walnut tree in the front yard, watching the &ldquo;Decoration Day
+      Parade,&rdquo; as it passed up the long street; and when the last of the
+      veterans was out of sight the grandfather murmured the words of the tune
+      that came drifting back from the now distant band at the head of the
+      procession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we'll all feel gay when Johnnie comes marching home again,&rdquo; he
+      finished, with a musing chuckle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you, Grandpa?&rdquo; the boy asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you all feel gay when the army got home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It didn't get home all at once, precisely,&rdquo; the grandfather explained.
+      &ldquo;When the war was over I suppose we felt relieved, more than anything
+      else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't feel so gay when the war <i>was</i>, though, I guess!&rdquo; the boy
+      ventured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess we didn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you scared, Grandpa? Were you ever scared the Rebels would win?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. We weren't ever afraid of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not any at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Not any at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, weren't you ever scared yourself, Grandpa? I mean when you were in
+      a battle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes; <i>then</i> I was.&rdquo; The old man laughed. &ldquo;Scared plenty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see why,&rdquo; the boy said promptly. &ldquo;I wouldn't be scared in a
+      battle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Course not! Grandpa, why don't you march in the Decoration Day Parade?
+      Wouldn't they let you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not able to march any more. Too short of breath and too shaky in the
+      legs and too blind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't care,&rdquo; said the boy. &ldquo;I'd be in the parade anyway, if I was
+      you. They had some sittin' in carriages, 'way at the tail end; but I
+      wouldn't like that. If I'd been in your place, Grandpa, and they'd let me
+      be in that parade, I'd been right up by the band. Look, Grandpa! Watch me,
+      Grandpa! This is the way I'd be, Grandpa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose from the garden bench where they sat, and gave a complex imitation
+      of what had most appealed to him as the grandeurs of the procession, his
+      prancing legs simulating those of the horse of the grand marshal, while
+      his upper parts rendered the drums and bugles of the band, as well as the
+      officers and privates of the militia company which had been a feature of
+      the parade. The only thing he left out was the detachment of veterans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Putty-boom! Putty-boom! Putty-boom-boom-boom!&rdquo; he vociferated, as the
+      drums&mdash;and then as the bugles: &ldquo;Ta, ta, ra, tara!&rdquo; He addressed his
+      restive legs: &ldquo;<i>Whoa</i>, there, you Whitey! Gee! Haw! Git up!&rdquo; Then,
+      waving an imaginary sword: &ldquo;Col-lumn right! Farwud <i>March!</i> Halt!
+      Carry <i>harms!</i>&rdquo; He &ldquo;carried arms.&rdquo; &ldquo;Show-dler <i>harms!</i>&rdquo; He
+      &ldquo;shouldered arms,&rdquo; and returned to his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'd be me, Grandpa. That's the way I'd do.&rdquo; And as the grandfather
+      nodded, seeming to agree, a thought recently dismissed returned to the
+      mind of the composite procession and he asked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, <i>why</i> weren't you ever afraid the Rebels would whip the
+      Unions, Grandpa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, we knew they couldn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess so.&rdquo; The little boy laughed disdainfully, thinking his question
+      satisfactorily answered. &ldquo;I guess those ole Rebels couldn't whipped a
+      flea! They didn't know how to fight any at all, did they, Grandpa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, they did!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; The boy was astounded. &ldquo;Weren't they all just reg'lar ole cowards,
+      Grandpa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the grandfather. &ldquo;They were pretty fine soldiers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were? Well, they ran away whenever you began shootin' at 'em, didn't
+      they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes they did, but most times they didn't. Sometimes they fought
+      like wildcats&mdash;and sometimes we were the ones that ran away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To keep from getting killed, or maybe to keep from getting captured.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the Rebels were bad men, weren't they, Grandpa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy's forehead, customarily vacant, showed some little vertical
+      shadows, produced by a struggle to think. &ldquo;Well, but&mdash;&rdquo; he began,
+      slowly. &ldquo;Listen, Grandpa, listen here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen! Well, you said&mdash;you said you never got scared the ole Rebels
+      were goin' to win.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They did win pretty often,&rdquo; said the grandfather. &ldquo;They won a good many
+      battles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean, you said you never got scared they'd win the war.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, we were never afraid of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but if they were good men and fought like wildcats, Grandpa, and
+      kep' winning battles and everything, how could that be? How could you <i>help</i>
+      bein' scared they'd win the war?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The grandfather's feeble eyes twinkled brightly. &ldquo;Why, we <i>knew</i> they
+      couldn't, Ramsey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this, the little vertical shadows on Ramsey's forehead became more
+      pronounced, for he had succeeded in thinking. &ldquo;Well, <i>they</i> didn't
+      know they couldn't, did they?&rdquo; he argued. &ldquo;They thought they were goin' to
+      win, didn't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I guess they did. Up till toward the last, I suppose they probably
+      did. But you see they were wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but&mdash;&rdquo; Ramsey struggled. &ldquo;Listen! Listen here, Grandpa! Well,
+      anyway, if they never got scared <i>we'd</i> win, and nobody got scared <i>they'd</i>
+      win&mdash;well, I don't see&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't see what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ramsey found himself unable to continue his concentration; he slumped
+      down upon the small of his back, and his brow relaxed to its more
+      comfortable placidity, while his eyes wandered with a new butterfly
+      fluttering over the irises that bordered the iron picket fence at the
+      south side of the yard. &ldquo;Oh, nothin' much,&rdquo; he murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see.&rdquo; And his grandfather laughed again. &ldquo;You mean: If the Rebels felt
+      just as sure of winning the war as we did, and kept winning battles why
+      shouldn't we ever have had any doubts that we were going to win? That's
+      it, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess so, Grandpa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I think it was mostly because we were certain that we were right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Ramsey. &ldquo;The Rebels knew they were on the side of the
+      Devil.&rdquo; But at this, the grandfather's laugh was louder than it had been
+      before, and Ramsey looked hurt. &ldquo;Well, you can laugh if you want to!&rdquo; he
+      objected in an aggrieved voice. &ldquo;Anyway, the Sunday-school sup'intendent
+      told us when people knew they were on the Devil's side they always&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say, I dare say,&rdquo; the old man interrupted, a little impatiently.
+      &ldquo;But in this world mighty few people think they're on the Devil's side,
+      Ramsey. There was a Frenchman once, in olden times; he said people were
+      crazy because, though they couldn't even make worms, they believed they
+      could make gods. And so whenever countries or parts of a country get into
+      a war, each side makes a god and a devil, and says: 'God's on our side and
+      the Devil's on the other.' The South thought the Devil was on our side,
+      you see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that kind o' mixes it all up more'n ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it seems so; but Abraham Lincoln wasn't mixed up about it. When some
+      people told him that God was on our side, he said the important thing was
+      to find out if we were on God's side. That was the whole question, you
+      see; because either side could make up a god, the kind of a god they liked
+      and wanted; and then they'd believe in him, too, and fight for him&mdash;but
+      if he was only a made-up god they'd lose. President Lincoln didn't want to
+      have a made-up god on his side; he wanted to find God Himself and find out
+      what he wanted, and then do it. And that's what Lincoln did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't understand much of all <i>that</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No? Then suppose you look at it this way: The South was fighting for what
+      it believed to be its rights, but we weren't fighting for our rights; we
+      were fighting for the right. The South was fighting for what it believed
+      to be its right to split the Union and be a country by itself; but we were
+      fighting for 'Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.' It
+      wasn't only the Union we fought for; it was Freedom. The South wanted
+      freedom to leave the Union; but the reason the South wanted that freedom
+      to separate from us was because <i>we</i> wanted the Freedom of Man. <i>There's</i>
+      the reason we had the certain knowledge that we were going to win the war.
+      How plain and simple it is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey didn't think so. He had begun to feel bored by the conversation,
+      and to undergo the oppression he usually suffered in school; yet he took a
+      little interest in the inexplicable increase of fervour with which his
+      grandfather spoke, and in a shoot of sunshine which somehow got through
+      the foliage of the walnut tree and made a bedazzlement of glinting fine
+      lines in one spot, about the size of a saucer, upon the old man's head of
+      thick white hair. Half closing his eyes, drowsily, Ramsey played that this
+      sunshine spot was a white bird's-nest and, and he had a momentary half
+      dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue soldier
+      cap on its head. The earnest old voice of the veteran was only a sound in
+      the boy's ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it's simple and plain enough now, though then we didn't often think
+      of it in exactly this way, but just went on fighting and never doubted. We
+      knew the struggle and suffering of our fathers and grandfathers to make a
+      great country here for Freedom, and we knew that all this wasn't just the
+      whim of a foolish god, willing to waste such great things&mdash;we knew
+      that such a country couldn't have been building up just to be wasted. But,
+      more than that, we knew that armies fighting for the Freedom of Man <i>had</i>
+      to win, in the long run, over armies that fought for what they considered
+      their rights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We didn't set out to free the slaves, so far as we knew. Yet our being
+      against slavery was what made the war, and we had the consciousness that
+      we were on the side of God's plan, because His plan is clearly the Freedom
+      of Man. Long ago we began to see the hints of His plan&mdash;a little like
+      the way you can see what's coming in August from what happens in April,
+      but man has to win his freedom from himself&mdash;men in the light have to
+      fight against men in the dark of their own shadow. That light is the
+      answer; we had the light that made us never doubt. Ours was the true
+      light, and so we&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Boom&mdash;&rdquo; The veterans had begun to fire their cannon on the crest of
+      the low hill, out at the cemetery; and from a little way down the street
+      came the rat-a-tat of a toy drum and sounds of a fife played execrably. A
+      file of children in cocked hats made of newspapers came marching
+      importantly up the sidewalk under the maple shade trees; and in advance,
+      upon a velocipede, rode a tin-sworded personage, shrieking incessant
+      commands but not concerning himself with whether or not any military
+      obedience was thereby obtained. Here was a revivifying effect upon young
+      Ramsey; his sluggard eyelids opened electrically; he leaped to his feet
+      and, abandoning his grandfather without preface or apology, sped across
+      the lawn and out of the gate, charging headlong upon the commander of the
+      company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You get off that 'locipede, Wesley Bender!&rdquo; he bellowed. &ldquo;You gimme that
+      sword! What rights you got to go bein' captain o' my army, I'd like to
+      know! Who got up this army, in the first place, I'd like to know! I did,
+      myself yesterd'y afternoon, and you get back in line or I won't let you
+      b'long to it at all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pretender succumbed; he instantly dismounted, being out-shouted and
+      overawed. On foot he took his place in the ranks, while Ramsey became
+      sternly vociferous. &ldquo;In-tention, company! Farwud <i>march</i>! Col-lumn <i>right</i>!
+      Right-showdler <i>harms</i>! Halt! Far-wud <i>march</i>. Carry harms&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Army went trudging away under the continuous but unheeded fire of
+      orders, and presently disappeared round a corner, leaving the veteran
+      chuckling feebly under his walnut tree and alone with the empty street.
+      All trace of what he had said seemed to have been wiped from the
+      grandson's mind; but memory has curious ways. Ramsey had understood not a
+      fifth nor a tenth of his grandfather's talk, and already he had
+      &ldquo;forgotten&rdquo; all of it&mdash;yet not only were there many, many times in
+      the boy's later life when, without ascertainable cause, he would remember
+      the sunlight falling upon the old man's white head, to make that semblance
+      of a glittering bird's-nest there, but with the picture came recollections
+      of words and sentences spoken by the grandfather, though the listener,
+      half-drowsily, had heard but the sound of an old, earnest voice&mdash;and
+      even the veteran's meaning finally took on a greater definiteness till it
+      became, in the grandson's thoughts, something clear and bright and
+      beautiful that he knew without being just sure where or how he had learned
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey Milholland sat miserably in school, his conscious being consisting
+      principally of a dull hate. Torpor was a little dispersed during a
+      fifteen-minute interval of &ldquo;Music,&rdquo; when he and all the other pupils in
+      the large room of the &ldquo;Five B. Grade&rdquo; sang repeated fractions of what they
+      enunciated as &ldquo;The Star Span-guh-hulled Banner&rdquo;; but afterward he relapsed
+      into the low spirits and animosity natural to anybody during enforced
+      confinement under instruction. No alleviation was accomplished by an
+      invader's temporary usurpation of the teacher's platform, a brisk and
+      unsympathetically cheerful young woman mounting thereon to &ldquo;teach German.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a long time mathematics and German had been about equally repulsive to
+      Ramsey, who found himself daily in the compulsory presence of both; but he
+      was gradually coming to regard German with the greater horror, because,
+      after months of patient mental resistance, he at last began to comprehend
+      that the German language has sixteen special and particular ways of using
+      the German article corresponding to that flexible bit of a word so easily
+      managed English&mdash;<i>the</i>. What in the world was the use of having
+      sixteen ways of doing a thing that could just as well be done in one? If
+      the Germans had contented themselves with insisting upon sixteen useless
+      variations for infrequent words, such as <i>hippopotamus</i>, for
+      instance, Ramsey might have thought the affair unreasonable but not
+      necessarily vicious&mdash;it would be easy enough to avoid talking about a
+      hippopotamus if he ever had to go to Germany. But the fact that the
+      Germans picked out <i>a</i> and <i>the</i> and many other little words in
+      use all the time, and gave every one of them sixteen forms, and expected
+      Ramsey Milholland to learn this dizzying uselessness down to the last
+      crotchety detail, with &ldquo;When to employ Which&rdquo; as a nausea to prepare for
+      the final convulsion when one <i>didn't</i> use Which, because it was an
+      &ldquo;Exception&rdquo;&mdash;there was a fashion of making easy matters hard that was
+      merely hellish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The teacher was strict but enthusiastic; she told the children, over and
+      over, that German was a beautiful language, and her face always had a glow
+      when she said this. At such times the children looked patient; they
+      supposed it must be so, because she was an adult and their teacher; and
+      they believed her with the same manner of believing which those of them
+      who went to Sunday-school used there when the Sunday-school teachers were
+      pushed into explanations of various matters set forth in the Old
+      Testament, or gave reckless descriptions of heaven. That is to say, the
+      children did not challenge or deny; already they had been driven into
+      habits of resignation and were passing out of the age when childhood is
+      able to reject adult nonsense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, to Ramsey Milholland, the German language seemed to be a collection
+      of perverse inventions for undeserved torment; it was full of revolting
+      surprises in the way of genders; vocally it often necessitated the
+      employment of noises suggestive of an incompletely mastered knowledge of
+      etiquette; and far inside him there was something faintly but constantly
+      antagonistic to it&mdash;yet, when the teacher declared that German was
+      incomparably the most beautiful language in the world, one of the many
+      facets of his mind submissively absorbed the statement as light to be
+      passed inward; it was part of the lesson to be learned. He did not know
+      whether the English language was beautiful or not; he never thought about
+      that, and no one ever said anything to him about it. Moreover, though his
+      deeper inward hated &ldquo;German,&rdquo; he liked his German teacher, and it was
+      pleasant to look at her when that glow came upon her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes, too, there were moments of relaxation in her class, when she
+      would stop the lesson and tell the children about Germany: what a
+      beautiful, good country it was, so trim and orderly, with such pleasant
+      customs, and all the people sensible and energetic and healthy. There was
+      &ldquo;Music&rdquo; again in the German class, which was another alleviation; though
+      it was the same old &ldquo;Star Spangled Banner&rdquo; over again. Ramsey was tired of
+      the song and tired of &ldquo;My Country 'Tis of Thee&rdquo;; they were bores, but it
+      was amusing to sing them in German. In German they sounded &ldquo;sort o'
+      funny,&rdquo; so he didn't mind this bit of the day's work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour later there arrived his supreme trial of this particular
+      morning. Arithmetic then being the order of business before the house, he
+      was sent alone to the blackboard, supposedly to make lucid the proper
+      reply to a fatal conundrum in decimals, and under the glare and focus of
+      the whole room he breathed heavily and itched everywhere; his brain at
+      once became sheer hash. He consumed as much time as possible in getting
+      the terms of the problem stated in chalk; then, affecting to be critical
+      of his own handiwork, erased what he had done and carefully wrote it
+      again. After that, he erased half of it, slowly retraced the figures, and
+      stepped back as if to see whether perspective improved their appearance.
+      Again he lifted the eraser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ramsey Milholland!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ma'am?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put down that eraser!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes'm. I just thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sharply bidden to get forward with his task, he explained in a feeble
+      voice that he had first to tie a shoe string and stooped to do so, but was
+      not permitted. Miss Ridgely tried to stimulate him with hints and
+      suggestion; found him, so far as decimals went, mere protoplasm, and,
+      wondering how so helpless a thing could live, summoned to the board little
+      Dora Yocum, the star of the class, whereupon Ramsey moved toward his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stand still, Ramsey! You stay right where you are and try to learn
+      something from the way Dora does it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The class giggled, and Ramsey stood, but learned nothing. His
+      conspicuousness was unendurable, because all of his schoolmates naturally
+      found more entertainment in watching him than in following the performance
+      of the capable Dora. He put his hands in and out of his pockets; was
+      bidden to hold them still, also not to shuffle his feet; and when in a
+      false assumption of ease he would have scratched his head Miss Ridgely's
+      severity increased, so that he was compelled to give over the attempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instructed to watch every figure chalked up by the mathematical wonder,
+      his eyes, grown sodden, were unable to remove themselves from the part in
+      her hair at the back of her head, where two little braids began their
+      separate careers to end in a couple of blue-and-red checked bits of
+      ribbon, one upon each of her thin shoulder blades. He was conscious that
+      the part in Dora's shining brown hair was odious, but he was unconscious
+      of anything arithmetical. His sensations clogged his intellect; he
+      suffered from unsought notoriety, and hated Dora Yocum; most of all he
+      hated her busy little shoulder blades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had to be &ldquo;kept in&rdquo; after school; and when he was allowed to go home he
+      averted his eyes as he went by the house where Dora lived. She was out in
+      the yard, eating a doughnut, and he knew it; but he had passed the age
+      when it is just as permissible to throw a rock at a girl as at a boy; and
+      stifling his normal inclinations, he walked sturdily on, though he
+      indulged himself so far as to engage in a murmured conversation with one
+      of the familiar spirits dwelling somewhere within him. &ldquo;Pfa!&rdquo; said Ramsey
+      to himself&mdash;or himself to Ramsey, since it is difficult to say which
+      was which. &ldquo;Pfa! Thinks she's smart, don't she?&rdquo;... &ldquo;Well, I guess she
+      does, but she ain't!&rdquo; ... &ldquo;I hate her, don't you?&rdquo;... &ldquo;You bet your life I
+      hate her!&rdquo;... &ldquo;Teacher's Pet, that's what <i>I</i> call her!&rdquo;... &ldquo;Well,
+      that's what <i>I</i> call her, too, don't I?&rdquo; &ldquo;Well, <i>I</i> do; that's
+      all she is, anyway&mdash;dirty ole Teacher's Pet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      He had not forgiven her four years later when he entered high school in
+      her company, for somehow Ramsey managed to shovel his way through
+      examinations and stayed with the class. By this time he had a long
+      accumulation of reasons for hating her: Dora's persistent and increasing
+      competency was not short of flamboyant, and teachers naturally got the
+      habit of flinging their quickest pupil in the face of their slowest and
+      &ldquo;dumbest.&rdquo; Nevertheless, Ramsey was unable to deny that she had become
+      less awful lookin' than she used to be. At least, he was honest enough to
+      make a partial retraction when his friend and classmate, Fred Mitchell,
+      insisted that an amelioration of Dora's appearance could be actually
+      proven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'll take it back. I don't claim she's every last bit as awful
+      lookin' as she always has been,&rdquo; said Ramsey, toward the conclusion of the
+      argument. &ldquo;I'll say this for her, she's awful lookin', but she may not be
+      as awful lookin' as she was. She don't come to school with the edge of
+      some of her underclo'es showin' below her dress any more, about every
+      other day, and her eyewinkers have got to stickin' out some, and she may
+      not be so abbasa<i>loot</i>ly skinny, but she'll haf to wait a mighty long
+      while before <i>I</i> want to look at her without gettin' sick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The implication that Miss Yocum cared to have Ramsey look at her, either
+      with or without gettin' sick, was mere rhetoric, and recognized as such by
+      the producer of it; she had never given the slightest evidence of any
+      desire that his gaze be bent upon her. What truth lay underneath his
+      flourish rested upon the fact that he could not look at her without some
+      symptoms of the sort he had tersely sketched to his friend; and yet, so
+      pungent is the fascination of self-inflicted misery, he did look at her,
+      during periods of study, often for three or four minutes at a stretch. His
+      expression at such times indeed resembled that of one who has dined
+      unwisely; but Dora Yocum was always too eagerly busy to notice it. He was
+      almost never in her eye, but she was continually in his; moreover, as the
+      banner pupil she was with hourly frequency an exhibit before the whole
+      class.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey found her worst of all when her turn came in &ldquo;Declamation,&rdquo; on
+      Friday afternoons. When she ascended the platform, bobbed a little
+      preliminary bow and began, &ldquo;Listen, my children, and you shall hear,&rdquo;
+       Ramsey included Paul Revere and the Old North Church and the whole
+      Revolutionary War in his antipathy, since they somehow appeared to be the
+      property of the Teacher's Pet. For Dora held this post in &ldquo;Declamation&rdquo; as
+      well as in everything else; here, as elsewhere, the hateful child's
+      prowess surpassed that of all others; and the teacher always entrusted her
+      with the rendition of the &ldquo;patriotic selections&rdquo;: Dora seemed to take fire
+      herself when she declared:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;The fate of a nation was riding that night;
+     And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight,
+     Kindled the land into flame with its heat.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey himself was in the same section of declaimers, and performed next&mdash;a
+      ghastly contrast. He gave a &ldquo;selection from Shakespeare,&rdquo; assigned by the
+      teacher; and he began this continuous misfortune by stumbling violently as
+      he ascended the platform, which stimulated a general giggle already in
+      being at the mere calling of his name. All of the class were bright with
+      happy anticipation, for the miserable Ramsey seldom failed their hopes,
+      particularly in &ldquo;Declamation.&rdquo; He faced them, his complexion wan, his
+      expression both baleful and horrified; and he began in a loud, hurried
+      voice, from which every hint of intelligence was excluded:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most pottent, grave, and rev&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The teacher tapped sharply on her desk, and stopped him. &ldquo;You've forgotten
+      to bow,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And don't say 'pottent.' The word is 'potent'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey flopped his head at the rear wall of the room, and began again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most pottent potent gray and revenerd signers my very nobe and approve
+      good masters that I have tan away this sole man's dutter it is mose true
+      true I have marry dur the very headman frun tuv my fending hath this
+      extent no more rude am I in speech&mdash;in speech&mdash;rude am I in
+      speech&mdash;in speech&mdash;in speech&mdash;in speech&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had stalled. Perhaps the fatal truth of that phrase, and some sense of
+      its applicability to the occasion had interfered with the mechanism which
+      he had set in operation to get rid of the &ldquo;recitation&rdquo; for him. At all
+      events, the machine had to run off its job all at once, or it wouldn't run
+      at all. Stopped, it stayed stopped, and backing off granted no new
+      impetus, though he tried, again and again. &ldquo;Hath this extent no more rude
+      am I in speech&mdash;&rdquo; He gulped audibly. &ldquo;Rude rude rude am I&mdash;rude
+      am I in speech&mdash;in speech&mdash;in speech. Rude am I in speech&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the irritated teacher said, as Ramsey's failing voice continued
+      huskily to insist upon this point. &ldquo;I think you are!&rdquo; And her nerves were
+      a little soothed by the shout of laughter from the school&mdash;it was
+      never difficult for teachers to be witty. &ldquo;Go sit down, Ramsey, and do it
+      after school.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His ears roaring, the unfortunate went to his seat, and, among all the
+      hilarious faces, one stood out&mdash;Dora Yocum's. Her laughter was
+      precocious; it was that of a confirmed superior, insufferably adult&mdash;she
+      was laughing at him as a grown person laughs at a child. Conspicuously and
+      unmistakably, there was something indulgent in her amusement. He choked.
+      Here was a little squirt of a high-school girl who would trot up to George
+      Washington himself and show off around him, given the opportunity; and
+      George Washington would probably pat her on the head, or give her a medal&mdash;or
+      something. Well, let him! Ramsey didn't care. He didn't care for George
+      Washington, or Paul Revere, or Shakespeare, or any of 'em. They could all
+      go to the dickens with Dora Yocum. They were all a lot of smarties anyway
+      and he hated the whole stew of 'em!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was one, however, whom he somehow couldn't manage to hate, even
+      though this one officially seemed to be as intimately associated with Dora
+      Yocum and superiority as the others were. Ramsey couldn't hate Abraham
+      Lincoln, even when Dora was chosen to deliver the &ldquo;Gettysburg Address&rdquo; on
+      the twelfth of February. Vaguely, yet reassuringly, Ramsey felt that
+      Lincoln had resisted adoption by the intellectuals. Lincoln had said
+      &ldquo;Government of the people, by the people, for the people,&rdquo; and that didn't
+      mean government by the teacher and the Teacher's Pet and Paul Revere and
+      Shakespeare and suchlike; it meant government by everybody, and therefore
+      Ramsey had as much to do with it as anybody else had. This was friendly;
+      and he believed that if Abraham Lincoln could have walked into the
+      schoolroom, Lincoln would have been as friendly with him as with Dora and
+      the teacher herself. Beyond a doubt, Dora and the teacher <i>thought</i>
+      Lincoln belonged to them and their crowd of exclusives; they seemed to
+      think they owned the whole United States; but Ramsey was sure they were
+      mistaken about Abraham Lincoln.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt that it was just like this little Yocum snippet to assume such a
+      thing, and it made him sicker than ever to look at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, one day, he noticed that her eye-winkers were stickin' out farther
+      and farther.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      His discovery irritated him the more. Next thing, this ole Teacher's Pet
+      would do she'd get to thinkin' she was pretty! If <i>that</i> happened,
+      well, nobody <i>could</i> stand her! The long lashes made her eyes
+      shadowy, and it was a fact that her shoulder blades ceased to insist upon
+      notoriety; you couldn't tell where they were at all, any more. Her back
+      seemed to be just a regular back, not made up of a lot of implements like
+      shoulder blades and things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A contemptible thing happened. Wesley Bender was well known to be the most
+      untidy boy in the class and had never shown any remorse for his reputation
+      or made the slightest effort either to improve or to dispute it. He was
+      content: it failed to lower his standing with his fellows or to impress
+      them unfavourably. In fact, he was treated as one who has attained a
+      slight distinction. At least, he owned one superlative, no matter what its
+      quality, and it lifted him out of the commonplace. It helped him to become
+      better known, and boys liked to be seen with him. But one day, there was a
+      rearrangement of the seating in the schoolroom: Wesley Bender was given a
+      desk next in front of Dora Yocum's; and within a week the whole room knew
+      that Wesley had begun voluntarily to wash his neck&mdash;the back of it,
+      anyhow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was at the bottom of the fight between Ramsey Milholland and Wesley
+      Bender, and the diplomatic exchanges immediately preceding hostilities
+      were charmingly frank and unhyprocitical, although quite as mixed-up and
+      off-the-issue as if they had been prepared by professional foreign office
+      men. Ramsey and Fred Mitchell and four other boys waylaid young Bender on
+      the street after school, intending jocosities rather than violence, but
+      the victim proved sensitive. &ldquo;You take your ole hands off o' me!&rdquo; he said
+      fiercely, as they began to push him about among them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ole dirty Wes!&rdquo; they hoarsely bellowed and squawked, in their changing
+      voices. &ldquo;Washes his ears!&rdquo;... &ldquo;Washes his <i>neck!</i>&rdquo;... &ldquo;Dora Yocum
+      told his mama to turn the hose on him!&rdquo;... &ldquo;Yay-ho! Ole dirty Wes tryin to
+      be a duke!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wesley broke from them and backed away, swinging his strapped books in a
+      dangerous circle. &ldquo;You keep off!&rdquo; he warned them. &ldquo;I got as much right to
+      my pers'nal appearance as anybody!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This richly fed their humour, and they rioted round him, keeping outside
+      the swinging books at the end of the strap. &ldquo;Pers'nal appearance!&rdquo;... &ldquo;Who
+      went and bought it for you, Wes?&rdquo;... &ldquo;Nobody bought it for him. Dora Yocum
+      took and give him one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You leave ladies' names alone!&rdquo; cried the chivalrous Wesley. &ldquo;You ought
+      to know better, on the public street, you&mdash;pups!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was a serious affront, at least to Ramsey Milholland's way of
+      thinking; for Ramsey, also, now proved sensitive. He quoted his friends&mdash;&ldquo;Shut
+      up!&rdquo;&mdash;and advanced toward Wesley. &ldquo;You look here! Who you callin'
+      'pups'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody!&rdquo; Wesley hotly returned. &ldquo;Everybody that hasn't got any more
+      decency than to go around mentioning ladies' names on the public streets.
+      Everybody that goes around mentioning ladies' names on the public streets
+      are pups!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are, are they?&rdquo; Ramsey as hotly demanded. &ldquo;Well, you just look here
+      a minute; my own father mentions my mother's name on the public streets
+      whenever he wants to, and you just try callin' my father a pup, and you
+      won't know what happened to you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What'll <i>you</i> do about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll put a new head on you,&rdquo; said Ramsey. &ldquo;That's what I'll do, because
+      anybody that calls my father or mother a pup&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shut up! I wasn't talking about your ole father and mother. I said
+      everybody that mentioned Dora Yocum's name on the public streets was a
+      pup, and I mean it! Everybody that mentions Dora Yocum's name on the pub&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora Yocum!&rdquo; said Ramsey. &ldquo;I got a perfect right to say it anywhere I
+      want to. Dora Yocum, Dora Yocum, Dora Yocum!&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, then you're a pup!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey charged upon him and received a suffocating blow full in the face,
+      not from Mr. Bender's fist but from the solid bundle of books at the end
+      of the strap. Ramsey saw eight or ten objectives instantly: there were
+      Wesley Benders standing full length in the air on top of other Wesley
+      Benders, and more Wesley Benders zigzagged out sideways from still other
+      Wesley Benders; nevertheless, he found one of these and it proved to be
+      flesh. He engaged it wildly at fisticuffs; pounded it upon the countenance
+      and drove it away. Then he sat down upon the curbstone, and, with his
+      dizzy eyes shut, leaned forward for the better accommodation of his
+      ensanguined nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wesley had retreated to the other side of the street holding a grimy
+      handkerchief to the midmost parts of his pallid face. &ldquo;There, you ole damn
+      pup!&rdquo; he shouted, in a voice which threatened to sob. &ldquo;I guess <i>that'll</i>
+      teach you to be careful how you mention Dora Yocum's name on the public
+      streets!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this, Ramsey made a motion as if to rise and pursue, whereupon Wesley
+      fled, wailing back over his shoulder as he ran, &ldquo;You wait till I ketch you
+      out alone on the public streets and I'll&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was lost in an outburst of hooting from his former friends, who
+      sympathetically surrounded the wounded Ramsey. But in a measure, at least,
+      the chivalrous fugitive had won his point. He was routed and outdone, yet
+      what survived the day was a rumour, which became a sort of tenuous legend
+      among those interested. There had been a fight over Dora Yocum, it
+      appeared, and Ramsey Milholland had attempted to maintain something
+      derogatory to the lady, while Wesley defended her as a knightly youth
+      should. The something derogatory was left vague; nobody attempted to say
+      just what it was, and the effects of the legend divided the schoolroom
+      strictly according to gender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boys, unmindful of proper gallantry, supported Ramsey on account of
+      the way he had persisted in lickin' the stuffin' out of Wesley Bender
+      after receiving that preliminary wallop from Wesley's blackjack bundle of
+      books. The girls petted and championed Wesley; they talked outrageously of
+      his conqueror, fiercely declaring that he ought to be arrested; and for
+      weeks they maintained a new manner toward him. They kept their facial
+      expressions hostile, but perhaps this was more for one another's benefit
+      than for Ramsey's; and several of them went so far out of their way to
+      find even private opportunities for reproving him that an alert observer
+      might have suspected them to have been less indignant than they seemed&mdash;but
+      not Ramsey. He thought they all hated him, and said he was glad of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora was a non-partisan. The little prig was so diligent at her books she
+      gave never the slightest sign of comprehending that there had been a fight
+      about her. Having no real cognizance of Messrs. Bender and Milholland
+      except as impediments to the advance of learning, she did not even look
+      demure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      With Wesley Bender, Ramsey was again upon fair terms before the winter had
+      run its course; the two were neighbours and, moreover, were drawn together
+      by a community of interests which made their reconciliation a necessity.
+      Ramsey played the guitar and Wesley played the mandolin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All ill feeling between them died with the first duet of spring, yet the
+      twinkling they made had no charm to soothe the savage breast of Ramsey
+      whenever the Teacher's Pet came into his thoughts. He daydreamed a
+      thousand ways of putting her in her place, but was unable to carry out any
+      of them, and had but a cobwebby satisfaction in imagining discomfitures
+      for her which remained imaginary. With a yearning so poignant that it
+      hurt, he yearned and yearned to show her what she really was. &ldquo;Just once!&rdquo;
+       he said to Fred Mitchell. &ldquo;That's all I ask, just once. Just gimme one
+      chance to show that girl what she really is. I guess if I ever get the
+      chance she'll find out what's the matter with her, for <i>once</i> in her
+      life, anyway!&rdquo; Thus it came to be talked about and understood and expected
+      in Ramsey's circle, all male, that Dora Yocum's day was coming. The nature
+      of the disaster was left vague, but there was no doubt in the world that
+      retribution merely awaited its ideal opportunity. &ldquo;You'll see!&rdquo; said
+      Ramsey. &ldquo;The time'll come when that ole girl'll wish she'd moved o' this
+      town before she ever got appointed monitor of <i>our</i> class! Just you
+      wait!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They waited, but conditions appeared to remain unfavourable indefinitely.
+      Perhaps the great opportunity might have arrived if Ramsey had been able
+      to achieve a startling importance in any of the &ldquo;various divergent yet
+      parallel lines of school endeavour&rdquo;&mdash;one of the phrases by means of
+      which teachers and principal clogged the minds of their unarmed auditors.
+      But though he was far from being the dumb driven beast of misfortune that
+      he seemed in the schoolroom, and, in fact, lived a double life, exhibiting
+      in his out-of-school hours a remarkable example of &ldquo;secondary personality&rdquo;&mdash;a
+      creature fearing nothing and capable of laughter; blue-eyed, fairly
+      robust, and anything but dumb&mdash;he was nevertheless without endowment
+      or attainment great enough to get him distinction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He &ldquo;tried for&rdquo; the high-school eleven, and &ldquo;tried for&rdquo; the nine, but the
+      experts were not long in eliminating him from either of these
+      competitions, and he had to content himself with cheering instead of
+      getting cheered. He was by no manner of means athlete enough, or enough of
+      anything else, to put Dora Yocum in her place, and so he and the great
+      opportunity were still waiting in May, at the end of the second year of
+      high school, when the class, now the &ldquo;10 A,&rdquo; reverted to an old fashion
+      and decided to entertain itself with a woodland picnic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They gathered upon the sandy banks of a creek, in the blue shade of big,
+      patchy-barked sycamores, with a dancing sky on top of everything and gold
+      dust atwinkle over the water. Hither the napkin-covered baskets were
+      brought from the wagons and assembled in the shade, where they appeared as
+      an attractive little meadow of white napery, and gave both surprise and
+      pleasure to communities of ants and to other original settlers of the
+      neighbourhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this nucleus or headquarters of the picnic, various expeditions set
+      forth up and down the creek and through the woods that bordered it. Camera
+      work was constant; spring wild flowers were accumulated by groups of girls
+      who trooped through the woods with eager eyes searching the thickets; two
+      envied boy fishermen established themselves upon a bank up-stream, with
+      hooks and lines thoughtfully brought with them, and poles which they
+      fashioned from young saplings. They took mussels from the shallows, for
+      bait, and having gone to all this trouble, declined to share with friends
+      less energetic and provident the perquisites and pleasures secured to
+      themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albert Paxton was another person who proved his enterprise. Having visited
+      the spot some days before, he had hired for his exclusive use throughout
+      the duration of the picnic an old rowboat belonging to a shanty squatter;
+      it was the only rowboat within a mile or two and Albert had his own uses
+      for it. Albert was the class lover and, after first taking the three
+      chaperon teachers &ldquo;out for a row,&rdquo; an excursion concluded in about ten
+      minutes, he disembarked them; Sadie Clews stepped into the boat, a pocket
+      camera in one hand, a tennis racket in the other; and the two spent the
+      rest of the day, except for the luncheon interval, solemnly drifting along
+      the banks or grounded on a shoal. Now and then Albert would row a few
+      strokes, and at almost any time when the populated shore glanced toward
+      them, Sadie would be seen photographing Albert, or Albert would be seen
+      photographing Sadie, but the tennis racket remained an enigma. Oarsman and
+      passenger appeared to have no conversation whatever&mdash;not once was
+      either seen or heard to address a remark to the other; and they looked as
+      placid as their own upside-down reflections in one of the still pools they
+      slowly floated over. They were sixteen, and had been &ldquo;engaged&rdquo; more than
+      two years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the borders of the little meadow of baskets there had been deposited
+      two black shapes, which remained undisturbed throughout the day, a closed
+      guitar case and a closed mandolin case, no doubt containing each its
+      proper instrument. So far as any use of these went they seemed to be of
+      the same leisure class to which Sadie's tennis racket belonged, for when
+      one of the teachers suggested music, the musicians proved shy. Wesley
+      Bender said they hadn't learned to play anything much and, besides, he had
+      a couple o' broken strings he didn't know as he could fix up; and Ramsey
+      said he guessed it seemed kind o' too hot to play much. Joining friends,
+      they organized a contest in marksmanship, the target being a floating can
+      which they assailed with pebbles; and after that they &ldquo;skipped&rdquo; flat
+      stones upon the surface of the water, then went to join a group gathered
+      about Willis Parker and Heinie Krusemeyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No fish had been caught, a lack of luck crossly attributed by the
+      fishermen to the noise made by constant advice on the part of their
+      attendant gallery. Messrs. Milholland, Bender, and the other rock throwers
+      came up shouting, and were ill received.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For heaven's sakes,&rdquo; Heinie Krusemeyer demanded, &ldquo;can't you shut up? Here
+      we just first got the girls to keep their mouths shut a minute and I
+      almost had a big pickerel or something on my hook, and here you got to up
+      and yell so he chases himself away! Why can't nobody show a little sense
+      sometimes when they ought to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should say so!&rdquo; his comrade exclaimed. &ldquo;If people would only just take
+      and think of all the trouble we been to, it seems funny somebody couldn't
+      let us have half a chance to get a few good fish. What chance they got to
+      bite with a lot o' <i>girls</i> gabbin' away, and then, just as we get 'em
+      quieted down, all you men got to come bustin' up here yellin' your heads
+      off. A fish isn't goin' to bite when he can't even hear himself think!
+      Anybody ought to know that much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the new arrivals hooted. <i>&ldquo;Fish!&rdquo;</i> Ramsey vociferated. &ldquo;I'll bet
+      a hundred dollars there hasn't been even a minny in this creek for the
+      last sixty years!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is, too!&rdquo; said Heinie, bitterly. &ldquo;But I wouldn't be surprised there
+      wouldn't be no longer if you got to keep up this noise. If you'd shut up
+      just a minute you could see yourself there's fish here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In whispers several of the tamed girls at once heartily corroborated this
+      statement, whereupon the newcomers ceased to gibe and consented to
+      silence. Ramsey leaned forth over the edge of the overhanging bank, a dirt
+      precipice five feet above the water, and peered into the indeterminable
+      depths below. The pool had been stirred, partly by the inexpert pokings of
+      the fishermen and partly by small clods and bits of dirt dislodged from
+      above by the feet of the audience. The water, consequently, was but
+      brownly translucent and revealed its secrets reluctantly; nevertheless
+      certain dim little shapes had been observed to move within it, and were
+      still there. Ramsey failed to see them at first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's any ole fish?&rdquo; he inquired, scornfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my goodness!&rdquo; Heinie Krusemeyer moaned. &ldquo;<i>Can't</i> you shut up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; whispered the girl who stood nearest to Ramsey. She pointed.
+      &ldquo;There's one. Right down there by Willis's hook. Don't you see him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey was impressed enough to whisper. &ldquo;Is there? I don't see him. I
+      can't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl came closer to him, and, the better to show him, leaned out over
+      the edge of the bank, and, for safety in maintaining her balance, rested
+      her left hand upon his shoulder while she pointed with her right.
+      Thereupon something happened to Ramsey. The touch upon his shoulder was
+      almost nothing, and he had never taken the slightest interest in Milla
+      Rust (to whom that small warm hand belonged), though she was the class
+      beauty, and long established in the office. Now, all at once, a peculiar
+      and heretofore entirely unfamiliar sensation suddenly became important in
+      the upper part of his chest. For a moment he held his breath, an
+      involuntary action;&mdash;he seemed to be standing in a shower of flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you see it, Ramsey?&rdquo; Milla whispered. &ldquo;It's a great big one. Why,
+      it must be as long as&mdash;as your shoe! Look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey saw nothing but the thick round curl on Milla's shoulder. Milla had
+      a group of curls on each of her shoulders, for she got her modes at the
+      Movies and had that sort of prettiness: large, gentle, calculating eyes,
+      and a full, softly modelled face, implacably sweet. Ramsey was accustomed
+      to all this charm, and Milla had never before been of more importance to
+      him than an equal weight of school furniture&mdash;but all at once some
+      magic had enveloped her. That curl upon the shoulder nearest him was shot
+      with dazzling fibres of sunshine. He seemed to be trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see it,&rdquo; he murmured, huskily, afraid that she might remove her
+      hand. &ldquo;I can't see any fish, Milla.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She leaned farther out over the bank. &ldquo;Why, there, goosie!&rdquo; she whispered.
+      &ldquo;Right there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't see it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She leaned still farther, bending down to point. &ldquo;Why right th&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment she removed her hand from his shoulder, though unwillingly.
+      She clutched at him, in fact, but without avail. She had been too amiable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A loud shriek was uttered by throats abler to vocalize, just then, than
+      Milla's, for in her great surprise she said nothing whatever&mdash;the
+      shriek came from the other girls as Milla left the crest of the
+      overhanging bank and almost horizontally disappeared into the brown water.
+      There was a tumultuous splash, and then of Milla Rust and her well-known
+      beautifulness there was nothing visible in the superficial world, nor upon
+      the surface of that creek. The vanishment was total.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Save</i> her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Several girls afterward admitted having used this expression, and little
+      Miss Floy Williams, the youngest and smallest member of the class, was
+      unable to deny that she had said, &ldquo;Oh, God!&rdquo; Nothing could have been more
+      natural, and the matter need not have been brought before her with such
+      insistence and frequency, during the two remaining years of her
+      undergraduate career.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey was one of those who heard this exclamation, later so famous, and
+      perhaps it was what roused him to heroism. He dived from the bank,
+      headlong, and the strange thought in his mind was &ldquo;I guess <i>this</i>'ll
+      show Dora Yocum!&rdquo; He should have been thinking of Milla, of course, at
+      such a time, particularly after the little enchantment just laid upon him
+      by Milla's touch and Milla's curls; and he knew well enough that Miss
+      Yocum was not among the spectators. She was half a mile away, as it
+      happened, gathering &ldquo;botanical specimens&rdquo; with one of the teachers&mdash;which
+      was her idea of what to do at a picnic!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey struck the water hard, and in the same instant struck something
+      harder. Wesley Bender's bundle of books had given him no such shock as he
+      received now, and if the creek bottom had not been of mud, just there, the
+      top of his young head might have declined the strain. Half stunned,
+      choking, spluttering he somehow floundered to his feet; and when he could
+      get his eyes a little cleared of water he found himself wavering face to
+      face with a blurred vision of Milla Rust. She had risen up out of the pond
+      and stood knee deep, like a lovely drenched figure in a fountain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon the bank above them, Willis Parker was jumping up and down,
+      gesticulating and shouting fiercely. &ldquo;Now I guess you're satisfied our
+      fishin' <i>is</i> spoilt! Whyn't you listen me? I <i>told</i> you it
+      wasn't more'n three feet deep! I and Heinie waded all over this creek
+      gettin' our bait. You're a pretty sight!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Of Milla he spoke unwittingly the literal truth. Even with her hair thus
+      wild and sodden, Milla rose from immersion blushing and prettier than
+      ever; and she was prettiest of all when she stretched out her hand
+      helplessly to Ramsey and he led her up out of the waters. They had plenty
+      of assistance to scramble to the top of the bank, and there Milla was
+      surrounded and borne away with a great clacketing and tumult. Ramsey gave
+      his coat into the hands of friends, who twisted the water out of it for
+      him, while he sat upon the grass in the sun, rubbed his head, and
+      experimented with his neck to see if it would &ldquo;work.&rdquo; The sunshine was
+      strong and hot; in half an hour he and his clothes were dry&mdash;or at
+      least &ldquo;dry enough,&rdquo; as he said, and except for some soreness of head and
+      neck, and the general crumpledness of his apparel, he seemed to be in all
+      ways much as usual when shouts and whistlings summoned all the party to
+      luncheon at the rendezvous. The change that made him different was
+      invisible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The change in Ramsey was invisible, and yet something must have been seen,
+      for everyone appeared to take it for granted that he was to sit next to
+      Milla at the pastoral meal. She herself understood it, evidently, for she
+      drew in her puckered skirts and without any words make a place for him
+      beside her as he driftingly approached her, affecting to whistle and
+      keeping his eyes on the foliage overhead. He still looked upward, even in
+      the act of sitting down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Squirrel or something,&rdquo; he said, feebly, as if in explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo; Milla asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Up there on a branch.&rdquo; He accepted a plate from her (she had provided
+      herself with an extra one), but he did not look at it or her. &ldquo;I'm not
+      just exactly sure it's a squirrel,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Kind of hard to make out
+      exactly what it is.&rdquo; He continued to keep his eyes aloft, because he
+      imagined that all of the class were looking at him and Milla, and he felt
+      unable to meet such publicity. It was to him as if the whole United States
+      had been scandalized to attention by this act of his in going to sit
+      beside Milla; he gazed upward so long that his eyeballs became sensitive
+      under the strain. He began to blink. &ldquo;I can't make out whether it's a
+      squirrel or just some leaves that kind o' got fixed like one,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I
+      can't make out yet which it is, but I guess when there's a breeze, if it's
+      a squirrel he'll prob'ly hop around some then, if he's alive or anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It had begun to seem that his eyes must remain fixed in that upward stare
+      forever; he wanted to bring them down, but could not face the glare of the
+      world. So the fugitive ostrich is said to bury his head in the sand; he
+      does it, not believing himself thereby hidden but trying to banish from
+      his own cognizance terrible facts which his unsheltered eyes have seemed
+      to reveal. So, too, do nervous children seek to bury their eyes under
+      pillows, and nervous statesmen theirs under oratory. Ramsey's ostrichings
+      can happen to anybody. But finally the brightness of the sky between the
+      leaves settled matters for him; he sneezed, wept, and for a little moment
+      again faced his fellowmen. No one was looking at him; everybody except
+      Milla had other things to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having sneezed involuntarily, he added a spell of coughing for which there
+      was no necessity. &ldquo;I guess I must be wrong,&rdquo; he muttered thickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about, Ramsey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About it bein' a squirrel.&rdquo; With infinite timidity he turned his head and
+      encountered a gaze so soft, so hallowed, that it disconcerted him, and he
+      dropped a &ldquo;drumstick&rdquo; of fried chicken, well dotted with ants, from his
+      plate. Scarlet he picked it up, but did not eat it. For the first time in
+      his life he felt that eating fried chicken held in the fingers was not to
+      be thought of. He replaced the &ldquo;drumstick&rdquo; upon his plate and allowed it
+      to remain there untouched, in spite of a great hunger for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having looked down, he now found difficulty in looking up, but gazed
+      steadily at his plate, and into this limited circle of vision came Milla's
+      delicate and rosy fingers, bearing a gift. &ldquo;There,&rdquo; she said in a motherly
+      little voice. &ldquo;It's a tomato mayonnaise sandwich and I made it myself. I
+      want you to eat it, Ramsey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His own fingers approached tremulousness as he accepted the thick sandwich
+      from her and conveyed it to his mouth. A moment later his soul filled with
+      horror, for a spurt of mayonnaise dressing had caused a catastrophe the
+      scene of which occupied no inconsiderable area of his right cheek; which
+      was the cheek toward Milla. He groped wretchedly for his handkerchief but
+      could not find it; he had lost it. Sudden death would have been relief; he
+      was sure that after such grotesquerie Milla could never bear to have
+      anything more to do with him; he was ruined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his anguish he felt a paper napkin pressed gently into his hand; a soft
+      voice said in his ear, &ldquo;Wipe it off with this, Ramsey. Nobody's noticing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So this incredibly charitable creature was still able to be his friend,
+      even after seeing him mayonnaised! Humbly marvelling, he did as she told
+      him, but avoided all further risks. He ate nothing more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sighed his first sigh of inexpressibleness, had a chill or so along the
+      spine, and at intervals his brow was bedewed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within his averted eyes there dwelt not the Milla Rust who sat beside him,
+      but an iridescent, fragile creature who had become angelic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spent the rest of the day dawdling helplessly about her; wherever she
+      went he was near, as near as possible, but of no deliberate volition of
+      his own. Something seemed to tie him to her, and Milla was nothing loth.
+      He seldom looked at her directly, or for longer than an instant, and more
+      rarely still did he speak to her except as a reply. What few remarks he
+      ventured upon his own initiative nearly all concerned the landscape, which
+      he commended repeatedly in a weak voice, as &ldquo;kind of pretty,&rdquo; though once
+      he said he guessed there might be bugs in the bark of a log on which they
+      sat; and he became so immoderately personal as to declare that if the bugs
+      had to get on anybody he'd rather they got on him than on Milla. She said
+      that was &ldquo;just perfectly lovely&rdquo; of him, asked where he got his sweet
+      nature, and in other ways encouraged him to continue the revelation, but
+      Ramsey was unable to get forward with it, though he opened and closed his
+      mouth a great many times in the effort to do so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At five o'clock everybody was summoned again to the rendezvous for a
+      ceremony preliminary to departure: the class found itself in a large
+      circle, standing, and sang &ldquo;The Star Spangled Banner.&rdquo; Ordinarily, on such
+      an open-air and out-of-school occasion, Ramsey would have joined the
+      chorus uproariously with the utmost blatancy of which his vocal apparatus
+      was capable; and most of the other boys expressed their humour by drowning
+      out the serious efforts of the girls; but he sang feebly, not much more
+      than humming through his teeth. Standing beside Milla, he was incapable of
+      his former inelegancies and his voice was in a semi-paralyzed condition,
+      like the rest of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Opposite him, across the circle, Dora Yocum stood a little in advance of
+      those near her, for of course she led the singing. Her clear and earnest
+      voice was distinguishable from all others, and though she did not glance
+      toward Ramsey he had a queer feeling that she was assuming more
+      superiority than ever, and that she was icily scornful of him and Milla.
+      The old resentment rose&mdash;he'd &ldquo;show&rdquo; that girl yet, some day!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the song was over, cheers were given for the class, &ldquo;the good ole
+      class of Nineteen Fourteen,&rdquo; the school, the teachers, and for the picnic,
+      thus officially concluded; and then the picnickers, carrying their baskets
+      and faded wild flowers and other souvenirs and burdens, moved toward the
+      big &ldquo;express wagons&rdquo; which were to take them back into the town. Ramsey
+      got his guitar case, and turned to Milla.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well what, Ramsey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;g'bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, no,&rdquo; said Milla. &ldquo;Anyways not yet. You can go back in the same wagon
+      with me. It's going to stop at the school and let us out there, and then
+      you could walk home with me if you felt like it. You could come all the
+      way to our gate with me, I expect, unless you'd be late home for your
+      supper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;well, I'd be perfectly willing,&rdquo; Ramsey said. &ldquo;Only I heard we
+      all had to go back in whatever wagon we came out in, and I didn't come in
+      the same wagon with you, so&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Milla laughed and leaned toward him a little. &ldquo;I already 'tended to that,&rdquo;
+       she said confidentially. &ldquo;I asked Johnnie Fiske, that came out in my
+      wagon, to go back in yours, so that makes room for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;then I guess I could do it.&rdquo; He moved toward the wagon with
+      her. &ldquo;I expect it don't make much difference one way or the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you can carry my basket if you want to,&rdquo; she said, adding
+      solicitously, &ldquo;Unless it's too heavy when you already got your guitar case
+      to carry, Ramsey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This thoughtfulness of hers almost overcame him; she seemed divine. He
+      gulped, and emotion made him even pinker than he had been under the
+      mayonnaise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I'll be glad to carry the basket, too,&rdquo; he faltered. &ldquo;It-it don't
+      weigh anything much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, let's hurry, so's we can get places together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as she manoeuvred him through the little crowd about the wagon, with
+      a soft push this way and a gentle pull that, and hurried him up the
+      improvised steps and found a place where there was room for them to sit,
+      Ramsey had another breathless sensation heretofore unknown to him. He
+      found himself taken under a dovelike protectorship; a wonderful,
+      inexpressible Being seemed to have become his proprietor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't this just perfectly lovely?&rdquo; she said cozily, close to his ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He swallowed, but found no words, for he had no thoughts; he was only an
+      incoherent tumult. This was his first love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it, Ramsey?&rdquo; she urged. The cozy voice had just the hint of a
+      reproach. &ldquo;Don't you think it's just perfectly lovely, Ramsey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes'm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next morning Ramsey came into his father's room while Mr. Milholland
+      was shaving, an hour before church time, and it became apparent that the
+      son had someting on his mind, though for a while he said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you want anything, Ramsey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't want to borrow my razors?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Milholland chuckled. &ldquo;I hardly supposed so, seriously! Shaving is a
+      great nuisance and the longer you keep away from it, the better. And when
+      you do, you let my razors alone, young feller!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo; (Mr. Milholland's razors were safe, Ramsey had already
+      achieved one of his own, but he practised the art in secret.) He passed
+      his hand thoughtfully over his cheeks, and traces of white powder were
+      left upon his fingers, whereupon he wiped his hand surreptitiously, and
+      stood irresolutely waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it you really want, Ramsey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I don't want anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir. You gay' me some Friday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Milholland turned from his mirror and looked over the edge of a towel
+      at his son. In the boy's eyes there was such a dumb agony of interrogation
+      that the father was a little startled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what is it, Ramsey? Have you&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, frowning and
+      wondering. &ldquo;You haven't been getting into some mess you want to tell me
+      about, have you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His tone was meek, but a mute distress lurked within it, bringing to the
+      father's mind disturbing suspicions, and foreshadowings of indignation and
+      of pity. &ldquo;See here, Ramsey,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if there's anything you want to ask
+      me, or to tell me, you'd better out with it and get it over. Now, what is
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;it isn't anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you <i>sure?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey's eyes fell before the severe and piercing gaze of his father.
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Milholland shook his head doubtfully; then, as his son walked slowly
+      out of the room, he turned to complete his toilet in a somewhat uneasy
+      frame of mind. Ramsey had undoubtedly wanted to say something to him and
+      the boy's expression had shown that the matter in question was serious,
+      distressing, and, it might be, even critical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact it was&mdash;to Ramsey. Having begun within only the last few
+      hours to regard haberdashery as of vital importance, and believing his
+      father to be possessed of the experience and authority lacking in himself,
+      Ramsey had come to get him to settle a question which had been upsetting
+      him badly, in his own room, since breakfast. What he wanted to know was:
+      Whether it was right to wear an extra handkerchief showing out of the coat
+      breast pocket or not, and, if it was right&mdash;ought the handkerchief to
+      have a coloured border or to be plain white? But he had never before
+      brought any such perplexities to his father, and found himself too
+      diffident to set them forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, when he left the house, a few minutes later, he boldly showed an
+      inch of purple border above the pocket; then, as he was himself about to
+      encounter several old lady pedestrians, he blushed and thrust the
+      handkerchief down into deep concealment. Having gone a block farther, he
+      pulled it up again; and so continued to operate this badge of fashion, or
+      unfashion, throughout the morning; and suffered a great deal thereby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, his father, rather relieved that Ramsey had not told his secret,
+      whatever it was, dismissed the episode from his mind and joined Mrs.
+      Milholland at the front door, ready for church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's Ramsey?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's gone ahead,&rdquo; she answered, buttoning her gloves as they went along.
+      &ldquo;I heard the door quite a little while ago. Perhaps he went over to walk
+      down with Charlotte and Vance. Did you notice how neat he looks this
+      morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, no, I didn't; not particularly. Does he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never saw anything like it before,&rdquo; said Mrs. Milholland. &ldquo;He went down
+      in the cellar and polished his own shoes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For about an hour, I think,&rdquo; she said, as one remaining calm before a
+      miracle. &ldquo;And he only has three neckties, but I saw him several times in
+      each of them. He must have kept changing and changing. I wonder&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad he's begun to take a little care of his appearance at last.
+      Business men think a good deal about that, these days, when he comes to
+      make his start in the world. I'll have to take a look at him and give him
+      a word of praise. I suppose he'll be in the pew when we get there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ramsey wasn't in the pew; and Charlotte, his sister, and her husband,
+      who were there, said they hadn't seen anything of him. It was not until
+      the members of the family were on their way home after the services that
+      they caught a glimpse of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were passing a church a little distance from their own; here the
+      congregation was just emerging to the open, and among the sedate throng
+      descending the broad stone steps appeared an accompanied Ramsey&mdash;and
+      a red, red Ramsey he was when he beheld his father and mother and sister
+      and brother-in-law staring up at him from the pavement below. They were
+      kind enough not to come to an absolute halt, but passed slowly on, so that
+      he was just able to avoid parading up the street in front of them. The
+      expressions of his father, mother, and sister were of a dumfoundedness
+      painful to bear, while such lurking jocosity as that apparent all over his
+      brother-in-law no dignified man should either exhibit or be called upon to
+      ignore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In hoarse whispers, Mrs. Milholland chided her husband for an exclamation
+      he had uttered. &ldquo;John! On Sunday! You ought to be ashamed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't help it,&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Who on earth is his clinging vine?
+      Why, she's got <i>lavender</i> tops on her shoes and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't look round!&rdquo; she warned him sharply. &ldquo;Don't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what's he doing at a Baptist church? What's he fidgeting at his
+      handkerchief about? Why can't he walk like people? Does he think it's
+      obligatory to walk home from church anchored arm-in-arm like Swedes on a
+      Sunday Out? Who <i>is</i> this cow-eyed fat girl that's got him, anyhow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush! Don't look round again, John.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never fear!&rdquo; said her husband, having disobeyed. &ldquo;They've turned off;
+      they're crossing over to Bullard Street. Who is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think her name's Rust,&rdquo; Mrs. Milholland informed him. &ldquo;I don't know
+      what her father does. She's one of the girls in his class at school.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's just like a boy; pick out some putty-faced flirt to take to
+      church!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she's quite pretty&mdash;in that way!&rdquo; said his wife, deprecatingly.
+      &ldquo;Of course that's the danger with public schools. It would be pleasanter
+      if he'd taken a fancy to someone whose family belongs to our own circle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Taken a fancy'!&rdquo; he echoed, hooting. &ldquo;Why, he's terrible! He looked like
+      a red-gilled goldfish that's flopped itself out of the bowl. Why, he&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I <i>say</i> I wish if he felt that he had to take girls anywhere,&rdquo; said
+      Mrs. Milholland, with the primmest air of speaking to the point&mdash;&ldquo;if
+      this sort of thing <i>must</i> begin, I wish he might have selected some
+      nice girl among the daughters of our own friends, like Dora Yocum, for
+      instance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon the spot she began to undergo the mortification of a mother who has
+      expected her son, just out of infancy, to look about him with the eye of a
+      critical matron of forty-five. Moreover, she was indiscreet enough to
+      express her views to Ramsey, a week later, producing thus a scene of
+      useless great fury and no little sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do think it's in <i>very</i> poor taste to see so much of any one girl,
+      Ramsey,&rdquo; she said, and, not heeding his protest that he only walked home
+      from school with Milla, &ldquo;about every other day,&rdquo; and that it didn't seem
+      any crime to him just to go to church with her a couple o' times, Mrs.
+      Milholland went on: &ldquo;But if you think you really <i>must</i> be dangling
+      around somebody quite this much&mdash;though what in the world you find to
+      <i>talk</i> about with this funny little Milla Rust you poor father says
+      he really cannot see&mdash;and of course it seems very queer to us that
+      you'd be willing to waste so much time just now when your mind ought to be
+      entirely on your studies, and especially with such an absurd <i>looking</i>
+      little thing&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you must listen, Ramsey, and let me speak now. What I meant was that
+      we shouldn't be <i>quite</i> so much distressed by your being seen with a
+      girl who dressed in better taste and seemed to have some notion of
+      refinement, though of course it's only natural she <i>wouldn't</i>, with a
+      father who is just a sort of ward politician, I understand, and a mother
+      we don't know, and of course shouldn't care to. But, oh, Ramsey! if you <i>had</i>
+      to make yourself so conspicuous why couldn't you be a little <i>bit</i>
+      more fastidious? Your father wouldn't have minded nearly so much if it had
+      been a self-respecting, intellectual girl. We both say that if you <i>must</i>
+      be so ridiculous at your age as to persist in seeing more of one girl than
+      another, why, oh why, don't you go and see some really nice girl like Dora
+      Yocum?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey was already dangerously distended, as an effect of the earlier part
+      of her discourse, and the word &ldquo;fastidious&rdquo; almost exploded him; but upon
+      the climax, &ldquo;Dora Yocum,&rdquo; he blew up with a shattering report and, leaving
+      fragments of incoherence ricocheting behind him, fled shuddering from the
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the rest of the school term he walked home with Milla every afternoon
+      and on Sundays appeared to have become a resolute Baptist. It was supposed
+      (by the interested members of the high-school class) that Ramsey and Milla
+      were &ldquo;engaged.&rdquo; Ramsey sometimes rather supposed they were himself, and
+      the dim idea gave him a sensation partly pleasant, but mostly
+      apprehensive: he was afraid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was afraid that the day was coming when he ought to kiss her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Vacation, in spite of increased leisure, may bring inconvenience to people
+      in Ramsey's strange but not uncommon condition. At home his constant air
+      was that of a badgered captive plaintively silent under injustice; and he
+      found it difficult to reply calmly when asked where he was going&mdash;an
+      inquiry addressed to him, he asserted, every time he touched his cap, even
+      to hang it up!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The amount of evening walking he did must also have been a trial to his
+      nerves, on account of fatigue, though the ground covered was not vast.
+      Milla's mother and father were friendly people but saw no reason to &ldquo;move
+      out of house and home,&rdquo; as Mr. Rust said, when Milla had &ldquo;callers&rdquo;; and on
+      account of the intimate plan of their small dwelling a visitor's only
+      alternative to spending the evening with Mr. and Mrs. Rust as well as with
+      Milla, was to invite her to &ldquo;go out walking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evening after evening they walked and walked and walked, usually in
+      company&mdash;at perhaps the distance of half a block&mdash;with Albert
+      Paxton and Sadie Clews, though Ramsey now and then felt disgraced by
+      having fallen into this class; for sometimes it was apparent that Albert
+      casually had his arm about Sadie's waist. This allured Ramsey somewhat,
+      but terrified him more. He didn't know how such matters were managed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Usually the quartet had no destination; they just went &ldquo;out walking&rdquo; until
+      ten o'clock, when both girls had to be home&mdash;and the boys did, too,
+      but never admitted it. On Friday evenings there was a &ldquo;public open-air
+      concert&rdquo; by a brass band in a small park, and the four were always there.
+      A political speechmaker occupied the bandstand one night, and they stood
+      for an hour in the midst of the crowd, listening vaguely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The orator saddled his politics upon patriotism. &ldquo;Do you intend to let
+      this glorious country go to wrack and ruin, oh, my good friends,&rdquo; he
+      demanded, &ldquo;or do you intend to save her? Look forth upon this country of
+      ours, I bid you, oh, my countrymen, and tell me what you see. You see a
+      fair domain of forest, mountain, plain, and fertile valleys, sweeping from
+      ocean to ocean. Look from the sturdy rocks of old New England, pledged to
+      posterity by the stern religious hardihood of the Pilgrim Fathers, across
+      the corn-bearing midland country, that land of milk and honey, won for us
+      by the pluck and endurance of the indomitable pioneers, to where in
+      sunshine roll the smiling Sierras of golden California, given to our
+      heritage by the unconquerable energy of those brave men and women who
+      braved the tomahawk on the Great Plains, the tempest, of Cape Horn, and
+      the fevers of Panama, to make American soil of El Dorado! America! Oh, my
+      America, how glorious you stand! Country of Washington and Valley Forge,
+      out of what martyrdoms hast thou arisen! Country of Lincoln in his box at
+      Ford's theatre, his lifeblood staining to a brighter, holier red the red,
+      white, and blue of the Old Flag! Always and always I see the Old Flag
+      fluttering the more sacredly encrimsoned in the breeze for the martyrs who
+      have upheld it! Always I see that Old Flag&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Milla gave Ramsey's arm, within her own, a little tug. &ldquo;Come on,&rdquo; she
+      said. &ldquo;Sade says she don't want to hang around here any longer. It's awful
+      tiresome. Let's go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He consented, placidly. The oration meant nothing to him and stirred no
+      one in the audience. The orator was impassioned; he shouted himself into
+      coughing fits, gesticulated, grew purple; he was so hot that his collar
+      caved in and finally swooned upon his neck in soggy exhaustion, prostrate
+      round his thunderings. Meanwhile, the people listened with an air of
+      patience, yawning here and there, and gradually growing fewer. It was the
+      old, old usual thing, made up of phrases that Ramsey had heard dinning
+      away on a thousand such occasions, and other kinds of occasions, until
+      they meant to him no more than so much sound. He was bored, and glad to
+      leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kind o' funny,&rdquo; he said, as they sagged along the street at their usual
+      tortoise gait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, Ramsey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seems kind o' funny they never have anything to say any one can take any
+      interest in. Always the same ole whoopety-whoop about George Washington
+      and Pilgrim Fathers and so on. I bet five dollars before long we'd of
+      heard him goin' on about our martyred Presidents, William McKinley and
+      James A. Garfield and Benjamin Harrison and all so on, and then some more
+      about the ole Red, White, and Blue. Don't you wish they'd <i>quit</i>,
+      sometimes, about the 'Ole Flag'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dunno,&rdquo; said Milla. &ldquo;I wasn't listening any at all. I hate speeches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I could <i>stand</i> 'em,&rdquo; Ramsey said, more generously, &ldquo;if they'd
+      ever give anybody a little to think about. What's the use always draggin'
+      in George Warshington and the Ole Flag? And who wants to hear any more ole
+      truck about 'from ole rocky New England to golden California,' and how big
+      and fine the United States is and how it's the land of the Free and all
+      that? Why don't they ever say anything new? That's what I'd like to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Milla laughed, and when he asked why, she told him she'd never heard him
+      talk so much &ldquo;at one stretch.&rdquo; &ldquo;I guess that speech got you kind of wound
+      up,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Let's talk about something different.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I just soon,&rdquo; he agreed. And so they walked on in silence, which seemed
+      to suit Milla. She hung weightily upon his arm, and they dawdled, drifting
+      from one side of the pavement to the other as they slowly advanced. Albert
+      and Sadie, ahead of them, called &ldquo;good-night&rdquo; from a corner, before
+      turning down the side street where Sadie lived; and then, presently,
+      Ramsey and Milla were at the latter's gate. He went in with her, halting
+      at the front steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, g'night, Milla,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Want to go out walking to-morrow night?
+      Albert and Sadie are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't to-morrow night,&rdquo; she told him with obvious regret. &ldquo;Isn't it the
+      worst luck! I got an aunt comin' to visit from Chicago, and she's crazy
+      about playing 'Five Hundred,' and Mama and Papa said I haf to stay in to
+      make four to play it. She's liable to be here three or four days, and I
+      guess I got to be around home pretty much all the time she's here. It's
+      the worst luck!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was doleful, but ventured to be literary. &ldquo;Well, what can't be helped
+      must be endured. I'll come around when she's gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved as if to depart, but she still retained his arm and did not
+      prepare to relinquish it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well what, Ramsey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;g'night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced up at the dark front of the house. &ldquo;I guess the family's gone
+      to bed,&rdquo; she said, absently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I s'pose so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, good-night, Ramsey.&rdquo; She said this but still did not release his
+      arm, and suddenly, in a fluster, he felt that the time he dreaded had
+      come. Somehow, without knowing where, except that it was somewhere upon
+      what seemed to be a blurred face too full of obstructing features, he
+      kissed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned instantly away in the darkness, her hands over her cheeks; and
+      in a panic Ramsey wondered if he hadn't made a dreadful mistake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;S'cuse me!&rdquo; he said, stumbling toward the gate. &ldquo;Well, I guess I got to
+      be gettin' along back home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      He woke in the morning to a great self-loathing: he had kissed a girl.
+      Mingled with the loathing was a curious pride in the very fact that caused
+      the loathing, but the pride did not last long. He came downstairs morbid
+      to breakfast, and continued this mood afterward. At noon Albert Paxton
+      brought him a note which Milla had asked Sadie to ask Albert to give him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dearie: I am just wondering if you thought as much about something so
+      sweet that happened last night as I did you know what. I think it was the
+      sweetest thing. I send you one with this note and I hope you will think it
+      is a sweet one. I would give you a real one if you were here now and I
+      hope you would think it was sweeter still than the one I put in this note.
+      It is the sweetest thing now you are mine and I am yours forever kiddo. If
+      you come around about friday eve it will be all right. aunt Jess will be
+      gone back home by then so come early and we will get Sade and Alb and go
+      to the band Concert. Don't forget what I said about my putting something
+      sweet in this note, and I hope you will think it is a sweet one but not as
+      sweet as the <i>real</i> sweet one I would like to&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point Ramsey impulsively tore the note into small pieces. He
+      turned cold as his imagination projected a sketch of his mother in the act
+      of reading this missive, and of her expression as she read the sentence:
+      &ldquo;It is the sweetest thing now you are mine and I am yours forever kiddo.&rdquo;
+       He wished that Milla hadn't written &ldquo;kiddo.&rdquo; She called him that,
+      sometimes, but in her warm little voice the word seemed not at all what it
+      did in ink. He wished, too, that she hadn't said she was his forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly he was seized with a horror of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moisture broke out heavily upon him; he felt a definite sickness, and,
+      wishing for death, went forth upon the streets to walk and walk. He cared
+      not whither, so that his feet took him in any direction away from Milla,
+      since they were unable to take him away from himself&mdash;of whom he had
+      as great a horror. Her loving face was continually before him, and its
+      sweetness made his flesh creep. Milla had been too sweet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he met or passed people, it seemed to him that perhaps they were able
+      to recognize upon him somewhere the marks of his low quality. &ldquo;Softy! Ole
+      sloppy fool!&rdquo; he muttered, addressing himself. &ldquo;Slushy ole mush!... <i>Spooner!</i>&rdquo;
+       And he added, &ldquo;Yours forever, kiddo!&rdquo; Convulsions seemed about to seize
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning a corner with his head down, he almost charged into Dora Yocum.
+      She was homeward bound from a piano lesson, and carried a rolled leather
+      case of sheet music&mdash;something he couldn't imagine Milla carrying&mdash;and
+      in her young girl's dress, which attempted to be nothing else, she looked
+      as wholesome as cold spring water. Ramsey had always felt that she
+      despised him and now, all at once, he thought that she was justified.
+      Leper that he had become, he was unworthy to be even touching his cap to
+      her! And as she nodded and went briskly on, he would have given anything
+      to turn and walk a little way with her, for it seemed to him that this
+      might fumigate his morals. But he lacked the courage, and, besides, he
+      considered himself unfit to be seen walking with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had a long afternoon of anguishes, these becoming most violent when he
+      tried to face the problem of his future course toward Milla. He did not
+      face it at all, in fact, but merely writhed, and had evolved nothing when
+      Friday evening was upon him and Milla waiting for him to take her to the
+      &ldquo;band concert&rdquo; with &ldquo;Alb and Sade.&rdquo; In his thoughts, by that time, this
+      harmless young pair shared the contamination of his own crime, and he
+      regarded them with aversion; however, he made shift to seek a short
+      interview with Albert, just before dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got a pretty rotten headache, and my stomach's upset, too,&rdquo; he said,
+      drooping upon the Paxton's fence. &ldquo;I been gettin' worse every minute. You
+      and Sadie go by Milla's, Albert, and tell her if I'm not there by
+      ha'-pas'-seven, tell her not to wait for me any longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you mean 'wait'?&rdquo; Albert inquired. &ldquo;You don't expect her to come
+      pokin' along with Sadie and me, do you? She'll keep on sittin' there at
+      home just the same, because she wouldn't have anything else to do, if you
+      don't come like she expects you to. She hasn't got any way to <i>stop</i>
+      waitin'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this, Ramsey moaned, without affectation. &ldquo;I don't expect I <i>can</i>,
+      Albert,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'd like to if I could, but the way it looks now, you
+      tell her I wouldn't be much surprised maybe I was startin' in with typhoid
+      fever or pretty near anything at all. You tell her I'm pretty near as
+      disappointed as she's goin' to be herself, and I'd come if I could&mdash;and
+      I <i>will</i> come if I get a good deal better, or anything&mdash;but the
+      way it's gettin' to look now, I kind o' feel as if I might be breaking out
+      with something any minute.&rdquo; He moved away, concluding, feebly: &ldquo;I guess I
+      better crawl on home, Albert, while I'm still able to walk some. You tell
+      her the way it looks now I'm liable to be right sick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the next morning he woke to the chafings of remorse, picturing a Milla
+      somewhat restored in charm waiting hopefully at the gate, even after
+      half-past seven, and then, as time passed and the sound of the distant
+      horns came faintly through the darkness, going sadly to her room&mdash;perhaps
+      weeping there. It was a picture to wring him with shame and pity, but was
+      followed by another which electrified him, for out of school he did not
+      lack imagination. What if Albert had reported his illness too vividly to
+      Milla? Milla was so fond! What if, in her alarm, she should come here to
+      the house to inquire of his mother about him? What if she told Mrs.
+      Milholland they were &ldquo;engaged&rdquo;? The next moment Ramsey was projecting a
+      conversation between his mother and Milla in which the latter stated that
+      she and Ramsey were soon to be married; that she regarded him as already
+      virtually her husband, and demanded to nurse him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a panic he fled from the house before breakfast, going out by way of a
+      side door, and he crossed back yards and climbed back fences to reach
+      Albert Paxton the more swiftly. This creature, a ladies' man almost
+      professionally, was found exercising with an electric iron and a pair of
+      flannel trousers in a basement laundry, by way of stirring his appetite
+      for the morning meal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here, Albert,&rdquo; his friend said breathlessly. &ldquo;I got a favour. I want
+      you to go over to Milla's&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm goin' to finish pressin' these trousers,&rdquo; Albert interrupted. &ldquo;Then
+      I've got my breakfast to eat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you could do this first,&rdquo; said Ramsey, hurriedly. &ldquo;It wouldn't hurt
+      you to do me this little favour first. You just slip over and see Milla
+      for me, if she's up yet, and if she isn't, you better wait around there
+      till she is, because I want you to tell her I'm a whole lot better this
+      morning. Tell her I'm pretty near practick'ly all right again, Albert, and
+      I'll prob'ly write her a note or something right soon&mdash;or in a week
+      or so, anyhow. You tell her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you act pretty funny!&rdquo; Albert exclaimed, fumbling in the pockets of
+      his coat. &ldquo;Why can't you go on over and tell her yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would,&rdquo; said Ramsey. &ldquo;I'd be perfectly willing to go only I got to get
+      back home to breakfast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Albert stared. &ldquo;Well, I got to go upstairs and eat my own breakfast in
+      about a minute, haven't I? But just as it happens there wouldn't be any
+      use your goin' over there, or me, either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Milla ain't there,&rdquo; said Albert, still searching the pockets of his coat.
+      &ldquo;When we went by her house last night to tell her about your headache and
+      stomach and all, why, her mother told us Milla'd gone up to Chicago
+      yesterday afternoon with her aunt, and said she left a note for you, and
+      she said if you were sick I better take it and give it to you. I was goin'
+      to bring it over to your house after breakfast.&rdquo; He found it. &ldquo;Here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey thanked him feebly, and departed in a state of partial
+      stupefaction, brought on by a glimpse of the instabilities of life. He had
+      also, not relief, but a sense of vacancy and loss; for Milla, out of his
+      reach, once more became mysteriously lovely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pausing in an alley, he read her note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dearie: Thought I ought to call you up but over the 'phone is just nix for
+      explanations as Mama and Aunt Jess would hear everything and thought I
+      might seem cold to you not saying anything sweet on account of them
+      listening and you would wonder why I was so cold when telling you good-by
+      for a wile maybe weeks. It is this way Uncle Purv wired Aunt Jess he has
+      just taken in a big touring car on a debt and his vacation starts
+      to-morrow so if they were going to take a trip they better start right way
+      so Aunt Jess invited me. It is going to be a big trip up around the lakes
+      and I have always wanted to go touring more than anything in the world
+      stopping at hotels and all and Mama said I ought to it would be so
+      splendid for my health as she thinks I am failing some lately. Now dearie
+      I have to pack and write this in a hurry so you will not be disappointed
+      when you come by for the B. C. to-night. Do not go get some other girl and
+      take her for I would hate her and nothing in this world make me false for
+      one second to my kiddo boy. I do not know just when home again as the
+      folks think I better stay up there for a visit at Aunt Jess and Uncle
+      Purvs home in Chicago after the trip is over. But I will think of you all
+      the time and you must think of me every minute and believe your own dearie
+      she will never no not for one second be false. So tell Sade and Alb
+      good-by for me and do not be false to me any more than I would be to you
+      and it will not be long till nothing more will interrupt our sweet
+      friendship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a measure of domestic prudence, Ramsey tore the note into irreparable
+      fragments, but he did this slowly, and without experiencing any of the
+      revulsion created by Milla's former missive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was melancholy, aggrieved that she should treat him so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      He never saw her again. She sent him a &ldquo;picture postal&rdquo; from Oconomowoc,
+      Wisconsin, which his father disengaged from the family mail, one morning
+      at breakfast, and considerately handed to him without audible comment.
+      Upon it was written, <i>&ldquo;Oh, you Ramsey!&rdquo;</i> This was the last of Milla.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just before school opened, in the autumn, Sadie Clews made some
+      revelations. &ldquo;Milla did like you,&rdquo; said Sadie. &ldquo;After that time you jumped
+      in the creek to save her she liked you better than any boy in town, and I
+      guess if it wasn't for her cousin Milt up in Chicago she would of liked
+      you the best anywhere. I guess she did, anyway, because she hadn't seen
+      him for about a year then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that afternoon she went away I was over there and took in
+      everything that was goin' on, only she made me promise on my word of
+      honour I wouldn't even tell Albert. They didn't get any wire from her
+      uncle about the touring car; it was her cousin Milt that jumped on the
+      train and came down and fixed it all up for Milla to go on the trip, and
+      everything. You see, Ramsey, she was turned back a couple of times in
+      school before she came in our class and I don't exactly know how old she
+      is and she don't <i>look</i> old yet, but I'm pretty sure she's at least
+      eighteen, and she might be over. Her mother kept tellin' her all the time
+      you were just a kid, and didn't have anything to support her on, and lots
+      of things like that. I didn't think such a great deal of this Milt's
+      looks, myself, but he's anyway twenty-one years old, and got a good
+      position, and all their family seem to think he's just fine! It wasn't his
+      father that took in the touring car on debt, like she said she was writing
+      to you; it was Milt himself. He started out in business when he was only
+      fifteen years old, and this trip he was gettin' up for his father and
+      mother and Milla was the first vacation he ever took. Well, of course she
+      wouldn't like my tellin' you, but I can't see the harm of it, now
+      everything's all over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All&mdash;all over? You mean Milla's going to be&mdash;to be married?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She already is,&rdquo; said Sadie. &ldquo;They got married at her Aunt Jess and Uncle
+      Purv's house, up in Chicago, last Thursday. Yes, sir; that quiet little
+      Milla's a regular old married woman by this time, I expect, Ramsey!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he got over the shock, which was not until the next day, one
+      predominating feeling remained: it was a gloomy pride&mdash;a pride in his
+      proven maturity. He was old enough, it appeared, to have been the same
+      thing as engaged to a person who was now a Married Woman. His manner
+      thenceforth showed an added trace of seriousness and self-consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having recovered his equipoise and something more, he entirely forgot that
+      moment of humble admiration he had felt for Dora Yocum on the day of his
+      flattest prostration. When he saw her sitting in the classroom, smiling
+      brightly up at the teacher, the morning of the school's opening in the
+      autumn, all his humility had long since vanished and she appeared to him
+      not otherwise than as the scholar whose complete proficiency had always
+      been so irksome to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at her!&rdquo; he muttered to himself. &ldquo;Same ole Teacher's Pet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now and then, as the days and seasons passed, and Dora's serene progress
+      continued, never checked or even flawed, there stirred within some
+      lingerings of the old determination to &ldquo;show&rdquo; her; and he would conjure up
+      a day-dream of Dora in loud lamentation, while he led the laughter of the
+      spectators. But gradually his feelings about her came to be merely a dull
+      oppression. He was tired of having to look at her (as he stated it) and he
+      thanked the Lord that the time wouldn't be so long now until he'd be out
+      of that ole school, and then all he'd have to do he'd just take care never
+      to walk by her house; it was easy enough to use some other street when he
+      had to go down-town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The good ole class of Nineteen-Fourteen is about gone,&rdquo; he said to Fred
+      Mitchell, who was still his most intimate friend when they reached the
+      senior year. &ldquo;Yes, sir; it's held together a good many years, Fred, but
+      after June it'll be busted plum up, and I hope nobody starts a move to
+      have any reunions. There's a good many members of the ole class that I can
+      stand and there's some I can't, but there's one I just won't! If we ever
+      did call a reunion, that ole Yocum girl would start in right away and run
+      the whole shebang, and that's where I'd resign! You know, Fred, the thing
+      <i>I</i> think is the one biggest benefit of graduating from this ole
+      school? It's never seein' Dora Yocum again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was again his theme as he sat by the same friend's side, in the rear
+      row of the class at Commencement, listening to the delivery of the
+      Valedictory. &ldquo;Thinks she's just sooblime, don't she!&rdquo; he whispered
+      morosely. &ldquo;She wouldn't trade with the President of the United States
+      right now. She prob'ly thinks bein' Valedictorian is more important than
+      Captain of the State University Eleven. Never mind!&rdquo; And here his tone
+      became huskily jubilant. &ldquo;Never mind! Just about a half-an-hour more and
+      that's the last o' <i>you</i>, ole girl! Yes, sir, Fred; one thing we can
+      feel pretty good over: this is where we get through with Dora Yocum!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey and Fred had arranged to room together at Greenfield, the seat of
+      the state university, and they made the short journey in company the
+      following September. They arrived hilarious, anticipating pleasurable
+      excitements in the way of &ldquo;fraternity&rdquo; pledgings and initiations,
+      encounters with sophomores, class meetings, and elections; and, also, they
+      were not absolutely without interest in the matter of Girls, for the state
+      university was co-educational, and it was but natural to expect in so
+      broad a field, all new to them, a possible vision of something rather
+      thrilling. They whispered cheerfully of all these things during the
+      process of matriculation, and signed the registrar's book on a fresh page;
+      but when Fred had written his name under Ramsey's, and blotted it, he took
+      the liberty of turning over the leaf to examine some of the autographs of
+      their future classmates, written on the other side. Then he uttered an
+      exclamation, more droll than dolorous, though it affected to be wholly the
+      latter; for the shock to Fred was by no means so painful as it was to his
+      friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey leaned forward and read the name indicated by Fred's forefinger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Dora Yocum.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...When they got back to their pleasant quarters at Mrs. Meig's, facing
+      the campus, Ramsey was still unable to talk of anything except the
+      lamentable discovery; nor were his companion's burlesquing efforts to
+      console him of great avail, though Fred did become serious enough to point
+      out that a university was different from a high school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not like havin' to use one big room as a headquarters, you know,
+      Ramsey. Everything's all split up, and she might happen not to be in a
+      single of your classes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't know my luck!&rdquo; the afflicted boy protested. &ldquo;I wish I'd gone to
+      Harvard, the way my father wanted me to. Why, this is just the worst
+      nuisance I ever struck! You'll see! She'll be in everything there is, just
+      the way she was back home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He appeared to be corroborated by the events of the next day, when they
+      attended the first meeting to organize the new class. The masculine
+      element predominated, but Dora Yocum was elected vice-president. &ldquo;You
+      see?&rdquo; Ramsey said. &ldquo;Didn't I tell you? You see what happens?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But after that she ceased for a time to intrude upon his life, and he
+      admitted that his harassment was less grave than he had anticipated. There
+      were about five hundred students in the freshman class; he seldom saw her,
+      and when he did it was not more than a distant glimpse of her on one of
+      the campus paths, her thoughtful head bent over a book as she hurried to a
+      classroom. This was bearable; and in the flattering agitations of being
+      sought, and even hunted, by several &ldquo;fraternities&rdquo; simultaneously desirous
+      of his becoming a sworn Brother, he almost forgot her. After a hazardous
+      month the roommates fell into the arms of the last &ldquo;frat&rdquo; to seek them,
+      and having undergone an evening of outrage which concluded with touching
+      rhetoric and an oath taken at midnight, they proudly wore jewelled symbols
+      on their breasts and were free to turn part of their attention to other
+      affairs, especially the affairs of the Eleven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, they were instructed by the older brethren of their Order, whose
+      duty it was to assist in the proper manoeuvring of their young careers,
+      that, although support of the 'varsity teams was important, they must
+      neglect neither the spiritual nor the intellectual by-products of
+      undergraduate doings. Therefore they became members of the college
+      Y.M.C.A. and of the &ldquo;Lumen Society.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      According to the charter which it had granted itself, the &ldquo;Lumen Society&rdquo;
+       was an &ldquo;Organization of male and female students&rdquo;&mdash;so &ldquo;advanced&rdquo; was
+      this university&mdash;&ldquo;for the development of the powers of debate and
+      oratory, intellectual and sociological progress, and the discussion of all
+      matters relating to philosophy, metaphysics, literature, art, and current
+      events.&rdquo; A statement so formidable was not without a hushing effect upon
+      Messrs. Milholland and Mitchell; they went to their first &ldquo;Lumen&rdquo; meeting
+      in a state of fear and came away little reassured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't get up there,&rdquo; Ramsey declared, &ldquo;I couldn't stand up there
+      before all that crowd and make a speech, or debate in a debate, to save my
+      soul and gizzard! Why, I'd just keel right over and haf to be carried
+      out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the way I understand it,&rdquo; said Fred, &ldquo;we can't get out of it. The
+      seniors in the 'frat' said we had to join, and they said we couldn't
+      resign, either, after we had joined. They said we just had to go through
+      it, and after a while we'd get used to it and not mind it much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I</i> will!&rdquo; Ramsey insisted. &ldquo;I couldn't any more stand up there on
+      my feet and get to spoutin' about sociology and the radical metempsychorus
+      of the metaphysical bazoozum than I could fly a flyin' machine. Why, I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that wasn't anything,&rdquo; Fred interrupted. &ldquo;The only one that talked
+      like that, he was that Blickens; he's a tutor, or something, and really a
+      member of the faculty. Most o' the others just kind of blah-blahhed
+      around, and what any of 'em tried to get off their chests hardly amounted
+      to terribly much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't care. I couldn't do it at <i>all!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the way it looks to me,&rdquo; Fred observed, &ldquo;we simply <i>got</i> to!
+      From what they tell me, the freshmen got to do more than anybody. Every
+      other Friday night, it's all freshmen and nothin' else. You get a postal
+      card on Monday morning in your mail, and it says 'Assignment' on it, and
+      then it's got written underneath what you haf to do the next Friday night&mdash;oration
+      or debate, or maybe just read from some old book or something. I guess we
+      got to stand up there and <i>try</i>, anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Ramsey. &ldquo;If they want me to commit suicide they can send
+      me one o' their ole 'Assignments.' I won't need to commit suicide, though,
+      I guess. All I'll do, I'll just fall over in a fit, and stay in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, in truth, when he received his first &ldquo;Assignment,&rdquo; one Monday
+      morning, a month later, he seemed in a fair way to fulfil his prophecy.
+      The attention of his roommate, who sat at a window of their study, was
+      attracted by sounds of strangulation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth's the matter, Ramsey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look! Look at <i>this!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred took the card and examined it with an amazement gradually merging
+      into a pleasure altogether too perceptible:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ASSIGNMENT
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TWELVE-MINUTE DEBATE, CLASS OF 1918. <i>Subject, Resolved:</i> That
+      Germany is both legally and morally justified in her invasion of Belgium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (Debaters are notified that each will be held strictly to the following
+      schedule: Affirmative, 4 min., first. Negative, 4 min., first. Affirm, 2
+      min., second. Neg., 2 min., second.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Affirmative Negative R. MILHOLLAND, '18 D. YOCUM, '18
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Concluding his reading, which was oral, the volatile Mitchell made use of
+      his voice in a manner of heathenish boisterousness, and presently reclined
+      upon a lounge to laugh the better. His stricken comrade, meanwhile,
+      recovered so far as to pace the floor. &ldquo;I'm goin' to pack up and light out
+      for home!&rdquo; he declared, over and over. And even oftener he read and reread
+      the card to make sure of the actuality of that fatal coincidence, &ldquo;D.
+      Yocum, '18.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I <i>could</i> do it,&rdquo; he vociferated, &ldquo;if I <i>could</i> stand up
+      there and debate one o' their darn ole debates in the first place&mdash;if
+      I had the gall to even try it, why, my gosh! you don't suppose I'm goin'
+      to get up there and argue with <i>that girl</i>, do you? That's a hot way
+      to get an education: stand up there and argue with a girl before a couple
+      o' hundred people! My <i>gosh!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You got to!&rdquo; his prostrate companion cackled, weakly. &ldquo;You can't get out
+      of it. You're a goner, ole Buddy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll be sick. I'll be sick as a dog! I'll be sick as the sickest dog that
+      ever&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No use, ole man. The frat seniors'll be on the job. They'll know whether
+      you're sick or not, and they'll have you there, right on the spot to the
+      minute!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prediction was accurate. The too fatherly &ldquo;frat seniors&rdquo; did all that
+      Fred said they would, and more. For the honour of the &ldquo;frat,&rdquo; they coached
+      the desperate Ramsey in the technic of Lumen debate, told him many more
+      things to say than could be said in six minutes, and produced him,
+      despairing, ghastly, and bedewed, in the large hall of the Lumen Society
+      at eight o'clock on Friday evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four other &ldquo;twelve-minute debates&rdquo; preceded his and the sound of these, in
+      Ramsey's ears, was the sound of Gabriel practising on his horn in the
+      early morning of Judgment Day. The members of the society sat, three rows
+      deep, along the walls of the room, leaving a clear oblong of green carpet
+      in the centre, where were two small desks, twenty feet apart, the rostrums
+      of the debaters. Upon a platform at the head of the room sat dreadful
+      seniors, the officers of the society, and, upon benches near the platform,
+      the debaters of the evening were aligned. One of the fraternal seniors sat
+      with sweltering Ramsey; and the latter, as his time relentlessly came
+      nearer, made a last miserable squirm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Brother Colburn, I got to get out o' here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you don't, young fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do!&rdquo; Ramsey whispered, passionately. &ldquo;Honest, I do. Honest,
+      Brother Colburn, I got to get a drink of water. I <i>got</i> to!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. You can't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honest, Colburn, I <i>got</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey grunted feebly, and cast his dilating eyes along the rows of faces.
+      Most of them were but as blurs, swimming, yet he was aware (he thought) of
+      a formidable and horrible impassive scrutiny of himself, a glare seeming
+      to pierce through him to the back of the belt round his waist, so that he
+      began to have fearful doubts about that belt, about every fastening and
+      adjustment of his garments, about the expression of his countenance, and
+      about many other things jumbling together in his consciousness. Over and
+      over he whispered gaspingly to himself the opening words of the sentence
+      with which Colburn had advised him to begin his argument. And as the
+      moment of supreme agony drew close, this whispering became continuous: &ldquo;In
+      making my first appearance before this honor'ble membership I feel
+      constrained to say in making my first appearance before this honor'ble
+      membership I feel constrained to say in making my first appearance before
+      this honor'ble mem&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      ...It had come. The chairman announced the subject of the fourth freshman
+      twelve-minute debate; and Dora Yocum, hitherto unperceived by Ramsey, rose
+      and went forward to one of the small desks in the open space, where she
+      stood composedly, a slim, pretty figure in white. Members in Ramsey's
+      neighbourhood were aware of a brief and hushed commotion, and of Colburn's
+      fierce whisper, &ldquo;You can't! You get up there!&rdquo; And the blanched Ramsey
+      came forth and placed himself at the other desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood before the silent populace of that morgue, and it seemed to him
+      that his features had forgotten that he was supposed to be their owner and
+      in control of them; he felt that they were slipping all over his face,
+      regardless of his wishes. His head, as a whole, was subject to an
+      agitation not before known by him; it desired to move rustily in eccentric
+      ways of its own devising; his legs alternately limbered and straightened
+      under no direction but their own; and his hands clutched each other
+      fiercely behind his back; he was not one cohesive person, evidently, but
+      an assembled collection of parts which had relapsed each into its own
+      individuality. In spite of them, he somehow contrived the semblance of a
+      bow toward the chairman and the semblance of another toward Dora, of whom
+      he was but hazily conscious. Then he opened his mouth, and, not knowing
+      how he had started his voice going, heard it as if from a distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In making my first appearance before this honor'ble membership I feel
+      restrained to say&mdash;&rdquo; He stopped short, and thenceforward shook
+      visibly. After a long pause, he managed to repeat his opening, stopped
+      again, swallowed many times, produced a handkerchief and wiped his face,
+      an act of necessity&mdash;then had an inspiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The subject assigned to me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is resolved that Germany is mor'ly
+      and legally justified in Belgians&mdash;Belgiums! This subject was
+      assigned to me to be the subject of this debate.&rdquo; He interrupted himself
+      to gasp piteously; found breathing difficult, but faltered again: &ldquo;This
+      subject is the subject. It is the subject that was assigned to me on a
+      postal card.&rdquo; Then, for a moment or so, he had a miraculous spurt of
+      confidence, and continued rather rapidly: &ldquo;I feel constrained to say that
+      the country of Belgian&mdash;Belgium, I mean&mdash;this country has been
+      constrained by the&mdash;invaded I mean&mdash;invaded by the imperial
+      German Impire and my subject in this debate is whether it ought to or not,
+      my being the infernative&mdash;affirmative, I mean&mdash;that I got to
+      prove that Germany is mor'ly and legally justified. I wish to state that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused again, lengthily, then struggled on. &ldquo;I have been requested to
+      state that the German Imp&mdash;Empire&mdash;that it certainly isn't right
+      for those Dutch&mdash;Germans, I mean&mdash;they haven't got any more
+      business in Belgium than I have myself, but I&mdash;I feel constrained to
+      say that I had to accept whatever side of this debate I got on the postal
+      card, and so I am constrained to take the side of the Dutch. I mean the
+      Germans. The Dutch are sometimes called&mdash;I mean the Germans are
+      sometimes called the Dutch in this country, but they aren't Dutch, though
+      sometimes called Dutch in this country. Well, and so&mdash;so, well, the
+      war began last August or about then, anyway, and the German army invaded
+      the Belgian army. After they got there, the invasion began. First, they
+      came around there and then they commenced invading. Well, what I feel
+      constrained&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He came to the longest of all his pauses here, and the awful gravity of
+      the audience almost suffocated him. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he concluded, &ldquo;it don't look
+      right to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four minutes!&rdquo; the chairman announced, for Ramsey's pauses had worn away
+      a great deal more of this terrible interval than had his eloquence.
+      &ldquo;Opening statement for the negative: Miss D. Yocum. Four minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Dora began to speak, Ramsey experienced a little relief, but only a
+      little&mdash;about the same amount of relief as that felt by a bridegroom
+      when it is the bride's turn to &ldquo;respond,&rdquo; not really relief at all, but
+      merely the slight relaxation of a continuing strain. The audience now
+      looked at Ramsey no more than people look at a bridegroom, but he failed
+      to perceive any substantial mitigation of his frightful conspicuousness.
+      He had not the remotest idea of what he had said in setting forth his case
+      for Germany, and he knew that it was his duty to listen closely to Dora,
+      in order to be able to refute her argument when his two-minute closing
+      speech fell due but he was conscious of little more than his own
+      condition. His legs had now gone wild beyond all devilry, and he had to
+      keep shifting his weight from one to the other in order even to hope that
+      their frenzy might escape general attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He realized that Dora was speaking rapidly and confidently, and that
+      somewhere in his ill-assembled parts lurked a familiar bit of him that
+      objected to her even more than usual; but she had used half of her time,
+      at least, before he was able to gather any coherent meaning from what she
+      was saying. Even then he caught only a fragment, here and there, and for
+      the rest&mdash;so far as Ramsey was concerned&mdash;she might as well have
+      been reciting the Swedish alphabet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of the rather startling feebleness of her opponent's statement,
+      Dora went at her task as earnestly as if it were to confute some monster
+      of casuistry. &ldquo;Thus, having demonstrated that <i>all</i> war is wrong,&rdquo;
+       she said, approaching her conclusion, &ldquo;it is scarcely necessary to point
+      out that whatever the actual circumstances of the invasion, and whatever
+      the status of the case in international law, or by reason of treaty, or
+      the German oath to respect the neutrality of Belgium, which of course was
+      grossly and dishonorably violated&mdash;all this, I say, ladies and
+      gentlemen of the Lumen Society, all this is beside the point of morals.
+      Since, as I have shown, <i>all</i> war is wrong, the case may be
+      simplified as follows: All war is morally wrong. <i>Quod erat
+      demonstrandum</i>. Germany invaded Belgium. Invasion is war. Germany,
+      therefore, did moral wrong. Upon the legal side, as I began by pointing
+      out, Germany confessed in the Reichstag the violation of law. Therefore,
+      Germany was justified in the invasion neither morally nor legally; but was
+      both morally and legally wrong and evil. Ladies and gentlemen of the Lumen
+      Society, I await the refutation of my opponent!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her opponent appeared to be having enough trouble with his legs, without
+      taking any added cares upon himself in the way of refutations. But the
+      marvellous Dora had calculated the length of her statement with such
+      nicety that the chairman announced &ldquo;Four minutes,&rdquo; almost upon the instant
+      of her final syllable; and all faces turned once more to the upholder of
+      the affirmative. &ldquo;Refutation and conclusion by the affirmative,&rdquo; said the
+      chairman. &ldquo;Mr. R. Milholland. Two minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Therewith, Ramsey coughed as long as he could cough, and when he felt that
+      no more should be done in this way, he wiped his face&mdash;again an act
+      of necessity&mdash;and quaveringly began:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen and ladies, or ladies and gentlemen, in making the refutation
+      of my opponent, I feel that&mdash;I feel that hardly anything more ought
+      to be said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused, looked helplessly at his uncontrollable legs, and resumed: &ldquo;I
+      am supposed to make the reputa&mdash;the refutation of my opponent, and I
+      feel that I ought to say quite a good deal more. In the first place, I
+      feel that the invasion has taken place. I am supposed&mdash;anyhow I got a
+      postal card that I am supposed to be here to-night. Well, in talking over
+      this matter with a couple of seniors, they told me I was supposed to claim
+      this invasion was mor'ly and legally all right. Well&mdash;&rdquo; Here, by some
+      chance, the recollection of a word of Dora's flickered into his chaotic
+      mind, and he had a brighter moment. &ldquo;My opponent said she proved all war
+      is wrong&mdash;or something like that, anyhow. She said she proved it was
+      wrong to fight, no matter what. Well, if she wasn't a girl, anybody that
+      wanted to get her into a fight could prob'ly do it.&rdquo; He did not add that
+      he would like to be the person to make the experiment (if Dora weren't a
+      girl), nor did the thought enter his mind until an hour or so later.
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;I suppose there is little more to be said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was so right, in regard to his own performance, at least, that,
+      thereupon drying up utterly, he proceeded to stand, a speechless figure in
+      the midst of a multitudinous silence, for an eternity lasting forty-five
+      seconds. He made a racking effort, and at the end of this epoch found
+      words again. &ldquo;In making my argument in this debate, I would state that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two minutes!&rdquo; said the chairman. &ldquo;Refutation by the negative. Miss D.
+      Yocum. Two minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I waive them,&rdquo; said Dora, primly. &ldquo;I submit that the affirmative has not
+      refuted the argument of the negative.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well.&rdquo; With his gavel the chairman sharply tapped the desk before
+      him, &ldquo;The question is now before the house. 'Resolved, that Germany is
+      both morally and legally justified in her invasion of Belgium.' All those
+      in favour of the&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But here there was an interruption of a kind never before witnessed during
+      any proceedings of the Lumen Society. It came from neither of the
+      debaters, who still remained standing at their desks until the vote
+      settling their comparative merits in argument should be taken. The
+      interruption was from the rear row of seats along the wall, where sat new
+      members of the society, freshmen not upon the program for the evening. A
+      loud voice was heard from this quarter, a loud but nasal voice, shrill as
+      well as nasal, and full of a strange hot passion. &ldquo;Mr. Chairman!&rdquo; it
+      cried. &ldquo;Look-a-here, Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman, I demand to be heard! You
+      gotta gimme my say, Mr. Chairman! I'm a-gunna have my <i>say</i>! You
+      look-a-here, Mr. Chairman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Shocked by such a breach of order, and by the unseemly violence of the
+      speaker, not only the chairman but everyone else looked there. A short,
+      strong figure was on its feet, gesticulating fiercely; and the head
+      belonging to it was a large one with too much curly black hair, a flat,
+      swarthy face, shiny and not immaculately shaven; there was an impression
+      of ill-chosen clothes, too much fat red lip, too much tooth, too much
+      eyeball. Fred Mitchell, half-sorrowing, yet struggling to conceal tears of
+      choked mirth over his roommate's late exhibition, recognized this violent
+      interrupter as one Linski, a fellow freshman who sat next to him in one of
+      his classes. &ldquo;What's <i>that</i> cuss up to?&rdquo; Fred wondered, and so did
+      others. Linski showed them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pressed forward, shoving himself through the two rows in front of him
+      till he emerged upon the green carpet of the open space, and as he came,
+      he was cyclonic with words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't put no such stuff as this over, I tell you!&rdquo; he shouted in his
+      hot, nasal voice. &ldquo;This here's a free country, and you call yourself a
+      debating society, do you? Lemme tell you <i>I</i> belong to a debating
+      society in Chicago, where I come from, and them fellas up there, they'd
+      think they'd oughta be shot fer a fake like what you people are tryin' to
+      put over, here, to-night. I come down here to git some more education, and
+      pay fer it, too, in good hard money I've made sweatin' in a machine shop
+      up there in Chicago; but if <i>this</i> is the kind of education I'm
+      a-gunna git, I better go on back there. You call this a square debate, do
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He advanced toward the chairman's platform, shaking a frantic fist. &ldquo;Well,
+      if you do, you got another think comin', my capitalis' frien'! you went
+      and give out the question whether it's right fer Choimuny to go through
+      Belgium; and what do you do fer the Choimun side? You pick out this here
+      big stiff&rdquo;&mdash;he waved his passionate hand at the paralyzed Ramsey&mdash;&ldquo;you
+      pick out a boob like that for the Choimun side, a poor fish that gits
+      stagefright so bad he don't know whether he's talkin' or dead; or else he
+      fakes it; because he's a speaker so bum it looks more to me like he was
+      faking. You get this big stiff to fake the Choimun side, and then you go
+      and stick up a goil agains' him that's got brains and makes a pacifis'
+      argument that wins the case agains' the Choimuns like cuttin' through hog
+      lard! But you ain't a-gunna git away with it, mister! Lemme tell you right
+      here and now, I may be a mix blood, but I got some Choimun in me with the
+      rest what I got, and before you vote on this here question you gotta hear
+      a few woids from somebody that can <i>talk!</i> This whole war is a
+      capitalis' war, Belgium as much as Choimuny, and the United States is
+      sellin' its soul to the capitalis' right now, I tell you, takin' sides
+      agains' Choimuny. Orders fer explosives and ammanition and guns and Red
+      Cross supplies is comin' into this country by the millions, and the
+      capitalis' United States is fat already on the blood of the workers of
+      Europe! Yes, it is, and I'll have my <i>say,</i> you boorjaw faker, and
+      you can hammer your ole gavel to pieces at me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had begun to shriek; moisture fell from his brow and his mouth; the
+      scandalized society was on its feet, nervously into groups. Evidently the
+      meeting was about to disintegrate. &ldquo;I'll have my <i>say</i>!&rdquo; the frenzied
+      Linski screamed. &ldquo;You try to put up this capitalis' trick and work a fake
+      to carry over this debate agains' Choimuny, but you can't work it on <i>me</i>,
+      lemme tell you! I'll have my <i>say!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The outraged chairman was wholly at a loss how to deal with the
+      &ldquo;unprecedented situation&rdquo;&mdash;so he defined it, quite truthfully; and he
+      continued to pound upon the desk, while other clamours began to rival
+      Linski's; shouts of &ldquo;Put him out!&rdquo; &ldquo;Order!&rdquo; &ldquo;Shut up, Freshman!&rdquo; &ldquo;Turn him
+      over to the sophomores!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This meeting is <i>adjourned!</i>&rdquo; bellowed the chairman, and there was a
+      thronging toward the doors, while the frothing Linski asseverated: &ldquo;I'm
+      a-gunna git my say, I tell you! I'll have my say! I'll have my <i>say!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had more than that, before the hour was over. A moment after he emerged
+      from the building and came out, still hot, upon the cool, dark campus, he
+      found himself the centre of a group of his own classmates whom he at first
+      mistook for sophomores, such was their manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...As this group broke up, a few minutes later, a youth running to join
+      it, scenting somewhat of interest, detained one of those who were
+      departing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's up? What was that squealing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing. We just talked to that Linski. Nobody else touched him, but
+      Ramsey Milholland gave him a <i>peach</i> of a punch on the snoot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whoopee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey was laconic in response to inquiries upon this subject. When
+      someone remarked: &ldquo;You served him right for calling you a boob and a poor
+      fish and so on before all the society, girls and all,&rdquo; Ramsey only said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That wasn't what I hit him for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He declined to explain further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The way I look at it, Ramsey,&rdquo; Fred Mitchell said, when they reached
+      their apartment, whither the benevolent Colburn accompanied them, &ldquo;the way
+      I look at it, this Linski kind of paid you a compliment, after all, when
+      he called you a fake. He must have thought you anyway <i>looked</i> as if
+      you could make a better speech than you did. Oh, golly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And as Ramsey groaned, the jovial Mitchell gave himself up to the divan
+      and the mirth. &ldquo;Oh, oh, oh, <i>golly</i>!&rdquo; he sputtered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never you mind, Brother Milholland,&rdquo; Colburn said gently. &ldquo;The Lumen is
+      used to nervous beginners. I've seen dozens in my time, just like you; and
+      some of 'em got to be first rate before they quit. Besides, this crazy
+      Linski is all that anybody'll ever remember about to-night's meeting,
+      anyhow. There never was any such outbreak as that in <i>my</i> time, and I
+      guess there never was in the whole history of the society. We'll probably
+      suspend him until he apologizes to the society&mdash;I'm on the board, and
+      I'm in favour of it. Who is the bird, anyhow? He's in your class.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never saw him before,&rdquo; Ramsey responded from the deep chair, where he
+      had moodily thrown himself; and, returning to his brooding upon his
+      oratory. &ldquo;Oh, murder!&rdquo; he moaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the senior, &ldquo;you'll know him when you see him again. You put
+      your mark on him where you can see it, all right!&rdquo; He chuckled. &ldquo;I suppose
+      I really ought to have interfered in that, but I decided to do a little
+      astronomical observation, about fifty feet away, for a few minutes. I'm
+      'way behind in my astronomy, anyhow. Do you know this Linski, Brother
+      Mitchell?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've talked to him a couple o' times on the campus,&rdquo; said Fred. &ldquo;He's in
+      one of my classes. He's about the oldest in our class, I guess&mdash;a lot
+      older than us, anyhow. He's kind of an anarchist or something; can't talk
+      more'n five minutes any time without gettin off some bug stuff about
+      'capitalism.' He said the course in political economy was all 'capitalism'
+      and the prof was bought by Wall Street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor old Prof. Craig!&rdquo; Colburn laughed. &ldquo;He gets fifteen hundred a year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I'd heard that myself, and I told Linski, and he said he had an
+      uncle workin' in a steel mill got twice that much; but it didn't make any
+      difference, ole Craig was bought by Wall Street. He said 'capitalism'
+      better look out; he and the foreign-born workmen were goin' to <i>take</i>
+      this country some day, and that was one of the reasons he was after an
+      education. He talked pretty strong pro-German, too&mdash;about the war in
+      Europe&mdash;but I sort of thought that was more because he'd be
+      pro-anything that he thought would help upset the United States than
+      because he cared much about Germany.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Colburn, &ldquo;that's how he sounded to-night. I guess there's
+      plenty more like him in the cities, too. That reminds me, I'd better
+      arrange a debate on immigration for the Lumen. We'll put Brother
+      Milholland for the negative, this time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey started violently. &ldquo;See here&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the senior reassured him. &ldquo;Just wanted to see you jump,&rdquo; he explained.
+      &ldquo;Don't fear; you've done your share.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think I have!&rdquo; Ramsey groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you won't be called on again this term. By the way,&rdquo; said Colburn,
+      thoughtfully, &ldquo;that was a clever girl you had against you to-night. I
+      don't believe in pacificism much, myself, but she used it very niftily for
+      her argument. Isn't she from your town, this Miss Yocum?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, she's a clever young thing,&rdquo; said the senior, still thoughtful. And
+      he added: &ldquo;Graceful girl, she is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this, the roommates looked at him with startled attention. Ramsey was
+      so roused as to forget his troubles and sit forward in his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the musing Colburn, &ldquo;she's a mighty pretty girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This exclamation was a simultaneous one; the astounded pair stared at him
+      in blank incredulity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, don't you think so?&rdquo; Colburn mildly inquired. &ldquo;She seems to me very
+      unusual looking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, yes,&rdquo; Fred assented, emphatically. &ldquo;We're with you there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Extraordinary eyes,&rdquo; continued Colburn. &ldquo;Lovely figure, too; altogether a
+      strikingly pretty girl. Handsome, I should say, perhaps. Yes, 'handsome'
+      rather than 'pretty'.&rdquo; He looked up from a brief reverie. &ldquo;You fellows
+      known her long?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet!&rdquo; said Ramsey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She made a splendid impression on the Lumen,&rdquo; Colburn went on. &ldquo;I don't
+      remember that I ever saw a first appearance there that quite equalled it.
+      She'll probably have a brilliant career in the society, and in the
+      university, too. She must be a very fine sort of person.&rdquo; He deliberated
+      within himself a few moments longer, then, realizing that his hosts and
+      Brethren did not respond with any heartiness&mdash;or with anything at all&mdash;to
+      the theme, he changed it, and asked them what they thought about the war
+      in Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They talked of the war rather drowsily for a while; it was an interesting
+      but not an exciting topic: the thing they spoke of was so far away. It was
+      in foreign countries where they had never been and had no acquaintances;
+      and both the cause and the issue seemed to be in confusion, though
+      evidently Germany had &ldquo;started&rdquo; the trouble. Only one thing emerged as
+      absolutely clear and proved: there could be no disagreement about
+      Germany's &ldquo;dirty work,&rdquo; as Fred defined it, in violating Belgium. And this
+      stirred Ramsey to declare with justice that &ldquo;dirty work&rdquo; had likewise been
+      done upon himself by the official person, whoever he or she was, who had
+      given him the German side of the evening's debate. After this moment of
+      fervour, the conversation languished, and Brother Colburn rose to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm glad you gave that Linski a fine little punch, Brother
+      Milholland,&rdquo; he said, at the door. &ldquo;It won't do you any harm in the
+      'frat,' or with the Lumen either. And don't be discouraged about your
+      debating. You'll learn. Anybody might have got rattled by having to argue
+      against as clever and good-looking a girl as that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The roommates gave each other a look of serious puzzlement as the door
+      closed. &ldquo;Well, Brother Colburn is a mighty nice fellow,&rdquo; Fred said. &ldquo;He's
+      kind of funny, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey assented, and then, as the two prepared for bed, they entered into
+      a further discussion of their senior friend. They liked him &ldquo;all right,&rdquo;
+       they said, but he certainly must be kind of queer, and they couldn't just
+      see how he had &ldquo;ever managed to get where he was&rdquo; in the &ldquo;frat&rdquo; and the
+      Lumen and the university.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey passed the slightly disfigured Linski on the campus next day
+      without betraying any embarrassment or making a sign of recognition. Fred
+      Mitchell told his roommate, chuckling, that Linski had sworn to &ldquo;get&rdquo; him,
+      and, not knowing Fred's affiliations, had made him the confidant of his
+      oath. Fred had given his blessing, he said, upon the enterprise, and
+      advised Linski to use a brick. &ldquo;He'll hit you on the head with it,&rdquo; said
+      the light-hearted Fred, falling back upon this old joke. &ldquo;Then you can
+      catch it as it bounces off and throw it back at him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      However, Linski proved to be merely an episode, not only so far as Ramsey
+      was concerned but in the Lumen and in the university as well. His
+      suspension from the Lumen was for a year, and so cruel a punishment it
+      proved for this born debater that he noisily declared he would found a
+      debating society himself, and had a poster printed and distributed
+      announcing the first meeting of &ldquo;The Free Speech and Masses' Rights
+      Council.&rdquo; Several town loafers attended the meeting, but the only person
+      connected with the university who came was an oriental student, a Chinese
+      youth of almost intrusive amiability. Linski made a fiery address, the
+      townsmen loudly appluading his advocacy of an embargo on munitions and the
+      distribution of everybody's &ldquo;property,&rdquo; but the Chinaman, accustomed to
+      see students so madly in earnest only when they were burlesquing, took the
+      whole affair to be intended humour, and tittered politely without
+      cessation&mdash;except at such times as he thought it proper to appear
+      quite wrung with laughter. Then he would rock himself, clasp his mouth
+      with both hands and splutter through his fingers. Linski accused him of
+      being in the pay of &ldquo;capital.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day the orator was unable to show himself upon the campus without
+      causing demonstrations; whenever he was seen a file of quickly gathering
+      students marched behind him chanting repeatedly and deafeningly in chorus:
+      &ldquo;Down with Wall Street! Hoch der Kaiser! Who loves Linski? Who, who, who?
+      Hoo Lun! Who loves Linski? Who, who, who? Hoo Lun!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linski was disgusted, resigned from the university, and disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, here it isn't mid-year Exams yet, and the good ole class of
+      Nineteen-Eighteen's already lost a member,&rdquo; said Fred Mitchell. &ldquo;I guess
+      we can bear the break-up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess so,&rdquo; Ramsey assented. &ldquo;That Linski might just as well stayed
+      here, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He couldn't do any harm here. He'll prob'ly get more people to listen to
+      him in cities where there's so many new immigrants and all such that don't
+      know anything, comin' in all the time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well,&rdquo; said Fred. &ldquo;What do <i>we</i> care what happens to Chicago!
+      Come on, let's behave real wild, and go on over to the 'Teria and get us a
+      couple egg sandwiches and sassprilly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey was willing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the strain of the &ldquo;mid-year Exams&rdquo; in February, they lived a
+      free-hearted life. They had settled into the ways of their world; they had
+      grown used to it, and it had grown used to them; there was no longer any
+      ignominy in being a freshman. They romped upon the campus and sometimes
+      rioted harmlessly about the streets of the town. In the evenings they
+      visited their fellows and Brethren and were visited in turn, and sometimes
+      they looked so far ahead as to talk vaguely of their plans for professions
+      or business&mdash;though to a freshman this concerned an almost
+      unthinkably distant prospect. &ldquo;I guess I'll go in with my father, in the
+      wholesale drug business,&rdquo; said Fred. &ldquo;My married brother already is in the
+      firm, and I suppose they'll give me a show&mdash;send me out on the road a
+      year or two first, maybe, to try me. Then I'm going to marry some little
+      cutie and settle down. What you goin' to do, Ramsey? Go to Law School, and
+      then come back and go in your father's office?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know. Guess so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was always Fred who did most of the talking; Ramsey was quiet. Fred
+      told the &ldquo;frat seniors&rdquo; that Ramsey was &ldquo;developing a whole lot these
+      days&rdquo;; and he told Ramsey himself that he could see a &ldquo;big change&rdquo; in him,
+      adding that the improvement was probably due to Ramsey's having passed
+      through &ldquo;terrible trials like that debate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey kept to their rooms more than his comrade did, one reason for this
+      domesticity being that he &ldquo;had to study longer than Fred did, to keep up&rdquo;;
+      and another reason may have been a greater shyness than Fred possessed&mdash;if,
+      indeed, Fred possessed any shyness at all. For Fred was a cheery spirit
+      difficult to abash, and by the coming of spring knew all of the
+      best-looking girl students in the place&mdash;knew them well enough, it
+      appeared, to speak of them not merely by their first names but by
+      abbreviations of these. He had become fashion's sprig, a &ldquo;fusser&rdquo; and
+      butterfly, and he reproached his roommate for shunning the ladies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the truth is, Fred,&rdquo; said Ramsey one day, responding darkly;&mdash;&ldquo;well,
+      you see the truth is, Fred, I've had a&mdash;a&mdash;I've had an
+      experience&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So, only, did he refer to Milla.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred said no more; and it was comprehended between them that the past need
+      never be definitely referred to again, but that it stood between Ramsey
+      and any entertainment to be obtained of the gentler but less trustworthy
+      sex. And when other Brethren of the &ldquo;frat&rdquo; would have pressed Ramsey to
+      join them in various frivolous enterprises concerning &ldquo;co-eds,&rdquo; or to be
+      shared by &ldquo;co-eds,&rdquo; Fred thought it better to explain to them privately
+      (all being sacred among Brethren) how Ramsey's life, so far as Girls went,
+      had been toyed with by one now a Married Woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This created a great deal of respect for Ramsey. It became understood
+      everywhere that he was a woman-hater.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      That early spring of 1915 the two boys and their friends and Brethren
+      talked more of the war than they had in the autumn, though the subject was
+      not an all at absorbing one; for the trenches in Flanders and France were
+      still of the immense, remote distance. By no stretch of imagination could
+      these wet trenches be thought greatly to concern the &ldquo;frat,&rdquo; the Lumen, or
+      the university. Really important matters were the doings of the &ldquo;Track
+      Team,&rdquo; now training in the &ldquo;Gym&rdquo; and on the 'Varsity Field, and, more
+      vital still, the prospects of the Nine. But in May there came a shock
+      which changed things for a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>Lusitania</i> brought to every American a revelation of what had
+      lain so deep in his own heart that often he had not realized it was there.
+      When the Germans hid in the sea and sent down the great merchant ship,
+      with American babies and their mothers, and gallantly dying American
+      gentlemen, there came a change even to girls and boys and professors,
+      until then so preoccupied with their own little aloof world thousands of
+      miles from the murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred Mitchell, ever volatile and generous, was one of those who went quite
+      wild. No orator, he nevertheless made a frantic speech at the week's &ldquo;frat
+      meetings,&rdquo; cursing the Germans in the simple old English words that their
+      performance had demonstrated to be applicable, and going on to demand that
+      the fraternity prepare for its own share in the action of the country. &ldquo;I
+      don't care <i>how</i> insignificant we few fellows here to-night may
+      seem,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;we can do our little, and if everybody in this country's
+      ready to do their own little, why, that'll be plenty! Brothers, don't you
+      realize that all <i>over</i> the United States to-night the people are
+      feeling just the way we are here? Millions and millions and millions of
+      them! Wherever there's an American he's <i>with</i> us&mdash;and you bet
+      your bottom dollar there are just a few more Americans in this country of
+      ours than there are big-mouthed lobsters like that fellow Linski! I tell
+      you, if Congress only gives the word, there could be an army of five
+      million men in this country to-morrow, and those dirty baby-killin'
+      dachshunds would hear a word or two from your Uncle Samuel! Brothers, I
+      demand that something be done right here and now, and by us! I move we
+      telegraph the Secretary of War to-night and offer him a regiment from this
+      university to go over and help <i>hang</i> their damn Kaiser.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The motion was hotly seconded and instantly carried. Then followed a much
+      flustered discussion of the form and phrasing of the proposed telegram,
+      but, after everything seemed to have been settled, someone ascertained by
+      telephone that the telegraph company would not accept messages containing
+      words customarily defined as profane; so the telegram had to be rewritten.
+      This led to further amendment, and it was finally decided to address the
+      senators from that state, instead of the Secretary of War, and thus in a
+      somewhat modified form the message was finally despatched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day, news of what the &ldquo;frat&rdquo; had done made a great stir in the
+      university; other &ldquo;frats&rdquo; sent telegrams, so did the &ldquo;Barbarians,&rdquo; haters
+      of the &ldquo;frats&rdquo; but joining them in this; while a small band of
+      &ldquo;German-American&rdquo; students found it their duty to go before the faculty
+      and report these &ldquo;breaches of neutrality.&rdquo; They protested heavily,
+      demanding the expulsion of the &ldquo;breachers&rdquo; as disloyal citizens, therefore
+      unfit students, but suffered a disappointment; for the faculty itself had
+      been sending telegrams of similar spirit, addressing not only the senators
+      and congressmen of the state but the President of the United States.
+      Flabbergasted, the &ldquo;German-Americans&rdquo; retired; they were confused and
+      disgusted by this higher-up outbreak of unneutrality&mdash;it overwhelmed
+      them that citizens of the United States should not remain neutral in the
+      dispute between the United States and Germany. All day the campus was in
+      ferment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At twilight, Ramsey was walking meditatively on his way to dinner at the
+      &ldquo;frat house,&rdquo; across the campus from his apartment at Mrs. Meig's.
+      Everybody was quiet now, both town and gown; the students were at their
+      dinners and so were the burghers. Ramsey was late but did not quicken his
+      thoughtful steps, which were those of one lost in reverie. He had
+      forgotten that spring-time was all about him, and, with his head down,
+      walked unregardful of the new gayeties flung forth upon the air by great
+      clusters of flowering shrubs, just come into white blossom and lavender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was unconscious that somebody behind him, going the same way, came
+      hastening to overtake him and called his name, &ldquo;Ramsey! Ramsey
+      Milholland!&rdquo; Not until he had been called three times did he realize that
+      he was being hailed&mdash;and in a girl's voice! By that time, the girl
+      herself was beside him, and Ramsey halted, quite taken aback. The girl was
+      Dora Yocum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was pale, a little breathless, and her eyes were bright and severe. &ldquo;I
+      want to speak to you,&rdquo; she said, quickly. &ldquo;I want to ask you about
+      something. Mr. Colburn and Fred Mitchell are the only people I know in
+      your 'frat' except you, and I haven't seen either of them to-day, or I'd
+      have asked one of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Most uncomfortably astonished, Ramsey took his hands out of his pockets,
+      picked a leaf from a lilac bush beside the path, and put the stem of the
+      leaf seriously into a corner of his mouth, before finding anything to say.
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;well, all right,&rdquo; he finally responded. &ldquo;I'll tell you&mdash;if
+      it's anything I know about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know about it,&rdquo; said Dora. &ldquo;That is, you certainly do if you were at
+      your 'frat' meeting last night. Were you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I was there,&rdquo; Ramsey answered, wondering what in the world she
+      wanted to know, though he supposed vaguely that it must be something about
+      Colburn, whom he had several times seen walking with her. &ldquo;Of course I
+      couldn't tell you much,&rdquo; he added, with an afterthought. &ldquo;You see, a good
+      deal that goes on at a 'frat' meeting isn't supposed to be talked about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, smiling faintly, though with a satire that missed him.
+      &ldquo;I've been a member of a sorority since September, and I think I have an
+      idea of what could be told or not told. Suppose we walk on, if you don't
+      mind. My question needn't embarrass you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, as they slowly went on together, Ramsey was embarrassed. He
+      felt &ldquo;queer.&rdquo; They had known each other so long; in a way had shared so
+      much, sitting daily for years near each other and undergoing the same
+      outward experiences; they had almost &ldquo;grown up together,&rdquo; yet this was the
+      first time they had ever talked together or walked together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you want to ask anything it's all right for me
+      to tell you&mdash;well, I just as soon, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has nothing to do with the secret proceedings of your 'frat',&rdquo; said
+      Dora, primly. &ldquo;What I want to ask about has been talked of all over the
+      place to-day. Everyone has been saying it was <i>your</i> 'frat' that sent
+      the first telegram to members of the Government offering support in case
+      of war with Germany. They say you didn't even wait until to-day, but sent
+      off a message last night. What I wanted to ask you was whether this story
+      is true or not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes,&rdquo; said Ramsey, mildly. &ldquo;That's what we did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She uttered an exclamation, a sound of grief and of suspicion confirmed.
+      &ldquo;Ah! I was afraid so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Afraid so'? What's the matter?&rdquo; he asked, and because she seemed excited
+      and troubled, he found himself not quite so embarrassed as he had been at
+      first; for some reason her agitation made him feel easier. &ldquo;What was wrong
+      about that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it's all so shocking and wicked and mistaken!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Even the
+      faculty has been doing it, and half the other 'frats' and sororities! And
+      it was yours that started it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we did,&rdquo; he said, throughly puzzled. &ldquo;We're the oldest 'frat' here,
+      and of course&rdquo;&mdash;he chuckled modestly&mdash;&ldquo;of course we think we're
+      the best. Do you mean you believe we ought to've sat back and let somebody
+      else start it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, <i>no</i>!&rdquo; she answered, vehemently. &ldquo;Nobody ought to have started
+      it! That's the trouble; don't you see? If nobody had started it none of it
+      might have happened. The rest mightn't have caught it. It mightn't have
+      got into their heads. A war thought is the most contagious thought in the
+      world; but if it can be kept from starting, it can be kept from being
+      contagious. It's just when people have got into an emotional state, or a
+      state of smouldering rage, that everybody ought to be so terribly careful
+      not to think war thoughts or make war speeches&mdash;or send war
+      telegrams! I thought&mdash;oh, I was so sure I'd convinced Mr. Colburn of
+      all this, the last time we talked of it! He seemed to understand, and I
+      was sure he agreed with me.&rdquo; She bit her lip. &ldquo;He was only pretending&mdash;I
+      see that now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess he must 'a' been,&rdquo; said Ramsey, with admirable simplicity. &ldquo;He
+      didn't talk about anything like that last night. He was as much for it as
+      anybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've no doubt!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey made bold to look at her out of the side of his eye, and as she was
+      gazing tensely forward he continued his observation for some time. She was
+      obviously controlling agitation, almost controlling tears, which seemed to
+      threaten her very wide-open eyes; for those now fully grown and noticeable
+      eyewinkers of hers were subject to fluctuations indicating such a threat.
+      She looked &ldquo;hurt,&rdquo; and Ramsey was touched; there was something human about
+      her, then, after all. And if he had put his feeling into words at the
+      moment, he would have said that he guessed maybe he could stand this ole
+      girl, for a few minutes sometimes, better than he'd always thought he
+      could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;Colburn prob'ly wouldn't want to hurt your feelings or
+      anything. Colburn&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He? He didn't! I haven't the faintest personal interest in what he did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Ramsey. &ldquo;Well, excuse me; I thought prob'ly you were sore
+      because he'd jollied you about this pacifist stuff, and then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; she said, sharply. &ldquo;I'm not thinking of his having agreed with <i>me</i>
+      and fooling <i>me</i> about it. He just wanted to make a pleasant
+      impression on a girl, and said anything he thought would please her. I
+      don't care whether he does things like that or not. What I care about is
+      that the <i>principle</i> didn't reach him and that he mocked it! I don't
+      care about a petty treachery to me, personally, but I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fraternal loyalty could not quite brook this. &ldquo;Brother Colburn is a
+      perfectly honor'ble man,&rdquo; said Ramsey, solemnly. &ldquo;He is one of the most
+      honor'ble men in this&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Oh, can't I make you understand that I'm not
+      condemning him for a little flattery to me? I don't care two straws for
+      his showing that <i>I</i> didn't influence him. He doesn't interest me,
+      please understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey was altogether perplexed. &ldquo;Well, I don't see what makes you go for
+      him so hard, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you said he was treach&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't <i>condemn</i> him for it,&rdquo; she insisted, despairingly. &ldquo;Don't
+      you see the difference? I'm not condemning anybody; I'm only lamenting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About all of you that want <i>war</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My golly!&rdquo; Ramsey exclaimed. &ldquo;You don't think those Dutchmen were right
+      to drown babies and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! I think they were ghastly murderers! I think they were detestable and
+      fiendish and monstrous and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, my goodness! What do you want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want war!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want Christianity!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I can't think of the Germans without
+      hating them, and so to-day, when all the world is hating them, I keep
+      myself from thinking of them as much as I can. Already half the world is
+      full of war; you want to go to war to make things right, but it won't; it
+      will only make more war!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you see what you've done, you boys?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Don't you see what
+      you've done with your absurd telegram? That started the rest; they thought
+      they <i>all</i> had to send telegrams like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the faculty&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even they mightn't have thought of it if it hadn't been for the first
+      one. Vengeance is the most terrible thought; once you put it into people's
+      minds that they ought to have it, it runs away with them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it isn't mostly vengeance we're after, at all. There's a lot more
+      to it than just getting even with&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not heed him. &ldquo;You're all blind! You don't see what you're doing;
+      you don't even see what you've done to this peaceful place here. You've
+      filled it full of thoughts of fury and killing and massacre&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, no,&rdquo; said Ramsey. &ldquo;It was those Dutch did that to us; and, besides,
+      there's more to it than you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, there isn't,&rdquo; she interrupted. &ldquo;It's just the old brutal spirit that
+      nations inherit from the time they were only tribes; it's the tribe
+      spirit, and an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It's those things
+      and the love of fighting&mdash;men have always loved to fight.
+      Civilization hasn't taken it out of them; men still have the brute in them
+      that loves to fight!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think so,&rdquo; said Ramsey. &ldquo;Americans don't love to fight; I don't
+      know about other countries, but we don't. Of course, here and there,
+      there's some fellow that likes to hunt around for scrapes, but I never saw
+      more than three or four in my life that acted that way. Of course a
+      football team often has a scrapper or two on it, but that's different.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I think you all really love to fight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey was roused to become argumentative. &ldquo;I don't see where you get the
+      idea. Colburn isn't that way, and back at school there wasn't a single boy
+      that was anything like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; She stopped, and turned suddenly to face him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo; he said, stopping, too. Something he said had
+      startled her, evidently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you say such a thing?&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;<i>You</i> love to fight!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do! You love fighting. You always have loved fighting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was dumbfounded. &ldquo;Why, I never had a fight in my life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She cried out in protest of such prevarication.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I never did,&rdquo; he insisted, mildly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you had a fight about <i>me</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I didn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With Wesley Bender!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey chuckled. &ldquo;<i>That</i> wasn't a fight!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn't?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing like one. We were just guyin' him about&mdash;about gettin'
+      slicked up, kind of, because he sat in front of you; and he hit me with
+      his book strap and I chased him off. Gracious, no; <i>that</i> wasn't a
+      fight!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you fought Linski only last fall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey chuckled again. &ldquo;That wasn't even as much like a fight as the one
+      with Wesley. I just told this Linski I was goin' to give him a punch in
+      the sn&mdash; I just told him to look out because I was goin' to hit him,
+      and then I did it, and waited to see if he wanted to do anything about it,
+      and he didn't. That's all there was to it, and it wasn't any more like
+      fighting than&mdash;than feeding chickens is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed dolefully. &ldquo;It seems to me rather more like it than that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it wasn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had begun to walk on again, and Ramsey was aware that they had passed
+      the &ldquo;frat house,&rdquo; where his dinner was probably growing cold. He was aware
+      of this, but not sharply or insistently. Curiously enough, he did not
+      think about it. He had begun to find something pleasant in the odd
+      interview, and in walking beside a girl, even though the girl was Dora
+      Yocum. He made no attempt to account to himself for anything so peculiar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a while they went slowly together, not speaking, and without
+      destination, though Ramsey vaguely took it for granted that Dora was going
+      somewhere. But she wasn't. They emerged from the part of the small town
+      closely built about the university and came out upon a bit of parked land
+      overlooking the river; and here Dora's steps slowed to an indeterminate
+      halt near a bench beneath a maple tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I'll stay here a while,&rdquo; she said; and as he made no response,
+      she asked, &ldquo;Hadn't you better be going back to your 'frat house' for your
+      dinner? I didn't mean for you to come out of your way with me; I only
+      wanted to get an answer to my question. You'd better be running back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood irresolute, not sure that he wanted his dinner just then. It
+      would have amazed him to face the fact deliberately that perhaps he
+      preferred being with Dora Yocum to eating. However, he faced no such fact,
+      nor any fact, but lingered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;&rdquo; he said again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd better go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I can get my dinner pretty near any time. I don't&mdash;&rdquo; He had
+      a thought. &ldquo;Did you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you have your dinner before I met you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, aren't you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head. &ldquo;I don't want any.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think people have very much appetite to-day and yesterday,&rdquo; she
+      said, with the hint of a sad laugh, &ldquo;all over America.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I guess that's so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's too terrible!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I can't sit and eat when I think of the <i>Lusitania</i>&mdash;of
+      all those poor, poor people strangling in the water&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I guess nobody can eat much, if they think about that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And of what it's going to bring, if we let it,&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;As if this
+      killing weren't enough, we want to add <i>our</i> killing! Oh, that's the
+      most terrible thing of all&mdash;the thing it makes within us! Don't you
+      understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned to him appealingly, and he felt queerer than ever. Dusk had
+      fallen. Where they stood, under the young-leaved maple tree, there was but
+      a faint lingering of afterglow, and in this mystery her face glimmered wan
+      and sweet; so that Ramsey, just then, was like one who discovers an old
+      pan, used in the kitchen, to be made of chased silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't feel much like dinner right now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&mdash;we
+      could sit here awhile on this bench, prob'ly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey kept very few things from Fred Mitchell, and usually his
+      confidences were immediate upon the occasion of them; but allowed several
+      weeks to elapse before sketching for his roommate the outlines of this
+      adventure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One thing that was kind o' funny about it, Fred,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I didn't know
+      what to call her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mitchell, stretched upon the window seat in their &ldquo;study,&rdquo; and looking
+      out over the town street below and the campus beyond the street, had
+      already thought it tactful to ambush his profound amusement by turning
+      upon his side, so that his face was toward the window and away from his
+      companion. &ldquo;What did you want to call her?&rdquo; he inquired in a serious
+      voice. &ldquo;Names?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. You know what I mean. I mean I had to just keep callin' her 'you';
+      and that gets kind of freaky when you're talkin' to anybody a good while
+      like that. When she'd be lookin' away from me, and I'd want to start
+      sayin' something to her, you know, why, I wouldn't know how to get started
+      exactly, without callin' her something. A person doesn't want to be always
+      startin' off with 'See here,' or things like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see why you let it trouble you,&rdquo; said Fred. &ldquo;From how you've
+      always talked about her, you had a perfectly handy way to start off with
+      anything you wanted to say to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What with?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn't you just say, 'Oh, you Teacher's Pet!' That would&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get out! What I mean is, she called me 'Ramsey' without any bother; it
+      seems funny I got stumped every time I started to say 'Dora.' Someway I
+      couldn't land it, and it certainly would 'a' sounded crazy to call her
+      'Miss Yocum' after sittin' in the same room with her every day from the
+      baby class clear on up through the end of high school. That <i>would</i>
+      'a' made me out an idiot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you call her?&rdquo; Fred asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just nothin' at all. I started to call her something or other a hundred
+      times, I guess, and then I'd balk. I'd get all ready, and kind of make a
+      sort of a sound, and then I'd have to quit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She may have thought you had a cold,&rdquo; said Fred, still keeping his back
+      turned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect maybe she did&mdash;though I don't know; most of the time she
+      didn't seem to notice me much, kind of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She didn't?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. She was too upset, I guess, by what she was thinkin' about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if it hadn't been for that,&rdquo; Fred suggested, &ldquo;you mean she'd have
+      certainly paid more attention to who was sitting on the bench with her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get out! You know how it was. Everybody those few days thought we were
+      goin' to have war, and she was just sure of it, and it upset her. Of
+      course most people were a lot more upset by what those Dutchmen did to the
+      <i>Lusitania</i> than by the idea of war; and she seemed to feel as broken
+      up as anybody could be about the <i>Lusitania</i>, but what got her the
+      worst was the notion of her country wantin' to fight, she said. She really
+      was upset, too, Fred; there wasn't any puttin' on about it. I guess that
+      ole girl certainly must have a good deal of feeling, because, doggoned,
+      after we'd been sittin' there a while if she didn't have to get out her
+      handkerchief! She kept her face turned away from me&mdash;just the same as
+      you're doin' now to keep from laughin'&mdash;but honestly, she cried like
+      somebody at a funeral. I felt like the darndest fool!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not laughing,&rdquo; said Fred, but he did not prove it by turning so that
+      his face could be seen. &ldquo;What did she say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she didn't say such an awful lot. She said one kind o' funny thing
+      though: she said she was sorry she couldn't quite control herself, but if
+      anybody had to see her cry she minded it less because it was an old
+      schoolmate. What struck me so kind o' funny about that is&mdash;why, it
+      looks as if she never knew the way I always hated her so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Fred. &ldquo;It wasn't flattering!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, it <i>isn't</i>, kind of,&rdquo; Ramsey agreed, musingly. &ldquo;It
+      certainly isn't when you look at it that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you say when she said that?&rdquo; Fred asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin'. I started to, but I sort of balked again. Well, we kept on
+      sitting there, and afterwhile she began to talk again and got kind of
+      excited about how no war could do anything or anybody any good, and all
+      war was wicked, no matter what it was about, and nothin' could be good
+      that was founded on fear and hate, and every war that ever was fought was
+      always founded on fear and hate. She said if the Germans wanted to fight
+      us we ought to go to meet them and tell them we wouldn't fight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin'. I kind o' started to&mdash;but what's the use? She's got that in
+      her head. Besides, how are you goin' to argue about a thing with a person
+      that's crying about it? I tell you, Fred, I guess we got to admit, after
+      all, that ole girl certainly must have a lots of heart about her, anyway.
+      There may not be much <i>fun</i> to her&mdash;though of course I wouldn't
+      know hardly any way to tell about that&mdash;but there couldn't be hardly
+      any doubt she's got a lot of feeling. Well, and then she went on and said
+      old men made wars, but didn't fight; they left the fighting to the boys,
+      and the suffering to the boy's mothers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; Fred exclaimed, and upon that he turned free of mirth for the
+      moment. &ldquo;That's the woman of it, I guess. Send the old men to do the
+      fighting! For the matter of that, I guess my father'd about a thousand
+      times go himself than see me and my brothers go; but Father's so fat he
+      can't stoop! You got to be able to stoop to dig a trench, I guess! Well,
+      suppose we sent our old men up against those Dutchmen; the Dutchmen would
+      just kill the old men, and then come after the boys anyway, and the boys
+      wouldn't be ready, and they'd get killed, too; and then there wouldn't be
+      anybody but the Dutchmen left, and that'd be one fine world, wouldn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Ramsey. &ldquo;Course I thought of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you tell her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin'. I couldn't get started anyway, but, besides, what was the use?
+      But she didn't want the old men to go; she didn't want anybody to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did she want the country to do?&rdquo; Fred asked, impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just what it has been doin', I suppose. Just let things simmer down, and
+      poke along, and let them do what they like to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess so!&rdquo; said Fred. &ldquo;Then, afterwhile, when they get some free time
+      on their hands, they'll come over and make it <i>really</i> interesting
+      for us, because they know we won't do anything but talk. Yes, I guess the
+      way things are settling down ought to suit Dora. There isn't goin' to be
+      any war.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was pretty sure there was, though,&rdquo; Ramsey said, thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, of course she was then. We all thought so those few days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. She said she thought it prob'ly wouldn't come right away, but now it
+      was almost sure to come sometime. She said our telegrams and all the talk
+      and so much feeling and everything showed her that the war thought that
+      was always <i>in</i> people somewhere had been stirred up so it would go
+      on and on. She said she knew from the way she felt herself about the <i>Lusitania</i>
+      that a feeling like that in her would never be absolutely wiped out as
+      long as she lived. But she said her other feeling about the horribleness
+      of war taught her to keep the first feeling from breaking out, but with
+      other people it wouldn't; and even if war didn't break out right then, it
+      would always be ready to, all over the country, and sometime it would,
+      though she was goin' to do her share to fight it, herself, as long as she
+      could stand. She asked me wouldn't I be one of the ones to help her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused, and after a moment Fred asked, &ldquo;Well? What did you say to
+      that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin'. I started to, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Fred thought it tactful to turn and look out the window, while the
+      agitation of his shoulders betrayed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on and laugh! Well, so we stayed there quite a while, but before we
+      left she got kind of more like everyday, you know, the way people do. It
+      was half-past nine when we walked back in town, and I was commencin' to
+      feel kind of hungry, so I asked her if she wasn't, and she sort of laughed
+      and seemed to be ashamed of it, as if it were a disgrace or something, but
+      she said she guessed she was; so I left her by that hedge of lilacs near
+      the observatory and went on over to the 'Teria and the fruit store, and
+      got some stuffed eggs and olives and half-a-dozen peanut butter sandwiches
+      and a box o' strawberries&mdash;kind of girl-food, you know&mdash;and went
+      on back there, and we ate the stuff up. So then she said she was afraid
+      she'd taken me away from my dinner and made me a lot of trouble, and so
+      on, and she was sorry, and she told me good-night&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you say then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Noth&mdash; Oh, shut up! So then she skipped out to her Dorm, and I came
+      on home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When did you see her next, Ramsey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't seen her next,&rdquo; said Ramsey. &ldquo;I haven't seen her at all&mdash;not
+      to speak to. I saw her on Main Street twice since then, but both times she
+      was with some other girls, and they were across the street, and I couldn't
+      tell if she was lookin' at me&mdash;I kind of thought not&mdash;so I
+      thought it might look sort o' nutty to bow to her if she wasn't, so I
+      didn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you didn't tell her you wouldn't be one of the ones to help her with
+      her pacifism and anti-war stuff and all that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I started to, but&mdash; Shut up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred sat up, giggling. &ldquo;So she thinks you <i>will</i> help her. You didn't
+      say anything at all, and she must think that means she converted you. Why
+      didn't you speak up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, <i>I</i> wouldn't argue with her,&rdquo; said Ramsey. Then, after a
+      silence, he seemed to be in need of sympathetic comprehension. &ldquo;It <i>was</i>
+      kind o' funny, though, wasn't it?&rdquo; he said, appealingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The whole business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What 'whole bus'&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, get out! Her stoppin' me, and me goin' pokin' along with her, and her&mdash;well,
+      her crying and everything, and me being around with her while she felt so
+      upset, I mean. It seems&mdash;well, it does seem kind o' funny to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why does it?&rdquo; Fred inquired, preserving his gravity. &ldquo;Why should it seem
+      funny to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't mean funny like something's funny you laugh at,&rdquo; Ramsey explained
+      laboriously. &ldquo;I mean funny like something that's out of the way, and you
+      wonder how it ever happened to happen. I mean it seems funny I'd ever be
+      sittin' there on a bench with that ole girl I never spoke to in my life or
+      had anything to do with, and talkin' about the United States goin' to war.
+      What we were talkin' about, why, that seems just as funny as the rest of
+      it. Lookin' back to our class picnic, f'r instance, second year of high
+      school, that day I jumped in the creek after&mdash; Well, you know, it was
+      when I started makin' a fool of myself over a girl. Thank goodness, I got
+      <i>that</i> out o' my system; it makes me just sick to look back on those
+      days and think of the fool things I did, and all I thought about that
+      girl. Why, she&mdash; Well, I've got old enough to see now she was just
+      about as ordinary a girl as there ever was, and if I saw her now I
+      wouldn't even think she was pretty; I'd prob'ly think she was sort of
+      loud-lookin'. Well, what's passed is past, and it isn't either here nor
+      there. What I started to say was this: that the way it begins to look to
+      me, it looks as if nobody can tell in this life a darn thing about what's
+      goin' to happen, and the things that do happen are the very ones you'd
+      swear were the last that could. I mean&mdash;you look back to that day of
+      the picnic&mdash;my! but I was a rube then&mdash;well, I mean you look
+      back to that day, and what do you suppose I'd have thought then if
+      somebody'd told me the time would ever come when I'd be 'way off here at
+      college sittin' on a bench with Dora Yocum&mdash;with <i>Dora Yocum</i>,
+      in the first place&mdash;and her crying, and both of us talking about the
+      United States goin' to war with Germany! Don't it seem pretty funny to
+      you, Fred, too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But as near as I can make out,&rdquo; Fred said, &ldquo;that isn't what happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say 'and both us talking' and so on. As near as I can make out, <i>you</i>
+      didn't say anything at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I didn't&mdash;much,&rdquo; Ramsey admitted, and returned to his point
+      with almost pathetic persistence. &ldquo;But doesn't it seem kind o' funny to
+      you, Fred?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does to me,&rdquo; Ramsey insisted. &ldquo;It certainly does to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Fred cruelly. &ldquo;I've noticed you said so, but it don't look any
+      funnier than you do when you say it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly he sent forth a startling shout. &ldquo;<i>Wow!</i> You're as red as a
+      blushing beet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Y'are!&rdquo; shouted Fred. &ldquo;Wow! The ole woman-hater's got the flushes! Oh,
+      look at the pretty posy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, jumping down from the window seat, he began to dance round his much
+      perturbed comrade, bellowing. Ramsey bore with him for a moment, then
+      sprang upon him; they wrestled vigorously, broke a chair, and went to the
+      floor with a crash that gave the chandelier in Mrs. Meig's parlour, below,
+      an attack of jingles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You let me up!&rdquo; Fred gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You take your solemn oath to shut up? You goin' to swear it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. I give my solemn oath,&rdquo; said Fred; and they rose, arranging
+      their tousled attire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Fred, &ldquo;when you goin' to call on her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look here!&rdquo; Ramsey approached him dangerously. &ldquo;You just gave me your
+      sol&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg!&rdquo; Fred cried, retreating. &ldquo;I mean, aside from all that, why, I just
+      thought maybe after such an evening you'd feel as a gentleman you ought to
+      go and ask about her health.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, see here&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I mean it; you ought to,&rdquo; Fred insisted, earnestly, and as his
+      roommate glared at him with complete suspicion, he added, in explanation.
+      &ldquo;You ought to go next Caller's Night, and send in your card, and say you
+      felt you ought to ask if she'd suffered any from the night air. Even if
+      you couldn't manage to say that, you ought to start to say it, anyhow,
+      because you&mdash; Keep off o' me! I'm only tryin' to do you a good turn,
+      ain't I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You save your good turns for yourself,&rdquo; Ramsey growled, still advancing
+      upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the insidious Mitchell, evading him, fled to the other end of the
+      room, picked up his cap, and changed his manner. &ldquo;Come on, ole bag o'
+      beans, let's be on our way to the 'frat house'; it's time. We'll call this
+      all off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You better!&rdquo; Ramsey warned him; and they trotted out together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as they went along, Fred took Ramsey's arm confidentially, and said,
+      &ldquo;Now, honestly, Ram, ole man, when <i>are</i> you goin' to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey was still red. &ldquo;You look here! Just say one more word&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, <i>no</i>,&rdquo; Fred expostulated. &ldquo;I mean <i>seriously</i>, Ramsey.
+      Honestly, I mean seriously. Aren't you seriously goin' to call on her some
+      Caller's Night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I'm not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I don't want to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, seriously, Ramsey, there's only one Caller's Night before vacation,
+      and so I suppose it hardly will be worth while; but I expect you'll see
+      quite a little of her at home this summer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I won't. I won't see her at all. She isn't goin' to be home this
+      summer, and I wouldn't see anything of her if she was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's she goin' to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Chicago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is?&rdquo; said Fred, slyly. &ldquo;When'd she tell you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey turned on him. &ldquo;You look out! She didn't tell me. I just happened
+      to see in the <i>Bulletin</i> she's signed up with some other girls to go
+      and do settlement work in Chicago. Anybody could see it. It was printed
+      out plain. You could have seen it just as well as I could, if you'd read
+      the <i>Bulletin</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Fred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now look here&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens! Can't I even say 'oh'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It depends on the way you say it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll be careful,&rdquo; Fred assured him, earnestly. &ldquo;I really and honestly
+      don't mean to get you excited about all this, Ramsey. I can see myself you
+      haven't changed from your old opinion of Dora Yocum a bit. I was only
+      tryin' to get a little rise out of you for a minute, because of course,
+      seriously, why, I can see you hate her just the same as you always did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Ramsey, disarmed and guileless in the face of diplomacy. &ldquo;I
+      only told you about all this, Fred, because it seemed&mdash;well, it
+      seemed so kind o' funny to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred affected not to hear. &ldquo;What did you say, Ramsey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey looked vaguely disturbed. &ldquo;I said&mdash;why, I said it all seemed
+      kind o'&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, then repeated plaintively: &ldquo;Well, to me, it all
+      seemed kind o'&mdash;kind o' funny.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did?&rdquo; Fred inquired, but as he glanced in seeming naivete at his
+      companion, something he saw in the latter's eye warned him, and suddenly
+      Fred thought it would be better to run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey chased him all the way to the &ldquo;frat house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey was not quite athlete enough for any of the 'varsity teams; neither
+      was he an antagonist safely encountered, whether in play or in earnest,
+      and during the next few days he taught Fred Mitchell to be cautious. The
+      chaffer learned that his own agility could not save him from Ramsey, and
+      so found it wiser to contain an effervescence which sometimes threatened
+      to burst him. Ramsey as a victim was a continuous temptation, he was so
+      good-natured and yet so furious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After Commencement, when the roommates had gone home, Mr. Mitchell's
+      caution extended over the long sunshiny months of summer vacation; he
+      broke it but once and then in well-advised safety, for the occasion was
+      semi-public. The two were out for a stroll on a July Sunday afternoon; and
+      up and down the street young couples lolled along, young families and baby
+      carriages straggled to and from the houses of older relatives, and the
+      rest of the world of that growing city was rocking and fanning itself on
+      its front veranda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's a right pretty place, isn't it, Ramsey? don't you think?&rdquo; Fred
+      remarked innocently, as they were passing a lawn of short-clipped, bright
+      green grass before a genial-looking house, fresh in white paint and cool
+      in green-and-white awnings. A broad veranda, well populated just now,
+      crossed the front of the house; fine trees helped the awnings to give
+      comfort against the sun; and Fred's remark was warranted. Nevertheless, he
+      fell under the suspicion of his companion, who had begun to evince some
+      nervousness before Fred spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What place do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Yocum place,&rdquo; said Mr. Mitchell. &ldquo;I hear the old gentleman's mighty
+      prosperous these days. They keep things up to the mark, don't they,
+      Ramsey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know whether they do or whether they don't,&rdquo; Ramsey returned
+      shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred appeared to muse regretfully. &ldquo;It looks kind of <i>empty</i> now,
+      though,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;with only Mr. and Mrs. Yocum and their three married
+      daughters, and eight or nine children on the front porch!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wait till I get you where they can't see us!&rdquo; Ramsey warned him,
+      fiercely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't do it!&rdquo; said Fred, manifesting triumph. &ldquo;We'll both stop right
+      here in plain sight of the whole Yocum family connection till you promise
+      not to touch me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he halted, leaning back implacably against the Yocum's iron fence.
+      Ramsey was scandalized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on!&rdquo; he said, hoarsely. &ldquo;Don't stop <i>here</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will, and if you go on alone I'll yell at you. You got to stand right
+      here with all of 'em lookin' at you until&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise! My heavens, come <i>on</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred consented to end the moment of agony; and for the rest of the summer
+      found it impossible to persuade Ramsey to pass that house in his company.
+      &ldquo;I won't do it!&rdquo; Ramsey told him. &ldquo;Your word of honour means nothin' to
+      me; you're liable to do anything that comes into your head, and I'm
+      gettin' old enough to not get a reputation for bein' seen with people that
+      act the idiot on the public streets. No, sir; we'll walk around the block&mdash;at
+      least, we will if you're goin' with <i>me</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And to Fred's delight, though he concealed it, they would make this
+      detour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening after their return to the university both were busy with their
+      trunks and various orderings and disorderings of their apartment, but Fred
+      several times expressed surprise that his roommate should be content to
+      remain at home; and finally Ramsey comprehended the implications. Mrs.
+      Meigs's chandelier immediately jingled with the shock of another crash
+      upon the floor above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You let me up!&rdquo; Fred commanded thickly, his voice muffled by the pile of
+      flannels, sweaters, underwear, and raincoats wherein his head was being
+      forced to burrow. &ldquo;You let me up, darn you! <i>I</i> didn't say anything.&rdquo;
+       And upon his release he complained that the attack was unprovoked. &ldquo;I
+      didn't say anything on earth to even hint you might want to go out and
+      look around to see if anybody in particular had got back to college yet. I
+      didn't even mention the <i>name</i> of Dora Yo&mdash; Keep off o' me! My
+      goodness, but you are sensitive!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As a matter of fact, neither of them saw Dora until the first meeting of
+      the Lumen, whither they went as sophomores to take their pleasure in the
+      agony of freshmen debaters. Ramsey was now able to attend the Lumen, not
+      with complacence but at least without shuddering over the recollection of
+      his own spectacular first appearance there. He had made subsequent
+      appearances, far from brilliant yet not disgraceful, and as a spectator,
+      at least, he usually felt rather at his ease in the place. It cannot be
+      asserted, however, that he appeared entirely at his ease this evening
+      after he had read the &ldquo;Programme&rdquo; chalked upon the large easel blackboard
+      beside the chairman's desk. Three &ldquo;Freshmen Debates&rdquo; were announced, and a
+      &ldquo;Sophomore Oration,&rdquo; this last being followed by the name, &ldquo;D. Yocum,
+      '18.&rdquo; Ramsey made immediate and conspicuous efforts to avoid sitting next
+      to his roommate, but was not so adroit as to be successful. However, Fred
+      was merciful: the fluctuations of his friend's complexion were an
+      inspiration more to pity than to badinage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three debates all concerned the &ldquo;Causes of the War in Europe,&rdquo; and
+      honours appeared to rest with a small and stout, stolidly &ldquo;pro-German&rdquo;
+       girl debater, who had brought with her and translated at sight absa-loot
+      proofs (so she called them), printed in German, that Germany had been
+      attacked by Belgium at the low instigation of the envious English.
+      Everybody knew it wasn't true; but she made an impression and established
+      herself as a debater, especially as her opponent was quite confounded by
+      her introduction of printed matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the debates and the verdicts were concluded, the orator appeared, and
+      Fred's compassion extended itself so far that he even refrained from
+      looking inquisitively at the boy in the seat next to his; but he made one
+      side wager, mentally&mdash;that if Ramsey had consented to be thoroughly
+      confidential just then, he would have confessed to feeling kind o' funny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora was charmingly dressed, and she was pale; but those notable eyelashes
+      of hers were all the more notable against her pallor. And as she spoke
+      with fire, it was natural that her colour should come back quite flamingly
+      and that her eyes should flash in shelter of the lashes. &ldquo;The Christian
+      Spirit and Internationalism&rdquo; was her subject, yet she showed no meek
+      sample of a Christian Spirit herself when she came to attacking war-makers
+      generally, as well as all those &ldquo;half-developed tribesmen,&rdquo; and &ldquo;victims
+      of herd instinct&rdquo; who believed that war might ever be justified under any
+      circumstances of atrocity. She was eloquent truly, and a picture of grace
+      and girlish dignity, even when she was most vigorous. Nothing could have
+      been more militant than her denunciation of militancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's an actual wonder,&rdquo; Fred said, when the two had got back to Mrs.
+      Meigs's, afterward. &ldquo;Don't you look at me like that: I'm talkin' about her
+      as a public character, and there's nothin' personal about it. You let me
+      alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey was not clear as to his duty. &ldquo;Well&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If any person makes a public speech,&rdquo; Fred protested, &ldquo;I got a perfect
+      right to discuss 'em, no matter what you think of 'em&rdquo;&mdash;and he added
+      hastily&mdash;&ldquo;or <i>don't</i> think of 'em!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; Fred exclaimed. &ldquo;You aren't expecting to interfere with me
+      if I say anything about that little fat Werder girl that argued for
+      Germany, are you? Or any of the other speakers? I got a right to talk
+      about 'em just as public speakers, haven't I? Well, what I say is: Dora
+      Yocum as an orator is just an actual perfect wonder. Got any objections?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;N-no.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right then.&rdquo; Fred settled himself upon the window seat with a pipe,
+      and proceeded, &ldquo;There's something about her, when she stands there, she
+      stands so straight and knows just what she's up to, and everything, why,
+      there's something about her makes the cold chills go down your spine&mdash;I
+      mean <i>my</i> spine, not yours particularly! You sit down&mdash;I mean <i>anybody's</i>
+      spine, doggone it!&rdquo; And as Ramsey increased the manifestations of his
+      suspicions, lifting a tennis racket over the prostrate figure, &ldquo;Oh,
+      murder,&rdquo; Fred said, resignedly. &ldquo;All right, we'll change the subject. That
+      fat little Werder cutie made out a pretty good case for Germany, didn't
+      she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey tossed the racket away, disposed himself in an easy chair with his
+      feet upon the table, and presently chuckled. &ldquo;You remember the time I had
+      the fuss with Wesley Bender, back in the ole school days?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the flubdub this Werder girl got off to-night puts me in mind of the
+      way I talked that day. I can remember it as well as anything! Wesley kept
+      yelpin' that whoever mentioned a lady's name in a public place was a pup,
+      and of course I didn't want to hit him for that; a boy's got a reg'lar
+      instinct for tryin' to make out he's on the right side in a scrap, and
+      he'll always try to do something, or say something, or he'll get the other
+      boy to say someting to make it look as if the other boy was in the wrong
+      and began the trouble. So I told poor ole Wes that my father spoke my
+      mother's name in a public place whenever he wanted to, and I dared him to
+      say my father was a pup. And all so on. A boy startin' up a scrap, why,
+      half the time he'll drag his father and mother if there's any chance to do
+      it. He'll fix up some way so he can say, 'Well, that's just the same as if
+      you called my father and mother a fool,' or something like that. Then,
+      afterward, he can claim he was scrappin' because he had to defend his
+      father and mother, and of course he'll more than half believe it himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you take a Government&mdash;it's only just some <i>men</i>, the way
+      I see it, and if they're goin' to start some big trouble like this war,
+      why, of course they'll play just about the same ole boy trick, because
+      it's instinct to do it, just the same for a man as it is for a boy&mdash;or
+      else the principle's just the same, or something. Well, anyhow, if you
+      want to know who started a scrap and worked it up, you got to forget all
+      the <i>talk</i> there is about it, and all what each side <i>says</i>, and
+      just look at two things: Who was fixed for it first, or thought they were,
+      and who hit first? When you get the answer to those two questions
+      everything's settled about all this being 'attacked' business. Both sides,
+      just the same as boys, they'll both claim they <i>had</i> to fight; but if
+      you want to know which one <i>did</i> have to, why forget all the arguing
+      and don't take your eye off just what <i>happened</i>. As near as I can
+      make out, this war began with Germany and Austria startin' in to wipe out
+      two little countries; Austria began shootin' up Serbia, and Germany began
+      shootin' up Belgium. I don't need to notice any more than that, myself&mdash;all
+      the Werder girls in the country can debate their heads off, they can't
+      change what happened and they can't excuse it, either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent, appearing to feel that he had concluded conclusively, and
+      the young gentleman on the window seat, after staring at him for several
+      moments of genuine thoughtfulness, was gracious enough to observe, &ldquo;Well,
+      ole Ram, you may be a little slow in class, but when you think things out
+      with yourself you do show signs of something pretty near like real
+      horse-sense sometimes. Why don't you ever say anything like that to&mdash;to
+      some of your pacifist friends?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean? Who you talkin' about? Whose 'pacifist friends'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here!&rdquo; Fred exclaimed, as Ramsey seemed about to rise. &ldquo;You keep
+      sitting just where you are, and don't look at me out of the side of your
+      eye like that&mdash;pretendin' you're a bad horse. I'm <i>really</i>
+      serious now, and you listen to me. I don't think argufying and debating
+      like that little Fraulein Werder's does much harm. She's a right nifty
+      young rolypoly, by the way, though you didn't notice, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn't I?&rdquo; Ramsey demanded, sharply. &ldquo;Why didn't I notice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing. But, as I was saying, I don't think that sort of talk does
+      much harm: everybody knows it goes on among the pro-Germans, and it's all
+      hot air, anyhow. But I think Linski's sort of talk does do harm, prob'ly
+      among people that don't know much; and what's more, I think Dora Yocum's
+      does some, too. Well, you hit Linski in the snoot, so what are you&mdash;
+      Sit still! My lord! You don't think I'm askin' you to go and hit Dora, do
+      you? I mean: Aren't you ever goin' to talk to her about it and tell her
+      what's what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you go on to bed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I'm in earnest,&rdquo; Fred urged. &ldquo;Honestly, aren't you ever goin' to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How could I do anything like that?&rdquo; Ramsey demanded explosively. &ldquo;I never
+      see her&mdash;to speak to, that is. I prob'ly won't happen to have another
+      talk with her, or anything, all the time we're in college.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; Fred admitted, &ldquo;I suppose not. Of course, if you did, then you would
+      give her quite a talking-to, just the way you did the other time, wouldn't
+      you?&rdquo; But upon that, another resumption of physical violence put an end to
+      the conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Throughout the term Ramsey's calculation of probabilities against the
+      happening of another interview with Dora seemed to be well founded, but at
+      the beginning of the second &ldquo;semester&rdquo; he found her to be a fellow member
+      of a class in biology. More than that, this class had every week a
+      two-hour session in the botanical laboratory, where the structure of
+      plants was studied under microscopic dissection. The students worked in
+      pairs, a special family of plants being assigned to each couple; and the
+      instructor selected the couples with an eye to combinations of the quick
+      with the slow. D. Yocum and R. Milholland (the latter in a strange state
+      of mind and complexion) were given two chairs, but only one desk and one
+      microscope. Their conversation was strictly botanical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thenceforth it became the most pressing care of Ramsey's life to prevent
+      his roommate from learning that there was any conversation at all, even
+      botanical. Fortunately, Fred was not taking the biological courses, though
+      he appeared to be taking the sentimental ones with an astonishing
+      thoroughness; and sometimes, to Fred's hilarious delight, Ramsey attempted
+      to turn the tables and rally him upon whatever last affair seemed to be
+      engaging his fancy. The old Victorian and pre-Victorian <i>blague</i> word
+      &ldquo;petticoat&rdquo; had been revived in Fred's vocabulary, and in others, as
+      &ldquo;skirt.&rdquo; The lightsome sprig was hourly to be seen, even when university
+      rulings forbade, dilly-dallying giddily along the campus paths or the town
+      sidewalks with some new and pretty Skirt. And when Ramsey tried to fluster
+      him about such a matter Fred would profess his ardent love for the new
+      lady in shouts and impromptu song. Nothing could be done to him, and
+      Ramsey, utterly unable to defend his own sensibilities in like manner, had
+      always to retire in bafflement. Sometimes he would ponder upon the
+      question thus suggested: Why couldn't he do this sort of thing, since Fred
+      could? But he never discovered a satisfying answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey's watchfulness was so careful (lest he make some impulsive
+      admission in regard to the botanical laboratory, for instance) that Mr.
+      Mitchell's curiosity gradually became almost quiescent; but there arrived
+      a day in February when it was piqued into the liveliest activity. It was
+      Sunday, and Fred, dressing with a fastidiousness ever his daily habit,
+      noticed that Ramsey was exhibiting an unusual perplexity about neckties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep the black one on,&rdquo; Fred said, volunteering the suggestion, as Ramsey
+      muttered fiercely at a mirror. &ldquo;It's in better taste for church, anyhow.
+      You're going to church, aren't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I've got a luncheon engagement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you could go to church first, couldn't you? You better; you've got
+      a lot of church absences against you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then one more won't hurt. No church in mine this morning, thanks! G'by,
+      ole sox; see you at the 'frat house' for dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went forth, whistling syncopations, and began a brisk trudge into the
+      open country. There was a professor's daughter who also was not going to
+      church that morning; and she lived a little more than three miles beyond
+      the outskirts of the town. Unfortunately, as the weather was threatening,
+      all others of her family abandoned the idea of church that day, and Fred
+      found her before a cozy fire, but surrounded by parents, little brothers,
+      and big sisters. The professor was talkative; Fred's mind might have been
+      greatly improved, but with a window in range he preferred a melancholy
+      contemplation of the snow, which had begun to fall in quantity. The
+      professor talked until luncheon, throughout luncheon, and was well under
+      way to fill the whole afternoon with talk, when Fred, repenting all the
+      errors of his life, got up to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Heartily urged to remain, for there was now something just under a
+      blizzard developing, he said No; he had a great deal of &ldquo;cirriculum work&rdquo;
+       to get done before the morrow, and passed from the sound of the
+      professor's hospitable voice and into the storm. He had a tedious struggle
+      against the wind and thickening snow, but finally came in sight of the
+      town, not long before dark. Here the road led down into a depression, and,
+      lifting his head as he began the slight ascent on the other side, Fred was
+      aware of two figures outlined upon the low ridge before him. They were
+      dimmed by the driving snow and their backs were toward him, but he
+      recognized them with perfect assurance. They were Dora Yocum and Ramsey
+      Milholland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were walking so slowly that their advance was almost imperceptible,
+      but it could be seen that Dora was talking with great animation; and she
+      was a graceful thing, thus gesticulating, in her long, slim fur coat with
+      the white snow frosting her brown fur cap. Ramsey had his hands deep in
+      his overcoat pockets and his manner was wholly that of an audience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred murmured to himself, &ldquo;'What did you say to her?' 'Nothin'. I started
+      to, but'&mdash;&rdquo; Then he put on a burst of speed and passed them, sweeping
+      off his hat with operatic deference, yet hurrying by as if fearful of
+      being thought a killjoy if he lingered. He went to the &ldquo;frat house,&rdquo; found
+      no one downstairs, and established himself in a red leather chair to smoke
+      and ruminate merrily by a great fire in the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour later Ramsey entered, stamped off the snow, hung up his hat
+      and coat, and sat himself down defiantly in the red leather chair on the
+      other side of the fireplace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, go on,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Commence!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all!&rdquo; Fred returned, amiably. &ldquo;Fine spring weather to-day. Lovely
+      to see all the flowers and the birds as we go a-strolling by. The little
+      bobolinks&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look here! That's the only walk I ever took with her in my life. I
+      mean by&mdash;by asking her and her saying she would and so forth. That
+      other time just sort of happened, and you know it. Well, the weather
+      wasn't just the best in the world, maybe, but she's an awful conscientious
+      girl and once she makes an engagement&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, of course,&rdquo; Fred finished for him, &ldquo;She'd be too pious to break it
+      just on account of a mere little blizzard or anything. Wonder how the
+      weather will be next Sunday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know and I don't care,&rdquo; said Ramsey. &ldquo;You don't suppose I asked
+      her to go <i>again</i>, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, for one thing, you don't suppose I want her to think I'm a perfect
+      fool, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred mused a moment or two, looking at the fire. &ldquo;What was the lecture?&rdquo;
+       he asked, mildly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What lecture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She seemed to me to be&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That wasn't lecturing; she was just&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well; she thinks war for the United States is coming closer and closer&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it isn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, she thinks so, anyhow,&rdquo; said Ramsey, &ldquo;and she's all broken up about
+      it. Of course she thinks we oughtn't to fight and she's trying to get
+      everybody else she can to keep working against it. She isn't goin' home
+      again next summer, she's goin' back to that settlement work in Chicago and
+      work there among those people against our goin' to war; and here in
+      college she wants to get everybody she can to talk against it, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you say?&rdquo; Fred asked, and himself supplied the reply: &ldquo;Nothin'.
+      I started to, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey got up. &ldquo;Now look here! You know the 'frat' passed a rule that if
+      we broke any more furniture in this house with our scrappin' we'd both be
+      fined the cost of repairs and five dollars apiece. Well, I can afford five
+      dollars this month better than you can, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I take it back!&rdquo; Fred interposed, hastily. &ldquo;But you just listen to me;
+      you look out&mdash;letting her think you're on her side like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You <i>don't?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey looked dogged. &ldquo;I'm not goin' around always arguin' about
+      everything when arguin' would just hurt people's feelings about something
+      they're all excited about, and wouldn't do a bit o' good in the world&mdash;and
+      you know yourself just <i>talk</i> hardly ever settles anything&mdash;so I
+      don't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aha!&rdquo; Fred cried. &ldquo;I thought so! Now you listen to me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But at this moment they were interrupted. Someone slyly opened the door,
+      and a snowball deftly thrown from without caught Ramsey upon the back of
+      the neck and head, where it flattened and displayed itself as an
+      ornamental star. Shouting fiercely, both boys sprang up, ran to the door,
+      were caught there in a barrage of snowballs, ducked through it in spite of
+      all damage, charged upon a dozen besweatered figures awaiting them and
+      began a mad battle in the blizzard. Some of their opponents treacherously
+      joined them, and turned upon the ambushers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the dusk the merry conflict waged up and down the snow-covered lawn,
+      and the combatants threw and threw, or surged back and forth, or clenched
+      and toppled over into snow banks, yet all coming to chant an extemporized
+      battle-cry in chorus, even as they fought the most wildly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who? Who? Who?&rdquo; they chanted. &ldquo;Who? Who? <i>Who</i> says there ain't
+      goin' to be no war?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      So everywhere over the country, that winter of 1916, there were
+      light-hearted boys skylarking&mdash;at college, or on the farms; and in
+      the towns the young machinists snowballed one another as they came from
+      the shops; while on this Sunday of the &ldquo;frat&rdquo; snow fight probably several
+      hundreds of thousands of youthful bachelors, between the two oceans, went
+      walking, like Ramsey, each with a girl who could forget the weather. Yet
+      boys of nineteen and in the twenties were not light-hearted all the time
+      that winter and that spring and that summer. Most of them knew long,
+      thoughtful moments, as Ramsey did, when they seemed to be thinking not of
+      girls or work or play&mdash;nor of anything around them, but of some more
+      vital matter or prospect. And at such times they were grave, but not
+      ungentle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the long strain was on the country; underneath all its outward seeming
+      of things going on as usual there shook a deep vibration, like the air
+      trembling to vast organ pipes in diapasons too profound to reach the ear
+      as sound: one felt, not heard, thunder in the ground under one's feet. The
+      succession of diplomatic Notes came to an end after the torpedoing of the
+      <i>Sussex</i>; and at last the tricky ruling Germans in Berlin gave their
+      word to murder no more, and people said, &ldquo;This means peace for America,
+      and all is well for us,&rdquo; but everybody knew in his heart that nothing was
+      well for us, that there was no peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They said &ldquo;All is well,&rdquo; while that thunder in the ground never ceased&mdash;it
+      grew deeper and heavier till all America shook with it and it became
+      slowly audible as the voice of the old American soil wherein lay those who
+      had defended it aforetime, a soil that bred those who would defend it
+      again, for it was theirs; and the meaning of it&mdash;Life, Liberty, and
+      the Pursuit of Happiness&mdash;was theirs, and theirs to defend. And they
+      knew they would defend it, and that more than the glory of a Nation was at
+      stake. The Freedom of Man was at stake. So, gradually, the sacred thunder
+      reached the ears of the young men and gave them those deep moments that
+      came to them whether they sat in the classroom or the counting-room, or
+      walked with the plow, or stood to the machine, or behind the ribbon
+      counter. Thus the thunder shook them and tried them and slowly came into
+      their lives and changed everything for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hate of the Germans was not bred; but a contempt for what Germany had
+      shown in lieu of a national heart; a contempt as mighty and profound as
+      the resolve that the German way and the German will should prevail in
+      America, nor in any country of the world that would be free. And when the
+      German Kaiser laid his command upon America, that no American should take
+      his ship upon the free seas, death being the penalty for any who
+      disobeyed, then the German Kaiser got his answer, not only to this new law
+      he had made for us, but to many other thoughts of his. Yet the answer was
+      for some time delayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a bitter Sunday, and its bitterness went everywhere, to every
+      place in the whole world that held high and generous hearts. Its
+      bitterness came to the special meeting in the &ldquo;Frat hall,&rdquo; where there
+      were hearts, indeed, of that right sort, and one of them became vocal in
+      its bitterness. This was the heart of Fred Mitchell, who was now an
+      authority, being president of the Junior Class, chairman of the Prom
+      Committee, and other things pleasant to be and to live for at his age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For me, Brothers,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I'd think I'd a great deal rather have been
+      shot through the head than heard the news from Washington to-day! I tell
+      you, I've spent the meanest afternoon I ever did in my life, and I guess
+      it's been pretty much the same with all of us. The worst of it is, it
+      looks as though there isn't a thing in the world we can do. The country's
+      been betrayed by a few blatherskites and boneheads that had the power to
+      do it, and all we can do we've just got to stand it. But there's some
+      Americans that aren't just standing it, and I want to tell you a lot of
+      'em are men from the universities, just like us. They're <i>over there</i>
+      right now; they haven't said much&mdash;they just packed up and went.
+      They're flying for France and for England and for Canada; they're fighting
+      under every flag on the right side of the Western Front; and they're
+      driving ambulances at Verdun and ammunition trucks at the Somme. Well,
+      there's going to be a lot more American boys on all these jobs mighty
+      soon, on account of what those men did in Congress to-day. If they won't
+      give us a chance to do something under our own flag, then we'll have to go
+      and do it under some other flag; and I want to tell you I'm one that's
+      going to <i>go!</i> I'll stick it out in college up to Easter, and then if
+      there's still no chance to go under the Stars and Stripes I'll maybe have
+      to go under the flag my great-great-grandfather fought against in 1776,
+      but, anyhow, I'll <i>go!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in speaking to Ramsey of this declaration that Dora said Fred was a
+      &ldquo;dangerous firebrand.&rdquo; They were taking another February walk, but the
+      February was February, 1917; and the day was dry and sunny. &ldquo;It's just
+      about a year ago,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is?&rdquo; Ramsey asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That first time we went walking. Don't you remember?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, <i>that</i> day? Yes, I remember it was snowing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so cold and blowy!&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;It seems a long time ago. I like
+      walking with you, Ramsey. You're so quiet and solid&mdash;I've always felt
+      I could talk to you just anyhow I pleased, and you wouldn't mind. I'll
+      miss these walks with you when we're out of college.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He chuckled. &ldquo;That's funny!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because we've only taken four besides this: two last year, and another
+      week before last, and another last week. This is only the fifth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious! Is that all? It seemed to me we'd gone ever so often!&rdquo; She
+      laughed. &ldquo;I'm afraid you won't think that seems much as if I'd liked
+      going, but I really have. And, by the way, you've never called on me at
+      all. Perhaps it's because I've forgotten to ask you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; Ramsey said, and scuffed his shoes on the path, presently
+      explaining rather huskily that he &ldquo;never <i>was</i> much of a caller&rdquo;; and
+      he added, &ldquo;or anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you must come if you ever care to,&rdquo; she said, with a big-sister
+      graciousness. &ldquo;The Dorm chaperon sits there, of course, but ours is a
+      jolly one and you'd like her. You've probably met her&mdash;Mrs. Hustings?&mdash;when
+      you've called on other girls at our old shop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Ramsey. &ldquo;I never was much of a&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, fearing that
+      he might be repeating himself, and too hastily amended his intention. &ldquo;I
+      never liked any girl enough to go and call on her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ramsey Milholland!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Why, when we were in school half the room
+      used to be talking about how you and that pretty Milla&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; Ramsey protested, again too hurriedly. &ldquo;I never called on her.
+      We just went walking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment later his colour suddenly became fiery. &ldquo;I don't mean&mdash;I
+      mean&mdash;&rdquo; he stammered. &ldquo;It was walking, of course&mdash;I mean we did
+      go out walking but it wasn't walking like&mdash;like this.&rdquo; He concluded
+      with a fit of coughing which seemed to rack him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora threw back her head and laughed delightfully. &ldquo;Don't you apologize!&rdquo;
+       she said. &ldquo;<i>I</i> didn't when I said it seemed to me that we've gone
+      walking so often, when in reality it's only four or five times altogether.
+      I think I can explain, though: I think it came partly from a feeling I
+      have that I can rely on you&mdash;that you're a good, solid, reliable sort
+      of person. I remember from the time we were little children, you always
+      had a sort of worried, honest look in school; and you used to make a dent
+      in your forehead&mdash;you meant it for a frown&mdash;whenever I caught
+      your eye. You hated me so honestly, and you were so honestly afraid I
+      wouldn't see it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no&mdash;no&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes&mdash;yes!&rdquo; she laughed, then grew serious. &ldquo;My feeling about you&mdash;that
+      you were a person to be relied on, I mean&mdash;I think it began that
+      evening in our freshman year, after the <i>Lusitania</i>, when I stopped
+      you on campus and you went with me, and I couldn't help crying, and you
+      were so nice and quiet. I hardly realized then that it was the first time
+      we'd ever really talked together&mdash;of course <i>I</i> did all the
+      talking!&mdash;and yet we'd known each other so many years. I thought of
+      it afterward. But what gave me such a different view of you, I'd always
+      thought you were one of that truculent sort of boys, always just bursting
+      for a fight; but you showed me you'd really never had a fight in your life
+      and hated fighting, and that you sympathized with my feeling about war.&rdquo;
+       She stopped speaking to draw in her breath with a sharp sigh. &ldquo;Ah, don't
+      you remember what I've told you all along? How it keeps coming closer and
+      closer&mdash;and now it's almost here! Isn't it <i>unthinkable?</i> And
+      what can we do to stop it, we poor few who feel that we <i>must</i> stop
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;&rdquo; Ramsey began uncomfortably. &ldquo;Of course I&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't do much,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I know. None of us can. What can any
+      little group do? There are so few of us among the undergraduates&mdash;and
+      only one in the whole faculty. All the rest are for war. But we mustn't
+      give up; we must never feel afterward that we left anything undone; we
+      must fight to the last breath!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Fight'?&rdquo; he repeated wonderingly, then chuckled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, as a figure of speech,&rdquo; she said, impatiently. &ldquo;Our language is full
+      of barbaric figures left over from the dark ages. But, oh, Ramsey!&rdquo;&mdash;she
+      touched his sleeve&mdash;&ldquo;I've heard that Fred Mitchell is saying that
+      he's going to Canada after Easter, to try to get into the Canadian
+      aviation corps. If it's true, he's a dangerous firebrand, I think. Is it
+      true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess so. He's been talking that way some.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why do you <i>let</i> him talk that way?&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;He's your
+      roommate; surely you have more influence with him than anybody else has.
+      Couldn't you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head slowly, while upon his face the faintly indicated
+      modellings of a grin hinted of an inner laughter at some surreptitious
+      thought. &ldquo;Well, you know, Fred says himself sometimes, I don't seem to be
+      much of a talker exactly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. But don't you see? That sort of thing is contagious. Others will
+      think they ought to go if he does; he's popular and quite a leader. Can't
+      you do anything with him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited for him to answer. &ldquo;Can't you?&rdquo; she insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The grin had disappeared, and Ramsey grew red again. He seemed to wish to
+      speak, to heave with speech that declined to be spoken and would not rouse
+      up from his inwards. Finally he uttered words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;well, I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I know,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;A man&mdash;or a boy!&mdash;always hates to be
+      intruding his own convictions upon other men, especially in a case like
+      this, where he might be afraid of some idiot's thinking him unmanlike. But
+      Ramsey&mdash;&rdquo; Suddenly she broke off and looked at him attentively; his
+      discomfort had become so obvious that suspicion struck her. She spoke
+      sharply. &ldquo;Ramsey <i>you</i> aren't dreaming of doing such a thing, are
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What such a thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fred hasn't influenced <i>you</i>, has he? You aren't planning to go with
+      him, are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To join the Canadian aviation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I hadn't thought of doing it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sighed again, relieved. &ldquo;I had a queer feeling about you just then&mdash;that
+      you <i>were</i> thinking of doing some such thing. You looked so odd&mdash;and
+      you're always so quiet, anybody might not really know what you do think.
+      But I'm not wrong about you, am I, Ramsey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had come to the foot of the steps that led up to the entrance of her
+      dormitory, and their walk was at an end. As they stopped and faced each
+      other, she looked at him earnestly; but he did not meet the scrutiny, his
+      eyelids fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not wrong, am I, Ramsey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About what?&rdquo; he murmured, uncomfortably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are my friend, aren't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it's all right,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;That relieves me and makes me happier
+      than I was just now, for of course if you're my friend you wouldn't let me
+      make any mistake about you. I believe you, and now, just before I go in
+      and we won't see much of each other for a week&mdash;if you still want me
+      to go with you again next Sunday&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;won't you, please?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if you like. But I want to tell you now that I count on you in all
+      this, even though you don't 'talk much,' as you say; I count on you more
+      than I do on anybody else, and I trust you when you say you're my friend,
+      and it makes me happy. And I think perhaps you're right about Fred
+      Mitchell. Talk isn't everything, nobody knows that better than I, who talk
+      so much! and I think that, instead of talking to Fred, a steady, quiet
+      influence like yours would do more good than any amount of arguing. So I
+      trust you, you see? And I'm sorry I had that queer doubt of you.&rdquo; She held
+      out her hand. &ldquo;Unless I happen to see you on the campus for a minute, in
+      the meantime, it's good-bye until a week from to-day. So&mdash;well, so,
+      good-bye until then!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; said Ramsey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a great struggle. &ldquo;I'm not influencing Fred not to go,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;don't want you to trust me to do anything like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it's all right for him to go, if he wants to,&rdquo; Ramsey said,
+      miserably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do? For him to go to <i>fight?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He swallowed. &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Oh!</i>&rdquo; she cried, turned even redder than he, and ran up the stone
+      steps. But before the storm doors closed upon her she looked down to where
+      he stood, with his eyes still lowered, a lonely-seeming figure, upon the
+      pavement below. Her voice caught upon a sob as she spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you feel like that, you might as well go and enlist, yourself,&rdquo; she
+      said, bitterly. &ldquo;I can't&mdash;I couldn't&mdash;speak to you again after
+      this!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was easy enough for him to evade Fred Mitchell's rallyings these days;
+      the sprig's mood was truculent, not toward his roommate but toward
+      Congress, which was less in fiery haste than he to be definitely at war
+      with Germany. All through the university the change had come: athletics,
+      in other years spotlighted at the centre of the stage, languished
+      suddenly, threatened with abandonment; students working for senior honours
+      forgot them; everything was forgotten except that growing thunder in the
+      soil. Several weeks elapsed after Dora's bitter dismissal of Ramsey before
+      she was mentioned between the comrades. Then, one evening, Fred asked, as
+      he restlessly paced their study floor:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you seen your pacifist friend lately?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Not exactly. Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, for my part, I think she ought to be locked up,&rdquo; Fred said,
+      angrily. &ldquo;Have you heard what she did this afternoon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all over college. She got up in the class in jurisprudence and made
+      a speech. It's a big class, you know, over two hundred, under Dean Burney.
+      He's a great lecturer, but he's a pacifist&mdash;the only one on the
+      faculty&mdash;and a friend of Dora's. They say he encouraged her to make
+      this break and led the subject around so she could do it, and then called
+      on her for an opinion, as the highest-stand student in the class. She got
+      up and claimed there wasn't any such thing as a legitimate cause for war,
+      either legally or morally, and said it was a sign of weakness in a nation
+      for it to believe that it did have cause for war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it was too much for that little, spunky Joe Stansbury, and he
+      jumped up and argued with her. He made her admit all the Germans have done
+      to us, the sea murders and the land murders, the blowing up of the
+      factories, the propaganda, the strikes, trying to turn the United States
+      into a German settlement, trying to get Japan and Mexico to make war on
+      us, and all the rest. He even made her admit there was proof they mean to
+      conquer us when they get through with the others, and that they've set out
+      to rule the world for their own benefit, and make whoever else they kindly
+      allow to live, to work for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She said it might be true, but since nothing at all could be a right
+      cause for war, than all this couldn't be a cause of war. Of course she had
+      her regular pacifist 'logic' working; she said that since war is the worst
+      thing there is, why, all other evils were lesser, and a lesser evil can't
+      be a just cause for a greater. She got terribly excited, they say, but
+      kept right on, anyway. She said war was murder and there couldn't be any
+      other way to look at it; and she'd heard there was already talk in the
+      university of students thinking about enlisting, and whoever did such a
+      thing was virtually enlisting to return murder for murder. Then Joe
+      Stansbury asked her if she meant that she'd feel toward any student that
+      enlisted the way she would toward a murderer, and she said, yes, she'd
+      have a horror of any student that enlisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that broke up the class; Joe turned from her to the platform and
+      told old Burney that he was responsible for allowing such talk in his
+      lecture-room, and Joe said so far as <i>he</i> was concerned, he resigned
+      from Burney's classes right there. That started it, and practically the
+      whole class got up and walked out with Joe. They said Burney streaked off
+      home, and Dora was left alone in there, with her head down on her desk&mdash;and
+      I guess she certainly deserves it. A good many have already stopped
+      speaking to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey fidgeted with a pen on the table by which he sat. &ldquo;Well, I don't
+      know,&rdquo; he said, slowly; &ldquo;I don't know if they ought to do that exactly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why oughtn't they?&rdquo; Fred demanded, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it looks to me as if she was only fightin' for her principles. She
+      believes in 'em. The more it costs a person to stick to their principles,
+      why, the more I believe the person must have something pretty fine about
+      'em likely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; said the hot-headed Fred. &ldquo;That may be in ordinary times, but not
+      when a person's principles are liable to betray their country! We won't
+      stand that kind of principles, I tell you, and we oughtn't to. Dora
+      Yocum's finding that out, all right. She had the biggest position of any
+      girl in this place, or any boy either, up to the last few weeks, and there
+      wasn't any student or hardly even a member of the faculty that had the
+      influence or was more admired and looked up to. She had the whole show!
+      But now, since she's just the same as called any student a murderer if he
+      enlists to fight for his country and his flag&mdash;well, now she hasn't
+      got anything at all, and if she keeps on she'll have even less!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused in his walking to and fro and came to a halt behind his friend's
+      chair, looking down compassionately upon the back of Ramsey's motionless
+      head. His tone changed. &ldquo;I guess it isn't just the ticket&mdash;me to be
+      talking this way to you, is it?&rdquo; he said, with a trace of huskiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;it's all right,&rdquo; Ramsey murmured, not altering his position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't help blowing up,&rdquo; Fred went on. &ldquo;I want to say, though, I know
+      I'm not very considerate to blow up about her to you this way. I've been
+      playing horse with you about her ever since freshman year, but&mdash;well,
+      you must have understood, Ram, I never meant anything that would really
+      bother you much, and I thought&mdash;well, I <i>really</i> thought it was
+      a good thing, you&mdash;your&mdash;well, I mean about her, you know. I'm
+      on, all right. I know it's pretty serious with you.&rdquo; He paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ramsey did not move, except that his right hand still fidgeted with the
+      pen upon the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;well&mdash;&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's&mdash;it's kind of tough luck!&rdquo; his friend contrived to say; and he
+      began to pace the floor again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;well&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here, ole stick-in-the-mud,&rdquo; Fred broke out abruptly. &ldquo;After her
+      saying what she did&mdash; Well, it's none o' my business, but&mdash;but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what?&rdquo; Ramsey murmured. &ldquo;I don't care what you say, if you want to
+      say anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I <i>got</i> to say it,&rdquo; Fred half groaned and half blurted. &ldquo;After
+      she said <i>that</i>&mdash;and she meant it&mdash;why, if I were in your
+      place I'd be darned if I'd be seen out walking with her again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not going to be,&rdquo; Ramsey said, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George!&rdquo; And now Fred halted in front of him, both being huskily
+      solemn. &ldquo;I think I understand a little of what that means to you, old
+      Ramsey; I think I do. I think I know something of what it costs you to
+      make that resolution for your country's sake.&rdquo; Impulsively he extended his
+      hand. &ldquo;It's a pretty big thing for you to do. Will you shake hands?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ramsey shook his head. &ldquo;I didn't do it. I wouldn't ever have done
+      anything just on account of her talkin' that way. She shut the door on me&mdash;it
+      was a good while ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did! What for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm not much of a talker, you know, Fred,&rdquo; said Ramsey, staring at
+      the pen he played with. &ldquo;I'm not much of anything, for that matter,
+      prob'ly, but I&mdash;well&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I had to tell her I didn't feel about things the way she did. She'd
+      thought I had, all along, I guess. Anyway, it made her hate me or
+      something, I guess; and she called it all off. I expect there wasn't much
+      to call off, so far as she was concerned, anyhow.&rdquo; He laughed feebly. &ldquo;She
+      told me I better go and enlist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pleasant of her!&rdquo; Fred muttered. &ldquo;Especially as we know what she thinks
+      enlisting means.&rdquo; He raised his voice cheerfully. &ldquo;Well, that's settled;
+      and, thank God, old Mr. Bernstorff's on his way to his sweet little
+      vine-clad cottage home! They're getting guns on the ships, and the big
+      show's liable to commence any day. We can hold up our heads now, and we're
+      going to see some great times, old Ramsey boy! It's hard on the home folks&mdash;Gosh!
+      I don't like to think of that! And I guess it's going to be hard on a lot
+      of boys that haven't understood what it's all about, and hard on some that
+      their family affairs, and business, and so on, have got 'em tied up so
+      it's hard to go&mdash;and of course there's plenty that just can't, and
+      some that aren't husky enough&mdash;but the rest of us are going to have
+      the big time in our lives. We got an awful lot to learn; it scares me to
+      think of what I don't know about being any sort of a rear-rank private.
+      Why, it's a regular <i>profession</i>, like practising law, or selling for
+      a drug house on the road. Golly! Do you remember how we talked about that,
+      'way back in freshman year, what we were going to do when we got out of
+      college? You were going to be practising law, for instance, and I&mdash;well,
+      f'r instance, remember Colburn; he was going to be a doctor, and he did go
+      to some medical school for one year. Now he's in the Red Cross, somewhere
+      in <i>Persia</i>. Golly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused to digest this impossibility, then chattered briskly on. &ldquo;Well,
+      there's <i>one</i> good old boy was with our class for a while, back in
+      freshman year; I bet we won't see him in any good old army! Old rough-neck
+      Linski that you put the knob on his nose for. Tommie Hopper says he saw
+      him last summer in Chicago soapboxin', yellin' his head off cussin' every
+      government under the sun, but mostly ours and the Allies', you bet, and
+      going to run the earth by revolution and representatives of unskilled
+      labour immigrants, nobody that can read or write allowed to vote, except
+      Linski. Tommie Hopper says he knows all about Linski; he never did a day's
+      work in his life&mdash;too busy trying to get the workingmen stirred up
+      against the people that exploit 'em! Tommie says he had a big crowd to
+      hear him, though, and took up quite a little money for a 'cause' or
+      something. Well, let him holler! I guess we can attend to him when we get
+      back from over yonder. By George, old Ram, I'm gettin' kind of floppy in
+      the gills!&rdquo; He administered a resounding slap to his comrade's shoulder.
+      &ldquo;It certainly looks as if our big days were walking toward us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was right. The portentous days came on apace, and each one brought a
+      new and greater portent. The faces of men lost a driven look besetting
+      them in the days of badgered waiting, and instead of that heavy
+      apprehension one saw the look men's faces must have worn in 1776 and 1861,
+      and the history of the old days grew clearer in the new. The President
+      went to the Congress, and the true indictment he made there reached
+      scoffing Potsdam with an unspoken prophecy somewhat chilling even to
+      Potsdam, one guesses&mdash;and then through an April night went almost
+      quietly the steady work: we were at war with Germany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bugles sounded across the continent; drums and fifes played up and
+      down the city streets and in town and village squares and through the
+      countrysides. Faintly in all ears there was multitudinous noise like
+      distant, hoarse cheering... and a sound like that was what Dora Yocum
+      heard, one night, as she sat lonely in her room. The bugles and fifes and
+      drums had been heard about the streets of the college town, that day, and
+      she thought she must die of them, they hurt her so, and now to be haunted
+      by this imaginary cheering&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She started. Was it imaginary?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went downstairs and stood upon the steps of the dormitory in the open
+      air. No; the cheering was real and loud. It came from the direction of the
+      railway station, and the night air surged and beat with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Below her stood the aged janitor of the building, listening. &ldquo;What's the
+      cheering for?&rdquo; she asked, remembering grimly that the janitor was one of
+      her acquaintances who had not yet stopped &ldquo;speaking&rdquo; to her. &ldquo;What's the
+      matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a good matter,&rdquo; the old man answered. &ldquo;I guess there must be a big
+      crowd of 'em down there. One of our students enlisted to-day, and they're
+      givin' him a send-off. Listen to 'em, how they <i>do</i> cheer. He's the
+      first one to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went back to her room, shivering, and spent the next day in bed with
+      an aching head. She rose in the evening, however&mdash;a handbill had been
+      slid under her door at five o'clock, calling a &ldquo;Mass Meeting&rdquo; of the
+      university at eight, and she felt it her duty to go; but when she got to
+      the great hall she found a seat in the dimmest corner, farthest from the
+      rostrum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The president of the university addressed the tumultuous many hundreds
+      before him, for tumultuous they were until he quieted them. He talked to
+      them soberly of patriotism, and called upon them for &ldquo;deliberation and a
+      little patience.&rdquo; There was danger of a stampede, he said, and he and the
+      rest of the faculty were in a measure responsible to their fathers and
+      mothers for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must keep your heads,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;God knows, I do not seek to judge
+      your duty in this gravest moment of your lives, nor assume to tell you
+      what you must or must not do. But by hurrying into service now, without
+      careful thought or consideration, you may impair the extent of your
+      possible usefulness to the very cause you are so anxious to serve.
+      Hundreds of you are taking technical courses which should be completed&mdash;at
+      least to the end of the term in June. Instructors from the United States
+      Army are already on the way here, and military training will be begun at
+      once for all who are physically eligible and of acceptable age. A special
+      course will be given in preparation for flying, and those who wish to
+      become aviators may enroll themselves for the course at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I speak to you in a crisis of the university's life, as well as that of
+      the nation, and the warning I utter has been made necessary by what took
+      place yesterday and to-day. Yesterday morning, a student in the junior
+      class enlisted as a private in the United States Regular Army. Far be it
+      from me to deplore his course in so doing; he spoke to me about it, and in
+      such a way that I felt I had no right to dissuade him. I told him that it
+      would be preferable for college men to wait until they could go as
+      officers, and, aside from the fact of a greater prestige, I urged that men
+      of education could perhaps be more useful in that capacity. He replied
+      that if he were useful enough as a private a commission might in time come
+      his way, and, as I say, I did not feel at liberty to attempt dissuasion.
+      He left to join a regiment to which he had been assigned, and many of you
+      were at the station to bid him farewell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But enthusiasm may be too contagious; even a great and inspiring motive
+      may work for harm, and the university must not become a desert. In the
+      twenty-four hours since that young man went to join the army last night,
+      one hundred and eleven of our young men students have left our walls;
+      eighty-four of them went off together at three o'clock to catch an
+      east-bound train at the junction and enlist for the Navy at Newport. We
+      are, I say, in danger of a stampede.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke on, but Dora was not listening; she had become obsessed by the
+      idea which seemed to be carrying her to the border of tragedy. When the
+      crowd poured forth from the building she went with it mechanically, and
+      paused in the dark outside. She spoke to a girl whom she did not know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanted to ask: Do you know who was the student Doctor Corvis spoke of?
+      I mean the one that was the first to enlist, and that they were cheering
+      last night when he went away to be a private in the United States Army.
+      Did you happen to hear his name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he was a junior.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who was it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ramsey Milholland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Fred Mitchell, crossing the campus one morning, ten days later, saw Dora
+      standing near the entrance of her dormitory, where he would pass her
+      unless he altered his course; and as he drew nearer her and the details of
+      her face grew into distinctness, he was indignant with himself for feeling
+      less and less indignation toward her in proportion to the closeness of his
+      approach. The pity that came over him was mingled with an unruly
+      admiration, causing him to wonder what unpatriotic stuff he could be made
+      of. She was marked, but not whipped; she still held herself straight under
+      all the hammering and cutting which, to his knowledge, she had been
+      getting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped him, &ldquo;for only a moment,&rdquo; she said, adding with a wan
+      profoundness: &ldquo;That is, if you're not one of those who feel that I
+      shouldn't be 'spoken to'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Fred, stiffly. &ldquo;I may share their point of view, perhaps, but I
+      don't feel called upon to obtrude it on you in that manner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; she said, nodding. &ldquo;I've wanted to speak with you about Ramsey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She bit her lip, then asked, abruptly: &ldquo;What made him do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enlist as a private with the regulars?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. What made him enlist at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only because he's that sort,&rdquo; Fred returned briskly. &ldquo;He may be
+      inexplicable to people who believe that his going out to fight for his
+      country is the same thing as going out to commit a mur&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her hand. &ldquo;Couldn't you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; Fred said at once. &ldquo;I'm sorry, but I don't know just
+      how to explain him to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed, apologetically. &ldquo;Well, you see, as I understand it, you don't
+      think it's possible for a person to have something within him that makes
+      him care so much about his country that he&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Don't you think I'm willing to suffer a little rather
+      than to see my country in the wrong? Don't you think I'm doing it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't want to be rude; but, of course, it seems to me that you're
+      suffering because you think you know more about what's right and wrong
+      than anybody else does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no. But I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We wouldn't get anywhere, probably, by arguing it,&rdquo; Fred said. &ldquo;You asked
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I asked you to tell my why he enlisted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The trouble is, I don't think I <i>can</i> tell that to anybody who needs
+      an answer. He just went, of course. There isn't any question about it. I
+      always thought he'd be the first to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I always thought so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you were mistaken,&rdquo; she said, decidedly. &ldquo;It was a special reason&mdash;to
+      make him act so cruelly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cruelly!&rdquo; Fred cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It <i>was!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cruel to whom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, to his mother&mdash;to his family. To have him go off that way,
+      without a word&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no' he'd been home,&rdquo; Fred corrected her. &ldquo;He went home the Saturday
+      before he enlisted, and settled it with them. They're all broken up, of
+      course; but when they saw he'd made up his mind, they quit opposing him,
+      and I think they're proud of him about it, maybe, in spite of feeling
+      anxious. You see, his father was an artilleryman in the war with Spain,
+      and his grandfather was a Colonel at the end of the War of the Rebellion,
+      though he went into it as a private, like Ramsey. He died when Ramsey was
+      about twelve; but Ramsey remembers him; he was talking of him a little the
+      night before he enlisted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora made a gesture of despairing protest. &ldquo;You don't understand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it I don't understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ramsey! <i>I</i> know why he went&mdash;and it's just killing me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred looked at her gravely. &ldquo;I don't think you need worry about it,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;There's nothing about his going that you are responsible for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She repeated her despairing gesture. &ldquo;You don't understand. But it's no
+      use. It doesn't help any to try to talk of it, though I thought maybe it
+      would, somehow.&rdquo; She went a little nearer the dormitory entrance, leaving
+      him where he was, then turned. &ldquo;I suppose you won't see him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know. Most probably not till we meet-if we should&mdash;in
+      France. I don't know where he's stationed; and I'm going with the aviation&mdash;if
+      it's ever ready! And he's with the regulars; he'll probably be among the
+      first to go over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see.&rdquo; She turned sharply away, calling back over her shoulder in a
+      choked voice. &ldquo;Thank you. Good-bye!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fred's heart had melted; gazing after her, he saw that her proud young
+      head had lowered now, and that her shoulders were moving convulsively; he
+      ran after her and caught her as she began slowly to ascend the dormitory
+      steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Don't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted a wet face. &ldquo;No, no! He went in bitterness because I told him
+      to, in my own bitterness! I've killed him! Long ago, when he wasn't much
+      more than a child, I heard he'd said that some day he'd 'show' me, and now
+      he's done it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred whistled low and long when she had disappeared. &ldquo;Girls!&rdquo; he murmured
+      to himself. &ldquo;Some girls, anyhow&mdash;they will be girls! You can't tell
+      'em what's what, and you can't change 'em, either!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as more urgent matters again occupied his attention, he went on at
+      an ardent and lively gait to attend his class in map-making.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter XXI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      That thunder in the soil, at first too deep within it to be audible, had
+      come to the surface now and gradually became heard as the thunder of a
+      million feet upon the training grounds. The bugles rang sharper; the drums
+      and fifes of town and village and countryside were the drums and fifes of
+      a war that came closer and closer to every hearth between the two oceans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the old symbols became symbols bright and new, as if no one had ever
+      seen them before. &ldquo;America&rdquo; was like a new word, and the song &ldquo;America&rdquo;
+       was like a new song. All the dusty blatancies of orating candidates,
+      seeking to rouse bored auditors with &ldquo;the old flag&rdquo;; all the mechanical
+      patriotics of school and church and club; all these time-worn flaccid
+      things leaped suddenly into living colour. The flag became brilliant and
+      strange to see&mdash;strange with a meaning that seemed new, a meaning
+      long known, yet never known till now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so hearts that thought they knew themselves came upon ambushes of
+      emotion and hidden indwellings of spirit not guessed before. Dora Yocum,
+      listening to the &ldquo;Star Spangled Banner,&rdquo; sung by children of immigrants to
+      an out-of-tune old piano in a mission clubroom, in Chicago, found herself
+      crying with a soul-shaking heartiness in a way different from other ways
+      that she had cried. Among the many things she thought of then was this:
+      That the banner the children were singing about was in danger. The great
+      country, almost a continent, had always seemed so untouchable, so safe and
+      sure; she had never been able to conceive of a hostile power mighty enough
+      to shake or even jar it. And since so great and fundamental a thing could
+      not be injured, a war for its defence had appeared to be, in her eyes, not
+      only wicked but ridiculous. At last, less and less vaguely, she had come
+      to comprehend something of the colossal German threat, and the shadow that
+      touched this bright banner of which the immigrants' children piped so
+      briskly in the mission club-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had begun to understand, though she could not have told just why, or
+      how, or at what moment understanding reached her. She began to understand
+      that her country, threatened to the life, had flung its line those
+      thousands of miles across the sea to stand and hold Hindenburg and
+      Ludendorff and all their Kaisers, Kings, Dukes, and Crown Princes, their
+      Krupp and Skoda monstrous engines, and their monstrous other engines of
+      men made into armies. Through the long haze of misted sea-miles and the
+      smoke of land-miles she perceived that brown line of ours, and knew it
+      stood there that Freedom, and the Nation itself, might not perish from the
+      earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so, a week later, she went home, and came nervously to Ramsey's mother
+      and found how to direct the letter she wanted to write. He was in France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the old phrase went, she poured out her heart. It seems to apply to her
+      letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wrote:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don't misunderstand me. I felt that my bitter speech to you had driven you
+      to take the step you did. I felt that I had sent you to be killed, and
+      that I ought to be killed for doing it, but I knew that you had other
+      motives, too. I knew, of course, that you thought of the country more than
+      you did of me, or of any mad thing I would say&mdash;but I thought that
+      what I said might have been the prompting thing, the word that threw you
+      into it so hastily and before you were ready, perhaps. I dreaded to bear
+      that terrible responsibility. I hope you understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My great mistake has been&mdash;I thought I sas so &ldquo;logical&rdquo;&mdash;it's
+      been in my starting everything with a thought I'd never proven; that war
+      is the worst thing, and all other evils were lesser. I was wrong. I was
+      wrong, because war isn't the worst evil. Slavery is the worse evil, and
+      now I want to tell you I have come to see that you are making war on those
+      that make slavery. Yes, you are fighting those that make both war and
+      slavery, and you are right, and I humbly reverence and honour all of you
+      who are in this right war. I have come home to work in the Red Cross here;
+      I work there all day, and all day I keep saying to myself&mdash;but I
+      really mean to <i>you</i>&mdash;it's what I pray, and oh, how I pray it:
+      &ldquo;God be with you and grant you the victory!&rdquo; For you must win and you will
+      win.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Forgive me, oh, please&mdash;and if you will, could you write to me? I
+      know you have things to do more important than &ldquo;girls&rdquo;&mdash;but oh,
+      couldn't you, please?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This letter, which she had taken care not to dampen, as she wrote, went in
+      slow course to the &ldquo;American Expeditionary Forces in France,&rdquo; and finally
+      found him whom it patiently sought. He delayed not long to answer, and in
+      time she held in a shaking hand the pencilled missive he had sent her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You forget all that comic talk about me enlisting because of your telling
+      me to. I'd written my father I was going at the first chance a month and a
+      half before that day when you said it. My mind was made up at the first
+      time there was any talk of war, and you had about as much responsibility
+      for my going as some little sparrow or something. Of course I don't mean I
+      didn't pay any attention to the different things you said, because I
+      always did, and I used to worry over it because I was afraid some day it
+      would get you in trouble, and I'm mighty glad you've cut it out. That's
+      right; you be a regular girl now. You always were one, and I knew it all
+      right. I'm not as scared to write to you as I was to talk to you, so I
+      guess you know I was mighty tickled to get your letter. It sounded blue,
+      but I was glad to get it. You <i>bet</i> I'll write to you! I don't
+      suppose you could have any idea how glad I was to get your letter. I could
+      sit here and write to you all day if they'd let me, but I'm a corporal
+      now. When you answer this, I wish you'd say how the old town looks and if
+      the grass in the front yards is as green as it usually is, and everything.
+      And tell me some more about everything you think of when you are working
+      down at the Red Cross like you said. I guess I've read your letter five
+      million times, and that part ten million. I mean where you underlined that
+      &ldquo;<i>you</i>&rdquo; and what you said to yourself at the Red Cross. Oh, murder,
+      but I was glad to read that! Don't forget about writing anything else you
+      think of like that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I was interrupted then and this is the next day. Of course, I can't
+      tell you where we are, because that darned censor will read this letter,
+      but I guess he will let this much by. Who do you think I ran across in a
+      village yesterday? Two boys from the old school days, and we certainly did
+      shake hands a few times! It was the old foolish Dutch Krusemeyer and
+      Albert Paxton, both of them lieutenants. I heard Fred Mitchell is still
+      training in the States and about crazy because they won't send him over
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you had any idea how glad I was to get your letter, you wouldn't lose
+      any time answering this one. Anyhow, I'm going to write to you again every
+      few days if I get the chance, because maybe you'll answer more than one of
+      'em.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But see here, cut out that &ldquo;sent you to be killed&rdquo; stuff. You've got the
+      wrong idea altogether. We've got the big job of our lives, we know that,
+      but we're going to do it. There'll be mistakes and bad times, but we won't
+      fall down. Now you'll excuse me for saying it this way, Dora, but I don't
+      know just how to express myself except saying of course we know everybody
+      isn't going to get back home&mdash;but listen, we didn't come over here to
+      get killed particularly, we came over here to give these Dutchmen h&mdash;l!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps you can excuse language if I write it with a blank like that, but
+      before we get back we're going to do what we came for. They may not all of
+      them be as bad as some of them&mdash;it's a good thing you don't know what
+      we do, because some of it would make you sick. As I say, there may be
+      quite a lot of good ones among them; but we know what they've done to this
+      country, and we know what they mean to do to ours. So we're going to
+      attend to them. Of course that's why I'm here. It wasn't you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don't forget to write pretty soon, Dora. You say in your letter&mdash;I
+      certainly was glad to get that letter&mdash;well, you say I have things to
+      do more important than &ldquo;girls.&rdquo; Dora, I think you probably know without my
+      saying so that of course while I have got important things to do, just as
+      every man over here has, and everybody at home, for that matter, well, the
+      thing that is most important in the world to me, next to helping win this
+      war, it's reading the next letter from you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don't forget how glad I'll be to get it, and don't forget you didn't have
+      anything to do with my being over here. That was&mdash;it was something
+      else. And you bet, whatever happens I'm glad I came! Don't ever forget <i>that</i>!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora knew it was &ldquo;something else.&rdquo; Her memory went back to her first
+      recollection of him in school: from that time on he had been just an
+      ordinary, everyday boy, floundering somehow through his lessons in school
+      and through his sweethearting with Milla, as the millions of other boys
+      floundered along with their own lessons and their own Millas. She saw him
+      swinging his books and romping homeward from the schoolhouse, or going
+      whistling by her father's front yard, rattling a stick on the fence as he
+      went, care-free and masterful, but shy as a deer if strangers looked at
+      him, and always &ldquo;not much of a talker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had always felt so superior to him, she shuddered as she thought of
+      it. His quiet had been so much better than her talk. His intelligence was
+      proven now, when it came to the great test, to be of a stronger sort than
+      hers. He was wise and good and gentle&mdash;and a fighting man! &ldquo;We know
+      what they've done to this country and what they mean to do to ours. So
+      we're going to attend to them.&rdquo; She read this over, and she knew that
+      Ramsey, wise and gentle and good, would fight like an unchained devil, and
+      that he and his comrades would indeed and indeed do what they &ldquo;came for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn't you,&rdquo; he said. She nodded gently, agreeing, and knew what it
+      was that sent him. Yet Ramsey had his own secret there, and did not tell
+      it. Sometimes there rose, faint in his memory, a whimsical picture, yet
+      one that had always meant much to him. He would see an old man sitting
+      with a little boy upon a rustic bench under a walnut tree to watch the
+      &ldquo;Decoration Day Parade&rdquo; go by&mdash;and Ramsey would see a shoot of
+      sunshine that had somehow got through the walnut tree and made a
+      bedazzlement of glinting fine lines over a spot about the size of a
+      saucer, upon the old man's thick white hair. And in Ramsey's memory, the
+      little boy, sitting beside the veteran, would half close his eyes,
+      drowsily, playing that this sunshine spot was a white bird's-nest, until
+      he had a momentary dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and
+      wore a blue soldier cap on its head. And Ramsey would bring out of his
+      memory thoughts that the old man had got into the child's head that day.
+      &ldquo;We knew that armies fighting for the Freedom of Man <i>had</i> to win, in
+      the long run.... We were on the side of God's Plan.... Long ago we began
+      to see hints of His Plan.... Man has to win his freedom from himself&mdash;men
+      in the light have to fight against men in the dark.... That light is the
+      answer.... We had the light that made us never doubt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A long while Dora sat with the letter in her hand before she answered it
+      and took it upon her heart to wear. That was the place for it, since it
+      was already within her heart, where he would find it when he came home
+      again. And she beheld the revelation sent to her. This ordinary life of
+      Ramsey's was but the outward glinting of a high and splendid spirit, as
+      high and splendid as earth can show. And yet it was only the life of an
+      everyday American boy. The streets of the town were full, now, of boys
+      like Ramsey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first they were just boys in uniform; then one saw that they were boys
+      no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were soldiers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
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+</html>
diff --git a/2595.txt b/2595.txt
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+++ b/2595.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,5026 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ramsey Milholland, by Booth Tarkington
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ramsey Milholland
+
+Author: Booth Tarkington
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2006 [EBook #2595]
+[Last updated: January 13, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMSEY MILHOLLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Earle Beach and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+RAMSEY MILHOLLAND
+
+
+by Booth Tarkington
+
+
+
+
+To the Memory of Billy Miller (William Henry Harrison Miller II) 1908 -
+1918 Little Patriot, Good Citizen Friend of Mankind
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+     When Johnnie comes marching home again,
+     Hurrah!  Hurrah!
+     We'll give him a hearty welcome then,
+     Hurrah!  Hurrah!
+     The men with the cheers, the boys with shouts,
+     The ladies they will all turn out,
+     And we'll all feel gay, when Johnnie comes marching home again!
+
+The old man and the little boy, his grandson, sat together in the shade
+of the big walnut tree in the front yard, watching the "Decoration
+Day Parade," as it passed up the long street; and when the last of the
+veterans was out of sight the grandfather murmured the words of the tune
+that came drifting back from the now distant band at the head of the
+procession.
+
+"Yes, we'll all feel gay when Johnnie comes marching home again," he
+finished, with a musing chuckle.
+
+"Did you, Grandpa?" the boy asked.
+
+"Did I what?"
+
+"Did you all feel gay when the army got home?"
+
+"It didn't get home all at once, precisely," the grandfather explained.
+"When the war was over I suppose we felt relieved, more than anything
+else."
+
+"You didn't feel so gay when the war _was_, though, I guess!" the boy
+ventured.
+
+"I guess we didn't."
+
+"Were you scared, Grandpa? Were you ever scared the Rebels would win?"
+
+"No. We weren't ever afraid of that."
+
+"Not any at all?"
+
+"No. Not any at all."
+
+"Well, weren't you ever scared yourself, Grandpa? I mean when you were
+in a battle."
+
+"Oh, yes; _then_ I was." The old man laughed. "Scared plenty!"
+
+"I don't see why," the boy said promptly. "I wouldn't be scared in a
+battle."
+
+"Wouldn't you?"
+
+"'Course not! Grandpa, why don't you march in the Decoration Day Parade?
+Wouldn't they let you?"
+
+"I'm not able to march any more. Too short of breath and too shaky in
+the legs and too blind."
+
+"I wouldn't care," said the boy. "I'd be in the parade anyway, if I was
+you. They had some sittin' in carriages, 'way at the tail end; but I
+wouldn't like that. If I'd been in your place, Grandpa, and they'd let
+me be in that parade, I'd been right up by the band. Look, Grandpa!
+Watch me, Grandpa! This is the way I'd be, Grandpa."
+
+He rose from the garden bench where they sat, and gave a complex
+imitation of what had most appealed to him as the grandeurs of the
+procession, his prancing legs simulating those of the horse of the grand
+marshal, while his upper parts rendered the drums and bugles of the
+band, as well as the officers and privates of the militia company which
+had been a feature of the parade. The only thing he left out was the
+detachment of veterans.
+
+"Putty-boom! Putty-boom! Putty-boom-boom-boom!" he vociferated, as the
+drums--and then as the bugles: "Ta, ta, ra, tara!" He addressed his
+restive legs: "_Whoa_, there, you Whitey! Gee! Haw! Git up!" Then,
+waving an imaginary sword: "Col-lumn right! Farwud _March!_ Halt! Carry
+_harms!_" He "carried arms." "Show-dler _harms!_" He "shouldered arms,"
+and returned to his seat.
+
+"That'd be me, Grandpa. That's the way I'd do." And as the grandfather
+nodded, seeming to agree, a thought recently dismissed returned to the
+mind of the composite procession and he asked:
+
+"Well, _why_ weren't you ever afraid the Rebels would whip the Unions,
+Grandpa?"
+
+"Oh, we knew they couldn't."
+
+"I guess so." The little boy laughed disdainfully, thinking his question
+satisfactorily answered. "I guess those ole Rebels couldn't whipped a
+flea! They didn't know how to fight any at all, did they, Grandpa?"
+
+"Oh, yes, they did!"
+
+"What?" The boy was astounded. "Weren't they all just reg'lar ole
+cowards, Grandpa?"
+
+"No," said the grandfather. "They were pretty fine soldiers."
+
+"They were? Well, they ran away whenever you began shootin' at 'em,
+didn't they?"
+
+"Sometimes they did, but most times they didn't. Sometimes they fought
+like wildcats--and sometimes we were the ones that ran away."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To keep from getting killed, or maybe to keep from getting captured."
+
+"But the Rebels were bad men, weren't they, Grandpa?"
+
+"No."
+
+The boy's forehead, customarily vacant, showed some little vertical
+shadows, produced by a struggle to think. "Well, but--" he began,
+slowly. "Listen, Grandpa, listen here!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Listen! Well, you said--you said you never got scared the ole Rebels
+were goin' to win."
+
+"They did win pretty often," said the grandfather. "They won a good many
+battles."
+
+"I mean, you said you never got scared they'd win the war."
+
+"No, we were never afraid of that."
+
+"Well, but if they were good men and fought like wildcats, Grandpa, and
+kep' winning battles and everything, how could that be? How could you
+_help_ bein' scared they'd win the war?"
+
+The grandfather's feeble eyes twinkled brightly. "Why, we _knew_ they
+couldn't, Ramsey."
+
+At this, the little vertical shadows on Ramsey's forehead became more
+pronounced, for he had succeeded in thinking. "Well, _they_ didn't know
+they couldn't, did they?" he argued. "They thought they were goin' to
+win, didn't they?"
+
+"Yes, I guess they did. Up till toward the last, I suppose they probably
+did. But you see they were wrong."
+
+"Well, but--" Ramsey struggled. "Listen! Listen here, Grandpa! Well,
+anyway, if they never got scared _we'd_ win, and nobody got scared
+_they'd_ win--well, I don't see--"
+
+"You don't see what?"
+
+But Ramsey found himself unable to continue his concentration; he
+slumped down upon the small of his back, and his brow relaxed to its
+more comfortable placidity, while his eyes wandered with a new butterfly
+fluttering over the irises that bordered the iron picket fence at the
+south side of the yard. "Oh, nothin' much," he murmured.
+
+"I see." And his grandfather laughed again. "You mean: If the Rebels
+felt just as sure of winning the war as we did, and kept winning battles
+why shouldn't we ever have had any doubts that we were going to win?
+That's it, isn't it?"
+
+"I guess so, Grandpa."
+
+"Well, I think it was mostly because we were certain that we were
+right."
+
+"I see," said Ramsey. "The Rebels knew they were on the side of the
+Devil." But at this, the grandfather's laugh was louder than it had been
+before, and Ramsey looked hurt. "Well, you can laugh if you want to!" he
+objected in an aggrieved voice. "Anyway, the Sunday-school sup'intendent
+told us when people knew they were on the Devil's side they always--"
+
+"I dare say, I dare say," the old man interrupted, a little impatiently.
+"But in this world mighty few people think they're on the Devil's side,
+Ramsey. There was a Frenchman once, in olden times; he said people were
+crazy because, though they couldn't even make worms, they believed they
+could make gods. And so whenever countries or parts of a country get
+into a war, each side makes a god and a devil, and says: 'God's on our
+side and the Devil's on the other.' The South thought the Devil was on
+our side, you see."
+
+"Well, that kind o' mixes it all up more'n ever."
+
+"Yes, it seems so; but Abraham Lincoln wasn't mixed up about it. When
+some people told him that God was on our side, he said the important
+thing was to find out if we were on God's side. That was the whole
+question, you see; because either side could make up a god, the kind of
+a god they liked and wanted; and then they'd believe in him, too, and
+fight for him--but if he was only a made-up god they'd lose. President
+Lincoln didn't want to have a made-up god on his side; he wanted to find
+God Himself and find out what he wanted, and then do it. And that's what
+Lincoln did."
+
+"Well, I don't understand much of all _that_!"
+
+"No? Then suppose you look at it this way: The South was fighting
+for what it believed to be its rights, but we weren't fighting for our
+rights; we were fighting for the right. The South was fighting for
+what it believed to be its right to split the Union and be a country by
+itself; but we were fighting for 'Liberty and Union, now and forever,
+one and inseparable.' It wasn't only the Union we fought for; it was
+Freedom. The South wanted freedom to leave the Union; but the reason the
+South wanted that freedom to separate from us was because _we_ wanted
+the Freedom of Man. _There's_ the reason we had the certain knowledge
+that we were going to win the war. How plain and simple it is!"
+
+Ramsey didn't think so. He had begun to feel bored by the conversation,
+and to undergo the oppression he usually suffered in school; yet he took
+a little interest in the inexplicable increase of fervour with which his
+grandfather spoke, and in a shoot of sunshine which somehow got through
+the foliage of the walnut tree and made a bedazzlement of glinting fine
+lines in one spot, about the size of a saucer, upon the old man's head
+of thick white hair. Half closing his eyes, drowsily, Ramsey played that
+this sunshine spot was a white bird's-nest and, and he had a momentary
+half dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue
+soldier cap on its head. The earnest old voice of the veteran was only a
+sound in the boy's ears.
+
+"Yes, it's simple and plain enough now, though then we didn't often
+think of it in exactly this way, but just went on fighting and
+never doubted. We knew the struggle and suffering of our fathers and
+grandfathers to make a great country here for Freedom, and we knew that
+all this wasn't just the whim of a foolish god, willing to waste such
+great things--we knew that such a country couldn't have been building up
+just to be wasted. But, more than that, we knew that armies fighting
+for the Freedom of Man _had_ to win, in the long run, over armies that
+fought for what they considered their rights.
+
+"We didn't set out to free the slaves, so far as we knew. Yet our being
+against slavery was what made the war, and we had the consciousness
+that we were on the side of God's plan, because His plan is clearly the
+Freedom of Man. Long ago we began to see the hints of His plan--a little
+like the way you can see what's coming in August from what happens in
+April, but man has to win his freedom from himself--men in the light
+have to fight against men in the dark of their own shadow. That light is
+the answer; we had the light that made us never doubt. Ours was the true
+light, and so we--"
+
+
+"Boom--" The veterans had begun to fire their cannon on the crest of
+the low hill, out at the cemetery; and from a little way down the street
+came the rat-a-tat of a toy drum and sounds of a fife played execrably.
+A file of children in cocked hats made of newspapers came marching
+importantly up the sidewalk under the maple shade trees; and in advance,
+upon a velocipede, rode a tin-sworded personage, shrieking incessant
+commands but not concerning himself with whether or not any military
+obedience was thereby obtained. Here was a revivifying effect upon young
+Ramsey; his sluggard eyelids opened electrically; he leaped to his feet
+and, abandoning his grandfather without preface or apology, sped across
+the lawn and out of the gate, charging headlong upon the commander of
+the company.
+
+"You get off that 'locipede, Wesley Bender!" he bellowed. "You gimme
+that sword! What rights you got to go bein' captain o' my army, I'd like
+to know! Who got up this army, in the first place, I'd like to know! I
+did, myself yesterd'y afternoon, and you get back in line or I won't let
+you b'long to it at all!"
+
+The pretender succumbed; he instantly dismounted, being out-shouted and
+overawed. On foot he took his place in the ranks, while Ramsey became
+sternly vociferous. "In-tention, company! Farwud _march_! Col-lumn
+_right_! Right-showdler _harms_! Halt! Far-wud _march_. Carry harms--"
+
+The Army went trudging away under the continuous but unheeded fire of
+orders, and presently disappeared round a corner, leaving the veteran
+chuckling feebly under his walnut tree and alone with the empty street.
+All trace of what he had said seemed to have been wiped from the
+grandson's mind; but memory has curious ways. Ramsey had understood
+not a fifth nor a tenth of his grandfather's talk, and already he had
+"forgotten" all of it--yet not only were there many, many times in the
+boy's later life when, without ascertainable cause, he would remember
+the sunlight falling upon the old man's white head, to make that
+semblance of a glittering bird's-nest there, but with the picture came
+recollections of words and sentences spoken by the grandfather, though
+the listener, half-drowsily, had heard but the sound of an old,
+earnest voice--and even the veteran's meaning finally took on a greater
+definiteness till it became, in the grandson's thoughts, something clear
+and bright and beautiful that he knew without being just sure where or
+how he had learned it.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+Ramsey Milholland sat miserably in school, his conscious being
+consisting principally of a dull hate. Torpor was a little dispersed
+during a fifteen-minute interval of "Music," when he and all the other
+pupils in the large room of the "Five B. Grade" sang repeated fractions
+of what they enunciated as "The Star Span-guh-hulled Banner"; but
+afterward he relapsed into the low spirits and animosity natural to
+anybody during enforced confinement under instruction. No alleviation
+was accomplished by an invader's temporary usurpation of the teacher's
+platform, a brisk and unsympathetically cheerful young woman mounting
+thereon to "teach German."
+
+For a long time mathematics and German had been about equally repulsive
+to Ramsey, who found himself daily in the compulsory presence of both;
+but he was gradually coming to regard German with the greater horror,
+because, after months of patient mental resistance, he at last began to
+comprehend that the German language has sixteen special and particular
+ways of using the German article corresponding to that flexible bit of a
+word so easily managed English--_the_. What in the world was the use of
+having sixteen ways of doing a thing that could just as well be done in
+one? If the Germans had contented themselves with insisting upon sixteen
+useless variations for infrequent words, such as _hippopotamus_, for
+instance, Ramsey might have thought the affair unreasonable but not
+necessarily vicious--it would be easy enough to avoid talking about
+a hippopotamus if he ever had to go to Germany. But the fact that the
+Germans picked out _a_ and _the_ and many other little words in use all
+the time, and gave every one of them sixteen forms, and expected Ramsey
+Milholland to learn this dizzying uselessness down to the last crotchety
+detail, with "When to employ Which" as a nausea to prepare for the
+final convulsion when one _didn't_ use Which, because it was an
+"Exception"--there was a fashion of making easy matters hard that was
+merely hellish.
+
+The teacher was strict but enthusiastic; she told the children, over and
+over, that German was a beautiful language, and her face always had a
+glow when she said this. At such times the children looked patient; they
+supposed it must be so, because she was an adult and their teacher; and
+they believed her with the same manner of believing which those of them
+who went to Sunday-school used there when the Sunday-school teachers
+were pushed into explanations of various matters set forth in the Old
+Testament, or gave reckless descriptions of heaven. That is to say, the
+children did not challenge or deny; already they had been driven into
+habits of resignation and were passing out of the age when childhood is
+able to reject adult nonsense.
+
+Thus, to Ramsey Milholland, the German language seemed to be a
+collection of perverse inventions for undeserved torment; it was full of
+revolting surprises in the way of genders; vocally it often necessitated
+the employment of noises suggestive of an incompletely mastered
+knowledge of etiquette; and far inside him there was something faintly
+but constantly antagonistic to it--yet, when the teacher declared that
+German was incomparably the most beautiful language in the world, one of
+the many facets of his mind submissively absorbed the statement as light
+to be passed inward; it was part of the lesson to be learned. He did not
+know whether the English language was beautiful or not; he never thought
+about that, and no one ever said anything to him about it. Moreover,
+though his deeper inward hated "German," he liked his German teacher,
+and it was pleasant to look at her when that glow came upon her face.
+
+Sometimes, too, there were moments of relaxation in her class, when
+she would stop the lesson and tell the children about Germany: what a
+beautiful, good country it was, so trim and orderly, with such pleasant
+customs, and all the people sensible and energetic and healthy. There
+was "Music" again in the German class, which was another alleviation;
+though it was the same old "Star Spangled Banner" over again. Ramsey
+was tired of the song and tired of "My Country 'Tis of Thee"; they were
+bores, but it was amusing to sing them in German. In German they sounded
+"sort o' funny," so he didn't mind this bit of the day's work.
+
+Half an hour later there arrived his supreme trial of this particular
+morning. Arithmetic then being the order of business before the house,
+he was sent alone to the blackboard, supposedly to make lucid the proper
+reply to a fatal conundrum in decimals, and under the glare and focus of
+the whole room he breathed heavily and itched everywhere; his brain at
+once became sheer hash. He consumed as much time as possible in getting
+the terms of the problem stated in chalk; then, affecting to be critical
+of his own handiwork, erased what he had done and carefully wrote it
+again. After that, he erased half of it, slowly retraced the figures,
+and stepped back as if to see whether perspective improved their
+appearance. Again he lifted the eraser.
+
+"Ramsey Milholland!"
+
+"Ma'am?"
+
+"Put down that eraser!"
+
+"Yes'm. I just thought--"
+
+Sharply bidden to get forward with his task, he explained in a feeble
+voice that he had first to tie a shoe string and stooped to do so, but
+was not permitted. Miss Ridgely tried to stimulate him with hints and
+suggestion; found him, so far as decimals went, mere protoplasm, and,
+wondering how so helpless a thing could live, summoned to the board
+little Dora Yocum, the star of the class, whereupon Ramsey moved toward
+his seat.
+
+"Stand still, Ramsey! You stay right where you are and try to learn
+something from the way Dora does it."
+
+The class giggled, and Ramsey stood, but learned nothing. His
+conspicuousness was unendurable, because all of his schoolmates
+naturally found more entertainment in watching him than in following
+the performance of the capable Dora. He put his hands in and out of his
+pockets; was bidden to hold them still, also not to shuffle his feet;
+and when in a false assumption of ease he would have scratched his head
+Miss Ridgely's severity increased, so that he was compelled to give over
+the attempt.
+
+Instructed to watch every figure chalked up by the mathematical wonder,
+his eyes, grown sodden, were unable to remove themselves from the part
+in her hair at the back of her head, where two little braids began their
+separate careers to end in a couple of blue-and-red checked bits of
+ribbon, one upon each of her thin shoulder blades. He was conscious that
+the part in Dora's shining brown hair was odious, but he was unconscious
+of anything arithmetical. His sensations clogged his intellect; he
+suffered from unsought notoriety, and hated Dora Yocum; most of all he
+hated her busy little shoulder blades.
+
+He had to be "kept in" after school; and when he was allowed to go home
+he averted his eyes as he went by the house where Dora lived. She was
+out in the yard, eating a doughnut, and he knew it; but he had passed
+the age when it is just as permissible to throw a rock at a girl as at a
+boy; and stifling his normal inclinations, he walked sturdily on, though
+he indulged himself so far as to engage in a murmured conversation with
+one of the familiar spirits dwelling somewhere within him. "Pfa!" said
+Ramsey to himself--or himself to Ramsey, since it is difficult to say
+which was which. "Pfa! Thinks she's smart, don't she?"... "Well, I guess
+she does, but she ain't!" ... "I hate her, don't you?"... "You bet
+your life I hate her!"... "Teacher's Pet, that's what _I_ call her!"...
+"Well, that's what _I_ call her, too, don't I?" "Well, _I_ do; that's
+all she is, anyway--dirty ole Teacher's Pet!"
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+He had not forgiven her four years later when he entered high school
+in her company, for somehow Ramsey managed to shovel his way through
+examinations and stayed with the class. By this time he had a long
+accumulation of reasons for hating her: Dora's persistent and increasing
+competency was not short of flamboyant, and teachers naturally got the
+habit of flinging their quickest pupil in the face of their slowest and
+"dumbest." Nevertheless, Ramsey was unable to deny that she had become
+less awful lookin' than she used to be. At least, he was honest enough
+to make a partial retraction when his friend and classmate, Fred
+Mitchell, insisted that an amelioration of Dora's appearance could be
+actually proven.
+
+"Well, I'll take it back. I don't claim she's every last bit as awful
+lookin' as she always has been," said Ramsey, toward the conclusion of
+the argument. "I'll say this for her, she's awful lookin', but she may
+not be as awful lookin' as she was. She don't come to school with the
+edge of some of her underclo'es showin' below her dress any more, about
+every other day, and her eyewinkers have got to stickin' out some, and
+she may not be so abbasa_loot_ly skinny, but she'll haf to wait a mighty
+long while before _I_ want to look at her without gettin' sick!"
+
+The implication that Miss Yocum cared to have Ramsey look at her, either
+with or without gettin' sick, was mere rhetoric, and recognized as such
+by the producer of it; she had never given the slightest evidence of
+any desire that his gaze be bent upon her. What truth lay underneath his
+flourish rested upon the fact that he could not look at her without some
+symptoms of the sort he had tersely sketched to his friend; and yet, so
+pungent is the fascination of self-inflicted misery, he did look at her,
+during periods of study, often for three or four minutes at a stretch.
+His expression at such times indeed resembled that of one who has dined
+unwisely; but Dora Yocum was always too eagerly busy to notice it. He
+was almost never in her eye, but she was continually in his; moreover,
+as the banner pupil she was with hourly frequency an exhibit before the
+whole class.
+
+Ramsey found her worst of all when her turn came in "Declamation,"
+on Friday afternoons. When she ascended the platform, bobbed a little
+preliminary bow and began, "Listen, my children, and you shall hear,"
+Ramsey included Paul Revere and the Old North Church and the whole
+Revolutionary War in his antipathy, since they somehow appeared to
+be the property of the Teacher's Pet. For Dora held this post in
+"Declamation" as well as in everything else; here, as elsewhere, the
+hateful child's prowess surpassed that of all others; and the teacher
+always entrusted her with the rendition of the "patriotic selections":
+Dora seemed to take fire herself when she declared:
+
+     "The fate of a nation was riding that night;
+     And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight,
+     Kindled the land into flame with its heat."
+
+Ramsey himself was in the same section of declaimers, and performed
+next--a ghastly contrast. He gave a "selection from Shakespeare,"
+assigned by the teacher; and he began this continuous misfortune by
+stumbling violently as he ascended the platform, which stimulated a
+general giggle already in being at the mere calling of his name. All of
+the class were bright with happy anticipation, for the miserable Ramsey
+seldom failed their hopes, particularly in "Declamation." He faced them,
+his complexion wan, his expression both baleful and horrified; and he
+began in a loud, hurried voice, from which every hint of intelligence
+was excluded:
+
+"Most pottent, grave, and rev--"
+
+The teacher tapped sharply on her desk, and stopped him. "You've
+forgotten to bow," she said. "And don't say 'pottent.' The word is
+'potent'."
+
+Ramsey flopped his head at the rear wall of the room, and began again:
+
+"Most pottent potent gray and revenerd signers my very nobe and approve
+good masters that I have tan away this sole man's dutter it is mose true
+true I have marry dur the very headman frun tuv my fending hath this
+extent no more rude am I in speech--in speech--rude am I in speech--in
+speech--in speech--in speech--"
+
+He had stalled. Perhaps the fatal truth of that phrase, and some sense
+of its applicability to the occasion had interfered with the mechanism
+which he had set in operation to get rid of the "recitation" for him.
+At all events, the machine had to run off its job all at once, or it
+wouldn't run at all. Stopped, it stayed stopped, and backing off granted
+no new impetus, though he tried, again and again. "Hath this extent
+no more rude am I in speech--" He gulped audibly. "Rude rude rude am
+I--rude am I in speech--in speech--in speech. Rude am I in speech--"
+
+"Yes," the irritated teacher said, as Ramsey's failing voice continued
+huskily to insist upon this point. "I think you are!" And her nerves
+were a little soothed by the shout of laughter from the school--it was
+never difficult for teachers to be witty. "Go sit down, Ramsey, and do
+it after school."
+
+His ears roaring, the unfortunate went to his seat, and, among all
+the hilarious faces, one stood out--Dora Yocum's. Her laughter was
+precocious; it was that of a confirmed superior, insufferably adult--she
+was laughing at him as a grown person laughs at a child. Conspicuously
+and unmistakably, there was something indulgent in her amusement. He
+choked. Here was a little squirt of a high-school girl who would trot
+up to George Washington himself and show off around him, given the
+opportunity; and George Washington would probably pat her on the head,
+or give her a medal--or something. Well, let him! Ramsey didn't care.
+He didn't care for George Washington, or Paul Revere, or Shakespeare, or
+any of 'em. They could all go to the dickens with Dora Yocum. They were
+all a lot of smarties anyway and he hated the whole stew of 'em!
+
+There was one, however, whom he somehow couldn't manage to hate, even
+though this one officially seemed to be as intimately associated with
+Dora Yocum and superiority as the others were. Ramsey couldn't hate
+Abraham Lincoln, even when Dora was chosen to deliver the "Gettysburg
+Address" on the twelfth of February. Vaguely, yet reassuringly, Ramsey
+felt that Lincoln had resisted adoption by the intellectuals. Lincoln
+had said "Government of the people, by the people, for the people," and
+that didn't mean government by the teacher and the Teacher's Pet
+and Paul Revere and Shakespeare and suchlike; it meant government by
+everybody, and therefore Ramsey had as much to do with it as anybody
+else had. This was friendly; and he believed that if Abraham Lincoln
+could have walked into the schoolroom, Lincoln would have been as
+friendly with him as with Dora and the teacher herself. Beyond a doubt,
+Dora and the teacher _thought_ Lincoln belonged to them and their crowd
+of exclusives; they seemed to think they owned the whole United States;
+but Ramsey was sure they were mistaken about Abraham Lincoln.
+
+He felt that it was just like this little Yocum snippet to assume such a
+thing, and it made him sicker than ever to look at her.
+
+Then, one day, he noticed that her eye-winkers were stickin' out farther
+and farther.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+His discovery irritated him the more. Next thing, this ole Teacher's Pet
+would do she'd get to thinkin' she was pretty! If _that_ happened, well,
+nobody _could_ stand her! The long lashes made her eyes shadowy, and it
+was a fact that her shoulder blades ceased to insist upon notoriety; you
+couldn't tell where they were at all, any more. Her back seemed to be
+just a regular back, not made up of a lot of implements like shoulder
+blades and things.
+
+A contemptible thing happened. Wesley Bender was well known to be the
+most untidy boy in the class and had never shown any remorse for his
+reputation or made the slightest effort either to improve or to dispute
+it. He was content: it failed to lower his standing with his fellows
+or to impress them unfavourably. In fact, he was treated as one who has
+attained a slight distinction. At least, he owned one superlative, no
+matter what its quality, and it lifted him out of the commonplace. It
+helped him to become better known, and boys liked to be seen with him.
+But one day, there was a rearrangement of the seating in the schoolroom:
+Wesley Bender was given a desk next in front of Dora Yocum's; and within
+a week the whole room knew that Wesley had begun voluntarily to wash his
+neck--the back of it, anyhow.
+
+This was at the bottom of the fight between Ramsey Milholland and Wesley
+Bender, and the diplomatic exchanges immediately preceding hostilities
+were charmingly frank and unhyprocitical, although quite as mixed-up
+and off-the-issue as if they had been prepared by professional foreign
+office men. Ramsey and Fred Mitchell and four other boys waylaid young
+Bender on the street after school, intending jocosities rather than
+violence, but the victim proved sensitive. "You take your ole hands off
+o' me!" he said fiercely, as they began to push him about among them.
+
+"Ole dirty Wes!" they hoarsely bellowed and squawked, in their changing
+voices. "Washes his ears!"... "Washes his _neck!_"... "Dora Yocum told
+his mama to turn the hose on him!"... "Yay-ho! Ole dirty Wes tryin to be
+a duke!"
+
+Wesley broke from them and backed away, swinging his strapped books in
+a dangerous circle. "You keep off!" he warned them. "I got as much right
+to my pers'nal appearance as anybody!"
+
+This richly fed their humour, and they rioted round him, keeping outside
+the swinging books at the end of the strap. "Pers'nal appearance!"...
+"Who went and bought it for you, Wes?"... "Nobody bought it for him.
+Dora Yocum took and give him one!"
+
+"You leave ladies' names alone!" cried the chivalrous Wesley. "You ought
+to know better, on the public street, you--pups!"
+
+Here was a serious affront, at least to Ramsey Milholland's way
+of thinking; for Ramsey, also, now proved sensitive. He quoted his
+friends--"Shut up!"--and advanced toward Wesley. "You look here! Who you
+callin' 'pups'?"
+
+"Everybody!" Wesley hotly returned. "Everybody that hasn't got any
+more decency than to go around mentioning ladies' names on the public
+streets. Everybody that goes around mentioning ladies' names on the
+public streets are pups!"
+
+"They are, are they?" Ramsey as hotly demanded. "Well, you just look
+here a minute; my own father mentions my mother's name on the public
+streets whenever he wants to, and you just try callin' my father a pup,
+and you won't know what happened to you!"
+
+"What'll _you_ do about it?"
+
+"I'll put a new head on you," said Ramsey. "That's what I'll do, because
+anybody that calls my father or mother a pup--"
+
+"Oh, shut up! I wasn't talking about your ole father and mother. I said
+everybody that mentioned Dora Yocum's name on the public streets was
+a pup, and I mean it! Everybody that mentions Dora Yocum's name on the
+pub--"
+
+"Dora Yocum!" said Ramsey. "I got a perfect right to say it anywhere I
+want to. Dora Yocum, Dora Yocum, Dora Yocum!--"
+
+"All right, then you're a pup!"
+
+Ramsey charged upon him and received a suffocating blow full in the
+face, not from Mr. Bender's fist but from the solid bundle of books
+at the end of the strap. Ramsey saw eight or ten objectives instantly:
+there were Wesley Benders standing full length in the air on top of
+other Wesley Benders, and more Wesley Benders zigzagged out sideways
+from still other Wesley Benders; nevertheless, he found one of these and
+it proved to be flesh. He engaged it wildly at fisticuffs; pounded
+it upon the countenance and drove it away. Then he sat down upon the
+curbstone, and, with his dizzy eyes shut, leaned forward for the better
+accommodation of his ensanguined nose.
+
+Wesley had retreated to the other side of the street holding a grimy
+handkerchief to the midmost parts of his pallid face. "There, you ole
+damn pup!" he shouted, in a voice which threatened to sob. "I guess
+_that'll_ teach you to be careful how you mention Dora Yocum's name on
+the public streets!"
+
+At this, Ramsey made a motion as if to rise and pursue, whereupon Wesley
+fled, wailing back over his shoulder as he ran, "You wait till I ketch
+you out alone on the public streets and I'll--"
+
+His voice was lost in an outburst of hooting from his former friends,
+who sympathetically surrounded the wounded Ramsey. But in a measure,
+at least, the chivalrous fugitive had won his point. He was routed and
+outdone, yet what survived the day was a rumour, which became a sort of
+tenuous legend among those interested. There had been a fight over Dora
+Yocum, it appeared, and Ramsey Milholland had attempted to maintain
+something derogatory to the lady, while Wesley defended her as a
+knightly youth should. The something derogatory was left vague; nobody
+attempted to say just what it was, and the effects of the legend divided
+the schoolroom strictly according to gender.
+
+The boys, unmindful of proper gallantry, supported Ramsey on account of
+the way he had persisted in lickin' the stuffin' out of Wesley Bender
+after receiving that preliminary wallop from Wesley's blackjack
+bundle of books. The girls petted and championed Wesley; they talked
+outrageously of his conqueror, fiercely declaring that he ought to be
+arrested; and for weeks they maintained a new manner toward him. They
+kept their facial expressions hostile, but perhaps this was more for one
+another's benefit than for Ramsey's; and several of them went so far out
+of their way to find even private opportunities for reproving him that
+an alert observer might have suspected them to have been less indignant
+than they seemed--but not Ramsey. He thought they all hated him, and
+said he was glad of it.
+
+Dora was a non-partisan. The little prig was so diligent at her books
+she gave never the slightest sign of comprehending that there had been
+a fight about her. Having no real cognizance of Messrs. Bender and
+Milholland except as impediments to the advance of learning, she did not
+even look demure.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+With Wesley Bender, Ramsey was again upon fair terms before the winter
+had run its course; the two were neighbours and, moreover, were drawn
+together by a community of interests which made their reconciliation a
+necessity. Ramsey played the guitar and Wesley played the mandolin.
+
+All ill feeling between them died with the first duet of spring, yet the
+twinkling they made had no charm to soothe the savage breast of Ramsey
+whenever the Teacher's Pet came into his thoughts. He daydreamed a
+thousand ways of putting her in her place, but was unable to carry
+out any of them, and had but a cobwebby satisfaction in imagining
+discomfitures for her which remained imaginary. With a yearning so
+poignant that it hurt, he yearned and yearned to show her what she
+really was. "Just once!" he said to Fred Mitchell. "That's all I ask,
+just once. Just gimme one chance to show that girl what she really is.
+I guess if I ever get the chance she'll find out what's the matter with
+her, for _once_ in her life, anyway!" Thus it came to be talked about
+and understood and expected in Ramsey's circle, all male, that Dora
+Yocum's day was coming. The nature of the disaster was left vague, but
+there was no doubt in the world that retribution merely awaited its
+ideal opportunity. "You'll see!" said Ramsey. "The time'll come when
+that ole girl'll wish she'd moved o' this town before she ever got
+appointed monitor of _our_ class! Just you wait!"
+
+They waited, but conditions appeared to remain unfavourable
+indefinitely. Perhaps the great opportunity might have arrived if Ramsey
+had been able to achieve a startling importance in any of the "various
+divergent yet parallel lines of school endeavour"--one of the phrases by
+means of which teachers and principal clogged the minds of their unarmed
+auditors. But though he was far from being the dumb driven beast of
+misfortune that he seemed in the schoolroom, and, in fact, lived a
+double life, exhibiting in his out-of-school hours a remarkable example
+of "secondary personality"--a creature fearing nothing and capable
+of laughter; blue-eyed, fairly robust, and anything but dumb--he was
+nevertheless without endowment or attainment great enough to get him
+distinction.
+
+He "tried for" the high-school eleven, and "tried for" the nine, but
+the experts were not long in eliminating him from either of these
+competitions, and he had to content himself with cheering instead of
+getting cheered. He was by no manner of means athlete enough, or enough
+of anything else, to put Dora Yocum in her place, and so he and the
+great opportunity were still waiting in May, at the end of the second
+year of high school, when the class, now the "10 A," reverted to an old
+fashion and decided to entertain itself with a woodland picnic.
+
+They gathered upon the sandy banks of a creek, in the blue shade of big,
+patchy-barked sycamores, with a dancing sky on top of everything and
+gold dust atwinkle over the water. Hither the napkin-covered baskets
+were brought from the wagons and assembled in the shade, where they
+appeared as an attractive little meadow of white napery, and gave both
+surprise and pleasure to communities of ants and to other original
+settlers of the neighbourhood.
+
+From this nucleus or headquarters of the picnic, various expeditions
+set forth up and down the creek and through the woods that bordered it.
+Camera work was constant; spring wild flowers were accumulated by groups
+of girls who trooped through the woods with eager eyes searching the
+thickets; two envied boy fishermen established themselves upon a bank
+up-stream, with hooks and lines thoughtfully brought with them, and
+poles which they fashioned from young saplings. They took mussels from
+the shallows, for bait, and having gone to all this trouble, declined
+to share with friends less energetic and provident the perquisites and
+pleasures secured to themselves.
+
+Albert Paxton was another person who proved his enterprise. Having
+visited the spot some days before, he had hired for his exclusive use
+throughout the duration of the picnic an old rowboat belonging to a
+shanty squatter; it was the only rowboat within a mile or two and Albert
+had his own uses for it. Albert was the class lover and, after first
+taking the three chaperon teachers "out for a row," an excursion
+concluded in about ten minutes, he disembarked them; Sadie Clews stepped
+into the boat, a pocket camera in one hand, a tennis racket in the
+other; and the two spent the rest of the day, except for the luncheon
+interval, solemnly drifting along the banks or grounded on a shoal. Now
+and then Albert would row a few strokes, and at almost any time when the
+populated shore glanced toward them, Sadie would be seen photographing
+Albert, or Albert would be seen photographing Sadie, but the tennis
+racket remained an enigma. Oarsman and passenger appeared to have no
+conversation whatever--not once was either seen or heard to address a
+remark to the other; and they looked as placid as their own upside-down
+reflections in one of the still pools they slowly floated over. They
+were sixteen, and had been "engaged" more than two years.
+
+On the borders of the little meadow of baskets there had been deposited
+two black shapes, which remained undisturbed throughout the day, a
+closed guitar case and a closed mandolin case, no doubt containing each
+its proper instrument. So far as any use of these went they seemed to be
+of the same leisure class to which Sadie's tennis racket belonged, for
+when one of the teachers suggested music, the musicians proved shy.
+Wesley Bender said they hadn't learned to play anything much and,
+besides, he had a couple o' broken strings he didn't know as he could
+fix up; and Ramsey said he guessed it seemed kind o' too hot to play
+much. Joining friends, they organized a contest in marksmanship, the
+target being a floating can which they assailed with pebbles; and after
+that they "skipped" flat stones upon the surface of the water, then went
+to join a group gathered about Willis Parker and Heinie Krusemeyer.
+
+No fish had been caught, a lack of luck crossly attributed by the
+fishermen to the noise made by constant advice on the part of their
+attendant gallery. Messrs. Milholland, Bender, and the other rock
+throwers came up shouting, and were ill received.
+
+"For heaven's sakes," Heinie Krusemeyer demanded, "can't you shut up?
+Here we just first got the girls to keep their mouths shut a minute and
+I almost had a big pickerel or something on my hook, and here you got
+to up and yell so he chases himself away! Why can't nobody show a little
+sense sometimes when they ought to?"
+
+"I should say so!" his comrade exclaimed. "If people would only just
+take and think of all the trouble we been to, it seems funny somebody
+couldn't let us have half a chance to get a few good fish. What chance
+they got to bite with a lot o' _girls_ gabbin' away, and then, just as
+we get 'em quieted down, all you men got to come bustin' up here yellin'
+your heads off. A fish isn't goin' to bite when he can't even hear
+himself think! Anybody ought to know that much."
+
+But the new arrivals hooted. _"Fish!"_ Ramsey vociferated. "I'll bet
+a hundred dollars there hasn't been even a minny in this creek for the
+last sixty years!"
+
+"There is, too!" said Heinie, bitterly. "But I wouldn't be surprised
+there wouldn't be no longer if you got to keep up this noise. If you'd
+shut up just a minute you could see yourself there's fish here."
+
+In whispers several of the tamed girls at once heartily corroborated
+this statement, whereupon the newcomers ceased to gibe and consented to
+silence. Ramsey leaned forth over the edge of the overhanging bank,
+a dirt precipice five feet above the water, and peered into the
+indeterminable depths below. The pool had been stirred, partly by the
+inexpert pokings of the fishermen and partly by small clods and bits
+of dirt dislodged from above by the feet of the audience. The water,
+consequently, was but brownly translucent and revealed its secrets
+reluctantly; nevertheless certain dim little shapes had been observed
+to move within it, and were still there. Ramsey failed to see them at
+first.
+
+"Where's any ole fish?" he inquired, scornfully.
+
+"Oh, my goodness!" Heinie Krusemeyer moaned. "_Can't_ you shut up?"
+
+"Look!" whispered the girl who stood nearest to Ramsey. She pointed.
+"There's one. Right down there by Willis's hook. Don't you see him?"
+
+Ramsey was impressed enough to whisper. "Is there? I don't see him. I
+can't--"
+
+The girl came closer to him, and, the better to show him, leaned out
+over the edge of the bank, and, for safety in maintaining her balance,
+rested her left hand upon his shoulder while she pointed with her right.
+Thereupon something happened to Ramsey. The touch upon his shoulder was
+almost nothing, and he had never taken the slightest interest in Milla
+Rust (to whom that small warm hand belonged), though she was the class
+beauty, and long established in the office. Now, all at once, a peculiar
+and heretofore entirely unfamiliar sensation suddenly became important
+in the upper part of his chest. For a moment he held his breath, an
+involuntary action;--he seemed to be standing in a shower of flowers.
+
+"Don't you see it, Ramsey?" Milla whispered. "It's a great big one. Why,
+it must be as long as--as your shoe! Look!"
+
+Ramsey saw nothing but the thick round curl on Milla's shoulder. Milla
+had a group of curls on each of her shoulders, for she got her modes at
+the Movies and had that sort of prettiness: large, gentle, calculating
+eyes, and a full, softly modelled face, implacably sweet. Ramsey was
+accustomed to all this charm, and Milla had never before been of more
+importance to him than an equal weight of school furniture--but all at
+once some magic had enveloped her. That curl upon the shoulder
+nearest him was shot with dazzling fibres of sunshine. He seemed to be
+trembling.
+
+"I don't see it," he murmured, huskily, afraid that she might remove her
+hand. "I can't see any fish, Milla."
+
+She leaned farther out over the bank. "Why, there, goosie!" she
+whispered. "Right there."
+
+"I can't see it."
+
+She leaned still farther, bending down to point. "Why right th--"
+
+At this moment she removed her hand from his shoulder, though
+unwillingly. She clutched at him, in fact, but without avail. She had
+been too amiable.
+
+A loud shriek was uttered by throats abler to vocalize, just then, than
+Milla's, for in her great surprise she said nothing whatever--the shriek
+came from the other girls as Milla left the crest of the overhanging
+bank and almost horizontally disappeared into the brown water. There
+was a tumultuous splash, and then of Milla Rust and her well-known
+beautifulness there was nothing visible in the superficial world, nor
+upon the surface of that creek. The vanishment was total.
+
+"_Save_ her!"
+
+Several girls afterward admitted having used this expression, and little
+Miss Floy Williams, the youngest and smallest member of the class, was
+unable to deny that she had said, "Oh, God!" Nothing could have been
+more natural, and the matter need not have been brought before her with
+such insistence and frequency, during the two remaining years of her
+undergraduate career.
+
+Ramsey was one of those who heard this exclamation, later so famous,
+and perhaps it was what roused him to heroism. He dived from the bank,
+headlong, and the strange thought in his mind was "I guess _this_'ll
+show Dora Yocum!" He should have been thinking of Milla, of course, at
+such a time, particularly after the little enchantment just laid upon
+him by Milla's touch and Milla's curls; and he knew well enough that
+Miss Yocum was not among the spectators. She was half a mile away, as
+it happened, gathering "botanical specimens" with one of the
+teachers--which was her idea of what to do at a picnic!
+
+Ramsey struck the water hard, and in the same instant struck something
+harder. Wesley Bender's bundle of books had given him no such shock
+as he received now, and if the creek bottom had not been of mud, just
+there, the top of his young head might have declined the strain. Half
+stunned, choking, spluttering he somehow floundered to his feet; and
+when he could get his eyes a little cleared of water he found himself
+wavering face to face with a blurred vision of Milla Rust. She had risen
+up out of the pond and stood knee deep, like a lovely drenched figure in
+a fountain.
+
+Upon the bank above them, Willis Parker was jumping up and down,
+gesticulating and shouting fiercely. "Now I guess you're satisfied our
+fishin' _is_ spoilt! Whyn't you listen me? I _told_ you it wasn't more'n
+three feet deep! I and Heinie waded all over this creek gettin' our
+bait. You're a pretty sight!"
+
+Of Milla he spoke unwittingly the literal truth. Even with her hair thus
+wild and sodden, Milla rose from immersion blushing and prettier than
+ever; and she was prettiest of all when she stretched out her hand
+helplessly to Ramsey and he led her up out of the waters. They had
+plenty of assistance to scramble to the top of the bank, and there Milla
+was surrounded and borne away with a great clacketing and tumult. Ramsey
+gave his coat into the hands of friends, who twisted the water out of
+it for him, while he sat upon the grass in the sun, rubbed his head, and
+experimented with his neck to see if it would "work." The sunshine was
+strong and hot; in half an hour he and his clothes were dry--or at least
+"dry enough," as he said, and except for some soreness of head and neck,
+and the general crumpledness of his apparel, he seemed to be in all
+ways much as usual when shouts and whistlings summoned all the party
+to luncheon at the rendezvous. The change that made him different was
+invisible.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+The change in Ramsey was invisible, and yet something must have been
+seen, for everyone appeared to take it for granted that he was to
+sit next to Milla at the pastoral meal. She herself understood it,
+evidently, for she drew in her puckered skirts and without any words
+make a place for him beside her as he driftingly approached her,
+affecting to whistle and keeping his eyes on the foliage overhead. He
+still looked upward, even in the act of sitting down.
+
+"Squirrel or something," he said, feebly, as if in explanation.
+
+"Where?" Milla asked.
+
+"Up there on a branch." He accepted a plate from her (she had provided
+herself with an extra one), but he did not look at it or her. "I'm not
+just exactly sure it's a squirrel," he said. "Kind of hard to make out
+exactly what it is." He continued to keep his eyes aloft, because he
+imagined that all of the class were looking at him and Milla, and he
+felt unable to meet such publicity. It was to him as if the whole United
+States had been scandalized to attention by this act of his in going
+to sit beside Milla; he gazed upward so long that his eyeballs became
+sensitive under the strain. He began to blink. "I can't make out whether
+it's a squirrel or just some leaves that kind o' got fixed like one,"
+he said. "I can't make out yet which it is, but I guess when there's a
+breeze, if it's a squirrel he'll prob'ly hop around some then, if he's
+alive or anything."
+
+It had begun to seem that his eyes must remain fixed in that upward
+stare forever; he wanted to bring them down, but could not face the
+glare of the world. So the fugitive ostrich is said to bury his head in
+the sand; he does it, not believing himself thereby hidden but trying to
+banish from his own cognizance terrible facts which his unsheltered eyes
+have seemed to reveal. So, too, do nervous children seek to bury their
+eyes under pillows, and nervous statesmen theirs under oratory. Ramsey's
+ostrichings can happen to anybody. But finally the brightness of the sky
+between the leaves settled matters for him; he sneezed, wept, and for
+a little moment again faced his fellowmen. No one was looking at him;
+everybody except Milla had other things to do.
+
+Having sneezed involuntarily, he added a spell of coughing for which
+there was no necessity. "I guess I must be wrong," he muttered thickly.
+
+"What about, Ramsey?"
+
+"About it bein' a squirrel." With infinite timidity he turned his head
+and encountered a gaze so soft, so hallowed, that it disconcerted him,
+and he dropped a "drumstick" of fried chicken, well dotted with ants,
+from his plate. Scarlet he picked it up, but did not eat it. For the
+first time in his life he felt that eating fried chicken held in the
+fingers was not to be thought of. He replaced the "drumstick" upon his
+plate and allowed it to remain there untouched, in spite of a great
+hunger for it.
+
+Having looked down, he now found difficulty in looking up, but gazed
+steadily at his plate, and into this limited circle of vision came
+Milla's delicate and rosy fingers, bearing a gift. "There," she said in
+a motherly little voice. "It's a tomato mayonnaise sandwich and I made
+it myself. I want you to eat it, Ramsey."
+
+His own fingers approached tremulousness as he accepted the thick
+sandwich from her and conveyed it to his mouth. A moment later his soul
+filled with horror, for a spurt of mayonnaise dressing had caused a
+catastrophe the scene of which occupied no inconsiderable area of his
+right cheek; which was the cheek toward Milla. He groped wretchedly for
+his handkerchief but could not find it; he had lost it. Sudden death
+would have been relief; he was sure that after such grotesquerie Milla
+could never bear to have anything more to do with him; he was ruined.
+
+In his anguish he felt a paper napkin pressed gently into his hand; a
+soft voice said in his ear, "Wipe it off with this, Ramsey. Nobody's
+noticing."
+
+So this incredibly charitable creature was still able to be his friend,
+even after seeing him mayonnaised! Humbly marvelling, he did as she told
+him, but avoided all further risks. He ate nothing more.
+
+He sighed his first sigh of inexpressibleness, had a chill or so along
+the spine, and at intervals his brow was bedewed.
+
+Within his averted eyes there dwelt not the Milla Rust who sat beside
+him, but an iridescent, fragile creature who had become angelic.
+
+He spent the rest of the day dawdling helplessly about her; wherever she
+went he was near, as near as possible, but of no deliberate volition of
+his own. Something seemed to tie him to her, and Milla was nothing loth.
+He seldom looked at her directly, or for longer than an instant, and
+more rarely still did he speak to her except as a reply. What few
+remarks he ventured upon his own initiative nearly all concerned the
+landscape, which he commended repeatedly in a weak voice, as "kind of
+pretty," though once he said he guessed there might be bugs in the bark
+of a log on which they sat; and he became so immoderately personal as to
+declare that if the bugs had to get on anybody he'd rather they got on
+him than on Milla. She said that was "just perfectly lovely" of him,
+asked where he got his sweet nature, and in other ways encouraged him to
+continue the revelation, but Ramsey was unable to get forward with it,
+though he opened and closed his mouth a great many times in the effort
+to do so.
+
+At five o'clock everybody was summoned again to the rendezvous for a
+ceremony preliminary to departure: the class found itself in a large
+circle, standing, and sang "The Star Spangled Banner." Ordinarily, on
+such an open-air and out-of-school occasion, Ramsey would have joined
+the chorus uproariously with the utmost blatancy of which his vocal
+apparatus was capable; and most of the other boys expressed their humour
+by drowning out the serious efforts of the girls; but he sang feebly,
+not much more than humming through his teeth. Standing beside Milla,
+he was incapable of his former inelegancies and his voice was in a
+semi-paralyzed condition, like the rest of him.
+
+
+Opposite him, across the circle, Dora Yocum stood a little in advance of
+those near her, for of course she led the singing. Her clear and earnest
+voice was distinguishable from all others, and though she did not
+glance toward Ramsey he had a queer feeling that she was assuming more
+superiority than ever, and that she was icily scornful of him and Milla.
+The old resentment rose--he'd "show" that girl yet, some day!
+
+When the song was over, cheers were given for the class, "the good
+ole class of Nineteen Fourteen," the school, the teachers, and for the
+picnic, thus officially concluded; and then the picnickers, carrying
+their baskets and faded wild flowers and other souvenirs and burdens,
+moved toward the big "express wagons" which were to take them back into
+the town. Ramsey got his guitar case, and turned to Milla.
+
+"Well--" he said.
+
+"Well what, Ramsey?"
+
+"Well--g'bye."
+
+"Why, no," said Milla. "Anyways not yet. You can go back in the same
+wagon with me. It's going to stop at the school and let us out there,
+and then you could walk home with me if you felt like it. You could come
+all the way to our gate with me, I expect, unless you'd be late home for
+your supper."
+
+"Well--well, I'd be perfectly willing," Ramsey said. "Only I heard we
+all had to go back in whatever wagon we came out in, and I didn't come
+in the same wagon with you, so--"
+
+Milla laughed and leaned toward him a little. "I already 'tended to
+that," she said confidentially. "I asked Johnnie Fiske, that came out in
+my wagon, to go back in yours, so that makes room for you."
+
+"Well--then I guess I could do it." He moved toward the wagon with her.
+"I expect it don't make much difference one way or the other."
+
+"And you can carry my basket if you want to," she said, adding
+solicitously, "Unless it's too heavy when you already got your guitar
+case to carry, Ramsey."
+
+This thoughtfulness of hers almost overcame him; she seemed divine.
+He gulped, and emotion made him even pinker than he had been under the
+mayonnaise.
+
+"I--I'll be glad to carry the basket, too," he faltered. "It-it don't
+weigh anything much."
+
+"Well, let's hurry, so's we can get places together."
+
+Then, as she manoeuvred him through the little crowd about the wagon,
+with a soft push this way and a gentle pull that, and hurried him up the
+improvised steps and found a place where there was room for them to sit,
+Ramsey had another breathless sensation heretofore unknown to him.
+He found himself taken under a dovelike protectorship; a wonderful,
+inexpressible Being seemed to have become his proprietor.
+
+"Isn't this just perfectly lovely?" she said cozily, close to his ear.
+
+He swallowed, but found no words, for he had no thoughts; he was only an
+incoherent tumult. This was his first love.
+
+"Isn't it, Ramsey?" she urged. The cozy voice had just the hint of a
+reproach. "Don't you think it's just perfectly lovely, Ramsey?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+The next morning Ramsey came into his father's room while Mr. Milholland
+was shaving, an hour before church time, and it became apparent that the
+son had someting on his mind, though for a while he said nothing.
+
+"Did you want anything, Ramsey?"
+
+"Well--"
+
+"Didn't want to borrow my razors?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+Mr. Milholland chuckled. "I hardly supposed so, seriously! Shaving is
+a great nuisance and the longer you keep away from it, the better. And
+when you do, you let my razors alone, young feller!"
+
+"Yes, sir." (Mr. Milholland's razors were safe, Ramsey had already
+achieved one of his own, but he practised the art in secret.) He passed
+his hand thoughtfully over his cheeks, and traces of white powder were
+left upon his fingers, whereupon he wiped his hand surreptitiously, and
+stood irresolutely waiting.
+
+"What is it you really want, Ramsey?"
+
+"I guess I don't want anything."
+
+"Money?"
+
+"No, sir. You gay' me some Friday."
+
+Mr. Milholland turned from his mirror and looked over the edge of a
+towel at his son. In the boy's eyes there was such a dumb agony of
+interrogation that the father was a little startled.
+
+"Why, what is it, Ramsey? Have you--" He paused, frowning and wondering.
+"You haven't been getting into some mess you want to tell me about, have
+you?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+His tone was meek, but a mute distress lurked within it, bringing to the
+father's mind disturbing suspicions, and foreshadowings of indignation
+and of pity. "See here, Ramsey," he said, "if there's anything you want
+to ask me, or to tell me, you'd better out with it and get it over. Now,
+what is it?"
+
+"Well--it isn't anything."
+
+"Are you _sure?_"
+
+Ramsey's eyes fell before the severe and piercing gaze of his father.
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Mr. Milholland shook his head doubtfully; then, as his son walked slowly
+out of the room, he turned to complete his toilet in a somewhat uneasy
+frame of mind. Ramsey had undoubtedly wanted to say something to him and
+the boy's expression had shown that the matter in question was serious,
+distressing, and, it might be, even critical.
+
+In fact it was--to Ramsey. Having begun within only the last few hours
+to regard haberdashery as of vital importance, and believing his father
+to be possessed of the experience and authority lacking in himself,
+Ramsey had come to get him to settle a question which had been upsetting
+him badly, in his own room, since breakfast. What he wanted to know was:
+Whether it was right to wear an extra handkerchief showing out of the
+coat breast pocket or not, and, if it was right--ought the handkerchief
+to have a coloured border or to be plain white? But he had never before
+brought any such perplexities to his father, and found himself too
+diffident to set them forth.
+
+However, when he left the house, a few minutes later, he boldly showed
+an inch of purple border above the pocket; then, as he was himself about
+to encounter several old lady pedestrians, he blushed and thrust the
+handkerchief down into deep concealment. Having gone a block farther, he
+pulled it up again; and so continued to operate this badge of fashion,
+or unfashion, throughout the morning; and suffered a great deal thereby.
+
+Meantime, his father, rather relieved that Ramsey had not told his
+secret, whatever it was, dismissed the episode from his mind and joined
+Mrs. Milholland at the front door, ready for church.
+
+"Where's Ramsey?" he asked.
+
+"He's gone ahead," she answered, buttoning her gloves as they went
+along. "I heard the door quite a little while ago. Perhaps he went over
+to walk down with Charlotte and Vance. Did you notice how neat he looks
+this morning?"
+
+"Why, no, I didn't; not particularly. Does he?"
+
+"I never saw anything like it before," said Mrs. Milholland. "He went
+down in the cellar and polished his own shoes."
+
+"What!"
+
+"For about an hour, I think," she said, as one remaining calm before a
+miracle. "And he only has three neckties, but I saw him several times in
+each of them. He must have kept changing and changing. I wonder--" She
+paused.
+
+"I'm glad he's begun to take a little care of his appearance at last.
+Business men think a good deal about that, these days, when he comes to
+make his start in the world. I'll have to take a look at him and give
+him a word of praise. I suppose he'll be in the pew when we get there."
+
+But Ramsey wasn't in the pew; and Charlotte, his sister, and her
+husband, who were there, said they hadn't seen anything of him. It was
+not until the members of the family were on their way home after the
+services that they caught a glimpse of him.
+
+They were passing a church a little distance from their own; here the
+congregation was just emerging to the open, and among the sedate throng
+descending the broad stone steps appeared an accompanied Ramsey--and a
+red, red Ramsey he was when he beheld his father and mother and sister
+and brother-in-law staring up at him from the pavement below. They were
+kind enough not to come to an absolute halt, but passed slowly on, so
+that he was just able to avoid parading up the street in front of
+them. The expressions of his father, mother, and sister were of a
+dumfoundedness painful to bear, while such lurking jocosity as that
+apparent all over his brother-in-law no dignified man should either
+exhibit or be called upon to ignore.
+
+In hoarse whispers, Mrs. Milholland chided her husband for an
+exclamation he had uttered. "John! On Sunday! You ought to be ashamed."
+
+"I couldn't help it," he exclaimed. "Who on earth is his clinging vine?
+Why, she's got _lavender_ tops on her shoes and--"
+
+"Don't look round!" she warned him sharply. "Don't--"
+
+"Well, what's he doing at a Baptist church? What's he fidgeting at his
+handkerchief about? Why can't he walk like people? Does he think it's
+obligatory to walk home from church anchored arm-in-arm like Swedes on a
+Sunday Out? Who _is_ this cow-eyed fat girl that's got him, anyhow?"
+
+"Hush! Don't look round again, John."
+
+"Never fear!" said her husband, having disobeyed. "They've turned off;
+they're crossing over to Bullard Street. Who is it?"
+
+"I think her name's Rust," Mrs. Milholland informed him. "I don't know
+what her father does. She's one of the girls in his class at school."
+
+"Well, that's just like a boy; pick out some putty-faced flirt to take
+to church!"
+
+"Oh, she's quite pretty--in that way!" said his wife, deprecatingly. "Of
+course that's the danger with public schools. It would be pleasanter if
+he'd taken a fancy to someone whose family belongs to our own circle."
+
+"'Taken a fancy'!" he echoed, hooting. "Why, he's terrible! He looked
+like a red-gilled goldfish that's flopped itself out of the bowl. Why,
+he--"
+
+"I _say_ I wish if he felt that he had to take girls anywhere," said
+Mrs. Milholland, with the primmest air of speaking to the point--"if
+this sort of thing _must_ begin, I wish he might have selected some
+nice girl among the daughters of our own friends, like Dora Yocum, for
+instance."
+
+Upon the spot she began to undergo the mortification of a mother who has
+expected her son, just out of infancy, to look about him with the eye of
+a critical matron of forty-five. Moreover, she was indiscreet enough
+to express her views to Ramsey, a week later, producing thus a scene of
+useless great fury and no little sound.
+
+"I do think it's in _very_ poor taste to see so much of any one girl,
+Ramsey," she said, and, not heeding his protest that he only walked home
+from school with Milla, "about every other day," and that it didn't seem
+any crime to him just to go to church with her a couple o' times, Mrs.
+Milholland went on: "But if you think you really _must_ be dangling
+around somebody quite this much--though what in the world you find to
+_talk_ about with this funny little Milla Rust you poor father says he
+really cannot see--and of course it seems very queer to us that you'd
+be willing to waste so much time just now when your mind ought to be
+entirely on your studies, and especially with such an absurd _looking_
+little thing--
+
+"No, you must listen, Ramsey, and let me speak now. What I meant was
+that we shouldn't be _quite_ so much distressed by your being seen with
+a girl who dressed in better taste and seemed to have some notion of
+refinement, though of course it's only natural she _wouldn't_, with a
+father who is just a sort of ward politician, I understand, and a mother
+we don't know, and of course shouldn't care to. But, oh, Ramsey! if you
+_had_ to make yourself so conspicuous why couldn't you be a little _bit_
+more fastidious? Your father wouldn't have minded nearly so much if it
+had been a self-respecting, intellectual girl. We both say that if you
+_must_ be so ridiculous at your age as to persist in seeing more of one
+girl than another, why, oh why, don't you go and see some really nice
+girl like Dora Yocum?"
+
+Ramsey was already dangerously distended, as an effect of the earlier
+part of her discourse, and the word "fastidious" almost exploded him;
+but upon the climax, "Dora Yocum," he blew up with a shattering report
+and, leaving fragments of incoherence ricocheting behind him, fled
+shuddering from the house.
+
+For the rest of the school term he walked home with Milla every
+afternoon and on Sundays appeared to have become a resolute Baptist. It
+was supposed (by the interested members of the high-school class) that
+Ramsey and Milla were "engaged." Ramsey sometimes rather supposed they
+were himself, and the dim idea gave him a sensation partly pleasant, but
+mostly apprehensive: he was afraid.
+
+He was afraid that the day was coming when he ought to kiss her.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+Vacation, in spite of increased leisure, may bring inconvenience to
+people in Ramsey's strange but not uncommon condition. At home his
+constant air was that of a badgered captive plaintively silent under
+injustice; and he found it difficult to reply calmly when asked where
+he was going--an inquiry addressed to him, he asserted, every time he
+touched his cap, even to hang it up!
+
+The amount of evening walking he did must also have been a trial to his
+nerves, on account of fatigue, though the ground covered was not vast.
+Milla's mother and father were friendly people but saw no reason
+to "move out of house and home," as Mr. Rust said, when Milla had
+"callers"; and on account of the intimate plan of their small dwelling
+a visitor's only alternative to spending the evening with Mr. and Mrs.
+Rust as well as with Milla, was to invite her to "go out walking."
+
+Evening after evening they walked and walked and walked, usually in
+company--at perhaps the distance of half a block--with Albert Paxton and
+Sadie Clews, though Ramsey now and then felt disgraced by having fallen
+into this class; for sometimes it was apparent that Albert casually had
+his arm about Sadie's waist. This allured Ramsey somewhat, but terrified
+him more. He didn't know how such matters were managed.
+
+Usually the quartet had no destination; they just went "out walking"
+until ten o'clock, when both girls had to be home--and the boys did,
+too, but never admitted it. On Friday evenings there was a "public
+open-air concert" by a brass band in a small park, and the four were
+always there. A political speechmaker occupied the bandstand one night,
+and they stood for an hour in the midst of the crowd, listening vaguely.
+
+The orator saddled his politics upon patriotism. "Do you intend to let
+this glorious country go to wrack and ruin, oh, my good friends," he
+demanded, "or do you intend to save her? Look forth upon this country of
+ours, I bid you, oh, my countrymen, and tell me what you see. You see
+a fair domain of forest, mountain, plain, and fertile valleys, sweeping
+from ocean to ocean. Look from the sturdy rocks of old New England,
+pledged to posterity by the stern religious hardihood of the Pilgrim
+Fathers, across the corn-bearing midland country, that land of milk
+and honey, won for us by the pluck and endurance of the indomitable
+pioneers, to where in sunshine roll the smiling Sierras of golden
+California, given to our heritage by the unconquerable energy of those
+brave men and women who braved the tomahawk on the Great Plains, the
+tempest, of Cape Horn, and the fevers of Panama, to make American soil
+of El Dorado! America! Oh, my America, how glorious you stand! Country
+of Washington and Valley Forge, out of what martyrdoms hast thou arisen!
+Country of Lincoln in his box at Ford's theatre, his lifeblood staining
+to a brighter, holier red the red, white, and blue of the Old Flag!
+Always and always I see the Old Flag fluttering the more sacredly
+encrimsoned in the breeze for the martyrs who have upheld it! Always I
+see that Old Flag--"
+
+Milla gave Ramsey's arm, within her own, a little tug. "Come on," she
+said. "Sade says she don't want to hang around here any longer. It's
+awful tiresome. Let's go."
+
+He consented, placidly. The oration meant nothing to him and stirred no
+one in the audience. The orator was impassioned; he shouted himself into
+coughing fits, gesticulated, grew purple; he was so hot that his
+collar caved in and finally swooned upon his neck in soggy exhaustion,
+prostrate round his thunderings. Meanwhile, the people listened with an
+air of patience, yawning here and there, and gradually growing fewer. It
+was the old, old usual thing, made up of phrases that Ramsey had heard
+dinning away on a thousand such occasions, and other kinds of occasions,
+until they meant to him no more than so much sound. He was bored, and
+glad to leave.
+
+"Kind o' funny," he said, as they sagged along the street at their usual
+tortoise gait.
+
+"What is it, Ramsey?"
+
+"Seems kind o' funny they never have anything to say any one can
+take any interest in. Always the same ole whoopety-whoop about George
+Washington and Pilgrim Fathers and so on. I bet five dollars before
+long we'd of heard him goin' on about our martyred Presidents, William
+McKinley and James A. Garfield and Benjamin Harrison and all so on, and
+then some more about the ole Red, White, and Blue. Don't you wish they'd
+_quit_, sometimes, about the 'Ole Flag'?"
+
+"I dunno," said Milla. "I wasn't listening any at all. I hate speeches."
+
+"Well, I could _stand_ 'em," Ramsey said, more generously, "if they'd
+ever give anybody a little to think about. What's the use always
+draggin' in George Warshington and the Ole Flag? And who wants to
+hear any more ole truck about 'from ole rocky New England to golden
+California,' and how big and fine the United States is and how it's the
+land of the Free and all that? Why don't they ever say anything new?
+That's what I'd like to know."
+
+Milla laughed, and when he asked why, she told him she'd never heard
+him talk so much "at one stretch." "I guess that speech got you kind of
+wound up," she said. "Let's talk about something different."
+
+"I just soon," he agreed. And so they walked on in silence, which
+seemed to suit Milla. She hung weightily upon his arm, and they dawdled,
+drifting from one side of the pavement to the other as they slowly
+advanced. Albert and Sadie, ahead of them, called "good-night" from a
+corner, before turning down the side street where Sadie lived; and then,
+presently, Ramsey and Milla were at the latter's gate. He went in with
+her, halting at the front steps.
+
+"Well, g'night, Milla," he said. "Want to go out walking to-morrow
+night? Albert and Sadie are."
+
+"I can't to-morrow night," she told him with obvious regret. "Isn't it
+the worst luck! I got an aunt comin' to visit from Chicago, and she's
+crazy about playing 'Five Hundred,' and Mama and Papa said I haf to stay
+in to make four to play it. She's liable to be here three or four days,
+and I guess I got to be around home pretty much all the time she's here.
+It's the worst luck!"
+
+He was doleful, but ventured to be literary. "Well, what can't be helped
+must be endured. I'll come around when she's gone."
+
+He moved as if to depart, but she still retained his arm and did not
+prepare to relinquish it.
+
+"Well--" he said.
+
+"Well what, Ramsey?"
+
+"Well--g'night."
+
+She glanced up at the dark front of the house. "I guess the family's
+gone to bed," she said, absently.
+
+"I s'pose so."
+
+"Well, good-night, Ramsey." She said this but still did not release his
+arm, and suddenly, in a fluster, he felt that the time he dreaded had
+come. Somehow, without knowing where, except that it was somewhere upon
+what seemed to be a blurred face too full of obstructing features, he
+kissed her.
+
+She turned instantly away in the darkness, her hands over her cheeks;
+and in a panic Ramsey wondered if he hadn't made a dreadful mistake.
+
+"S'cuse me!" he said, stumbling toward the gate. "Well, I guess I got to
+be gettin' along back home."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+He woke in the morning to a great self-loathing: he had kissed a girl.
+Mingled with the loathing was a curious pride in the very fact that
+caused the loathing, but the pride did not last long. He came downstairs
+morbid to breakfast, and continued this mood afterward. At noon Albert
+Paxton brought him a note which Milla had asked Sadie to ask Albert to
+give him.
+
+Dearie: I am just wondering if you thought as much about something so
+sweet that happened last night as I did you know what. I think it was
+the sweetest thing. I send you one with this note and I hope you will
+think it is a sweet one. I would give you a real one if you were here
+now and I hope you would think it was sweeter still than the one I put
+in this note. It is the sweetest thing now you are mine and I am yours
+forever kiddo. If you come around about friday eve it will be all right.
+aunt Jess will be gone back home by then so come early and we will get
+Sade and Alb and go to the band Concert. Don't forget what I said about
+my putting something sweet in this note, and I hope you will think it is
+a sweet one but not as sweet as the _real_ sweet one I would like to--
+
+At this point Ramsey impulsively tore the note into small pieces. He
+turned cold as his imagination projected a sketch of his mother in
+the act of reading this missive, and of her expression as she read the
+sentence: "It is the sweetest thing now you are mine and I am yours
+forever kiddo." He wished that Milla hadn't written "kiddo." She called
+him that, sometimes, but in her warm little voice the word seemed not at
+all what it did in ink. He wished, too, that she hadn't said she was his
+forever.
+
+Suddenly he was seized with a horror of her.
+
+Moisture broke out heavily upon him; he felt a definite sickness, and,
+wishing for death, went forth upon the streets to walk and walk. He
+cared not whither, so that his feet took him in any direction away from
+Milla, since they were unable to take him away from himself--of whom he
+had as great a horror. Her loving face was continually before him, and
+its sweetness made his flesh creep. Milla had been too sweet.
+
+When he met or passed people, it seemed to him that perhaps they were
+able to recognize upon him somewhere the marks of his low quality.
+"Softy! Ole sloppy fool!" he muttered, addressing himself. "Slushy ole
+mush!... _Spooner!_" And he added, "Yours forever, kiddo!" Convulsions
+seemed about to seize him.
+
+Turning a corner with his head down, he almost charged into Dora Yocum.
+She was homeward bound from a piano lesson, and carried a rolled leather
+case of sheet music--something he couldn't imagine Milla carrying--and
+in her young girl's dress, which attempted to be nothing else, she
+looked as wholesome as cold spring water. Ramsey had always felt
+that she despised him and now, all at once, he thought that she was
+justified. Leper that he had become, he was unworthy to be even touching
+his cap to her! And as she nodded and went briskly on, he would have
+given anything to turn and walk a little way with her, for it seemed to
+him that this might fumigate his morals. But he lacked the courage, and,
+besides, he considered himself unfit to be seen walking with her.
+
+He had a long afternoon of anguishes, these becoming most violent when
+he tried to face the problem of his future course toward Milla. He did
+not face it at all, in fact, but merely writhed, and had evolved nothing
+when Friday evening was upon him and Milla waiting for him to take her
+to the "band concert" with "Alb and Sade." In his thoughts, by that
+time, this harmless young pair shared the contamination of his own
+crime, and he regarded them with aversion; however, he made shift to
+seek a short interview with Albert, just before dinner.
+
+"I got a pretty rotten headache, and my stomach's upset, too," he said,
+drooping upon the Paxton's fence. "I been gettin' worse every minute.
+You and Sadie go by Milla's, Albert, and tell her if I'm not there by
+ha'-pas'-seven, tell her not to wait for me any longer."
+
+"How do you mean 'wait'?" Albert inquired. "You don't expect her to come
+pokin' along with Sadie and me, do you? She'll keep on sittin' there at
+home just the same, because she wouldn't have anything else to do, if
+you don't come like she expects you to. She hasn't got any way to _stop_
+waitin'!"
+
+At this, Ramsey moaned, without affectation. "I don't expect I _can_,
+Albert," he said. "I'd like to if I could, but the way it looks now,
+you tell her I wouldn't be much surprised maybe I was startin' in with
+typhoid fever or pretty near anything at all. You tell her I'm pretty
+near as disappointed as she's goin' to be herself, and I'd come if I
+could--and I _will_ come if I get a good deal better, or anything--but
+the way it's gettin' to look now, I kind o' feel as if I might be
+breaking out with something any minute." He moved away, concluding,
+feebly: "I guess I better crawl on home, Albert, while I'm still able
+to walk some. You tell her the way it looks now I'm liable to be right
+sick."
+
+And the next morning he woke to the chafings of remorse, picturing a
+Milla somewhat restored in charm waiting hopefully at the gate, even
+after half-past seven, and then, as time passed and the sound of the
+distant horns came faintly through the darkness, going sadly to her
+room--perhaps weeping there. It was a picture to wring him with shame
+and pity, but was followed by another which electrified him, for out
+of school he did not lack imagination. What if Albert had reported his
+illness too vividly to Milla? Milla was so fond! What if, in her alarm,
+she should come here to the house to inquire of his mother about him?
+What if she told Mrs. Milholland they were "engaged"? The next moment
+Ramsey was projecting a conversation between his mother and Milla in
+which the latter stated that she and Ramsey were soon to be married;
+that she regarded him as already virtually her husband, and demanded to
+nurse him.
+
+In a panic he fled from the house before breakfast, going out by way of
+a side door, and he crossed back yards and climbed back fences to reach
+Albert Paxton the more swiftly. This creature, a ladies' man almost
+professionally, was found exercising with an electric iron and a pair of
+flannel trousers in a basement laundry, by way of stirring his appetite
+for the morning meal.
+
+"See here, Albert," his friend said breathlessly. "I got a favour. I
+want you to go over to Milla's--"
+
+"I'm goin' to finish pressin' these trousers," Albert interrupted. "Then
+I've got my breakfast to eat."
+
+"Well, you could do this first," said Ramsey, hurriedly. "It wouldn't
+hurt you to do me this little favour first. You just slip over and see
+Milla for me, if she's up yet, and if she isn't, you better wait around
+there till she is, because I want you to tell her I'm a whole lot better
+this morning. Tell her I'm pretty near practick'ly all right again,
+Albert, and I'll prob'ly write her a note or something right soon--or in
+a week or so, anyhow. You tell her--"
+
+"Well, you act pretty funny!" Albert exclaimed, fumbling in the pockets
+of his coat. "Why can't you go on over and tell her yourself?"
+
+"I would," said Ramsey. "I'd be perfectly willing to go only I got to
+get back home to breakfast."
+
+Albert stared. "Well, I got to go upstairs and eat my own breakfast in
+about a minute, haven't I? But just as it happens there wouldn't be any
+use your goin' over there, or me, either."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Milla ain't there," said Albert, still searching the pockets of his
+coat. "When we went by her house last night to tell her about your
+headache and stomach and all, why, her mother told us Milla'd gone up to
+Chicago yesterday afternoon with her aunt, and said she left a note for
+you, and she said if you were sick I better take it and give it to you.
+I was goin' to bring it over to your house after breakfast." He found
+it. "Here!"
+
+Ramsey thanked him feebly, and departed in a state of partial
+stupefaction, brought on by a glimpse of the instabilities of life. He
+had also, not relief, but a sense of vacancy and loss; for Milla, out of
+his reach, once more became mysteriously lovely.
+
+Pausing in an alley, he read her note.
+
+Dearie: Thought I ought to call you up but over the 'phone is just nix
+for explanations as Mama and Aunt Jess would hear everything and thought
+I might seem cold to you not saying anything sweet on account of them
+listening and you would wonder why I was so cold when telling you
+good-by for a wile maybe weeks. It is this way Uncle Purv wired Aunt
+Jess he has just taken in a big touring car on a debt and his vacation
+starts to-morrow so if they were going to take a trip they better start
+right way so Aunt Jess invited me. It is going to be a big trip up
+around the lakes and I have always wanted to go touring more than
+anything in the world stopping at hotels and all and Mama said I ought
+to it would be so splendid for my health as she thinks I am failing some
+lately. Now dearie I have to pack and write this in a hurry so you will
+not be disappointed when you come by for the B. C. to-night. Do not go
+get some other girl and take her for I would hate her and nothing in
+this world make me false for one second to my kiddo boy. I do not know
+just when home again as the folks think I better stay up there for a
+visit at Aunt Jess and Uncle Purvs home in Chicago after the trip is
+over. But I will think of you all the time and you must think of me
+every minute and believe your own dearie she will never no not for one
+second be false. So tell Sade and Alb good-by for me and do not be
+false to me any more than I would be to you and it will not be long till
+nothing more will interrupt our sweet friendship.
+
+As a measure of domestic prudence, Ramsey tore the note into irreparable
+fragments, but he did this slowly, and without experiencing any of the
+revulsion created by Milla's former missive.
+
+He was melancholy, aggrieved that she should treat him so.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+He never saw her again. She sent him a "picture postal" from Oconomowoc,
+Wisconsin, which his father disengaged from the family mail, one morning
+at breakfast, and considerately handed to him without audible comment.
+Upon it was written, _"Oh, you Ramsey!"_ This was the last of Milla.
+
+Just before school opened, in the autumn, Sadie Clews made some
+revelations. "Milla did like you," said Sadie. "After that time you
+jumped in the creek to save her she liked you better than any boy in
+town, and I guess if it wasn't for her cousin Milt up in Chicago she
+would of liked you the best anywhere. I guess she did, anyway, because
+she hadn't seen him for about a year then.
+
+"Well, that afternoon she went away I was over there and took in
+everything that was goin' on, only she made me promise on my word of
+honour I wouldn't even tell Albert. They didn't get any wire from her
+uncle about the touring car; it was her cousin Milt that jumped on the
+train and came down and fixed it all up for Milla to go on the trip, and
+everything. You see, Ramsey, she was turned back a couple of times in
+school before she came in our class and I don't exactly know how old
+she is and she don't _look_ old yet, but I'm pretty sure she's at least
+eighteen, and she might be over. Her mother kept tellin' her all the
+time you were just a kid, and didn't have anything to support her on,
+and lots of things like that. I didn't think such a great deal of this
+Milt's looks, myself, but he's anyway twenty-one years old, and got a
+good position, and all their family seem to think he's just fine! It
+wasn't his father that took in the touring car on debt, like she said
+she was writing to you; it was Milt himself. He started out in business
+when he was only fifteen years old, and this trip he was gettin' up for
+his father and mother and Milla was the first vacation he ever took.
+Well, of course she wouldn't like my tellin' you, but I can't see the
+harm of it, now everything's all over."
+
+"All--all over? You mean Milla's going to be--to be married?"
+
+"She already is," said Sadie. "They got married at her Aunt Jess and
+Uncle Purv's house, up in Chicago, last Thursday. Yes, sir; that quiet
+little Milla's a regular old married woman by this time, I expect,
+Ramsey!"
+
+When he got over the shock, which was not until the next day, one
+predominating feeling remained: it was a gloomy pride--a pride in his
+proven maturity. He was old enough, it appeared, to have been the same
+thing as engaged to a person who was now a Married Woman. His manner
+thenceforth showed an added trace of seriousness and self-consideration.
+
+Having recovered his equipoise and something more, he entirely forgot
+that moment of humble admiration he had felt for Dora Yocum on the day
+of his flattest prostration. When he saw her sitting in the classroom,
+smiling brightly up at the teacher, the morning of the school's opening
+in the autumn, all his humility had long since vanished and she appeared
+to him not otherwise than as the scholar whose complete proficiency had
+always been so irksome to him.
+
+"Look at her!" he muttered to himself. "Same ole Teacher's Pet!"
+
+Now and then, as the days and seasons passed, and Dora's serene progress
+continued, never checked or even flawed, there stirred within some
+lingerings of the old determination to "show" her; and he would conjure
+up a day-dream of Dora in loud lamentation, while he led the laughter of
+the spectators. But gradually his feelings about her came to be merely a
+dull oppression. He was tired of having to look at her (as he stated it)
+and he thanked the Lord that the time wouldn't be so long now until he'd
+be out of that ole school, and then all he'd have to do he'd just take
+care never to walk by her house; it was easy enough to use some other
+street when he had to go down-town.
+
+"The good ole class of Nineteen-Fourteen is about gone," he said to Fred
+Mitchell, who was still his most intimate friend when they reached the
+senior year. "Yes, sir; it's held together a good many years, Fred, but
+after June it'll be busted plum up, and I hope nobody starts a move to
+have any reunions. There's a good many members of the ole class that I
+can stand and there's some I can't, but there's one I just won't! If we
+ever did call a reunion, that ole Yocum girl would start in right away
+and run the whole shebang, and that's where I'd resign! You know, Fred,
+the thing _I_ think is the one biggest benefit of graduating from this
+ole school? It's never seein' Dora Yocum again."
+
+This was again his theme as he sat by the same friend's side, in the
+rear row of the class at Commencement, listening to the delivery of
+the Valedictory. "Thinks she's just sooblime, don't she!" he whispered
+morosely. "She wouldn't trade with the President of the United States
+right now. She prob'ly thinks bein' Valedictorian is more important than
+Captain of the State University Eleven. Never mind!" And here his tone
+became huskily jubilant. "Never mind! Just about a half-an-hour more
+and that's the last o' _you_, ole girl! Yes, sir, Fred; one thing we can
+feel pretty good over: this is where we get through with Dora Yocum!"
+
+Ramsey and Fred had arranged to room together at Greenfield, the seat
+of the state university, and they made the short journey in company the
+following September. They arrived hilarious, anticipating pleasurable
+excitements in the way of "fraternity" pledgings and initiations,
+encounters with sophomores, class meetings, and elections; and, also,
+they were not absolutely without interest in the matter of Girls, for
+the state university was co-educational, and it was but natural to
+expect in so broad a field, all new to them, a possible vision of
+something rather thrilling. They whispered cheerfully of all these
+things during the process of matriculation, and signed the registrar's
+book on a fresh page; but when Fred had written his name under Ramsey's,
+and blotted it, he took the liberty of turning over the leaf to examine
+some of the autographs of their future classmates, written on the other
+side. Then he uttered an exclamation, more droll than dolorous, though
+it affected to be wholly the latter; for the shock to Fred was by no
+means so painful as it was to his friend.
+
+Ramsey leaned forward and read the name indicated by Fred's forefinger.
+
+_Dora Yocum._
+
+...When they got back to their pleasant quarters at Mrs. Meig's, facing
+the campus, Ramsey was still unable to talk of anything except the
+lamentable discovery; nor were his companion's burlesquing efforts to
+console him of great avail, though Fred did become serious enough to
+point out that a university was different from a high school.
+
+"It's not like havin' to use one big room as a headquarters, you know,
+Ramsey. Everything's all split up, and she might happen not to be in a
+single of your classes."
+
+"You don't know my luck!" the afflicted boy protested. "I wish I'd gone
+to Harvard, the way my father wanted me to. Why, this is just the worst
+nuisance I ever struck! You'll see! She'll be in everything there is,
+just the way she was back home."
+
+He appeared to be corroborated by the events of the next day, when they
+attended the first meeting to organize the new class. The masculine
+element predominated, but Dora Yocum was elected vice-president. "You
+see?" Ramsey said. "Didn't I tell you? You see what happens?"
+
+But after that she ceased for a time to intrude upon his life, and he
+admitted that his harassment was less grave than he had anticipated.
+There were about five hundred students in the freshman class; he seldom
+saw her, and when he did it was not more than a distant glimpse of her
+on one of the campus paths, her thoughtful head bent over a book as
+she hurried to a classroom. This was bearable; and in the flattering
+agitations of being sought, and even hunted, by several "fraternities"
+simultaneously desirous of his becoming a sworn Brother, he almost
+forgot her. After a hazardous month the roommates fell into the arms of
+the last "frat" to seek them, and having undergone an evening of outrage
+which concluded with touching rhetoric and an oath taken at midnight,
+they proudly wore jewelled symbols on their breasts and were free to
+turn part of their attention to other affairs, especially the affairs of
+the Eleven.
+
+However, they were instructed by the older brethren of their Order,
+whose duty it was to assist in the proper manoeuvring of their young
+careers, that, although support of the 'varsity teams was important,
+they must neglect neither the spiritual nor the intellectual by-products
+of undergraduate doings. Therefore they became members of the college
+Y.M.C.A. and of the "Lumen Society."
+
+According to the charter which it had granted itself, the "Lumen
+Society" was an "Organization of male and female students"--so
+"advanced" was this university--"for the development of the powers of
+debate and oratory, intellectual and sociological progress, and
+the discussion of all matters relating to philosophy, metaphysics,
+literature, art, and current events." A statement so formidable was not
+without a hushing effect upon Messrs. Milholland and Mitchell; they went
+to their first "Lumen" meeting in a state of fear and came away little
+reassured.
+
+"I couldn't get up there," Ramsey declared, "I couldn't stand up there
+before all that crowd and make a speech, or debate in a debate, to save
+my soul and gizzard! Why, I'd just keel right over and haf to be carried
+out."
+
+"Well, the way I understand it," said Fred, "we can't get out of it.
+The seniors in the 'frat' said we had to join, and they said we couldn't
+resign, either, after we had joined. They said we just had to go through
+it, and after a while we'd get used to it and not mind it much."
+
+"_I_ will!" Ramsey insisted. "I couldn't any more stand up there on my
+feet and get to spoutin' about sociology and the radical metempsychorus
+of the metaphysical bazoozum than I could fly a flyin' machine. Why,
+I--"
+
+"Oh, that wasn't anything," Fred interrupted. "The only one that talked
+like that, he was that Blickens; he's a tutor, or something, and really
+a member of the faculty. Most o' the others just kind of blah-blahhed
+around, and what any of 'em tried to get off their chests hardly
+amounted to terribly much."
+
+"I don't care. I couldn't do it at _all!_"
+
+"Well, the way it looks to me," Fred observed, "we simply _got_ to! From
+what they tell me, the freshmen got to do more than anybody. Every other
+Friday night, it's all freshmen and nothin' else. You get a postal card
+on Monday morning in your mail, and it says 'Assignment' on it, and
+then it's got written underneath what you haf to do the next Friday
+night--oration or debate, or maybe just read from some old book or
+something. I guess we got to stand up there and _try_, anyway."
+
+"All right," said Ramsey. "If they want me to commit suicide they can
+send me one o' their ole 'Assignments.' I won't need to commit suicide,
+though, I guess. All I'll do, I'll just fall over in a fit, and stay in
+it."
+
+And, in truth, when he received his first "Assignment," one Monday
+morning, a month later, he seemed in a fair way to fulfil his prophecy.
+The attention of his roommate, who sat at a window of their study, was
+attracted by sounds of strangulation.
+
+"What on earth's the matter, Ramsey?"
+
+"Look! Look at _this!_"
+
+Fred took the card and examined it with an amazement gradually merging
+into a pleasure altogether too perceptible:
+
+ASSIGNMENT
+
+TWELVE-MINUTE DEBATE, CLASS OF 1918. _Subject, Resolved:_ That Germany
+is both legally and morally justified in her invasion of Belgium.
+
+(Debaters are notified that each will be held strictly to the following
+schedule: Affirmative, 4 min., first. Negative, 4 min., first. Affirm, 2
+min., second. Neg., 2 min., second.)
+
+Affirmative Negative R. MILHOLLAND, '18 D. YOCUM, '18
+
+Concluding his reading, which was oral, the volatile Mitchell made use
+of his voice in a manner of heathenish boisterousness, and presently
+reclined upon a lounge to laugh the better. His stricken comrade,
+meanwhile, recovered so far as to pace the floor. "I'm goin' to pack up
+and light out for home!" he declared, over and over. And even oftener
+he read and reread the card to make sure of the actuality of that fatal
+coincidence, "D. Yocum, '18."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+"If I _could_ do it," he vociferated, "if I _could_ stand up there and
+debate one o' their darn ole debates in the first place--if I had the
+gall to even try it, why, my gosh! you don't suppose I'm goin' to get
+up there and argue with _that girl_, do you? That's a hot way to get
+an education: stand up there and argue with a girl before a couple o'
+hundred people! My _gosh!_"
+
+"You got to!" his prostrate companion cackled, weakly. "You can't get
+out of it. You're a goner, ole Buddy!"
+
+
+"I'll be sick. I'll be sick as a dog! I'll be sick as the sickest dog
+that ever--"
+
+"No use, ole man. The frat seniors'll be on the job. They'll know
+whether you're sick or not, and they'll have you there, right on the
+spot to the minute!"
+
+The prediction was accurate. The too fatherly "frat seniors" did all
+that Fred said they would, and more. For the honour of the "frat," they
+coached the desperate Ramsey in the technic of Lumen debate, told him
+many more things to say than could be said in six minutes, and produced
+him, despairing, ghastly, and bedewed, in the large hall of the Lumen
+Society at eight o'clock on Friday evening.
+
+Four other "twelve-minute debates" preceded his and the sound of these,
+in Ramsey's ears, was the sound of Gabriel practising on his horn in
+the early morning of Judgment Day. The members of the society sat, three
+rows deep, along the walls of the room, leaving a clear oblong of green
+carpet in the centre, where were two small desks, twenty feet apart, the
+rostrums of the debaters. Upon a platform at the head of the room sat
+dreadful seniors, the officers of the society, and, upon benches near
+the platform, the debaters of the evening were aligned. One of the
+fraternal seniors sat with sweltering Ramsey; and the latter, as his
+time relentlessly came nearer, made a last miserable squirm.
+
+"Look here, Brother Colburn, I got to get out o' here."
+
+"No, you don't, young fellow."
+
+"Yes, I do!" Ramsey whispered, passionately. "Honest, I do. Honest,
+Brother Colburn, I got to get a drink of water. I _got_ to!"
+
+"No. You can't."
+
+"Honest, Colburn, I _got_--"
+
+"Hush!"
+
+Ramsey grunted feebly, and cast his dilating eyes along the rows of
+faces. Most of them were but as blurs, swimming, yet he was aware (he
+thought) of a formidable and horrible impassive scrutiny of himself, a
+glare seeming to pierce through him to the back of the belt round his
+waist, so that he began to have fearful doubts about that belt, about
+every fastening and adjustment of his garments, about the expression of
+his countenance, and about many other things jumbling together in his
+consciousness. Over and over he whispered gaspingly to himself the
+opening words of the sentence with which Colburn had advised him to
+begin his argument. And as the moment of supreme agony drew close, this
+whispering became continuous: "In making my first appearance before
+this honor'ble membership I feel constrained to say in making my first
+appearance before this honor'ble membership I feel constrained to say in
+making my first appearance before this honor'ble mem--"
+
+...It had come. The chairman announced the subject of the fourth
+freshman twelve-minute debate; and Dora Yocum, hitherto unperceived
+by Ramsey, rose and went forward to one of the small desks in the open
+space, where she stood composedly, a slim, pretty figure in white.
+Members in Ramsey's neighbourhood were aware of a brief and hushed
+commotion, and of Colburn's fierce whisper, "You can't! You get up
+there!" And the blanched Ramsey came forth and placed himself at the
+other desk.
+
+He stood before the silent populace of that morgue, and it seemed to him
+that his features had forgotten that he was supposed to be their owner
+and in control of them; he felt that they were slipping all over his
+face, regardless of his wishes. His head, as a whole, was subject to
+an agitation not before known by him; it desired to move rustily in
+eccentric ways of its own devising; his legs alternately limbered and
+straightened under no direction but their own; and his hands clutched
+each other fiercely behind his back; he was not one cohesive person,
+evidently, but an assembled collection of parts which had relapsed each
+into its own individuality. In spite of them, he somehow contrived the
+semblance of a bow toward the chairman and the semblance of another
+toward Dora, of whom he was but hazily conscious. Then he opened his
+mouth, and, not knowing how he had started his voice going, heard it as
+if from a distance.
+
+"In making my first appearance before this honor'ble membership I feel
+restrained to say--" He stopped short, and thenceforward shook visibly.
+After a long pause, he managed to repeat his opening, stopped again,
+swallowed many times, produced a handkerchief and wiped his face, an act
+of necessity--then had an inspiration.
+
+"The subject assigned to me," he said, "is resolved that Germany is
+mor'ly and legally justified in Belgians--Belgiums! This subject was
+assigned to me to be the subject of this debate." He interrupted himself
+to gasp piteously; found breathing difficult, but faltered again: "This
+subject is the subject. It is the subject that was assigned to me on
+a postal card." Then, for a moment or so, he had a miraculous spurt of
+confidence, and continued rather rapidly: "I feel constrained to say
+that the country of Belgian--Belgium, I mean--this country has been
+constrained by the--invaded I mean--invaded by the imperial German
+Impire and my subject in this debate is whether it ought to or not, my
+being the infernative--affirmative, I mean--that I got to prove that
+Germany is mor'ly and legally justified. I wish to state that--"
+
+He paused again, lengthily, then struggled on. "I have been requested
+to state that the German Imp--Empire--that it certainly isn't right
+for those Dutch--Germans, I mean--they haven't got any more business in
+Belgium than I have myself, but I--I feel constrained to say that I had
+to accept whatever side of this debate I got on the postal card, and so
+I am constrained to take the side of the Dutch. I mean the Germans. The
+Dutch are sometimes called--I mean the Germans are sometimes called the
+Dutch in this country, but they aren't Dutch, though sometimes called
+Dutch in this country. Well, and so--so, well, the war began last August
+or about then, anyway, and the German army invaded the Belgian army.
+After they got there, the invasion began. First, they came around there
+and then they commenced invading. Well, what I feel constrained--"
+
+He came to the longest of all his pauses here, and the awful gravity of
+the audience almost suffocated him. "Well," he concluded, "it don't look
+right to me."
+
+"Four minutes!" the chairman announced, for Ramsey's pauses had worn
+away a great deal more of this terrible interval than had his eloquence.
+"Opening statement for the negative: Miss D. Yocum. Four minutes."
+
+As Dora began to speak, Ramsey experienced a little relief, but only
+a little--about the same amount of relief as that felt by a bridegroom
+when it is the bride's turn to "respond," not really relief at all, but
+merely the slight relaxation of a continuing strain. The audience now
+looked at Ramsey no more than people look at a bridegroom, but he failed
+to perceive any substantial mitigation of his frightful conspicuousness.
+He had not the remotest idea of what he had said in setting forth his
+case for Germany, and he knew that it was his duty to listen closely
+to Dora, in order to be able to refute her argument when his two-minute
+closing speech fell due but he was conscious of little more than his own
+condition. His legs had now gone wild beyond all devilry, and he had
+to keep shifting his weight from one to the other in order even to hope
+that their frenzy might escape general attention.
+
+He realized that Dora was speaking rapidly and confidently, and that
+somewhere in his ill-assembled parts lurked a familiar bit of him that
+objected to her even more than usual; but she had used half of her time,
+at least, before he was able to gather any coherent meaning from what
+she was saying. Even then he caught only a fragment, here and there,
+and for the rest--so far as Ramsey was concerned--she might as well have
+been reciting the Swedish alphabet.
+
+In spite of the rather startling feebleness of her opponent's statement,
+Dora went at her task as earnestly as if it were to confute some monster
+of casuistry. "Thus, having demonstrated that _all_ war is wrong," she
+said, approaching her conclusion, "it is scarcely necessary to point out
+that whatever the actual circumstances of the invasion, and whatever the
+status of the case in international law, or by reason of treaty, or the
+German oath to respect the neutrality of Belgium, which of course was
+grossly and dishonorably violated--all this, I say, ladies and gentlemen
+of the Lumen Society, all this is beside the point of morals. Since, as
+I have shown, _all_ war is wrong, the case may be simplified as follows:
+All war is morally wrong. _Quod erat demonstrandum_. Germany invaded
+Belgium. Invasion is war. Germany, therefore, did moral wrong. Upon
+the legal side, as I began by pointing out, Germany confessed in the
+Reichstag the violation of law. Therefore, Germany was justified in the
+invasion neither morally nor legally; but was both morally and legally
+wrong and evil. Ladies and gentlemen of the Lumen Society, I await the
+refutation of my opponent!"
+
+Her opponent appeared to be having enough trouble with his legs, without
+taking any added cares upon himself in the way of refutations. But the
+marvellous Dora had calculated the length of her statement with such
+nicety that the chairman announced "Four minutes," almost upon the
+instant of her final syllable; and all faces turned once more to
+the upholder of the affirmative. "Refutation and conclusion by the
+affirmative," said the chairman. "Mr. R. Milholland. Two minutes."
+
+Therewith, Ramsey coughed as long as he could cough, and when he felt
+that no more should be done in this way, he wiped his face--again an act
+of necessity--and quaveringly began:
+
+"Gentlemen and ladies, or ladies and gentlemen, in making the refutation
+of my opponent, I feel that--I feel that hardly anything more ought to
+be said."
+
+He paused, looked helplessly at his uncontrollable legs, and resumed:
+"I am supposed to make the reputa--the refutation of my opponent, and I
+feel that I ought to say quite a good deal more. In the first place, I
+feel that the invasion has taken place. I am supposed--anyhow I got a
+postal card that I am supposed to be here to-night. Well, in talking
+over this matter with a couple of seniors, they told me I was supposed
+to claim this invasion was mor'ly and legally all right. Well--" Here,
+by some chance, the recollection of a word of Dora's flickered into his
+chaotic mind, and he had a brighter moment. "My opponent said she proved
+all war is wrong--or something like that, anyhow. She said she proved it
+was wrong to fight, no matter what. Well, if she wasn't a girl, anybody
+that wanted to get her into a fight could prob'ly do it." He did not
+add that he would like to be the person to make the experiment (if Dora
+weren't a girl), nor did the thought enter his mind until an hour or so
+later. "Well," he added, "I suppose there is little more to be said."
+
+He was so right, in regard to his own performance, at least, that,
+thereupon drying up utterly, he proceeded to stand, a speechless
+figure in the midst of a multitudinous silence, for an eternity lasting
+forty-five seconds. He made a racking effort, and at the end of this
+epoch found words again. "In making my argument in this debate, I would
+state that--"
+
+"Two minutes!" said the chairman. "Refutation by the negative. Miss D.
+Yocum. Two minutes."
+
+"I waive them," said Dora, primly. "I submit that the affirmative has
+not refuted the argument of the negative."
+
+"Very well." With his gavel the chairman sharply tapped the desk before
+him, "The question is now before the house. 'Resolved, that Germany
+is both morally and legally justified in her invasion of Belgium.' All
+those in favour of the--"
+
+But here there was an interruption of a kind never before witnessed
+during any proceedings of the Lumen Society. It came from neither of
+the debaters, who still remained standing at their desks until the
+vote settling their comparative merits in argument should be taken. The
+interruption was from the rear row of seats along the wall, where
+sat new members of the society, freshmen not upon the program for the
+evening. A loud voice was heard from this quarter, a loud but nasal
+voice, shrill as well as nasal, and full of a strange hot passion. "Mr.
+Chairman!" it cried. "Look-a-here, Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman, I demand
+to be heard! You gotta gimme my say, Mr. Chairman! I'm a-gunna have my
+_say_! You look-a-here, Mr. Chairman!"
+
+Shocked by such a breach of order, and by the unseemly violence of the
+speaker, not only the chairman but everyone else looked there. A short,
+strong figure was on its feet, gesticulating fiercely; and the head
+belonging to it was a large one with too much curly black hair, a flat,
+swarthy face, shiny and not immaculately shaven; there was an impression
+of ill-chosen clothes, too much fat red lip, too much tooth, too much
+eyeball. Fred Mitchell, half-sorrowing, yet struggling to conceal tears
+of choked mirth over his roommate's late exhibition, recognized this
+violent interrupter as one Linski, a fellow freshman who sat next to him
+in one of his classes. "What's _that_ cuss up to?" Fred wondered, and so
+did others. Linski showed them.
+
+He pressed forward, shoving himself through the two rows in front of him
+till he emerged upon the green carpet of the open space, and as he came,
+he was cyclonic with words.
+
+"You don't put no such stuff as this over, I tell you!" he shouted in
+his hot, nasal voice. "This here's a free country, and you call yourself
+a debating society, do you? Lemme tell you _I_ belong to a debating
+society in Chicago, where I come from, and them fellas up there, they'd
+think they'd oughta be shot fer a fake like what you people are
+tryin' to put over, here, to-night. I come down here to git some more
+education, and pay fer it, too, in good hard money I've made sweatin'
+in a machine shop up there in Chicago; but if _this_ is the kind of
+education I'm a-gunna git, I better go on back there. You call this a
+square debate, do you?"
+
+He advanced toward the chairman's platform, shaking a frantic fist.
+"Well, if you do, you got another think comin', my capitalis' frien'!
+you went and give out the question whether it's right fer Choimuny to go
+through Belgium; and what do you do fer the Choimun side? You pick out
+this here big stiff"--he waved his passionate hand at the paralyzed
+Ramsey--"you pick out a boob like that for the Choimun side, a poor fish
+that gits stagefright so bad he don't know whether he's talkin' or dead;
+or else he fakes it; because he's a speaker so bum it looks more to me
+like he was faking. You get this big stiff to fake the Choimun side, and
+then you go and stick up a goil agains' him that's got brains and makes
+a pacifis' argument that wins the case agains' the Choimuns like cuttin'
+through hog lard! But you ain't a-gunna git away with it, mister!
+Lemme tell you right here and now, I may be a mix blood, but I got some
+Choimun in me with the rest what I got, and before you vote on this here
+question you gotta hear a few woids from somebody that can _talk!_ This
+whole war is a capitalis' war, Belgium as much as Choimuny, and the
+United States is sellin' its soul to the capitalis' right now, I tell
+you, takin' sides agains' Choimuny. Orders fer explosives and ammanition
+and guns and Red Cross supplies is comin' into this country by the
+millions, and the capitalis' United States is fat already on the blood
+of the workers of Europe! Yes, it is, and I'll have my _say,_ you
+boorjaw faker, and you can hammer your ole gavel to pieces at me!"
+
+He had begun to shriek; moisture fell from his brow and his mouth; the
+scandalized society was on its feet, nervously into groups. Evidently
+the meeting was about to disintegrate. "I'll have my _say_!" the
+frenzied Linski screamed. "You try to put up this capitalis' trick and
+work a fake to carry over this debate agains' Choimuny, but you can't
+work it on _me_, lemme tell you! I'll have my _say!_"
+
+The outraged chairman was wholly at a loss how to deal with the
+"unprecedented situation"--so he defined it, quite truthfully; and he
+continued to pound upon the desk, while other clamours began to rival
+Linski's; shouts of "Put him out!" "Order!" "Shut up, Freshman!" "Turn
+him over to the sophomores!"
+
+"This meeting is _adjourned!_" bellowed the chairman, and there was a
+thronging toward the doors, while the frothing Linski asseverated: "I'm
+a-gunna git my say, I tell you! I'll have my say! I'll have my _say!_"
+
+He had more than that, before the hour was over. A moment after he
+emerged from the building and came out, still hot, upon the cool, dark
+campus, he found himself the centre of a group of his own classmates
+whom he at first mistook for sophomores, such was their manner.
+
+...As this group broke up, a few minutes later, a youth running to
+join it, scenting somewhat of interest, detained one of those who were
+departing.
+
+"What's up? What was that squealing?"
+
+"Oh, nothing. We just talked to that Linski. Nobody else touched him,
+but Ramsey Milholland gave him a _peach_ of a punch on the snoot."
+
+"Whoopee!"
+
+Ramsey was laconic in response to inquiries upon this subject. When
+someone remarked: "You served him right for calling you a boob and a
+poor fish and so on before all the society, girls and all," Ramsey only
+said:
+
+"That wasn't what I hit him for."
+
+He declined to explain further.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+"The way I look at it, Ramsey," Fred Mitchell said, when they reached
+their apartment, whither the benevolent Colburn accompanied them, "the
+way I look at it, this Linski kind of paid you a compliment, after all,
+when he called you a fake. He must have thought you anyway _looked_ as
+if you could make a better speech than you did. Oh, golly!"
+
+And as Ramsey groaned, the jovial Mitchell gave himself up to the divan
+and the mirth. "Oh, oh, oh, _golly_!" he sputtered.
+
+"Never you mind, Brother Milholland," Colburn said gently. "The Lumen is
+used to nervous beginners. I've seen dozens in my time, just like you;
+and some of 'em got to be first rate before they quit. Besides, this
+crazy Linski is all that anybody'll ever remember about to-night's
+meeting, anyhow. There never was any such outbreak as that in _my_ time,
+and I guess there never was in the whole history of the society. We'll
+probably suspend him until he apologizes to the society--I'm on the
+board, and I'm in favour of it. Who is the bird, anyhow? He's in your
+class."
+
+"I never saw him before," Ramsey responded from the deep chair, where
+he had moodily thrown himself; and, returning to his brooding upon his
+oratory. "Oh, murder!" he moaned.
+
+"Well," said the senior, "you'll know him when you see him again. You
+put your mark on him where you can see it, all right!" He chuckled. "I
+suppose I really ought to have interfered in that, but I decided to do
+a little astronomical observation, about fifty feet away, for a few
+minutes. I'm 'way behind in my astronomy, anyhow. Do you know this
+Linski, Brother Mitchell?"
+
+"I've talked to him a couple o' times on the campus," said Fred. "He's
+in one of my classes. He's about the oldest in our class, I guess--a
+lot older than us, anyhow. He's kind of an anarchist or something; can't
+talk more'n five minutes any time without gettin off some bug stuff
+about 'capitalism.' He said the course in political economy was all
+'capitalism' and the prof was bought by Wall Street."
+
+"Poor old Prof. Craig!" Colburn laughed. "He gets fifteen hundred a
+year."
+
+"Yes; I'd heard that myself, and I told Linski, and he said he had an
+uncle workin' in a steel mill got twice that much; but it didn't
+make any difference, ole Craig was bought by Wall Street. He said
+'capitalism' better look out; he and the foreign-born workmen were goin'
+to _take_ this country some day, and that was one of the reasons he was
+after an education. He talked pretty strong pro-German, too--about
+the war in Europe--but I sort of thought that was more because he'd be
+pro-anything that he thought would help upset the United States than
+because he cared much about Germany."
+
+"Yes," said Colburn, "that's how he sounded to-night. I guess there's
+plenty more like him in the cities, too. That reminds me, I'd better
+arrange a debate on immigration for the Lumen. We'll put Brother
+Milholland for the negative, this time."
+
+Ramsey started violently. "See here--"
+
+But the senior reassured him. "Just wanted to see you jump," he
+explained. "Don't fear; you've done your share."
+
+"I should think I have!" Ramsey groaned.
+
+"Yes, you won't be called on again this term. By the way," said Colburn,
+thoughtfully, "that was a clever girl you had against you to-night. I
+don't believe in pacificism much, myself, but she used it very niftily
+for her argument. Isn't she from your town, this Miss Yocum?"
+
+Fred nodded.
+
+"Well, she's a clever young thing," said the senior, still thoughtful.
+And he added: "Graceful girl, she is."
+
+At this, the roommates looked at him with startled attention. Ramsey was
+so roused as to forget his troubles and sit forward in his chair.
+
+"Yes," said the musing Colburn, "she's a mighty pretty girl."
+
+"What!"
+
+This exclamation was a simultaneous one; the astounded pair stared at
+him in blank incredulity.
+
+"Why, don't you think so?" Colburn mildly inquired. "She seems to me
+very unusual looking."
+
+"Well, yes," Fred assented, emphatically. "We're with you there!"
+
+"Extraordinary eyes," continued Colburn. "Lovely figure, too; altogether
+a strikingly pretty girl. Handsome, I should say, perhaps. Yes,
+'handsome' rather than 'pretty'." He looked up from a brief reverie.
+"You fellows known her long?"
+
+"You bet!" said Ramsey.
+
+"She made a splendid impression on the Lumen," Colburn went on. "I don't
+remember that I ever saw a first appearance there that quite equalled
+it. She'll probably have a brilliant career in the society, and in the
+university, too. She must be a very fine sort of person." He deliberated
+within himself a few moments longer, then, realizing that his hosts
+and Brethren did not respond with any heartiness--or with anything at
+all--to the theme, he changed it, and asked them what they thought about
+the war in Europe.
+
+They talked of the war rather drowsily for a while; it was an
+interesting but not an exciting topic: the thing they spoke of was so
+far away. It was in foreign countries where they had never been and
+had no acquaintances; and both the cause and the issue seemed to be in
+confusion, though evidently Germany had "started" the trouble. Only
+one thing emerged as absolutely clear and proved: there could be no
+disagreement about Germany's "dirty work," as Fred defined it, in
+violating Belgium. And this stirred Ramsey to declare with justice that
+"dirty work" had likewise been done upon himself by the official
+person, whoever he or she was, who had given him the German side of
+the evening's debate. After this moment of fervour, the conversation
+languished, and Brother Colburn rose to go.
+
+"Well, I'm glad you gave that Linski a fine little punch, Brother
+Milholland," he said, at the door. "It won't do you any harm in the
+'frat,' or with the Lumen either. And don't be discouraged about your
+debating. You'll learn. Anybody might have got rattled by having to
+argue against as clever and good-looking a girl as that!"
+
+The roommates gave each other a look of serious puzzlement as the door
+closed. "Well, Brother Colburn is a mighty nice fellow," Fred said.
+"He's kind of funny, though."
+
+Ramsey assented, and then, as the two prepared for bed, they entered
+into a further discussion of their senior friend. They liked him "all
+right," they said, but he certainly must be kind of queer, and they
+couldn't just see how he had "ever managed to get where he was" in the
+"frat" and the Lumen and the university.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+Ramsey passed the slightly disfigured Linski on the campus next day
+without betraying any embarrassment or making a sign of recognition.
+Fred Mitchell told his roommate, chuckling, that Linski had sworn
+to "get" him, and, not knowing Fred's affiliations, had made him the
+confidant of his oath. Fred had given his blessing, he said, upon the
+enterprise, and advised Linski to use a brick. "He'll hit you on the
+head with it," said the light-hearted Fred, falling back upon this old
+joke. "Then you can catch it as it bounces off and throw it back at
+him."
+
+However, Linski proved to be merely an episode, not only so far as
+Ramsey was concerned but in the Lumen and in the university as well. His
+suspension from the Lumen was for a year, and so cruel a punishment it
+proved for this born debater that he noisily declared he would found
+a debating society himself, and had a poster printed and distributed
+announcing the first meeting of "The Free Speech and Masses' Rights
+Council." Several town loafers attended the meeting, but the only
+person connected with the university who came was an oriental student,
+a Chinese youth of almost intrusive amiability. Linski made a fiery
+address, the townsmen loudly appluading his advocacy of an embargo
+on munitions and the distribution of everybody's "property," but the
+Chinaman, accustomed to see students so madly in earnest only when
+they were burlesquing, took the whole affair to be intended humour, and
+tittered politely without cessation--except at such times as he thought
+it proper to appear quite wrung with laughter. Then he would rock
+himself, clasp his mouth with both hands and splutter through his
+fingers. Linski accused him of being in the pay of "capital."
+
+Next day the orator was unable to show himself upon the campus without
+causing demonstrations; whenever he was seen a file of quickly gathering
+students marched behind him chanting repeatedly and deafeningly in
+chorus: "Down with Wall Street! Hoch der Kaiser! Who loves Linski? Who,
+who, who? Hoo Lun! Who loves Linski? Who, who, who? Hoo Lun!"
+
+Linski was disgusted, resigned from the university, and disappeared.
+
+"Well, here it isn't mid-year Exams yet, and the good ole class of
+Nineteen-Eighteen's already lost a member," said Fred Mitchell. "I guess
+we can bear the break-up!"
+
+"I guess so," Ramsey assented. "That Linski might just as well stayed
+here, though."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He couldn't do any harm here. He'll prob'ly get more people to listen
+to him in cities where there's so many new immigrants and all such that
+don't know anything, comin' in all the time."
+
+"Oh, well," said Fred. "What do _we_ care what happens to Chicago! Come
+on, let's behave real wild, and go on over to the 'Teria and get us a
+couple egg sandwiches and sassprilly."
+
+Ramsey was willing.
+
+After the strain of the "mid-year Exams" in February, they lived a
+free-hearted life. They had settled into the ways of their world; they
+had grown used to it, and it had grown used to them; there was no
+longer any ignominy in being a freshman. They romped upon the campus
+and sometimes rioted harmlessly about the streets of the town. In the
+evenings they visited their fellows and Brethren and were visited in
+turn, and sometimes they looked so far ahead as to talk vaguely of their
+plans for professions or business--though to a freshman this concerned
+an almost unthinkably distant prospect. "I guess I'll go in with my
+father, in the wholesale drug business," said Fred. "My married brother
+already is in the firm, and I suppose they'll give me a show--send me
+out on the road a year or two first, maybe, to try me. Then I'm going to
+marry some little cutie and settle down. What you goin' to do, Ramsey?
+Go to Law School, and then come back and go in your father's office?"
+
+"I don't know. Guess so."
+
+It was always Fred who did most of the talking; Ramsey was quiet. Fred
+told the "frat seniors" that Ramsey was "developing a whole lot these
+days"; and he told Ramsey himself that he could see a "big change" in
+him, adding that the improvement was probably due to Ramsey's having
+passed through "terrible trials like that debate."
+
+Ramsey kept to their rooms more than his comrade did, one reason for
+this domesticity being that he "had to study longer than Fred did, to
+keep up"; and another reason may have been a greater shyness than Fred
+possessed--if, indeed, Fred possessed any shyness at all. For Fred was
+a cheery spirit difficult to abash, and by the coming of spring knew all
+of the best-looking girl students in the place--knew them well enough,
+it appeared, to speak of them not merely by their first names but by
+abbreviations of these. He had become fashion's sprig, a "fusser" and
+butterfly, and he reproached his roommate for shunning the ladies.
+
+"Well, the truth is, Fred," said Ramsey one day, responding
+darkly;--"well, you see the truth is, Fred, I've had a--a--I've had an
+experience--"
+
+So, only, did he refer to Milla.
+
+Fred said no more; and it was comprehended between them that the past
+need never be definitely referred to again, but that it stood between
+Ramsey and any entertainment to be obtained of the gentler but less
+trustworthy sex. And when other Brethren of the "frat" would have
+pressed Ramsey to join them in various frivolous enterprises concerning
+"co-eds," or to be shared by "co-eds," Fred thought it better to explain
+to them privately (all being sacred among Brethren) how Ramsey's life,
+so far as Girls went, had been toyed with by one now a Married Woman.
+
+This created a great deal of respect for Ramsey. It became understood
+everywhere that he was a woman-hater.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+That early spring of 1915 the two boys and their friends and Brethren
+talked more of the war than they had in the autumn, though the subject
+was not an all at absorbing one; for the trenches in Flanders and France
+were still of the immense, remote distance. By no stretch of imagination
+could these wet trenches be thought greatly to concern the "frat," the
+Lumen, or the university. Really important matters were the doings of
+the "Track Team," now training in the "Gym" and on the 'Varsity Field,
+and, more vital still, the prospects of the Nine. But in May there came
+a shock which changed things for a time.
+
+The _Lusitania_ brought to every American a revelation of what had lain
+so deep in his own heart that often he had not realized it was there.
+When the Germans hid in the sea and sent down the great merchant ship,
+with American babies and their mothers, and gallantly dying American
+gentlemen, there came a change even to girls and boys and professors,
+until then so preoccupied with their own little aloof world thousands of
+miles from the murder.
+
+Fred Mitchell, ever volatile and generous, was one of those who went
+quite wild. No orator, he nevertheless made a frantic speech at the
+week's "frat meetings," cursing the Germans in the simple old English
+words that their performance had demonstrated to be applicable, and
+going on to demand that the fraternity prepare for its own share in the
+action of the country. "I don't care _how_ insignificant we few fellows
+here to-night may seem," he cried; "we can do our little, and if
+everybody in this country's ready to do their own little, why, that'll
+be plenty! Brothers, don't you realize that all _over_ the United States
+to-night the people are feeling just the way we are here? Millions and
+millions and millions of them! Wherever there's an American he's _with_
+us--and you bet your bottom dollar there are just a few more Americans
+in this country of ours than there are big-mouthed lobsters like that
+fellow Linski! I tell you, if Congress only gives the word, there could
+be an army of five million men in this country to-morrow, and those
+dirty baby-killin' dachshunds would hear a word or two from your Uncle
+Samuel! Brothers, I demand that something be done right here and now,
+and by us! I move we telegraph the Secretary of War to-night and offer
+him a regiment from this university to go over and help _hang_ their
+damn Kaiser."
+
+The motion was hotly seconded and instantly carried. Then followed
+a much flustered discussion of the form and phrasing of the proposed
+telegram, but, after everything seemed to have been settled, someone
+ascertained by telephone that the telegraph company would not accept
+messages containing words customarily defined as profane; so the
+telegram had to be rewritten. This led to further amendment, and it was
+finally decided to address the senators from that state, instead of the
+Secretary of War, and thus in a somewhat modified form the message was
+finally despatched.
+
+Next day, news of what the "frat" had done made a great stir in the
+university; other "frats" sent telegrams, so did the "Barbarians,"
+haters of the "frats" but joining them in this; while a small band of
+"German-American" students found it their duty to go before the faculty
+and report these "breaches of neutrality." They protested heavily,
+demanding the expulsion of the "breachers" as disloyal citizens,
+therefore unfit students, but suffered a disappointment; for the faculty
+itself had been sending telegrams of similar spirit, addressing not
+only the senators and congressmen of the state but the President of the
+United States. Flabbergasted, the "German-Americans" retired; they were
+confused and disgusted by this higher-up outbreak of unneutrality--it
+overwhelmed them that citizens of the United States should not remain
+neutral in the dispute between the United States and Germany. All day
+the campus was in ferment.
+
+At twilight, Ramsey was walking meditatively on his way to dinner at
+the "frat house," across the campus from his apartment at Mrs. Meig's.
+Everybody was quiet now, both town and gown; the students were at their
+dinners and so were the burghers. Ramsey was late but did not quicken
+his thoughtful steps, which were those of one lost in reverie. He had
+forgotten that spring-time was all about him, and, with his head down,
+walked unregardful of the new gayeties flung forth upon the air by great
+clusters of flowering shrubs, just come into white blossom and lavender.
+
+He was unconscious that somebody behind him, going the same way,
+came hastening to overtake him and called his name, "Ramsey! Ramsey
+Milholland!" Not until he had been called three times did he realize
+that he was being hailed--and in a girl's voice! By that time, the girl
+herself was beside him, and Ramsey halted, quite taken aback. The girl
+was Dora Yocum.
+
+She was pale, a little breathless, and her eyes were bright and severe.
+"I want to speak to you," she said, quickly. "I want to ask you about
+something. Mr. Colburn and Fred Mitchell are the only people I know in
+your 'frat' except you, and I haven't seen either of them to-day, or I'd
+have asked one of them."
+
+Most uncomfortably astonished, Ramsey took his hands out of his pockets,
+picked a leaf from a lilac bush beside the path, and put the stem of the
+leaf seriously into a corner of his mouth, before finding anything to
+say. "Well--well, all right," he finally responded. "I'll tell you--if
+it's anything I know about."
+
+"You know about it," said Dora. "That is, you certainly do if you were
+at your 'frat' meeting last night. Were you?"
+
+"Yes, I was there," Ramsey answered, wondering what in the world she
+wanted to know, though he supposed vaguely that it must be something
+about Colburn, whom he had several times seen walking with her. "Of
+course I couldn't tell you much," he added, with an afterthought. "You
+see, a good deal that goes on at a 'frat' meeting isn't supposed to be
+talked about."
+
+"Yes," she said, smiling faintly, though with a satire that missed him.
+"I've been a member of a sorority since September, and I think I have an
+idea of what could be told or not told. Suppose we walk on, if you don't
+mind. My question needn't embarrass you."
+
+Nevertheless, as they slowly went on together, Ramsey was embarrassed.
+He felt "queer." They had known each other so long; in a way had shared
+so much, sitting daily for years near each other and undergoing the same
+outward experiences; they had almost "grown up together," yet this was
+the first time they had ever talked together or walked together.
+
+"Well--" he said. "If you want to ask anything it's all right for me to
+tell you--well, I just as soon, I guess."
+
+"It has nothing to do with the secret proceedings of your 'frat'," said
+Dora, primly. "What I want to ask about has been talked of all over the
+place to-day. Everyone has been saying it was _your_ 'frat' that sent
+the first telegram to members of the Government offering support in case
+of war with Germany. They say you didn't even wait until to-day, but
+sent off a message last night. What I wanted to ask you was whether this
+story is true or not?"
+
+"Why, yes," said Ramsey, mildly. "That's what we did."
+
+She uttered an exclamation, a sound of grief and of suspicion confirmed.
+"Ah! I was afraid so!"
+
+"'Afraid so'? What's the matter?" he asked, and because she seemed
+excited and troubled, he found himself not quite so embarrassed as he
+had been at first; for some reason her agitation made him feel easier.
+"What was wrong about that?"
+
+"Oh, it's all so shocking and wicked and mistaken!" she cried. "Even the
+faculty has been doing it, and half the other 'frats' and sororities!
+And it was yours that started it."
+
+"Yes, we did," he said, throughly puzzled. "We're the oldest 'frat'
+here, and of course"--he chuckled modestly--"of course we think we're
+the best. Do you mean you believe we ought to've sat back and let
+somebody else start it?"
+
+"Oh, _no_!" she answered, vehemently. "Nobody ought to have started it!
+That's the trouble; don't you see? If nobody had started it none of it
+might have happened. The rest mightn't have caught it. It mightn't have
+got into their heads. A war thought is the most contagious thought in
+the world; but if it can be kept from starting, it can be kept from
+being contagious. It's just when people have got into an emotional
+state, or a state of smouldering rage, that everybody ought to be so
+terribly careful not to think war thoughts or make war speeches--or send
+war telegrams! I thought--oh, I was so sure I'd convinced Mr. Colburn of
+all this, the last time we talked of it! He seemed to understand, and I
+was sure he agreed with me." She bit her lip. "He was only pretending--I
+see that now!"
+
+"I guess he must 'a' been," said Ramsey, with admirable simplicity. "He
+didn't talk about anything like that last night. He was as much for it
+as anybody."
+
+"I've no doubt!"
+
+Ramsey made bold to look at her out of the side of his eye, and as she
+was gazing tensely forward he continued his observation for some time.
+She was obviously controlling agitation, almost controlling tears, which
+seemed to threaten her very wide-open eyes; for those now fully
+grown and noticeable eyewinkers of hers were subject to fluctuations
+indicating such a threat. She looked "hurt," and Ramsey was touched;
+there was something human about her, then, after all. And if he had put
+his feeling into words at the moment, he would have said that he guessed
+maybe he could stand this ole girl, for a few minutes sometimes, better
+than he'd always thought he could.
+
+"Well," he said, "Colburn prob'ly wouldn't want to hurt your feelings or
+anything. Colburn--"
+
+"He? He didn't! I haven't the faintest personal interest in what he
+did."
+
+"Oh!" said Ramsey. "Well, excuse me; I thought prob'ly you were sore
+because he'd jollied you about this pacifist stuff, and then--"
+
+"No!" she said, sharply. "I'm not thinking of his having agreed with
+_me_ and fooling _me_ about it. He just wanted to make a pleasant
+impression on a girl, and said anything he thought would please her. I
+don't care whether he does things like that or not. What I care about
+is that the _principle_ didn't reach him and that he mocked it! I don't
+care about a petty treachery to me, personally, but I--"
+
+Fraternal loyalty could not quite brook this. "Brother Colburn is a
+perfectly honor'ble man," said Ramsey, solemnly. "He is one of the most
+honor'ble men in this--"
+
+"Of course!" she cried. "Oh, can't I make you understand that I'm not
+condemning him for a little flattery to me? I don't care two straws
+for his showing that _I_ didn't influence him. He doesn't interest me,
+please understand."
+
+Ramsey was altogether perplexed. "Well, I don't see what makes you go
+for him so hard, then."
+
+"I don't."
+
+"But you said he was treach--"
+
+"I don't _condemn_ him for it," she insisted, despairingly. "Don't you
+see the difference? I'm not condemning anybody; I'm only lamenting.
+
+"What about?
+
+"About all of you that want _war_!"
+
+"My golly!" Ramsey exclaimed. "You don't think those Dutchmen were right
+to drown babies and--"
+
+"No! I think they were ghastly murderers! I think they were detestable
+and fiendish and monstrous and--"
+
+"Well, then, my goodness! What do you want?"
+
+"I don't want war!"
+
+"You don't?"
+
+"I want Christianity!" she cried. "I can't think of the Germans without
+hating them, and so to-day, when all the world is hating them, I keep
+myself from thinking of them as much as I can. Already half the world is
+full of war; you want to go to war to make things right, but it won't;
+it will only make more war!"
+
+"Well, I--"
+
+"Don't you see what you've done, you boys?" she said. "Don't you see
+what you've done with your absurd telegram? That started the rest; they
+thought they _all_ had to send telegrams like that."
+
+"Well, the faculty--"
+
+"Even they mightn't have thought of it if it hadn't been for the first
+one. Vengeance is the most terrible thought; once you put it into
+people's minds that they ought to have it, it runs away with them."
+
+"Well, it isn't mostly vengeance we're after, at all. There's a lot more
+to it than just getting even with--"
+
+She did not heed him. "You're all blind! You don't see what you're
+doing; you don't even see what you've done to this peaceful place here.
+You've filled it full of thoughts of fury and killing and massacre--"
+
+"Why, no," said Ramsey. "It was those Dutch did that to us; and,
+besides, there's more to it than you--"
+
+"No, there isn't," she interrupted. "It's just the old brutal spirit
+that nations inherit from the time they were only tribes; it's the tribe
+spirit, and an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It's those things
+and the love of fighting--men have always loved to fight. Civilization
+hasn't taken it out of them; men still have the brute in them that loves
+to fight!"
+
+"I don't think so," said Ramsey. "Americans don't love to fight; I don't
+know about other countries, but we don't. Of course, here and there,
+there's some fellow that likes to hunt around for scrapes, but I never
+saw more than three or four in my life that acted that way. Of course a
+football team often has a scrapper or two on it, but that's different."
+
+"No," she said. "I think you all really love to fight."
+
+Ramsey was roused to become argumentative. "I don't see where you get
+the idea. Colburn isn't that way, and back at school there wasn't a
+single boy that was anything like that."
+
+"What!" She stopped, and turned suddenly to face him.
+
+"What's the matter?" he said, stopping, too. Something he said had
+startled her, evidently.
+
+"How can you say such a thing?" she cried. "_You_ love to fight!"
+
+"Me?"
+
+"You do! You love fighting. You always have loved fighting."
+
+He was dumbfounded. "Why, I never had a fight in my life!"
+
+She cried out in protest of such prevarication.
+
+"Well, I never did," he insisted, mildly.
+
+"Why, you had a fight about _me_!"
+
+"No, I didn't."
+
+"With Wesley Bender!"
+
+Ramsey chuckled. "_That_ wasn't a fight!"
+
+"It wasn't?"
+
+"Nothing like one. We were just guyin' him about--about gettin' slicked
+up, kind of, because he sat in front of you; and he hit me with his book
+strap and I chased him off. Gracious, no; _that_ wasn't a fight!"
+
+"But you fought Linski only last fall."
+
+Ramsey chuckled again. "That wasn't even as much like a fight as the one
+with Wesley. I just told this Linski I was goin' to give him a punch in
+the sn-- I just told him to look out because I was goin' to hit him, and
+then I did it, and waited to see if he wanted to do anything about it,
+and he didn't. That's all there was to it, and it wasn't any more like
+fighting than--than feeding chickens is."
+
+She laughed dolefully. "It seems to me rather more like it than that!"
+
+"Well, it wasn't."
+
+They had begun to walk on again, and Ramsey was aware that they had
+passed the "frat house," where his dinner was probably growing cold. He
+was aware of this, but not sharply or insistently. Curiously enough, he
+did not think about it. He had begun to find something pleasant in the
+odd interview, and in walking beside a girl, even though the girl was
+Dora Yocum. He made no attempt to account to himself for anything so
+peculiar.
+
+For a while they went slowly together, not speaking, and without
+destination, though Ramsey vaguely took it for granted that Dora was
+going somewhere. But she wasn't. They emerged from the part of the
+small town closely built about the university and came out upon a bit
+of parked land overlooking the river; and here Dora's steps slowed to an
+indeterminate halt near a bench beneath a maple tree.
+
+"I think I'll stay here a while," she said; and as he made no response,
+she asked, "Hadn't you better be going back to your 'frat house' for
+your dinner? I didn't mean for you to come out of your way with me; I
+only wanted to get an answer to my question. You'd better be running
+back."
+
+"Well--"
+
+He stood irresolute, not sure that he wanted his dinner just then. It
+would have amazed him to face the fact deliberately that perhaps he
+preferred being with Dora Yocum to eating. However, he faced no such
+fact, nor any fact, but lingered.
+
+"Well--" he said again.
+
+"You'd better go."
+
+"I guess I can get my dinner pretty near any time. I don't--" He had a
+thought. "Did you--"
+
+"Did I what?"
+
+"Did you have your dinner before I met you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, aren't you--"
+
+She shook her head. "I don't want any."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't think people have very much appetite to-day and yesterday," she
+said, with the hint of a sad laugh, "all over America."
+
+"No; I guess that's so."
+
+"It's too terrible!" she said. "I can't sit and eat when I think of the
+_Lusitania_--of all those poor, poor people strangling in the water--"
+
+"No; I guess nobody can eat much, if they think about that."
+
+"And of what it's going to bring, if we let it," she went on. "As if
+this killing weren't enough, we want to add _our_ killing! Oh, that's
+the most terrible thing of all--the thing it makes within us! Don't you
+understand?"
+
+She turned to him appealingly, and he felt queerer than ever. Dusk had
+fallen. Where they stood, under the young-leaved maple tree, there
+was but a faint lingering of afterglow, and in this mystery her face
+glimmered wan and sweet; so that Ramsey, just then, was like one who
+discovers an old pan, used in the kitchen, to be made of chased silver.
+
+"Well, I don't feel much like dinner right now," he said. "We--we could
+sit here awhile on this bench, prob'ly."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+Ramsey kept very few things from Fred Mitchell, and usually his
+confidences were immediate upon the occasion of them; but allowed
+several weeks to elapse before sketching for his roommate the outlines
+of this adventure.
+
+"One thing that was kind o' funny about it, Fred," he said, "I didn't
+know what to call her."
+
+Mr. Mitchell, stretched upon the window seat in their "study," and
+looking out over the town street below and the campus beyond the street,
+had already thought it tactful to ambush his profound amusement by
+turning upon his side, so that his face was toward the window and away
+from his companion. "What did you want to call her?" he inquired in a
+serious voice. "Names?"
+
+"No. You know what I mean. I mean I had to just keep callin' her 'you';
+and that gets kind of freaky when you're talkin' to anybody a good while
+like that. When she'd be lookin' away from me, and I'd want to start
+sayin' something to her, you know, why, I wouldn't know how to get
+started exactly, without callin' her something. A person doesn't want to
+be always startin' off with 'See here,' or things like that."
+
+"I don't see why you let it trouble you," said Fred. "From how you've
+always talked about her, you had a perfectly handy way to start off with
+anything you wanted to say to her."
+
+"What with?"
+
+"Why didn't you just say, 'Oh, you Teacher's Pet!' That would--"
+
+"Get out! What I mean is, she called me 'Ramsey' without any bother; it
+seems funny I got stumped every time I started to say 'Dora.' Someway I
+couldn't land it, and it certainly would 'a' sounded crazy to call her
+'Miss Yocum' after sittin' in the same room with her every day from the
+baby class clear on up through the end of high school. That _would_ 'a'
+made me out an idiot!"
+
+"What did you call her?" Fred asked.
+
+"Just nothin' at all. I started to call her something or other a hundred
+times, I guess, and then I'd balk. I'd get all ready, and kind of make a
+sort of a sound, and then I'd have to quit."
+
+"She may have thought you had a cold," said Fred, still keeping his back
+turned.
+
+"I expect maybe she did--though I don't know; most of the time she
+didn't seem to notice me much, kind of."
+
+"She didn't?"
+
+"No. She was too upset, I guess, by what she was thinkin' about."
+
+"But if it hadn't been for that," Fred suggested, "you mean she'd have
+certainly paid more attention to who was sitting on the bench with her?"
+
+"Get out! You know how it was. Everybody those few days thought we were
+goin' to have war, and she was just sure of it, and it upset her. Of
+course most people were a lot more upset by what those Dutchmen did
+to the _Lusitania_ than by the idea of war; and she seemed to feel as
+broken up as anybody could be about the _Lusitania_, but what got her
+the worst was the notion of her country wantin' to fight, she said. She
+really was upset, too, Fred; there wasn't any puttin' on about it. I
+guess that ole girl certainly must have a good deal of feeling, because,
+doggoned, after we'd been sittin' there a while if she didn't have to
+get out her handkerchief! She kept her face turned away from me--just
+the same as you're doin' now to keep from laughin'--but honestly, she
+cried like somebody at a funeral. I felt like the darndest fool!"
+
+"I'm not laughing," said Fred, but he did not prove it by turning so
+that his face could be seen. "What did she say?"
+
+"Oh, she didn't say such an awful lot. She said one kind o' funny thing
+though: she said she was sorry she couldn't quite control herself, but
+if anybody had to see her cry she minded it less because it was an old
+schoolmate. What struck me so kind o' funny about that is--why, it looks
+as if she never knew the way I always hated her so."
+
+"Yes," said Fred. "It wasn't flattering!"
+
+"Well, sir, it _isn't_, kind of," Ramsey agreed, musingly. "It certainly
+isn't when you look at it that way."
+
+"What did you say when she said that?" Fred asked.
+
+"Nothin'. I started to, but I sort of balked again. Well, we kept on
+sitting there, and afterwhile she began to talk again and got kind of
+excited about how no war could do anything or anybody any good, and all
+war was wicked, no matter what it was about, and nothin' could be good
+that was founded on fear and hate, and every war that ever was fought
+was always founded on fear and hate. She said if the Germans wanted to
+fight us we ought to go to meet them and tell them we wouldn't fight."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"Nothin'. I kind o' started to--but what's the use? She's got that
+in her head. Besides, how are you goin' to argue about a thing with
+a person that's crying about it? I tell you, Fred, I guess we got to
+admit, after all, that ole girl certainly must have a lots of heart
+about her, anyway. There may not be much _fun_ to her--though of course
+I wouldn't know hardly any way to tell about that--but there couldn't be
+hardly any doubt she's got a lot of feeling. Well, and then she went on
+and said old men made wars, but didn't fight; they left the fighting to
+the boys, and the suffering to the boy's mothers."
+
+"Yes!" Fred exclaimed, and upon that he turned free of mirth for the
+moment. "That's the woman of it, I guess. Send the old men to do the
+fighting! For the matter of that, I guess my father'd about a thousand
+times go himself than see me and my brothers go; but Father's so fat he
+can't stoop! You got to be able to stoop to dig a trench, I guess! Well,
+suppose we sent our old men up against those Dutchmen; the Dutchmen
+would just kill the old men, and then come after the boys anyway, and
+the boys wouldn't be ready, and they'd get killed, too; and then there
+wouldn't be anybody but the Dutchmen left, and that'd be one fine world,
+wouldn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said Ramsey. "Course I thought of that."
+
+"Did you tell her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"Nothin'. I couldn't get started anyway, but, besides, what was the use?
+But she didn't want the old men to go; she didn't want anybody to go."
+
+"What did she want the country to do?" Fred asked, impatiently.
+
+"Just what it has been doin', I suppose. Just let things simmer down,
+and poke along, and let them do what they like to us."
+
+"I guess so!" said Fred. "Then, afterwhile, when they get some free time
+on their hands, they'll come over and make it _really_ interesting for
+us, because they know we won't do anything but talk. Yes, I guess the
+way things are settling down ought to suit Dora. There isn't goin' to be
+any war."
+
+"She was pretty sure there was, though," Ramsey said, thoughtfully.
+
+"Oh, of course she was then. We all thought so those few days."
+
+"No. She said she thought it prob'ly wouldn't come right away, but now
+it was almost sure to come sometime. She said our telegrams and all the
+talk and so much feeling and everything showed her that the war thought
+that was always _in_ people somewhere had been stirred up so it would
+go on and on. She said she knew from the way she felt herself about the
+_Lusitania_ that a feeling like that in her would never be absolutely
+wiped out as long as she lived. But she said her other feeling about the
+horribleness of war taught her to keep the first feeling from breaking
+out, but with other people it wouldn't; and even if war didn't break
+out right then, it would always be ready to, all over the country, and
+sometime it would, though she was goin' to do her share to fight it,
+herself, as long as she could stand. She asked me wouldn't I be one of
+the ones to help her."
+
+He paused, and after a moment Fred asked, "Well? What did you say to
+that?"
+
+"Nothin'. I started to, but--"
+
+Again Fred thought it tactful to turn and look out the window, while the
+agitation of his shoulders betrayed him.
+
+"Go on and laugh! Well, so we stayed there quite a while, but before we
+left she got kind of more like everyday, you know, the way people do. It
+was half-past nine when we walked back in town, and I was commencin'
+to feel kind of hungry, so I asked her if she wasn't, and she sort of
+laughed and seemed to be ashamed of it, as if it were a disgrace or
+something, but she said she guessed she was; so I left her by that hedge
+of lilacs near the observatory and went on over to the 'Teria and the
+fruit store, and got some stuffed eggs and olives and half-a-dozen
+peanut butter sandwiches and a box o' strawberries--kind of girl-food,
+you know--and went on back there, and we ate the stuff up. So then she
+said she was afraid she'd taken me away from my dinner and made me a lot
+of trouble, and so on, and she was sorry, and she told me good-night--"
+
+"What did you say then?"
+
+"Noth-- Oh, shut up! So then she skipped out to her Dorm, and I came on
+home."
+
+"When did you see her next, Ramsey?"
+
+"I haven't seen her next," said Ramsey. "I haven't seen her at all--not
+to speak to. I saw her on Main Street twice since then, but both times
+she was with some other girls, and they were across the street, and
+I couldn't tell if she was lookin' at me--I kind of thought not--so I
+thought it might look sort o' nutty to bow to her if she wasn't, so I
+didn't."
+
+"And you didn't tell her you wouldn't be one of the ones to help her
+with her pacifism and anti-war stuff and all that?"
+
+"No. I started to, but-- Shut up!"
+
+Fred sat up, giggling. "So she thinks you _will_ help her. You didn't
+say anything at all, and she must think that means she converted you.
+Why didn't you speak up?"
+
+"Well, _I_ wouldn't argue with her," said Ramsey. Then, after a silence,
+he seemed to be in need of sympathetic comprehension. "It _was_ kind o'
+funny, though, wasn't it?" he said, appealingly.
+
+"What was?"
+
+"The whole business."
+
+"What 'whole bus'--"
+
+"Oh, get out! Her stoppin' me, and me goin' pokin' along with her, and
+her--well, her crying and everything, and me being around with her while
+she felt so upset, I mean. It seems--well, it does seem kind o' funny to
+me."
+
+"Why does it?" Fred inquired, preserving his gravity. "Why should it
+seem funny to you?"
+
+"I don't mean funny like something's funny you laugh at," Ramsey
+explained laboriously. "I mean funny like something that's out of the
+way, and you wonder how it ever happened to happen. I mean it seems
+funny I'd ever be sittin' there on a bench with that ole girl I never
+spoke to in my life or had anything to do with, and talkin' about the
+United States goin' to war. What we were talkin' about, why, that seems
+just as funny as the rest of it. Lookin' back to our class picnic, f'r
+instance, second year of high school, that day I jumped in the creek
+after-- Well, you know, it was when I started makin' a fool of myself
+over a girl. Thank goodness, I got _that_ out o' my system; it makes me
+just sick to look back on those days and think of the fool things I did,
+and all I thought about that girl. Why, she-- Well, I've got old enough
+to see now she was just about as ordinary a girl as there ever was, and
+if I saw her now I wouldn't even think she was pretty; I'd prob'ly think
+she was sort of loud-lookin'. Well, what's passed is past, and it isn't
+either here nor there. What I started to say was this: that the way it
+begins to look to me, it looks as if nobody can tell in this life a darn
+thing about what's goin' to happen, and the things that do happen are
+the very ones you'd swear were the last that could. I mean--you look
+back to that day of the picnic--my! but I was a rube then--well, I mean
+you look back to that day, and what do you suppose I'd have thought then
+if somebody'd told me the time would ever come when I'd be 'way off here
+at college sittin' on a bench with Dora Yocum--with _Dora Yocum_, in
+the first place--and her crying, and both of us talking about the United
+States goin' to war with Germany! Don't it seem pretty funny to you,
+Fred, too?"
+
+"But as near as I can make out," Fred said, "that isn't what happened."
+
+"Why isn't it?"
+
+"You say 'and both us talking' and so on. As near as I can make out,
+_you_ didn't say anything at all."
+
+"Well, I didn't--much," Ramsey admitted, and returned to his point with
+almost pathetic persistence. "But doesn't it seem kind o' funny to you,
+Fred?"
+
+"Well, I don't know."
+
+"It does to me," Ramsey insisted. "It certainly does to me."
+
+"Yes," said Fred cruelly. "I've noticed you said so, but it don't look
+any funnier than you do when you say it."
+
+Suddenly he sent forth a startling shout. "_Wow!_ You're as red as a
+blushing beet."
+
+"I am not!"
+
+"Y'are!" shouted Fred. "Wow! The ole woman-hater's got the flushes! Oh,
+look at the pretty posy!"
+
+And, jumping down from the window seat, he began to dance round his much
+perturbed comrade, bellowing. Ramsey bore with him for a moment, then
+sprang upon him; they wrestled vigorously, broke a chair, and went to
+the floor with a crash that gave the chandelier in Mrs. Meig's parlour,
+below, an attack of jingles.
+
+"You let me up!" Fred gasped.
+
+"You take your solemn oath to shut up? You goin' to swear it?"
+
+"All right. I give my solemn oath," said Fred; and they rose, arranging
+their tousled attire.
+
+"Well," said Fred, "when you goin' to call on her?"
+
+"You look here!" Ramsey approached him dangerously. "You just gave me
+your sol--"
+
+"I beg!" Fred cried, retreating. "I mean, aside from all that, why, I
+just thought maybe after such an evening you'd feel as a gentleman you
+ought to go and ask about her health."
+
+"Now, see here--"
+
+"No, I mean it; you ought to," Fred insisted, earnestly, and as
+his roommate glared at him with complete suspicion, he added, in
+explanation. "You ought to go next Caller's Night, and send in your
+card, and say you felt you ought to ask if she'd suffered any from the
+night air. Even if you couldn't manage to say that, you ought to start
+to say it, anyhow, because you-- Keep off o' me! I'm only tryin' to do
+you a good turn, ain't I?"
+
+"You save your good turns for yourself," Ramsey growled, still advancing
+upon him.
+
+But the insidious Mitchell, evading him, fled to the other end of the
+room, picked up his cap, and changed his manner. "Come on, ole bag o'
+beans, let's be on our way to the 'frat house'; it's time. We'll call
+this all off."
+
+"You better!" Ramsey warned him; and they trotted out together.
+
+But as they went along, Fred took Ramsey's arm confidentially, and said,
+"Now, honestly, Ram, ole man, when _are_ you goin' to--"
+
+Ramsey was still red. "You look here! Just say one more word--"
+
+"Oh, _no_," Fred expostulated. "I mean _seriously_, Ramsey. Honestly, I
+mean seriously. Aren't you seriously goin' to call on her some Caller's
+Night?"
+
+"No, I'm not!"
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Because I don't want to."
+
+"Well, seriously, Ramsey, there's only one Caller's Night before
+vacation, and so I suppose it hardly will be worth while; but I expect
+you'll see quite a little of her at home this summer?"
+
+"No, I won't. I won't see her at all. She isn't goin' to be home this
+summer, and I wouldn't see anything of her if she was."
+
+"Where's she goin' to be."
+
+"In Chicago."
+
+"She is?" said Fred, slyly. "When'd she tell you?"
+
+Ramsey turned on him. "You look out! She didn't tell me. I just happened
+to see in the _Bulletin_ she's signed up with some other girls to go and
+do settlement work in Chicago. Anybody could see it. It was printed out
+plain. You could have seen it just as well as I could, if you'd read the
+_Bulletin_."
+
+"Oh," said Fred.
+
+"Now look here--"
+
+"Good heavens! Can't I even say 'oh'?"
+
+"It depends on the way you say it."
+
+"I'll be careful," Fred assured him, earnestly. "I really and honestly
+don't mean to get you excited about all this, Ramsey. I can see myself
+you haven't changed from your old opinion of Dora Yocum a bit. I was
+only tryin' to get a little rise out of you for a minute, because of
+course, seriously, why, I can see you hate her just the same as you
+always did."
+
+"Yes," said Ramsey, disarmed and guileless in the face of diplomacy. "I
+only told you about all this, Fred, because it seemed--well, it seemed
+so kind o' funny to me."
+
+Fred affected not to hear. "What did you say, Ramsey?"
+
+Ramsey looked vaguely disturbed. "I said--why, I said it all seemed kind
+o'--" He paused, then repeated plaintively: "Well, to me, it all seemed
+kind o'--kind o' funny."
+
+"What did?" Fred inquired, but as he glanced in seeming naivete at his
+companion, something he saw in the latter's eye warned him, and suddenly
+Fred thought it would be better to run.
+
+Ramsey chased him all the way to the "frat house."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+Ramsey was not quite athlete enough for any of the 'varsity teams;
+neither was he an antagonist safely encountered, whether in play or
+in earnest, and during the next few days he taught Fred Mitchell to be
+cautious. The chaffer learned that his own agility could not save him
+from Ramsey, and so found it wiser to contain an effervescence which
+sometimes threatened to burst him. Ramsey as a victim was a continuous
+temptation, he was so good-natured and yet so furious.
+
+After Commencement, when the roommates had gone home, Mr. Mitchell's
+caution extended over the long sunshiny months of summer vacation; he
+broke it but once and then in well-advised safety, for the occasion was
+semi-public. The two were out for a stroll on a July Sunday afternoon;
+and up and down the street young couples lolled along, young families
+and baby carriages straggled to and from the houses of older relatives,
+and the rest of the world of that growing city was rocking and fanning
+itself on its front veranda.
+
+"Here's a right pretty place, isn't it, Ramsey? don't you think?" Fred
+remarked innocently, as they were passing a lawn of short-clipped,
+bright green grass before a genial-looking house, fresh in white paint
+and cool in green-and-white awnings. A broad veranda, well populated
+just now, crossed the front of the house; fine trees helped the awnings
+to give comfort against the sun; and Fred's remark was warranted.
+Nevertheless, he fell under the suspicion of his companion, who had
+begun to evince some nervousness before Fred spoke.
+
+"What place do you mean?"
+
+"The Yocum place," said Mr. Mitchell. "I hear the old gentleman's mighty
+prosperous these days. They keep things up to the mark, don't they,
+Ramsey?"
+
+"I don't know whether they do or whether they don't," Ramsey returned
+shortly.
+
+Fred appeared to muse regretfully. "It looks kind of _empty_ now,
+though," he said, "with only Mr. and Mrs. Yocum and their three married
+daughters, and eight or nine children on the front porch!"
+
+"You wait till I get you where they can't see us!" Ramsey warned him,
+fiercely.
+
+"You can't do it!" said Fred, manifesting triumph. "We'll both stop
+right here in plain sight of the whole Yocum family connection till you
+promise not to touch me."
+
+And he halted, leaning back implacably against the Yocum's iron fence.
+Ramsey was scandalized.
+
+"Come on!" he said, hoarsely. "Don't stop _here_!"
+
+"I will, and if you go on alone I'll yell at you. You got to stand right
+here with all of 'em lookin' at you until--"
+
+"I promise! My heavens, come _on_!"
+
+Fred consented to end the moment of agony; and for the rest of the
+summer found it impossible to persuade Ramsey to pass that house in his
+company. "I won't do it!" Ramsey told him. "Your word of honour means
+nothin' to me; you're liable to do anything that comes into your head,
+and I'm gettin' old enough to not get a reputation for bein' seen with
+people that act the idiot on the public streets. No, sir; we'll walk
+around the block--at least, we will if you're goin' with _me_!"
+
+And to Fred's delight, though he concealed it, they would make this
+detour.
+
+The evening after their return to the university both were busy with
+their trunks and various orderings and disorderings of their apartment,
+but Fred several times expressed surprise that his roommate should
+be content to remain at home; and finally Ramsey comprehended the
+implications. Mrs. Meigs's chandelier immediately jingled with the shock
+of another crash upon the floor above.
+
+"You let me up!" Fred commanded thickly, his voice muffled by the pile
+of flannels, sweaters, underwear, and raincoats wherein his head
+was being forced to burrow. "You let me up, darn you! _I_ didn't say
+anything." And upon his release he complained that the attack was
+unprovoked. "I didn't say anything on earth to even hint you might want
+to go out and look around to see if anybody in particular had got back
+to college yet. I didn't even mention the _name_ of Dora Yo-- Keep off
+o' me! My goodness, but you are sensitive!"
+
+As a matter of fact, neither of them saw Dora until the first meeting of
+the Lumen, whither they went as sophomores to take their pleasure in the
+agony of freshmen debaters. Ramsey was now able to attend the Lumen, not
+with complacence but at least without shuddering over the recollection
+of his own spectacular first appearance there. He had made subsequent
+appearances, far from brilliant yet not disgraceful, and as a spectator,
+at least, he usually felt rather at his ease in the place. It cannot be
+asserted, however, that he appeared entirely at his ease this evening
+after he had read the "Programme" chalked upon the large easel
+blackboard beside the chairman's desk. Three "Freshmen Debates" were
+announced, and a "Sophomore Oration," this last being followed by the
+name, "D. Yocum, '18." Ramsey made immediate and conspicuous efforts
+to avoid sitting next to his roommate, but was not so adroit as to be
+successful. However, Fred was merciful: the fluctuations of his friend's
+complexion were an inspiration more to pity than to badinage.
+
+The three debates all concerned the "Causes of the War in Europe," and
+honours appeared to rest with a small and stout, stolidly "pro-German"
+girl debater, who had brought with her and translated at sight absa-loot
+proofs (so she called them), printed in German, that Germany had been
+attacked by Belgium at the low instigation of the envious English.
+Everybody knew it wasn't true; but she made an impression and
+established herself as a debater, especially as her opponent was quite
+confounded by her introduction of printed matter.
+
+When the debates and the verdicts were concluded, the orator appeared,
+and Fred's compassion extended itself so far that he even refrained from
+looking inquisitively at the boy in the seat next to his; but he made
+one side wager, mentally--that if Ramsey had consented to be thoroughly
+confidential just then, he would have confessed to feeling kind o'
+funny.
+
+Dora was charmingly dressed, and she was pale; but those notable
+eyelashes of hers were all the more notable against her pallor. And as
+she spoke with fire, it was natural that her colour should come back
+quite flamingly and that her eyes should flash in shelter of the lashes.
+"The Christian Spirit and Internationalism" was her subject, yet she
+showed no meek sample of a Christian Spirit herself when she came to
+attacking war-makers generally, as well as all those "half-developed
+tribesmen," and "victims of herd instinct" who believed that war might
+ever be justified under any circumstances of atrocity. She was eloquent
+truly, and a picture of grace and girlish dignity, even when she
+was most vigorous. Nothing could have been more militant than her
+denunciation of militancy.
+
+"She's an actual wonder," Fred said, when the two had got back to Mrs.
+Meigs's, afterward. "Don't you look at me like that: I'm talkin' about
+her as a public character, and there's nothin' personal about it. You
+let me alone."
+
+Ramsey was not clear as to his duty. "Well--"
+
+"If any person makes a public speech," Fred protested, "I got a perfect
+right to discuss 'em, no matter what you think of 'em"--and he added
+hastily--"or _don't_ think of 'em!"
+
+"Look here--"
+
+"Good heavens!" Fred exclaimed. "You aren't expecting to interfere with
+me if I say anything about that little fat Werder girl that argued for
+Germany, are you? Or any of the other speakers? I got a right to talk
+about 'em just as public speakers, haven't I? Well, what I say is:
+Dora Yocum as an orator is just an actual perfect wonder. Got any
+objections?"
+
+"N-no."
+
+"All right then." Fred settled himself upon the window seat with a pipe,
+and proceeded, "There's something about her, when she stands there, she
+stands so straight and knows just what she's up to, and everything, why,
+there's something about her makes the cold chills go down your
+spine--I mean _my_ spine, not yours particularly! You sit down--I
+mean _anybody's_ spine, doggone it!" And as Ramsey increased the
+manifestations of his suspicions, lifting a tennis racket over the
+prostrate figure, "Oh, murder," Fred said, resignedly. "All right, we'll
+change the subject. That fat little Werder cutie made out a pretty good
+case for Germany, didn't she?"
+
+Ramsey tossed the racket away, disposed himself in an easy chair with
+his feet upon the table, and presently chuckled. "You remember the time
+I had the fuss with Wesley Bender, back in the ole school days?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"All the flubdub this Werder girl got off to-night puts me in mind of
+the way I talked that day. I can remember it as well as anything! Wesley
+kept yelpin' that whoever mentioned a lady's name in a public place was
+a pup, and of course I didn't want to hit him for that; a boy's got
+a reg'lar instinct for tryin' to make out he's on the right side in a
+scrap, and he'll always try to do something, or say something, or he'll
+get the other boy to say someting to make it look as if the other boy
+was in the wrong and began the trouble. So I told poor ole Wes that my
+father spoke my mother's name in a public place whenever he wanted
+to, and I dared him to say my father was a pup. And all so on. A boy
+startin' up a scrap, why, half the time he'll drag his father and mother
+if there's any chance to do it. He'll fix up some way so he can say,
+'Well, that's just the same as if you called my father and mother a
+fool,' or something like that. Then, afterward, he can claim he was
+scrappin' because he had to defend his father and mother, and of course
+he'll more than half believe it himself.
+
+"Well, you take a Government--it's only just some _men_, the way I see
+it, and if they're goin' to start some big trouble like this war, why,
+of course they'll play just about the same ole boy trick, because it's
+instinct to do it, just the same for a man as it is for a boy--or else
+the principle's just the same, or something. Well, anyhow, if you want
+to know who started a scrap and worked it up, you got to forget all the
+_talk_ there is about it, and all what each side _says_, and just look
+at two things: Who was fixed for it first, or thought they were, and who
+hit first? When you get the answer to those two questions everything's
+settled about all this being 'attacked' business. Both sides, just the
+same as boys, they'll both claim they _had_ to fight; but if you want to
+know which one _did_ have to, why forget all the arguing and don't take
+your eye off just what _happened_. As near as I can make out, this
+war began with Germany and Austria startin' in to wipe out two little
+countries; Austria began shootin' up Serbia, and Germany began shootin'
+up Belgium. I don't need to notice any more than that, myself--all
+the Werder girls in the country can debate their heads off, they can't
+change what happened and they can't excuse it, either."
+
+He was silent, appearing to feel that he had concluded conclusively, and
+the young gentleman on the window seat, after staring at him for several
+moments of genuine thoughtfulness, was gracious enough to observe,
+"Well, ole Ram, you may be a little slow in class, but when you think
+things out with yourself you do show signs of something pretty near like
+real horse-sense sometimes. Why don't you ever say anything like that
+to--to some of your pacifist friends?"
+
+"What do you mean? Who you talkin' about? Whose 'pacifist friends'?"
+
+"See here!" Fred exclaimed, as Ramsey seemed about to rise. "You keep
+sitting just where you are, and don't look at me out of the side of your
+eye like that--pretendin' you're a bad horse. I'm _really_ serious now,
+and you listen to me. I don't think argufying and debating like that
+little Fraulein Werder's does much harm. She's a right nifty young
+rolypoly, by the way, though you didn't notice, of course."
+
+"Why didn't I?" Ramsey demanded, sharply. "Why didn't I notice?"
+
+"Oh, nothing. But, as I was saying, I don't think that sort of talk does
+much harm: everybody knows it goes on among the pro-Germans, and it's
+all hot air, anyhow. But I think Linski's sort of talk does do harm,
+prob'ly among people that don't know much; and what's more, I think Dora
+Yocum's does some, too. Well, you hit Linski in the snoot, so what are
+you-- Sit still! My lord! You don't think I'm askin' you to go and hit
+Dora, do you? I mean: Aren't you ever goin' to talk to her about it and
+tell her what's what?"
+
+"Oh, you go on to bed!"
+
+"No, I'm in earnest," Fred urged. "Honestly, aren't you ever goin' to?"
+
+"How could I do anything like that?" Ramsey demanded explosively. "I
+never see her--to speak to, that is. I prob'ly won't happen to have
+another talk with her, or anything, all the time we're in college."
+
+"No," Fred admitted, "I suppose not. Of course, if you did, then you
+would give her quite a talking-to, just the way you did the other time,
+wouldn't you?" But upon that, another resumption of physical violence
+put an end to the conversation.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+Throughout the term Ramsey's calculation of probabilities against the
+happening of another interview with Dora seemed to be well founded, but
+at the beginning of the second "semester" he found her to be a fellow
+member of a class in biology. More than that, this class had every week
+a two-hour session in the botanical laboratory, where the structure of
+plants was studied under microscopic dissection. The students worked in
+pairs, a special family of plants being assigned to each couple; and the
+instructor selected the couples with an eye to combinations of the quick
+with the slow. D. Yocum and R. Milholland (the latter in a strange state
+of mind and complexion) were given two chairs, but only one desk and one
+microscope. Their conversation was strictly botanical.
+
+Thenceforth it became the most pressing care of Ramsey's life to prevent
+his roommate from learning that there was any conversation at all, even
+botanical. Fortunately, Fred was not taking the biological courses,
+though he appeared to be taking the sentimental ones with an astonishing
+thoroughness; and sometimes, to Fred's hilarious delight, Ramsey
+attempted to turn the tables and rally him upon whatever last affair
+seemed to be engaging his fancy. The old Victorian and pre-Victorian
+_blague_ word "petticoat" had been revived in Fred's vocabulary, and in
+others, as "skirt." The lightsome sprig was hourly to be seen, even
+when university rulings forbade, dilly-dallying giddily along the campus
+paths or the town sidewalks with some new and pretty Skirt. And when
+Ramsey tried to fluster him about such a matter Fred would profess his
+ardent love for the new lady in shouts and impromptu song. Nothing
+could be done to him, and Ramsey, utterly unable to defend his own
+sensibilities in like manner, had always to retire in bafflement.
+Sometimes he would ponder upon the question thus suggested: Why couldn't
+he do this sort of thing, since Fred could? But he never discovered a
+satisfying answer.
+
+Ramsey's watchfulness was so careful (lest he make some impulsive
+admission in regard to the botanical laboratory, for instance) that
+Mr. Mitchell's curiosity gradually became almost quiescent; but
+there arrived a day in February when it was piqued into the liveliest
+activity. It was Sunday, and Fred, dressing with a fastidiousness
+ever his daily habit, noticed that Ramsey was exhibiting an unusual
+perplexity about neckties.
+
+"Keep the black one on," Fred said, volunteering the suggestion, as
+Ramsey muttered fiercely at a mirror. "It's in better taste for church,
+anyhow. You're going to church, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes. Are you?"
+
+"No. I've got a luncheon engagement."
+
+"Well, you could go to church first, couldn't you? You better; you've
+got a lot of church absences against you."
+
+"Then one more won't hurt. No church in mine this morning, thanks! G'by,
+ole sox; see you at the 'frat house' for dinner."
+
+He went forth, whistling syncopations, and began a brisk trudge into the
+open country. There was a professor's daughter who also was not going to
+church that morning; and she lived a little more than three miles
+beyond the outskirts of the town. Unfortunately, as the weather was
+threatening, all others of her family abandoned the idea of church that
+day, and Fred found her before a cozy fire, but surrounded by parents,
+little brothers, and big sisters. The professor was talkative; Fred's
+mind might have been greatly improved, but with a window in range he
+preferred a melancholy contemplation of the snow, which had begun
+to fall in quantity. The professor talked until luncheon, throughout
+luncheon, and was well under way to fill the whole afternoon with talk,
+when Fred, repenting all the errors of his life, got up to go.
+
+Heartily urged to remain, for there was now something just under a
+blizzard developing, he said No; he had a great deal of "cirriculum
+work" to get done before the morrow, and passed from the sound of
+the professor's hospitable voice and into the storm. He had a tedious
+struggle against the wind and thickening snow, but finally came in
+sight of the town, not long before dark. Here the road led down into a
+depression, and, lifting his head as he began the slight ascent on the
+other side, Fred was aware of two figures outlined upon the low ridge
+before him. They were dimmed by the driving snow and their backs were
+toward him, but he recognized them with perfect assurance. They were
+Dora Yocum and Ramsey Milholland.
+
+They were walking so slowly that their advance was almost imperceptible,
+but it could be seen that Dora was talking with great animation; and
+she was a graceful thing, thus gesticulating, in her long, slim fur coat
+with the white snow frosting her brown fur cap. Ramsey had his hands
+deep in his overcoat pockets and his manner was wholly that of an
+audience.
+
+Fred murmured to himself, "'What did you say to her?' 'Nothin'. I
+started to, but'--" Then he put on a burst of speed and passed them,
+sweeping off his hat with operatic deference, yet hurrying by as if
+fearful of being thought a killjoy if he lingered. He went to the
+"frat house," found no one downstairs, and established himself in a red
+leather chair to smoke and ruminate merrily by a great fire in the hall.
+
+Half an hour later Ramsey entered, stamped off the snow, hung up his hat
+and coat, and sat himself down defiantly in the red leather chair on the
+other side of the fireplace.
+
+"Well, go on," he said. "Commence!"
+
+"Not at all!" Fred returned, amiably. "Fine spring weather to-day.
+Lovely to see all the flowers and the birds as we go a-strolling by. The
+little bobolinks--"
+
+"You look here! That's the only walk I ever took with her in my life. I
+mean by--by asking her and her saying she would and so forth. That other
+time just sort of happened, and you know it. Well, the weather wasn't
+just the best in the world, maybe, but she's an awful conscientious girl
+and once she makes an engagement--"
+
+"Why, of course," Fred finished for him, "She'd be too pious to break
+it just on account of a mere little blizzard or anything. Wonder how the
+weather will be next Sunday?"
+
+"I don't know and I don't care," said Ramsey. "You don't suppose I asked
+her to go _again_, do you?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, for one thing, you don't suppose I want her to think I'm a
+perfect fool, do you?"
+
+Fred mused a moment or two, looking at the fire. "What was the lecture?"
+he asked, mildly.
+
+"What lecture?"
+
+"She seemed to me to be--"
+
+"That wasn't lecturing; she was just--"
+
+"Just what?"
+
+"Well; she thinks war for the United States is coming closer and
+closer--"
+
+"But it isn't."
+
+"Well, she thinks so, anyhow," said Ramsey, "and she's all broken up
+about it. Of course she thinks we oughtn't to fight and she's trying to
+get everybody else she can to keep working against it. She isn't goin'
+home again next summer, she's goin' back to that settlement work in
+Chicago and work there among those people against our goin' to war; and
+here in college she wants to get everybody she can to talk against it,
+and--"
+
+"What did you say?" Fred asked, and himself supplied the reply:
+"Nothin'. I started to, but--"
+
+Ramsey got up. "Now look here! You know the 'frat' passed a rule that if
+we broke any more furniture in this house with our scrappin' we'd both
+be fined the cost of repairs and five dollars apiece. Well, I can afford
+five dollars this month better than you can, and--"
+
+"I take it back!" Fred interposed, hastily. "But you just listen to me;
+you look out--letting her think you're on her side like that."
+
+"I don't--"
+
+"You _don't?_"
+
+Ramsey looked dogged. "I'm not goin' around always arguin' about
+everything when arguin' would just hurt people's feelings about
+something they're all excited about, and wouldn't do a bit o' good
+in the world--and you know yourself just _talk_ hardly ever settles
+anything--so I don't--"
+
+"Aha!" Fred cried. "I thought so! Now you listen to me--"
+
+"I won't. I--"
+
+But at this moment they were interrupted. Someone slyly opened the door,
+and a snowball deftly thrown from without caught Ramsey upon the back
+of the neck and head, where it flattened and displayed itself as an
+ornamental star. Shouting fiercely, both boys sprang up, ran to the
+door, were caught there in a barrage of snowballs, ducked through it in
+spite of all damage, charged upon a dozen besweatered figures awaiting
+them and began a mad battle in the blizzard. Some of their opponents
+treacherously joined them, and turned upon the ambushers.
+
+In the dusk the merry conflict waged up and down the snow-covered
+lawn, and the combatants threw and threw, or surged back and forth, or
+clenched and toppled over into snow banks, yet all coming to chant an
+extemporized battle-cry in chorus, even as they fought the most wildly.
+
+"Who? Who? Who?" they chanted. "Who? Who? _Who_ says there ain't goin'
+to be no war?"
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+So everywhere over the country, that winter of 1916, there were
+light-hearted boys skylarking--at college, or on the farms; and in the
+towns the young machinists snowballed one another as they came from the
+shops; while on this Sunday of the "frat" snow fight probably several
+hundreds of thousands of youthful bachelors, between the two oceans,
+went walking, like Ramsey, each with a girl who could forget the
+weather. Yet boys of nineteen and in the twenties were not light-hearted
+all the time that winter and that spring and that summer. Most of them
+knew long, thoughtful moments, as Ramsey did, when they seemed to be
+thinking not of girls or work or play--nor of anything around them,
+but of some more vital matter or prospect. And at such times they were
+grave, but not ungentle.
+
+For the long strain was on the country; underneath all its outward
+seeming of things going on as usual there shook a deep vibration, like
+the air trembling to vast organ pipes in diapasons too profound to reach
+the ear as sound: one felt, not heard, thunder in the ground under
+one's feet. The succession of diplomatic Notes came to an end after the
+torpedoing of the _Sussex_; and at last the tricky ruling Germans in
+Berlin gave their word to murder no more, and people said, "This means
+peace for America, and all is well for us," but everybody knew in his
+heart that nothing was well for us, that there was no peace.
+
+They said "All is well," while that thunder in the ground never
+ceased--it grew deeper and heavier till all America shook with it and it
+became slowly audible as the voice of the old American soil wherein lay
+those who had defended it aforetime, a soil that bred those who would
+defend it again, for it was theirs; and the meaning of it--Life,
+Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--was theirs, and theirs to defend.
+And they knew they would defend it, and that more than the glory of a
+Nation was at stake. The Freedom of Man was at stake. So, gradually,
+the sacred thunder reached the ears of the young men and gave them those
+deep moments that came to them whether they sat in the classroom or
+the counting-room, or walked with the plow, or stood to the machine, or
+behind the ribbon counter. Thus the thunder shook them and tried them
+and slowly came into their lives and changed everything for them.
+
+Hate of the Germans was not bred; but a contempt for what Germany had
+shown in lieu of a national heart; a contempt as mighty and profound as
+the resolve that the German way and the German will should prevail in
+America, nor in any country of the world that would be free. And when
+the German Kaiser laid his command upon America, that no American should
+take his ship upon the free seas, death being the penalty for any who
+disobeyed, then the German Kaiser got his answer, not only to this
+new law he had made for us, but to many other thoughts of his. Yet the
+answer was for some time delayed.
+
+There was a bitter Sunday, and its bitterness went everywhere, to
+every place in the whole world that held high and generous hearts. Its
+bitterness came to the special meeting in the "Frat hall," where there
+were hearts, indeed, of that right sort, and one of them became vocal
+in its bitterness. This was the heart of Fred Mitchell, who was now an
+authority, being president of the Junior Class, chairman of the Prom
+Committee, and other things pleasant to be and to live for at his age.
+
+"For me, Brothers," he said, "I'd think I'd a great deal rather have
+been shot through the head than heard the news from Washington to-day! I
+tell you, I've spent the meanest afternoon I ever did in my life, and I
+guess it's been pretty much the same with all of us. The worst of it
+is, it looks as though there isn't a thing in the world we can do. The
+country's been betrayed by a few blatherskites and boneheads that had
+the power to do it, and all we can do we've just got to stand it. But
+there's some Americans that aren't just standing it, and I want to tell
+you a lot of 'em are men from the universities, just like us. They're
+_over there_ right now; they haven't said much--they just packed up and
+went. They're flying for France and for England and for Canada; they're
+fighting under every flag on the right side of the Western Front; and
+they're driving ambulances at Verdun and ammunition trucks at the Somme.
+Well, there's going to be a lot more American boys on all these jobs
+mighty soon, on account of what those men did in Congress to-day. If
+they won't give us a chance to do something under our own flag, then
+we'll have to go and do it under some other flag; and I want to tell you
+I'm one that's going to _go!_ I'll stick it out in college up to Easter,
+and then if there's still no chance to go under the Stars and Stripes
+I'll maybe have to go under the flag my great-great-grandfather fought
+against in 1776, but, anyhow, I'll _go!_"
+
+It was in speaking to Ramsey of this declaration that Dora said Fred was
+a "dangerous firebrand." They were taking another February walk, but the
+February was February, 1917; and the day was dry and sunny. "It's just
+about a year ago," she said.
+
+"What is?" Ramsey asked.
+
+"That first time we went walking. Don't you remember?"
+
+"Oh, _that_ day? Yes, I remember it was snowing."
+
+"And so cold and blowy!" she added. "It seems a long time ago. I like
+walking with you, Ramsey. You're so quiet and solid--I've always felt
+I could talk to you just anyhow I pleased, and you wouldn't mind. I'll
+miss these walks with you when we're out of college."
+
+He chuckled. "That's funny!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because we've only taken four besides this: two last year, and another
+week before last, and another last week. This is only the fifth."
+
+"Good gracious! Is that all? It seemed to me we'd gone ever so often!"
+She laughed. "I'm afraid you won't think that seems much as if I'd liked
+going, but I really have. And, by the way, you've never called on me at
+all. Perhaps it's because I've forgotten to ask you."
+
+"Oh, no," Ramsey said, and scuffed his shoes on the path, presently
+explaining rather huskily that he "never _was_ much of a caller"; and he
+added, "or anything."
+
+"Well, you must come if you ever care to," she said, with a big-sister
+graciousness. "The Dorm chaperon sits there, of course, but ours is
+a jolly one and you'd like her. You've probably met her--Mrs.
+Hustings?--when you've called on other girls at our old shop."
+
+"No," said Ramsey. "I never was much of a--" He paused, fearing that he
+might be repeating himself, and too hastily amended his intention. "I
+never liked any girl enough to go and call on her."
+
+"Ramsey Milholland!" she cried. "Why, when we were in school half the
+room used to be talking about how you and that pretty Milla--"
+
+"No, no!" Ramsey protested, again too hurriedly. "I never called on her.
+We just went walking."
+
+A moment later his colour suddenly became fiery. "I don't mean--I
+mean--" he stammered. "It was walking, of course--I mean we did go out
+walking but it wasn't walking like--like this." He concluded with a fit
+of coughing which seemed to rack him.
+
+Dora threw back her head and laughed delightfully. "Don't you
+apologize!" she said. "_I_ didn't when I said it seemed to me that we've
+gone walking so often, when in reality it's only four or five times
+altogether. I think I can explain, though: I think it came partly from
+a feeling I have that I can rely on you--that you're a good, solid,
+reliable sort of person. I remember from the time we were little
+children, you always had a sort of worried, honest look in school;
+and you used to make a dent in your forehead--you meant it for a
+frown--whenever I caught your eye. You hated me so honestly, and you
+were so honestly afraid I wouldn't see it!"
+
+"Oh, no--no--"
+
+"Oh, yes--yes!" she laughed, then grew serious. "My feeling about
+you--that you were a person to be relied on, I mean--I think it began
+that evening in our freshman year, after the _Lusitania_, when I stopped
+you on campus and you went with me, and I couldn't help crying, and you
+were so nice and quiet. I hardly realized then that it was the first
+time we'd ever really talked together--of course _I_ did all the
+talking!--and yet we'd known each other so many years. I thought of it
+afterward. But what gave me such a different view of you, I'd always
+thought you were one of that truculent sort of boys, always just
+bursting for a fight; but you showed me you'd really never had a fight
+in your life and hated fighting, and that you sympathized with my
+feeling about war." She stopped speaking to draw in her breath with a
+sharp sigh. "Ah, don't you remember what I've told you all along? How
+it keeps coming closer and closer--and now it's almost here! Isn't it
+_unthinkable?_ And what can we do to stop it, we poor few who feel that
+we _must_ stop it?"
+
+"Well--" Ramsey began uncomfortably. "Of course I--I--"
+
+"You can't do much," she said. "I know. None of us can. What can any
+little group do? There are so few of us among the undergraduates--and
+only one in the whole faculty. All the rest are for war. But we mustn't
+give up; we must never feel afterward that we left anything undone; we
+must fight to the last breath!"
+
+"'Fight'?" he repeated wonderingly, then chuckled.
+
+"Oh, as a figure of speech," she said, impatiently. "Our language
+is full of barbaric figures left over from the dark ages. But, oh,
+Ramsey!"--she touched his sleeve--"I've heard that Fred Mitchell is
+saying that he's going to Canada after Easter, to try to get into the
+Canadian aviation corps. If it's true, he's a dangerous firebrand, I
+think. Is it true?"
+
+"I guess so. He's been talking that way some."
+
+"But why do you _let_ him talk that way?" she cried. "He's your
+roommate; surely you have more influence with him than anybody else has.
+Couldn't you--"
+
+He shook his head slowly, while upon his face the faintly indicated
+modellings of a grin hinted of an inner laughter at some surreptitious
+thought. "Well, you know, Fred says himself sometimes, I don't seem to
+be much of a talker exactly!"
+
+"I know. But don't you see? That sort of thing is contagious. Others
+will think they ought to go if he does; he's popular and quite a leader.
+Can't you do anything with him?"
+
+She waited for him to answer. "Can't you?" she insisted.
+
+The grin had disappeared, and Ramsey grew red again. He seemed to wish
+to speak, to heave with speech that declined to be spoken and would not
+rouse up from his inwards. Finally he uttered words.
+
+"I--I--well, I--"
+
+"Oh, I know," she said. "A man--or a boy!--always hates to be intruding
+his own convictions upon other men, especially in a case like this,
+where he might be afraid of some idiot's thinking him unmanlike. But
+Ramsey--" Suddenly she broke off and looked at him attentively; his
+discomfort had become so obvious that suspicion struck her. She spoke
+sharply. "Ramsey _you_ aren't dreaming of doing such a thing, are you?"
+
+"What such a thing?"
+
+"Fred hasn't influenced _you_, has he? You aren't planning to go with
+him, are you?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To join the Canadian aviation."
+
+"No; I hadn't thought of doing it."
+
+She sighed again, relieved. "I had a queer feeling about you just
+then--that you _were_ thinking of doing some such thing. You looked so
+odd--and you're always so quiet, anybody might not really know what you
+do think. But I'm not wrong about you, am I, Ramsey?"
+
+They had come to the foot of the steps that led up to the entrance of
+her dormitory, and their walk was at an end. As they stopped and
+faced each other, she looked at him earnestly; but he did not meet the
+scrutiny, his eyelids fell.
+
+"I'm not wrong, am I, Ramsey?"
+
+"About what?" he murmured, uncomfortably.
+
+"You are my friend, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then it's all right," she said. "That relieves me and makes me happier
+than I was just now, for of course if you're my friend you wouldn't let
+me make any mistake about you. I believe you, and now, just before I go
+in and we won't see much of each other for a week--if you still want me
+to go with you again next Sunday--"
+
+"Yes--won't you, please?"
+
+"Yes, if you like. But I want to tell you now that I count on you in all
+this, even though you don't 'talk much,' as you say; I count on you
+more than I do on anybody else, and I trust you when you say you're my
+friend, and it makes me happy. And I think perhaps you're right about
+Fred Mitchell. Talk isn't everything, nobody knows that better than
+I, who talk so much! and I think that, instead of talking to Fred, a
+steady, quiet influence like yours would do more good than any amount of
+arguing. So I trust you, you see? And I'm sorry I had that queer doubt
+of you." She held out her hand. "Unless I happen to see you on the
+campus for a minute, in the meantime, it's good-bye until a week from
+to-day. So--well, so, good-bye until then!"
+
+"Wait," said Ramsey.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+He made a great struggle. "I'm not influencing Fred not to go," he said.
+"I--don't want you to trust me to do anything like that."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I think it's all right for him to go, if he wants to," Ramsey said,
+miserably.
+
+"You do? For him to go to _fight?_"
+
+He swallowed. "Yes."
+
+"_Oh!_" she cried, turned even redder than he, and ran up the stone
+steps. But before the storm doors closed upon her she looked down to
+where he stood, with his eyes still lowered, a lonely-seeming figure,
+upon the pavement below. Her voice caught upon a sob as she spoke.
+
+"If you feel like that, you might as well go and enlist, yourself," she
+said, bitterly. "I can't--I couldn't--speak to you again after this!"
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+
+It was easy enough for him to evade Fred Mitchell's rallyings these
+days; the sprig's mood was truculent, not toward his roommate but toward
+Congress, which was less in fiery haste than he to be definitely at war
+with Germany. All through the university the change had come: athletics,
+in other years spotlighted at the centre of the stage, languished
+suddenly, threatened with abandonment; students working for senior
+honours forgot them; everything was forgotten except that growing
+thunder in the soil. Several weeks elapsed after Dora's bitter dismissal
+of Ramsey before she was mentioned between the comrades. Then, one
+evening, Fred asked, as he restlessly paced their study floor:
+
+"Have you seen your pacifist friend lately?"
+
+"No. Not exactly. Why?"
+
+"Well, for my part, I think she ought to be locked up," Fred said,
+angrily. "Have you heard what she did this afternoon?"
+
+"No."
+
+"It's all over college. She got up in the class in jurisprudence and
+made a speech. It's a big class, you know, over two hundred, under Dean
+Burney. He's a great lecturer, but he's a pacifist--the only one on the
+faculty--and a friend of Dora's. They say he encouraged her to make this
+break and led the subject around so she could do it, and then called on
+her for an opinion, as the highest-stand student in the class. She got up
+and claimed there wasn't any such thing as a legitimate cause for war,
+either legally or morally, and said it was a sign of weakness in a
+nation for it to believe that it did have cause for war.
+
+"Well, it was too much for that little, spunky Joe Stansbury, and he
+jumped up and argued with her. He made her admit all the Germans have
+done to us, the sea murders and the land murders, the blowing up of the
+factories, the propaganda, the strikes, trying to turn the United States
+into a German settlement, trying to get Japan and Mexico to make war on
+us, and all the rest. He even made her admit there was proof they mean
+to conquer us when they get through with the others, and that they've
+set out to rule the world for their own benefit, and make whoever else
+they kindly allow to live, to work for them.
+
+"She said it might be true, but since nothing at all could be a right
+cause for war, than all this couldn't be a cause of war. Of course she
+had her regular pacifist 'logic' working; she said that since war is
+the worst thing there is, why, all other evils were lesser, and a lesser
+evil can't be a just cause for a greater. She got terribly excited,
+they say, but kept right on, anyway. She said war was murder and there
+couldn't be any other way to look at it; and she'd heard there was
+already talk in the university of students thinking about enlisting,
+and whoever did such a thing was virtually enlisting to return murder for
+murder. Then Joe Stansbury asked her if she meant that she'd feel toward
+any student that enlisted the way she would toward a murderer, and she
+said, yes, she'd have a horror of any student that enlisted.
+
+"Well, that broke up the class; Joe turned from her to the platform and
+told old Burney that he was responsible for allowing such talk in his
+lecture-room, and Joe said so far as _he_ was concerned, he resigned
+from Burney's classes right there. That started it, and practically the
+whole class got up and walked out with Joe. They said Burney streaked
+off home, and Dora was left alone in there, with her head down on her
+desk--and I guess she certainly deserves it. A good many have already
+stopped speaking to her."
+
+Ramsey fidgeted with a pen on the table by which he sat. "Well, I don't
+know," he said, slowly; "I don't know if they ought to do that exactly."
+
+"Why oughtn't they?" Fred demanded, sharply.
+
+"Well, it looks to me as if she was only fightin' for her principles.
+She believes in 'em. The more it costs a person to stick to their
+principles, why, the more I believe the person must have something
+pretty fine about 'em likely."
+
+"Yes!" said the hot-headed Fred. "That may be in ordinary times, but not
+when a person's principles are liable to betray their country! We won't
+stand that kind of principles, I tell you, and we oughtn't to. Dora
+Yocum's finding that out, all right. She had the biggest position of
+any girl in this place, or any boy either, up to the last few weeks, and
+there wasn't any student or hardly even a member of the faculty that had
+the influence or was more admired and looked up to. She had the whole
+show! But now, since she's just the same as called any student a
+murderer if he enlists to fight for his country and his flag--well, now
+she hasn't got anything at all, and if she keeps on she'll have even
+less!"
+
+He paused in his walking to and fro and came to a halt behind his
+friend's chair, looking down compassionately upon the back of Ramsey's
+motionless head. His tone changed. "I guess it isn't just the ticket--me
+to be talking this way to you, is it?" he said, with a trace of
+huskiness.
+
+"Oh--it's all right," Ramsey murmured, not altering his position.
+
+"I can't help blowing up," Fred went on. "I want to say, though, I know
+I'm not very considerate to blow up about her to you this way. I've been
+playing horse with you about her ever since freshman year, but--well,
+you must have understood, Ram, I never meant anything that would really
+bother you much, and I thought--well, I _really_ thought it was a good
+thing, you--your--well, I mean about her, you know. I'm on, all right. I
+know it's pretty serious with you." He paused.
+
+Ramsey did not move, except that his right hand still fidgeted with the
+pen upon the table.
+
+"Oh--well--" he said.
+
+"It's--it's kind of tough luck!" his friend contrived to say; and he
+began to pace the floor again.
+
+"Oh--well--"
+
+"See here, ole stick-in-the-mud," Fred broke out abruptly. "After her
+saying what she did-- Well, it's none o' my business, but--but--"
+
+"Well, what?" Ramsey murmured. "I don't care what you say, if you want
+to say anything."
+
+"Well, I _got_ to say it," Fred half groaned and half blurted. "After
+she said _that_--and she meant it--why, if I were in your place I'd be
+darned if I'd be seen out walking with her again."
+
+"I'm not going to be," Ramsey said, quietly.
+
+"By George!" And now Fred halted in front of him, both being huskily
+solemn. "I think I understand a little of what that means to you, old
+Ramsey; I think I do. I think I know something of what it costs you to
+make that resolution for your country's sake." Impulsively he extended
+his hand. "It's a pretty big thing for you to do. Will you shake hands?"
+
+But Ramsey shook his head. "I didn't do it. I wouldn't ever have done
+anything just on account of her talkin' that way. She shut the door on
+me--it was a good while ago."
+
+"She did! What for?"
+
+"Well, I'm not much of a talker, you know, Fred," said Ramsey, staring
+at the pen he played with. "I'm not much of anything, for that matter,
+prob'ly, but I--well--I--"
+
+"You what?"
+
+"Well, I had to tell her I didn't feel about things the way she did.
+She'd thought I had, all along, I guess. Anyway, it made her hate me
+or something, I guess; and she called it all off. I expect there wasn't
+much to call off, so far as she was concerned, anyhow." He laughed
+feebly. "She told me I better go and enlist."
+
+"Pleasant of her!" Fred muttered. "Especially as we know what she thinks
+enlisting means." He raised his voice cheerfully. "Well, that's settled;
+and, thank God, old Mr. Bernstorff's on his way to his sweet little
+vine-clad cottage home! They're getting guns on the ships, and the big
+show's liable to commence any day. We can hold up our heads now, and
+we're going to see some great times, old Ramsey boy! It's hard on the
+home folks--Gosh! I don't like to think of that! And I guess it's going
+to be hard on a lot of boys that haven't understood what it's all about,
+and hard on some that their family affairs, and business, and so on,
+have got 'em tied up so it's hard to go--and of course there's plenty
+that just can't, and some that aren't husky enough--but the rest of
+us are going to have the big time in our lives. We got an awful lot to
+learn; it scares me to think of what I don't know about being any
+sort of a rear-rank private. Why, it's a regular _profession_, like
+practising law, or selling for a drug house on the road. Golly! Do you
+remember how we talked about that, 'way back in freshman year, what
+we were going to do when we got out of college? You were going to
+be practising law, for instance, and I--well, f'r instance, remember
+Colburn; he was going to be a doctor, and he did go to some medical
+school for one year. Now he's in the Red Cross, somewhere in _Persia_.
+Golly!"
+
+He paused to digest this impossibility, then chattered briskly on.
+"Well, there's _one_ good old boy was with our class for a while, back
+in freshman year; I bet we won't see him in any good old army! Old
+rough-neck Linski that you put the knob on his nose for. Tommie Hopper
+says he saw him last summer in Chicago soapboxin', yellin' his head off
+cussin' every government under the sun, but mostly ours and the Allies',
+you bet, and going to run the earth by revolution and representatives
+of unskilled labour immigrants, nobody that can read or write allowed
+to vote, except Linski. Tommie Hopper says he knows all about Linski;
+he never did a day's work in his life--too busy trying to get the
+workingmen stirred up against the people that exploit 'em! Tommie says
+he had a big crowd to hear him, though, and took up quite a little money
+for a 'cause' or something. Well, let him holler! I guess we can attend
+to him when we get back from over yonder. By George, old Ram, I'm
+gettin' kind of floppy in the gills!" He administered a resounding slap
+to his comrade's shoulder. "It certainly looks as if our big days were
+walking toward us!"
+
+
+He was right. The portentous days came on apace, and each one brought a
+new and greater portent. The faces of men lost a driven look besetting
+them in the days of badgered waiting, and instead of that heavy
+apprehension one saw the look men's faces must have worn in 1776 and
+1861, and the history of the old days grew clearer in the new. The
+President went to the Congress, and the true indictment he made there
+reached scoffing Potsdam with an unspoken prophecy somewhat chilling even
+to Potsdam, one guesses--and then through an April night went almost
+quietly the steady work: we were at war with Germany.
+
+The bugles sounded across the continent; drums and fifes played up and
+down the city streets and in town and village squares and through the
+countrysides. Faintly in all ears there was multitudinous noise like
+distant, hoarse cheering... and a sound like that was what Dora Yocum
+heard, one night, as she sat lonely in her room. The bugles and fifes
+and drums had been heard about the streets of the college town, that
+day, and she thought she must die of them, they hurt her so, and now to
+be haunted by this imaginary cheering--
+
+She started. Was it imaginary?
+
+She went downstairs and stood upon the steps of the dormitory in the
+open air. No; the cheering was real and loud. It came from the direction
+of the railway station, and the night air surged and beat with it.
+
+Below her stood the aged janitor of the building, listening. "What's the
+cheering for?" she asked, remembering grimly that the janitor was one of
+her acquaintances who had not yet stopped "speaking" to her. "What's the
+matter?"
+
+"It's a good matter," the old man answered. "I guess there must be a
+big crowd of 'em down there. One of our students enlisted to-day, and
+they're givin' him a send-off. Listen to 'em, how they _do_ cheer. He's
+the first one to go."
+
+She went back to her room, shivering, and spent the next day in bed with
+an aching head. She rose in the evening, however--a handbill had been
+slid under her door at five o'clock, calling a "Mass Meeting" of the
+university at eight, and she felt it her duty to go; but when she got to
+the great hall she found a seat in the dimmest corner, farthest from the
+rostrum.
+
+The president of the university addressed the tumultuous many hundreds
+before him, for tumultuous they were until he quieted them. He talked to
+them soberly of patriotism, and called upon them for "deliberation and
+a little patience." There was danger of a stampede, he said, and he and
+the rest of the faculty were in a measure responsible to their fathers
+and mothers for them.
+
+"You must keep your heads," he said. "God knows, I do not seek to judge
+your duty in this gravest moment of your lives, nor assume to tell you
+what you must or must not do. But by hurrying into service now, without
+careful thought or consideration, you may impair the extent of your
+possible usefulness to the very cause you are so anxious to serve.
+Hundreds of you are taking technical courses which should be
+completed--at least to the end of the term in June. Instructors from the
+United States Army are already on the way here, and military training
+will be begun at once for all who are physically eligible and of
+acceptable age. A special course will be given in preparation for
+flying, and those who wish to become aviators may enroll themselves for
+the course at once.
+
+"I speak to you in a crisis of the university's life, as well as that of
+the nation, and the warning I utter has been made necessary by what took
+place yesterday and to-day. Yesterday morning, a student in the junior
+class enlisted as a private in the United States Regular Army. Far be it
+from me to deplore his course in so doing; he spoke to me about it, and
+in such a way that I felt I had no right to dissuade him. I told him
+that it would be preferable for college men to wait until they could
+go as officers, and, aside from the fact of a greater prestige, I urged
+that men of education could perhaps be more useful in that capacity. He
+replied that if he were useful enough as a private a commission might in
+time come his way, and, as I say, I did not feel at liberty to attempt
+dissuasion. He left to join a regiment to which he had been assigned,
+and many of you were at the station to bid him farewell.
+
+"But enthusiasm may be too contagious; even a great and inspiring motive
+may work for harm, and the university must not become a desert. In the
+twenty-four hours since that young man went to join the army last night,
+one hundred and eleven of our young men students have left our walls;
+eighty-four of them went off together at three o'clock to catch an
+east-bound train at the junction and enlist for the Navy at Newport. We
+are, I say, in danger of a stampede."
+
+He spoke on, but Dora was not listening; she had become obsessed by the
+idea which seemed to be carrying her to the border of tragedy. When the
+crowd poured forth from the building she went with it mechanically, and
+paused in the dark outside. She spoke to a girl whom she did not know.
+
+"I beg your pardon--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I wanted to ask: Do you know who was the student Doctor Corvis spoke
+of? I mean the one that was the first to enlist, and that they were
+cheering last night when he went away to be a private in the United
+States Army. Did you happen to hear his name?"
+
+"Yes, he was a junior."
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"Ramsey Milholland."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+
+Fred Mitchell, crossing the campus one morning, ten days later, saw Dora
+standing near the entrance of her dormitory, where he would pass her
+unless he altered his course; and as he drew nearer her and the details
+of her face grew into distinctness, he was indignant with himself
+for feeling less and less indignation toward her in proportion to the
+closeness of his approach. The pity that came over him was mingled with
+an unruly admiration, causing him to wonder what unpatriotic stuff
+he could be made of. She was marked, but not whipped; she still held
+herself straight under all the hammering and cutting which, to his
+knowledge, she had been getting.
+
+She stopped him, "for only a moment," she said, adding with a wan
+profoundness: "That is, if you're not one of those who feel that I
+shouldn't be 'spoken to'?"
+
+"No," said Fred, stiffly. "I may share their point of view, perhaps, but
+I don't feel called upon to obtrude it on you in that manner."
+
+"I see," she said, nodding. "I've wanted to speak with you about
+Ramsey."
+
+"All right."
+
+She bit her lip, then asked, abruptly: "What made him do it?"
+
+"Enlist as a private with the regulars?"
+
+"No. What made him enlist at all?"
+
+"Only because he's that sort," Fred returned briskly. "He may be
+inexplicable to people who believe that his going out to fight for his
+country is the same thing as going out to commit a mur--"
+
+She lifted her hand. "Couldn't you--"
+
+"I beg your pardon," Fred said at once. "I'm sorry, but I don't know
+just how to explain him to you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+He laughed, apologetically. "Well, you see, as I understand it, you
+don't think it's possible for a person to have something within him that
+makes him care so much about his country that he--"
+
+"Wait!" she cried. "Don't you think I'm willing to suffer a little
+rather than to see my country in the wrong? Don't you think I'm doing
+it?"
+
+"Well, I don't want to be rude; but, of course, it seems to me that
+you're suffering because you think you know more about what's right and
+wrong than anybody else does."
+
+"Oh, no. But I--"
+
+"We wouldn't get anywhere, probably, by arguing it," Fred said. "You
+asked me."
+
+"I asked you to tell my why he enlisted."
+
+"The trouble is, I don't think I _can_ tell that to anybody who needs
+an answer. He just went, of course. There isn't any question about it. I
+always thought he'd be the first to go."
+
+"Oh, no!" she said.
+
+"Yes, I always thought so."
+
+"I think you were mistaken," she said, decidedly. "It was a special
+reason--to make him act so cruelly."
+
+"Cruelly!" Fred cried.
+
+"It _was!_"
+
+"Cruel to whom?"
+
+"Oh, to his mother--to his family. To have him go off that way, without
+a word--"
+
+"Oh, no' he'd been home," Fred corrected her. "He went home the Saturday
+before he enlisted, and settled it with them. They're all broken up, of
+course; but when they saw he'd made up his mind, they quit opposing him,
+and I think they're proud of him about it, maybe, in spite of feeling
+anxious. You see, his father was an artilleryman in the war with
+Spain, and his grandfather was a Colonel at the end of the War of the
+Rebellion, though he went into it as a private, like Ramsey. He died
+when Ramsey was about twelve; but Ramsey remembers him; he was talking
+of him a little the night before he enlisted."
+
+Dora made a gesture of despairing protest. "You don't understand!"
+
+"What is it I don't understand?"
+
+"Ramsey! _I_ know why he went--and it's just killing me!"
+
+Fred looked at her gravely. "I don't think you need worry about it," he
+said. "There's nothing about his going that you are responsible for."
+
+She repeated her despairing gesture. "You don't understand. But it's no
+use. It doesn't help any to try to talk of it, though I thought maybe
+it would, somehow." She went a little nearer the dormitory entrance,
+leaving him where he was, then turned. "I suppose you won't see him?"
+
+"I don't know. Most probably not till we meet-if we should--in France.
+I don't know where he's stationed; and I'm going with the aviation--if
+it's ever ready! And he's with the regulars; he'll probably be among the
+first to go over."
+
+"I see." She turned sharply away, calling back over her shoulder in a
+choked voice. "Thank you. Good-bye!"
+
+But Fred's heart had melted; gazing after her, he saw that her
+proud young head had lowered now, and that her shoulders were moving
+convulsively; he ran after her and caught her as she began slowly to
+ascend the dormitory steps.
+
+"See here," he cried. "Don't--"
+
+She lifted a wet face. "No, no! He went in bitterness because I told him
+to, in my own bitterness! I've killed him! Long ago, when he wasn't much
+more than a child, I heard he'd said that some day he'd 'show' me, and
+now he's done it!"
+
+Fred whistled low and long when she had disappeared. "Girls!" he
+murmured to himself. "Some girls, anyhow--they will be girls! You can't
+tell 'em what's what, and you can't change 'em, either!"
+
+Then, as more urgent matters again occupied his attention, he went on at
+an ardent and lively gait to attend his class in map-making.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI
+
+That thunder in the soil, at first too deep within it to be audible, had
+come to the surface now and gradually became heard as the thunder of
+a million feet upon the training grounds. The bugles rang sharper; the
+drums and fifes of town and village and countryside were the drums and
+fifes of a war that came closer and closer to every hearth between the
+two oceans.
+
+All the old symbols became symbols bright and new, as if no one had ever
+seen them before. "America" was like a new word, and the song "America"
+was like a new song. All the dusty blatancies of orating candidates,
+seeking to rouse bored auditors with "the old flag"; all the mechanical
+patriotics of school and church and club; all these time-worn flaccid
+things leaped suddenly into living colour. The flag became brilliant and
+strange to see--strange with a meaning that seemed new, a meaning long
+known, yet never known till now.
+
+And so hearts that thought they knew themselves came upon ambushes of
+emotion and hidden indwellings of spirit not guessed before. Dora Yocum,
+listening to the "Star Spangled Banner," sung by children of immigrants
+to an out-of-tune old piano in a mission clubroom, in Chicago, found
+herself crying with a soul-shaking heartiness in a way different from
+other ways that she had cried. Among the many things she thought of then
+was this: That the banner the children were singing about was in danger.
+The great country, almost a continent, had always seemed so untouchable,
+so safe and sure; she had never been able to conceive of a hostile
+power mighty enough to shake or even jar it. And since so great and
+fundamental a thing could not be injured, a war for its defence had
+appeared to be, in her eyes, not only wicked but ridiculous. At last,
+less and less vaguely, she had come to comprehend something of the
+colossal German threat, and the shadow that touched this bright banner
+of which the immigrants' children piped so briskly in the mission
+club-room.
+
+She had begun to understand, though she could not have told just why,
+or how, or at what moment understanding reached her. She began to
+understand that her country, threatened to the life, had flung its line
+those thousands of miles across the sea to stand and hold Hindenburg and
+Ludendorff and all their Kaisers, Kings, Dukes, and Crown Princes, their
+Krupp and Skoda monstrous engines, and their monstrous other engines of
+men made into armies. Through the long haze of misted sea-miles and the
+smoke of land-miles she perceived that brown line of ours, and knew it
+stood there that Freedom, and the Nation itself, might not perish from
+the earth.
+
+And so, a week later, she went home, and came nervously to Ramsey's
+mother and found how to direct the letter she wanted to write. He was in
+France.
+
+As the old phrase went, she poured out her heart. It seems to apply to
+her letter.
+
+She wrote:
+
+Don't misunderstand me. I felt that my bitter speech to you had driven
+you to take the step you did. I felt that I had sent you to be killed,
+and that I ought to be killed for doing it, but I knew that you had
+other motives, too. I knew, of course, that you thought of the country
+more than you did of me, or of any mad thing I would say--but I thought
+that what I said might have been the prompting thing, the word that
+threw you into it so hastily and before you were ready, perhaps. I
+dreaded to bear that terrible responsibility. I hope you understand.
+
+My great mistake has been--I thought I sas so "logical"--it's been in
+my starting everything with a thought I'd never proven; that war is the
+worst thing, and all other evils were lesser. I was wrong. I was wrong,
+because war isn't the worst evil. Slavery is the worse evil, and now
+I want to tell you I have come to see that you are making war on those
+that make slavery. Yes, you are fighting those that make both war and
+slavery, and you are right, and I humbly reverence and honour all of
+you who are in this right war. I have come home to work in the Red Cross
+here; I work there all day, and all day I keep saying to myself--but I
+really mean to _you_--it's what I pray, and oh, how I pray it: "God be
+with you and grant you the victory!" For you must win and you will win.
+
+Forgive me, oh, please--and if you will, could you write to me? I know
+you have things to do more important than "girls"--but oh, couldn't you,
+please?
+
+This letter, which she had taken care not to dampen, as she wrote, went
+in slow course to the "American Expeditionary Forces in France," and
+finally found him whom it patiently sought. He delayed not long to
+answer, and in time she held in a shaking hand the pencilled missive he
+had sent her.
+
+You forget all that comic talk about me enlisting because of your
+telling me to. I'd written my father I was going at the first chance a
+month and a half before that day when you said it. My mind was made up
+at the first time there was any talk of war, and you had about as much
+responsibility for my going as some little sparrow or something. Of
+course I don't mean I didn't pay any attention to the different things
+you said, because I always did, and I used to worry over it because I
+was afraid some day it would get you in trouble, and I'm mighty glad
+you've cut it out. That's right; you be a regular girl now. You always
+were one, and I knew it all right. I'm not as scared to write to you as
+I was to talk to you, so I guess you know I was mighty tickled to get
+your letter. It sounded blue, but I was glad to get it. You _bet_ I'll
+write to you! I don't suppose you could have any idea how glad I was to
+get your letter. I could sit here and write to you all day if they'd let
+me, but I'm a corporal now. When you answer this, I wish you'd say how
+the old town looks and if the grass in the front yards is as green as it
+usually is, and everything. And tell me some more about everything you
+think of when you are working down at the Red Cross like you said.
+I guess I've read your letter five million times, and that part ten
+million. I mean where you underlined that "_you_" and what you said
+to yourself at the Red Cross. Oh, murder, but I was glad to read that!
+Don't forget about writing anything else you think of like that.
+
+Well, I was interrupted then and this is the next day. Of course, I
+can't tell you where we are, because that darned censor will read this
+letter, but I guess he will let this much by. Who do you think I ran
+across in a village yesterday? Two boys from the old school days, and
+we certainly did shake hands a few times! It was the old foolish Dutch
+Krusemeyer and Albert Paxton, both of them lieutenants. I heard Fred
+Mitchell is still training in the States and about crazy because they
+won't send him over yet.
+
+If you had any idea how glad I was to get your letter, you wouldn't lose
+any time answering this one. Anyhow, I'm going to write to you again
+every few days if I get the chance, because maybe you'll answer more
+than one of 'em.
+
+But see here, cut out that "sent you to be killed" stuff. You've got the
+wrong idea altogether. We've got the big job of our lives, we know that,
+but we're going to do it. There'll be mistakes and bad times, but we
+won't fall down. Now you'll excuse me for saying it this way, Dora, but
+I don't know just how to express myself except saying of course we know
+everybody isn't going to get back home--but listen, we didn't come
+over here to get killed particularly, we came over here to give these
+Dutchmen h--l!
+
+Perhaps you can excuse language if I write it with a blank like that,
+but before we get back we're going to do what we came for. They may not
+all of them be as bad as some of them--it's a good thing you don't know
+what we do, because some of it would make you sick. As I say, there may
+be quite a lot of good ones among them; but we know what they've done to
+this country, and we know what they mean to do to ours. So we're going
+to attend to them. Of course that's why I'm here. It wasn't you.
+
+Don't forget to write pretty soon, Dora. You say in your letter--I
+certainly was glad to get that letter--well, you say I have things to do
+more important than "girls." Dora, I think you probably know without my
+saying so that of course while I have got important things to do, just
+as every man over here has, and everybody at home, for that matter,
+well, the thing that is most important in the world to me, next to
+helping win this war, it's reading the next letter from you.
+
+Don't forget how glad I'll be to get it, and don't forget you didn't
+have anything to do with my being over here. That was--it was something
+else. And you bet, whatever happens I'm glad I came! Don't ever forget
+_that_!
+
+Dora knew it was "something else." Her memory went back to her first
+recollection of him in school: from that time on he had been just an
+ordinary, everyday boy, floundering somehow through his lessons in
+school and through his sweethearting with Milla, as the millions of
+other boys floundered along with their own lessons and their own
+Millas. She saw him swinging his books and romping homeward from the
+schoolhouse, or going whistling by her father's front yard, rattling
+a stick on the fence as he went, care-free and masterful, but shy as a
+deer if strangers looked at him, and always "not much of a talker."
+
+She had always felt so superior to him, she shuddered as she thought of
+it. His quiet had been so much better than her talk. His intelligence
+was proven now, when it came to the great test, to be of a stronger sort
+than hers. He was wise and good and gentle--and a fighting man! "We know
+what they've done to this country and what they mean to do to ours. So
+we're going to attend to them." She read this over, and she knew that
+Ramsey, wise and gentle and good, would fight like an unchained devil,
+and that he and his comrades would indeed and indeed do what they "came
+for."
+
+"It wasn't you," he said. She nodded gently, agreeing, and knew what it
+was that sent him. Yet Ramsey had his own secret there, and did not tell
+it. Sometimes there rose, faint in his memory, a whimsical picture, yet
+one that had always meant much to him. He would see an old man sitting
+with a little boy upon a rustic bench under a walnut tree to watch the
+"Decoration Day Parade" go by--and Ramsey would see a shoot of sunshine
+that had somehow got through the walnut tree and made a bedazzlement of
+glinting fine lines over a spot about the size of a saucer, upon the old
+man's thick white hair. And in Ramsey's memory, the little boy, sitting
+beside the veteran, would half close his eyes, drowsily, playing that
+this sunshine spot was a white bird's-nest, until he had a momentary
+dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue
+soldier cap on its head. And Ramsey would bring out of his memory
+thoughts that the old man had got into the child's head that day. "We
+knew that armies fighting for the Freedom of Man _had_ to win, in the
+long run.... We were on the side of God's Plan.... Long ago we began to
+see hints of His Plan.... Man has to win his freedom from himself--men
+in the light have to fight against men in the dark.... That light is the
+answer.... We had the light that made us never doubt."
+
+
+A long while Dora sat with the letter in her hand before she answered it
+and took it upon her heart to wear. That was the place for it, since it
+was already within her heart, where he would find it when he came home
+again. And she beheld the revelation sent to her. This ordinary life of
+Ramsey's was but the outward glinting of a high and splendid spirit, as
+high and splendid as earth can show. And yet it was only the life of an
+everyday American boy. The streets of the town were full, now, of boys
+like Ramsey.
+
+At first they were just boys in uniform; then one saw that they were
+boys no more.
+
+They were soldiers.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ramsey Milholland, by Booth Tarkington
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+Digitized for Project Gutenberg by Earle Beach, e_beach@hotmail.com
+Italicized text is enclosed by '~'s.
+
+
+
+
+
+Ramsey Milholland
+
+by Booth Tarkington
+
+
+
+
+To the Memory of Billy Miller
+(William Henry Harrison Miller II)
+1908 - 1918
+Little Patriot, Good Citizen
+Friend of Mankind
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+  When Johnnie comes marching home again,
+      Hurrah!  Hurrah!
+  We'll give him a hearty welcome then,
+      Hurrah!  Hurrah!
+    The men with the cheers, the boys with shouts,
+    The ladies they will all turn out,
+  And we'll all feel gay, when Johnnie comes marching home again!
+
+The old man and the little boy, his grandson, sat together in the
+shade of the big walnut tree in the front yard, watching the
+"Decoration Day Parade," as it passed up the long street; and when
+the last of the veterans was out of sight the grandfather murmured
+the words of the tune that came drifting back from the now distant
+band at the head of the procession.
+
+"Yes, we'll all feel gay when Johnnie comes marching home again,"
+he finished, with a musing chuckle.
+
+"Did you, Grandpa?" the boy asked.
+
+"Did I what?"
+
+"Did you all feel gay when the army got home?"
+
+"It didn't get home all at once, precisely," the grandfather
+explained.  "When the war was over I suppose we felt relieved, more
+than anything else."
+
+"You didn't feel so gay when the war ~was~, though, I guess!" the boy
+ventured.
+
+"I guess we didn't."
+
+"Were you scared, Grandpa?  Were you ever scared the Rebels would
+win?"
+
+"No.  We weren't ever afraid of that."
+
+"Not any at all?"
+
+"No.  Not any at all."
+
+"Well, weren't you ever scared yourself, Grandpa?  I mean when you
+were in a battle."
+
+"Oh, yes; ~then~ I was."  The old man laughed.  "Scared plenty!"
+
+"I don't see why," the boy said promptly.  "I wouldn't be scared in
+a battle."
+
+"Wouldn't you?"
+
+"'Course not!  Grandpa, why don't you march in the Decoration Day
+Parade?  Wouldn't they let you?"
+
+"I'm not able to march any more.  Too short of breath and too shaky
+in the legs and too blind."
+
+"I wouldn't care," said the boy.  "I'd be in the parade anyway, if
+I was you.  They had some sittin' in carriages, 'way at the tail end;
+but I wouldn't like that.  If I'd been in your place, Grandpa, and
+they'd let me be in that parade, I'd been right up by the band.
+Look, Grandpa!  Watch me, Grandpa!  This is the way I'd be, Grandpa."
+
+He rose from the garden bench where they sat, and gave a complex
+imitation of what had most appealed to him as the grandeurs of the
+procession, his prancing legs simulating those of the horse of the
+grand marshal, while his upper parts rendered the drums and bugles
+of the band, as well as the officers and privates of the militia
+company which had been a feature of the parade.  The only thing he
+left out was the detachment of veterans.
+
+"Putty-boom!  Putty-boom!  Putty-boom-boom-boom!" he vociferated, as
+the drums--and then as the bugles:  "Ta, ta, ra, tara!"  He addressed
+his restive legs:  "~Whoa~, there, you Whitey!  Gee!  Haw!  Git up!"
+Then, waving an imaginary sword:  "Col-lumn right!  Farwud ~March!~
+Halt!  Carry ~harms!~  He "carried arms."  "Show-dler ~harms!~"  He
+"shouldered arms," and returned to his seat.
+
+"That'd be me, Grandpa.  That's the way I'd do."  And as the
+grandfather nodded, seeming to agree, a thought recently dismissed
+returned to the mind of the composite procession and he asked:
+
+"Well, ~why~ weren't you ever afraid the Rebels would whip the
+Unions, Grandpa?"
+
+"Oh, we knew they couldn't."
+
+"I guess so."  The little boy laughed disdainfully, thinking his
+question satisfactorily asnwered.  "I guess those ole Rebels couldn't
+whipped a flea!  They didn't know how to fight any at all, did they,
+Grandpa?"
+
+"Oh, yes, they did!"
+
+"What?"  The boy was astounded.  "Weren't they all just reg'lar ole
+cowards, Grandpa?"
+
+"No," said the grandfather.  "They were pretty fine soldiers."
+
+"They were?  Well, they ran away whenever you began shootin' at 'em,
+didn't they?"
+
+"Sometimes they did, but most times they didn't.  Sometimes they
+fought like wildcats--and sometimes we were the ones that ran away."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To keep from getting killed, or maybe to keep from getting
+captured."
+
+"But the Rebels were bad men, weren't they, Grandpa?"
+
+"No."
+
+The boy's forehead, customarily vacant, showed some little vertical
+shadows, produced by a struggle to think.  "Well, but--" he began,
+slowly.  "Listen, Grandpa, listen here!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Listen!  Well, you said--you said you never got scared the ole
+Rebels were goin' to win."
+
+"They did win pretty often," said the grandfather.  "They won a good
+many battles."
+
+"I mean, you said you never got scared they'd win the war."
+
+"No, we were never afraid of that."
+
+"Well, but if they were good men and fought like wildcats, Grandpa,
+and kep' winning battles and everything, how could that be?  How
+could you ~help~ bein' scared they'd win the war?"
+
+The grandfather's feeble eyes twinkled brightly.  "Why, we ~knew~ they
+couldn't, Ramsey."
+
+At this, the little vertical shadows on Ramsey's forehead became more
+pronounced, for he had succeeded in thinking.  "Well, ~they~ didn't
+know they couldn't, did they?" he argued.  "They thought they were
+goin' to win, didin't they?"
+
+"Yes, I guess they did.  Up till toward the last, I suppose they
+probably did.  But you see they were wrong."
+
+"Well, but--" Ramsey struggled.  "Listen!  Listen here, Grandpa!
+Well, anyway, if they never got scared ~we'd~ win, and nobody got
+scared ~they'd~ win--well, I don't see--"
+
+"You don't see what?"
+
+But Ramsey found himself unable to continue his concentration; he
+slumped down upon the small of his back, and his brow relaxed to
+its more comfortable placidity, while his eyes wandered with a new
+butterfly fluttering over the irises that bordered the iron picket
+fence at the south side of the yard.  "Oh, nothin' much," he
+murmured.
+
+"I see."  And his grandfather laughed again.  "You mean:  If the
+Rebels felt just as sure of winning the war as we did, and kept
+winning battles why shouldn't we ever have had any doubts that we
+were going to win?  That's it, isn't it?"
+
+"I guess so, Grandpa."
+
+"Well, I think it was mostly because we were certain that we were
+right."
+
+"I see," said Ramsey.  "The Rebels knew they were on the side of the
+Devil."  But at this, the grandfather's laugh was louder than it had
+been before, and Ramsey looked hurt.  "Well, you can laugh if you
+want to!" he objected in an aggrieved voice.  "Anyway, the Sunday-
+school sup'intendent told us when people knew they were on the
+Devil's side they always--"
+
+"I dare say, I dare say," the old man interrupted, a little
+impatiently.  "But in this world mighty few people think they're on
+the Devil's side, Ramsey.  There was a Frenchman once, in olden times;
+he said people were crazy because, though they couldn't even make
+worms, they believed they could make gods.  And so whenever countries
+or parts of a country get into a war, each side makes a god and a
+devil, and says:  "God's on our side and the Devil's on the other."
+The South thought the Devil was on our side, you see."
+
+"Well, that kind o' mixes it all up more'n ever."
+
+"Yes, it seems so; but Abraham Lincoln wasn't mixed up about it.
+When some people told him that God was on our side, he said the
+important thing was to find out if we were on God's side.  That was
+the whole question, you see; because either side could make up a god,
+the kind of a god they liked and wanted; and then they'd believe in
+him, too, and fight for him--but if he was only a made-up god they'd
+lose.  President Lincoln didn't want to have a made-up god on his
+side; he wanted to find God Himself and find out what he wanted, and
+then do it.  And that's what Lincoln did."
+
+"Well, I don't understand much of all ~that~!"
+
+"No?"  Then suppose you look at it this way:  The South was fighting
+for what it believed to be its rights, but we weren't fighting for
+our rights; we were fighting for the right.  The South was fighting
+for what it believed to be its right to split the Union and be a
+country by itself; but we were fighting for 'Liberty and Union, now
+and forever, one and inseparable.'  It wasn't only the Union we
+fought for; it was Freedom.  The South wanted freedom to leave the
+Union; but the reason the South wanted that freedom to separate from
+us was because ~we~ wanted the Freedom of Man.  ~There's~ the reason
+we had the certain knowledge that we were going to win the war.  How
+plain and simple it is!"
+
+Ramsey didn't think so.  He had begun to feel bored by the
+conversation, and to undergo the oppression he usually suffered in
+school; yet he took a little interest in the inexplicable increase of
+fervour with which his grandfather spoke, and in a shoot of sunshine
+which somehow got through the foliage of the walnut tree and made a
+bedazzlement of glinting fine lines in one spot, about the size of
+a saucer, upon the old man's head of thick white hair.  Half closing
+his eyes, drowsily, Ramsey played that this sunshine spot was a white
+bird's-next and, and he had a momentary half dream of a glittering
+little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue soldier cap on its head.
+The earnest old voice of the veteran was only a sound in the boy's
+ears.
+
+"Yes, it's simple and plain enough now, though then we didn't often
+think of it in exactly this way, but just went on fighting and never
+doubted.  We knew the struggle and suffering of our fathers and
+grandfathers to make a great country here for Freedom, and we knew
+that all this wasn't just the whim of a foolish god, willing to waste
+such great things--we knew that such a country couldn't have been
+building up just to be wasted.  But, more than that, we knew that
+armies fighting for the Freedom of Man ~had~ to win, in the long run,
+over armies that fought for what they considered their rights.
+
+"We didn't set out to free the slaves, so far as we knew.  Yet our
+being against slavery was what made the war, and we had the
+consciousness that we were on the side of God's plan, because His
+plan is clearly the Freedom of Man.  Long ago we began to see the
+hints of His plan--a little like the way you can see what's coming
+in August from what happens in April.  but man has to win his freedom
+from himself--men in the light have to fight against men in the dark
+of their own shadow.  That light is the answer; we had the light that
+made us never doubt.  Ours was the true light, and so we--"
+
+
+"Boom--"  The veterans had begun to fire their cannon on the crest
+of the low hill, out at the cemetery; and from a little way down the
+street came the rat-a-tat of a toy drum and sounds of a fife played
+execrably.  A file of children in cocked hats made of newspapers came
+marching importantly up the sidewalk under the maple shade trees; and
+in advance, upon a velocipede, rode a tin-sworded personage,
+shrieking incessant commands but not concerning himself with whether
+or not any military obedience was thereby obtained.  Here was a
+revivifying effect upon young Ramsey; his sluggard eyelids opened
+electrically; he leaped to his feet and, abandoning his grandfather
+without preface or apology, sped across the lawn and out of the gate,
+charging headlong upon the commander of the company.
+
+"You get off that 'locipede, Wesley Bender!" he bellowed.  "You gimme
+that sword!  What rights you got to go bein' captain o' my army, I'd
+like to know!  Who got up this army, in the first place, I'd like to
+know!  I did, myself yesterd'y afternoon, and you get back in line or
+I won't let you b'long to it at all!"
+
+The pretender succumbed; he instantly dismounted, being out-shouted
+and overawed.  On foot he took his place in the ranks, while Ramsey
+became sternly vociferous.  "In-tention, company!  Farwud ~march~!
+Col-lumn ~right~!  Right-showdler ~harms~!  Halt!  Far-wud ~march~.
+Carry harms--"
+
+The Army went trudging away under the continuous but unheed fire of
+orders, and presently disappeared round a corner, leaving the veteran
+chuckling feebly under his walnut tree and alone with the empty
+street.  All trace of what he had said seemed to have been wiped
+from the grandson's mind; but memory has curious ways.  Ramsey had
+understood not a fifth nor a tenth of his grandfather's talk, and
+already he had "forgotten" all of it--yet not only were there many,
+many times in the boy's later life when, without ascertainable cause,
+he would remember the sunlight falling upon the old man's white head,
+to make that semblance of a glittering bird's-nest there, but with
+the picture came recollections of words and sentences spoken by the
+grandfather, though the listener, half-drowsily, had heard but the
+sound of an old, earnest voice--and even the veteran's meaning
+finally took on a greater definiteness till it became, in the
+grandson's thoughts, something clear and bright and beautiful that
+he knew without being just sure where or how he had learned it.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+Ramsey Milholland sat miserably in school, his conscious being
+consisting principally of a dull hate.  Torpor was a little dispersed
+during a fifteen-minute interval of "Music," when he and all the
+other pupils in the large room of the "Five B. Grade" sang repeated
+fractions of what they enunciated as "The Star Span-guh-hulled
+Banner"; but afterward he relapsed into the low spirits and animosity
+natural to anybody during enforced confinement under instruction.  No
+alleviation was accomplished by an invader's temporary usurpation of
+the teacher's platform, a brisk and unsympathetically cheerful young
+woman mounting thereon to "teach German."
+
+For a long time mathematics and German had been about equally
+repulsive to Ramsey, who found himself daily in the compulsory
+presence of both; but he was gradually coming to regard German with
+the greater horror, because, after months of patient mental
+resistance, he at last began to comprehend that the German language
+has sixteen special and particular ways of using the German article
+corresponding to that flexible bit of a word so easily managed
+English--~the~.  What in the world was the use of having sixteen ways
+of doing a thing that could just as well be done in one?  If the
+Germans had contented themselves with insisting upon sixteen useless
+variations for infrequent words, such as ~hippopotamus~, for instance,
+Ramsey might have thought the affair unreasonable but not necessarily
+vicious--it would be easy enough to avoid talking about a
+hippopotamus if he ever had to go to Germany.  But the fact that the
+Germans picked out ~a~ and ~the~ and many other little words in use
+all the time, and gave every one of them sixteen forms, and expected
+Ramsey Milholland to learn this dizzying uselessness down to the last
+crotchety detail, with "When to employ Which" as a nausea to prepare
+for the final convulsion when one ~didn't~ use Which, because it was
+an "Exception"--there was a fashion of making easy matters hard that
+was merely hellish.
+
+The teacher was strict but enthusiastic; she told the children, over
+and over, that German was a beautiful language, and her face always
+had a glow when she said this.  At such times the children looked
+patient; they supposed it must be so, because she was an adult and
+their teacher; and they believed her with the same manner of
+believing which those of them who went to Sunday-school used there
+when the Sunday-school teachers were pushed into explanations of
+various matters set forth in the Old Testament, or gave reckless
+descriptions of heaven.  That is to say, the children did not
+challenge or deny; already they had been driven into habits of
+resignation and were passing out of the age when childhood is able
+to reject adult nonsense.
+
+Thus, to Ramsey Milholland, the German language seemed to be a
+collection of perverse inventions for undeserved torment; it was
+full of revolting surprises in the way of genders; vocally it often
+necessitated the employment of noises suggestive of an incompletely
+mastered knowledge of etiquette; and far inside him there was
+something faintly but constantly antagonistic to it--yet, when the
+teacher declared that German was incomparably the most beautiful
+language in the world, one of the many facets of his mind submissively
+absorbed the statement as light to be passed inward; it was part of
+the lesson to be learned.  He did not know whether the English
+language was beautiful or not; he never thought about that, and no one
+ever said anything to him about it.  Moreover, though his deeper
+inward hated "German," he liked his German teacher, and it was
+pleasant to look at her when that glow came upon her face.
+
+Sometimes, too, there were moments of relaxation in her class, when
+she would stop the lesson and tell the children about Germany:  what
+a beautiful, good country it was, so trim and orderly, with such
+pleasant customs, and all the people sensible and energetic and
+healthy.  There was "Music" again in the German class, which was
+another alleviation; though it was the same old "Star Spangled
+Banner" over again.  Ramsey was tired of the song and tired of "My
+Country 'Tis of Thee"; they were bores, but it was amusing to sing
+them in German.  In German they sounded "sort o' funny," so he didn't
+mind this bit of the day's work.
+
+Half an hour later there arrived his supreme trial of this particular
+morning.  Arithmetic then being the order of business before the
+house, he was sent alone to the blackboard, supposedly to make lucid
+the proper reply to a fatal conundrum in decimals, and under the
+glare and focus of the whole room he breathed heavily and itched
+everywhere; his brain at once became sheer hash.  He consumed as much
+time as possible in getting the terms of the problem stated in chalk;
+then, affecting to be critical of his own handiwork, erased what he
+had done and carefully wrote it again.  After that, he erased half of
+it, slowly retraced the figures, and stepped back as if to see
+whether perspective improved their appearance.  Again he lifted the
+eraser.
+
+"Ramsey Milholland!"
+
+"Ma'am?"
+
+"Put down that eraser!"
+
+"Yes'm.  I just thought--"
+
+Sharply bidden to get forward with his task, he explained in a feeble
+voice that he had first to tie a shoe string and stooped to do so,
+but was not permitted.  Miss Ridgely tried to stimulate him with
+hints and suggestion; found him, so far as decimals went, mere
+protoplasm, and, wondering how so helpless a thing could live,
+summoned to the board little Dora Yocum, the star of the class,
+whereupon Ramsey moved toward his seat.
+
+"Stand still, Ramsey!  You stay right where you are and try to learn
+something from the way Dora does it."
+
+The class giggled, and Ramsey stood, but learned nothing.  His
+conspicuousness was unendurable, because all of his schoolmates
+naturally found more entertainment in watching him than in following
+the performance of the capable Dora.  He put his hands in and out of
+his pockets; was bidden to hold them still, also not to shuffle his
+feet; and when in a false assumption of ease he would have scratched
+his head Miss Ridgely's severity increased, so that he was compelled
+to give over the attempt.
+
+Instructed to watch every figure chalked up by the mathematical
+wonder, his eyes, grown sodden, were unable to remove themselves from
+the part in her hair at the back of her head, where two little braids
+began their separate careers to end in a couple of blue-and-red
+checked bits of ribbon, one upon each of her thin shoulder blades.
+He was conscious that the part in Dora's shining brown hair was
+odious, but he was unconscious of anything arithmetical.  His
+sensations clogged his intellect; he suffered from unsought notoriety,
+and hated Dora Yocum; most of all he hated her busy little shoulder
+blades.
+
+He had to be "kept in" after school; and when he was allowed to go
+home he averted his eyes as he went by the house where Dora lived.
+She was out in the yard, eating a doughnut, and he knew it; but he
+had passed the age when it is just as permissible to throw a rock at
+a girl as at a boy; and stifling his normal inclinations, he walked
+sturdily on, though he indulged himself so far as to engage in a
+murmured conversation with one of the familiar spirits dwelling
+somewhere within him.  "Pfa!" said Ramsey to himself--or himself to
+Ramsey, since it is difficult to say which was which.  "Pfa!  Thinks
+she's smart, don't she?"... "Well, I guess she does, but she ain't!"
+... "I hate her, don't you?"... "You bet your life I hate her!"...
+"Teacher's Pet, that's what ~I~ call her!"... "Well, that's what ~I~
+call her, too, don't I?"  "Well, ~I~ do; that's all she is, anyway
+--dirty ole Teacher's Pet!"
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+He had not forgiven her four years later when he entered high school
+in her company, for somehow Ramsey managed to shovel his way through
+examinations and stayed with the class.  By this time he had a long
+accumulation of reasons for hating her:  Dora's persistent and
+increasing competency was not short of flamboyant, and teachers
+naturally got the habit of flinging their quickest pupil in the face
+of their slowest and "dumbest."  Nevertheless, Ramsey was unable to
+deny that she had become less awful lookin' than she used to be.  At
+least, he was honest enough to make a partial retraction when his
+friend and classmate, Fred Mitchell, insisted that an amelioration of
+Dora's appearance could be actually proven.
+
+"Well, I'll take it back.  I don't claim she's every last bit as
+awful lookin' as she always has been," said Ramsey, toward the
+conclusion of the argument.  "I'll say this for her, she's awful
+lookin', but she may not be as awful lookin' as she was.  She don't
+come to school with the edge of some of her underclo'es showin' below
+her dress any more, about every other day, and her eyewinkers have
+got to stickin' out some, and she may not be so abbasa~loot~ly
+skinny, but she'll haf to wait a mighty long while before ~I~ want
+to look at her without gettin' sick!"
+
+The implication that Miss Yocum cared to have Ramsey look at her,
+either with or without gettin' sick, was mere rhetoric, and
+recognized as such by the producer of it; she had never given the
+slightest evidence of any desire that his gaze be bent upon her.
+What truth lay underneath his flourish rested upon the fact that he
+could not look at her without some symptoms of the sort he had
+tersely sketched to his friend; and yet, so pungent is the
+fascination of self-inflicted misery, he did look at her, during
+periods of study, often for three or four minutes at a stretch.  His
+expression at such times indeed resembled that of one who has dined
+unwisely; but Dora Yocum was always too eagerly busy to notice it.
+He was almost never in her eye, but she was continually in his;
+moreover, as the banner pupil she was with hourly frequency an exhibit
+before the whole class.
+
+Ramsey found her worst of all when her turn came in "Declamation," on
+Friday afternoons.  When she ascended the platform, bobbed a little
+preliminary bow and began, "Listen, my children, and you shall hear,"
+Ramsey included Paul Revere and the Old North Church and the whole
+Revolutionary War in his antipathy, since they somehow appeared to
+be the property of the Teacher's Pet.  For Dora held this post in
+"Declamation" as well as in everything else; here, as elsewhere,
+the hateful child's prowess surpassed that of all others; and the
+teacher always entrusted her with the rendition of the "patriotic
+selections":  Dora seemed to take fire herself when she declared:
+
+  "The fate of a nation was riding that night;
+  And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight,
+  Kindled the land into flame with its heat."
+
+Ramsey himself was in the same section of declaimers, and performed 
+next--a ghastly contrast.  He gave a "selection from Shakespeare,"
+assigned by the teacher; and he began this continuous misfortune by
+stumbling violently as he ascended the platform, which stimulated a
+general giggle already in being at the mere calling of his name.  All
+of the class were bright with happy anticipation, for the miserable
+Ramsey seldom failed their hopes, particularly in "Declamation."
+He faced them, his complexion wan, his expression both baleful and
+horrified; and he began in a loud, hurried voice, from which every
+hint of intelligence was excluded:
+
+"Most pottent, grave, and rev--"
+
+The teacher tapped sharply on her desk, and stopped him.  "You've
+forgotten to bow," she said.  "And don't say 'pottent.'  The word is
+'potent'."
+
+Ramsey flopped his head at the rear wall of the room, and began
+again:
+
+"Most pottent potent grav and revenerd signers my very nobe and
+approve good masters that I have tan away this sole man's dutter it is
+mose true true I have marry dur the very headman frun tuv my fending
+hath this extent no more rude am I in speech--in speech--rude am I in
+speech--in speech--in speech--in speech--"
+
+He had stalled.  Perhaps the fatal truth of that phrase, and some
+sense of its applicability to the occasion had interfered with
+the mechanism which he had set in operation to get rid of the 
+"recitation" for him.  At all events, the machine had to run off
+its job all at once, or it wouldn't run at all.  Stopped, it stayed
+stopped, and backing off granted no new impetus, though he tried,
+again and again.  "Hath this extent no more rude am I in speech--"
+He gulped audibly.  "Rude rude rude am I--rude am I in speech--in
+speech--in speech.  Rude am I in speech--"
+
+"Yes," the irritated teacher said, as Ramsey's failing voice
+continued huskily to insist upon this point.  "I think you are!"
+And her nerves were a little soothed by the shout of laughter from
+the school--it was never difficult for teachers to be witty.  "Go sit
+down, Ramsey, and do it after school."
+
+His ears roaring, the unfortunate went to his seat, and, among all
+the hilarious faces, one stood out--Dora Yocum's.  Her laughter was
+precocious; it was that of a confirmed superior, insufferably adult
+--she was laughing at him as a grown person laughs at a child.
+Conspicuously and unmistakably, there was something indulgent in her
+amusement.  He choked.  Here was a little squirt of a high-school
+girl who would trot up to George Washington himself and show off
+around him, given the opportunity; and George Washington would
+probably pat her on the head, or give her a medal--or something.
+Well, let him!  Ramsey didn't care.  He didn't care for George
+Washington, or Paul Revere, or Shakespeare, or any of 'em.  They
+could all go to the dickens with Dora Yocum.  They were all a lot
+of smarties anyway and he hated the whole stew of 'em!
+
+There was one, however, whom he somehow couldn't manage to hate, even
+though this one officially seemed to be as intimately associated with
+Dora Yocum and superiority as the others were.  Ramsey couldn't hate
+Abraham Lincoln, even when Dora was chosen to deliver the "Gettysburg
+Address" on the twelfth of February.  Vaguely, yet reassuringly,
+Ramsey felt that Lincoln had resisted adoption by the intellectuals.
+Lincoln had said "Government of the people, by the people, for the
+people," and that didn't mean government by the teacher and the
+Teacher's Pet and Paul Revere and Shakespeare and suchlike; it meant
+government by everybody, and therefore Ramsey had as much to do with
+it as anybody else had.  This was friendly; and he believed that if
+Abraham Lincoln could have walked into the schoolroom, Lincoln would
+have been as friendly with him as with Dora and the teacher herself.
+Beyond a doubt, Dora and the teacher ~thought~ Lincoln belonged to
+them and their crowd of exclusives; they seemed to think they owned
+the whole United States; but Ramsey was sure they were mistaken about
+Abraham Lincoln.
+
+He felt that it was just like this little Yocum snippet to assume
+such a thing, and it made him sicker than ever to look at her.
+
+Then, one day, he noticed that her eye-winkers were stickin' out
+farther and farther.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+His discovery irritated him the more.  Next thing, this ole Teacher's
+Pet would do she'd get to thinkin' she was pretty!  If ~that~
+happened, well, nobody ~could~ stand her!  The long lashes made her
+eyes shadowy, and it was a fact that her shoulder blades ceased to
+insist upon notoriety; you couldn't tell where they were at all, any
+more.  Her back seemed to be just a regular back, not made up of a lot
+of implements like shoulder blades and things.
+
+A contemptible thing happened.  Wesley Bender was well known to be
+the most untidy boy in the class and had never shown any remorse for
+his reputation or made the slightest effort either to improve or to
+dispute it.  He was content:  it failed to lower his standing with
+his fellows or to impress them unfavourably.  In fact, he was treated
+as one who has attained a slight distinction.  At least, he owned one
+superlative, no matter what its quality, and it lifted him out of the
+commonplace.  It helped him to become better known, and boys liked to
+be seen with him.  But one day, there was a rearrangement of the
+seating in the schoolroom:  Wesley Bender was given a desk next in
+front of Dora Yocum's; and within a week the whole room knew that
+Wesley had begun voluntarily to wash his neck--the back of it,
+anyhow.
+
+This was at the bottom of the fight between Ramsey Milholland and
+Wesley Bender, and the diplomatic exchanges immediately preceding
+hostilities were charmingly frank and unhyprocitical, although quite
+as mixed-up and off-the-issue as if they had been prepared by
+professional foreign office men.  Ramsey and Fred Mitchell and four
+other boys waylaid young Bender on the street after school, intending
+jocosities rather than violence, but the victim proved sensitive.
+"You take your ole hands off o' me!" he said fiercely, as they began
+to push him about among them.
+
+"Ole dirty Wes!" they hoarsely bellowed and squawked, in their
+changing voices.  "Washes his ears!"... "Washes his ~neck!~"...
+"Dora Yocum told his mama to turn the hose on him~"...  "Yay-ho!
+Ole dirty Wes tryin to be a duke!"
+
+Wesley broke from them and backed away, swinging his strapped books
+in a dangerous circle.  "You keep off!" he warned them.  "I got as
+much right to my pers'nal appearance as anybody!"
+
+This richly fed their humour, and they rioted round him, keeping
+outside the swinging books at the end of the strap.  "Pers'nal
+appearance!"...  "Who went and bought it for you, Wes?"...  "Nobody
+bought it for him.  Dora Yocum took and give him one!"
+
+"You leave ladies' names alone!" cried the chivalrous Wesley.  "You
+ought to know better, on the public street, you--pups!"
+
+Here was a serious affront, at least to Ramsey Milholland's way of
+thinking; for Ramsey, also, now proved sensitive.  He quoted his
+friends--"Shut up!"--and advanced toward Wesley.  "You look here!
+Who you callin' 'pups'?"
+
+"Everybody!" Wesley hotly returned.  "Everybody that hasn't got any
+more decency than to go around mentioning ladies' names on the public
+streets.  Everybody that goes around mentioning ladies' names on the
+public streets are pups!"
+
+"They are, are they?" Ramsey as hotly demanded.  "Well, you just look
+here a minute; my own father mentions my mother's name on the public
+streets whenever he wants to, and you just try callin' my father a
+pup, and you won't know what happened to you!"
+
+"What'll ~you~ do about it?"
+
+"I'll put a new head on you," said Ramsey.  "That's what I'll do,
+because anybody that calls my father or mother a pup--"
+
+"Oh, shut up!  I wasn't talking about your ole father and mother.  I
+said everybody that mentioned Dora Yocum's name on the public streets
+was a pup, and I mean it!  Everybody that mentions Dora Yocum's name
+on the pub--"
+
+"Dora Yocum!" said Ramsey.  "I got a perfect right to say it anywhere
+I want to.  Dora Yocum, Dora Yocum, Dora Yocum!--"
+
+"All right, then you're a pup!"
+
+Ramsey charged upon him and received a suffocating blow full in the
+face, not from Mr. Bender's fist but from the solid bundle of books
+at the end of the strap.  Ramsey saw eight or ten objectives
+instantly:  there were Wesley Benders standing full length in the
+air on top of other Wesley Benders, and more Wesley Benders zigzagged
+out sideways from still other Wesley Benders; nevertheless, he found
+one of these and it proved to be flesh.  He engaged it wildly at
+fisticuffs; pounded it upon the countenance and drove it away.  Then
+he sat down upon the curbstone, and, with his dizzy eyes shut, leaned
+forward for the better accomodation of his ensanguined nose.
+
+Wesley had retreated to the other side of the street holding a grimy
+handkerchief to the midmost parts of his pallid face.  "There, you ole
+damn pup!" he shouted, in a voice which threatened to sob.  "I guess
+~that'll~ teach you to be careful how you mention Dora Yocum's name
+on the public streets!"
+
+At this, Ramsey made a motion as if to rise and pursue, whereupon
+Wesley fled, wailing back over his shoulder as he ran, "You wait till
+I ketch you out alone on the public streets and I'll--"
+
+His voice was lost in an outburst of hooting from his former friends,
+who sympathetically surrounded the wounded Ramsey.  But in a measure,
+at least, the chivalrous fugitive had won his point.  He was routed
+and outdone, yet what survived the day was a rumour, which became a
+sort of tenuous legend among those interested.  There had been a
+fight over Dora Yocum, it appeared, and Ramsey Milholland had
+attempted to maintain something derogatory to the lady, while Wesley
+defended her as a knightly youth should.  The something derogatory
+was left vague; nobody attempted to say just what it was, and the
+effects of the legend divided the schoolroom strictly according to
+gender.
+
+The boys, unmindful of proper gallantry, supported Ramsey on account
+of the way he had persisted in lickin' the stuffin' out of Wesley
+Bender after receiving that preliminary wallop from Wesley's
+blackjack bundle of books.  The girls petted and championed Wesley;
+they talked outrageously of his conqueror, fiercely declaring that
+he ought to be arrested; and for weeks they maintained a new manner
+toward him.  They kept their facial expressions hostile, but perhaps
+this was more for one another's benefit than for Ramsey's; and
+several of them went so far out of their way to find even private
+opportunities for reproving him that an alert observer might have
+suspected them to have been less indignant than they seemed--but not
+Ramsey.  He thought they all hated him, and said he was glad of it.
+
+Dora was a non-partisan.  The little prig was so diligent at her
+books she gave never the slightest sign of comprehending that there
+had been a fight about her.  Having no real cognizance of Messrs.
+Bender and Milholland except as impediments to the advance of
+learning, she did not even look demure.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+With Wesley Bender, Ramsey was again upon fair terms before the
+winter had run its course; the two were neighbours and, moreover,
+were drawn together by a community of interests which made their
+reconciliation a necessity.  Ramsey played the guitar and Wesley
+played the mandolin.
+
+All ill feeling between them died with the first duet of spring, yet
+the twinkling they made had no charm to soothe the savage breast of
+Ramsey whenever the Teacher's Pet came into his thoughts.  He
+daydreamed a thousand ways of putting her in her place, but was
+unable to carry out any of them, and had but a cobwebby satisfaction
+in imagining discomfitures for her which remained imaginary.  With a
+yearning so poignant that it hurt, he yearned and yearned to show her
+what she really was.  "Just once!" he said to Fred Mitchell.  "That's
+all I ask, just once.  Just gimme one chance to show that girl what
+she really is.  I guess if I ever get the chance she'll find out
+what's the matter with her, for ~once~ in her life, anyway!"  Thus it
+came to be talked about and understood and expected in Ramsey's
+circle, all male, that Dora Yocum's day was coming.  The nature of the
+disaster was left vague, but there was no doubt in the world that
+retribution merely awaited its ideal opportunity.  "You'll see!" said
+Ramsey.  "The time'll come when that ole girl'll wish she'd moved o'
+this town before she ever got appointed monitor of ~our~ class!  Just
+you wait!"
+
+They waited, but conditions appeared to remain unfavourable
+indefinitely.  Perhaps the great opportunity might have arrived if
+Ramsey had been able to acheive a startling importance in any of
+the "various divergent yet parallel lines of school endeavour"--one
+of the phrases by means of which teachers and principal clogged the
+minds of their unarmed auditors.  But though he was far from being
+the dumb driven beast of misfortune that he seemed in the schoolroom,
+and, in fact, lived a double life, exhibiting in his out-of-school
+hours a remarkable example of "secondary personality"--a creature
+fearing nothing and capable of laughter; blue-eyed, fairly robust,
+and anything but dumb--he was nevertheless without endowment or
+attainment great enough to get him distinction.
+
+He "tried for" the high-school eleven, and "tried for" the nine, but
+the experts were not long in elminiating him from either of these
+competitions, and he had to content himself with cheering instead of
+getting cheered.  He was by no manner of means athlete enough, or
+enough of anything else, to put Dora Yocum in her place, and so he
+and the great opportunity were still waiting in May, at the end of
+the second year of high school, when the class, now the "10 A,"
+reverted to an old fashion and decided to entertain itself with a
+woodland picnic.
+
+They gathered upon the sandy banks of a creek, in the blue shade of
+big, patchy-barked sycamores, with a dancing sky on top of everything
+and gold dust atwinkle over the water.  Hither the napkin-covered
+baskets were brought from the wagons and assembled in the shade,
+where they appeared as an attractive little meadow of white napery,
+and gave both surprise and pleasure to communities of ants and to
+other original settlers of the neighbourhood.
+
+From this nucleus or headquarters of the picnic, various expeditions
+set forth up and down the creek and through the woods that bordered
+it.  Camera work was constant; spring wild flowers were accumulated
+by groups of girls who trooped through the woods with eager eyes
+searching the thickets; two envied boy fishermen established
+themselves upon a bank up-stream, with hooks and lines thoughtfully
+brought with them, and poles which they fashioned from young
+saplings.  They took mussels from the shallows, for bait, and having
+gone to all this trouble, declined to share with friends less
+energetic and provident the perquisites and pleasures secured to
+themselves.
+
+Albert Paxton was another person who proved his enterprise.  Having
+visited the spot some days before, he had hired for his exclusive use
+throughout the duration of the picnic an old rowboat belonging to a
+shanty squatter; it was the only rowboat within a mile or two and
+Albert had his own uses for it.  Albert was the class lover and,
+after first taking the three chaperon teachers "out for a row," an
+excursion concluded in about ten minutes, he disembarked them; Sadie
+Clews stepped into the boat, a pocket camera in one hand, a tennis
+racket in the other; and the two spent the rest of the day, except
+for the luncheon interval, solemnly drifting along the banks or
+grounded on a shoal.  Now and then Albert would row a few strokes,
+and at almost any time when the populated shore glanced toward them,
+Sadie would be seen photographing Albert, or Albert would be seen
+photographing Sadie, but the tennis racket remained an enigma.
+Oarsman and passenger appeared to have no conversation whatever--not
+once was either seen or heard to address a remark to the other; and
+they looked as placid as their own upside-down reflections in one of
+the still pools they slowly floated over.  They were sixteen, and had
+been "engaged" more than two years.
+
+On the borders of the little meadow of baskets there had been
+deposited two black shapes, which remained undisturbed throughout
+the day, a closed guitar case and a closed mandolin case, no doubt
+containing each its proper instrument.  So far as any use of these
+went they seemed to be of the same leisure class to which Sadie's
+tennis racket belonged, for when one of the teachers suggested music,
+the musicians proved shy.  Wesley Bender said they hadn't learned to
+play anything much and, besides, he had a couple o' broken strings
+he didn't know as he could fix up; and Ramsey said he guessed it
+seemed kind o' too hot to play much.  Joining friends, they organized
+a contest in marksmanship, the target being a floating can which they
+assailed with pebbles; and after that they "skipped" flat stones upon
+the surface of the water, then went to join a group gathered about
+Willis Parker and Heinie Krusemeyer.
+
+No fish had been caught, a lack of luck crossly attributed by the
+fishermen to the noise made by constant advice on the part of their
+attendant gallery.  Messrs. Milholland, Bender, and the other rock
+throwers came up shouting, and were ill received.
+
+"For heaven's sakes," Heinie Krusemeyer demanded, "can't you shut up?
+Here we just first got the girls to keep their mouths shut a minute
+and I almost had a big pickerel or something on my hook, and here you
+got to up and yell so he chases himself away!  Why can't nobody show
+a little sense sometimes when they ought to?"
+
+"I should say so!" his comrade exclaimed.  "If people would only just
+take and think of all the trouble we been to, it seems funny somebody
+couldn't let us have half a chance to get a few good fish.  What
+chance they got to bite with a lot o' ~girls~ gabbin' away, and then,
+just as we get 'em quieted down, all you men got to come bustin' up
+here yellin' your heads off.  A fish isn't goin' to bite when he
+can't even hear himself think!  Anybody ought to know that much."
+
+But the new arrivals hooted.  ~"Fish!"~ Ramsey vociferated.  "I'll
+bet a hundred dollars there hasn't been even a minny in this creek
+for the last sixty years!"
+
+"There is, too!" said Heinie, bitterly.  "But I wouldn't be supprised
+there wouldn't be no longer if you got to keep up this noise.  If
+you'd shut up just a minute you could see yourself there's fish
+here."
+
+In whispers several of the tamed girls at once heartily corroborated
+this statement, whereupon the newcomers ceased to gibe and consented
+to silence.  Ramsey leaned forth over the edge of the overhanging
+bank, a dirt precipice five feet above the water, and peered into the
+indeterminable depths below.  The pool had been stirred, partly by
+the inexpert pokings of the fishermen and partly by small clods and
+bits of dirt dislodged from above by the feet of the audience.  The
+water, consequently, was but brownly translucent and revealed its
+secrets reluctantly; nevertheless certain dim little shapes had been
+observed to move within it, and were still there.  Ramsey failed to
+see them at first.
+
+"Where's any ole fish?" he inquired, scornfully.
+
+"Oh, my goodness!" Heinie Krusemeyer moaned.  "~Can't~ you shut up?"
+
+"Look!" whispered the girl who stood nearest to Ramsey.  She pointed.
+"There's one.  Right down there by Willis's hook.  Don't you see
+him?"
+
+Ramsey was impressed enough to whisper.  "Is there?  I don't see him.
+I can't--"
+
+The girl came closer to him, and, the better to show him, leaned
+out over the edge of the bank, and, for safety in maintaining her
+balance, rested her left hand upon his shoulder while she pointed
+with her right.  Thereupon something happened to Ramsey.  The touch
+upon his shoulder was almost nothing, and he had never taken the
+slightest interest in Milla Rust (to whom that small warm hand
+belonged), though she was the class beauty, and long established in
+the office.  Now, all at once, a peculiar and heretofore entirely
+unfamiliar sensation suddenly became important in the upper part of
+his chest.  For a moment he held his breath, an involuntary action;
+--he seemed to be standing in a shower of flowers.
+
+"Don't you see it, Ramsey?" Milla whispered.  "It's a great big one.
+Why, it must be as long as--as your shoe!  Look!"
+
+Ramsey saw nothing but the thick round curl on Milla's shoulder.
+Milla had a group of curls on each of her shoulders, for she got her
+modes at the Movies and had that sort of prettiness:  large, gentle,
+calculating eyes, and a full, softly modelled face, implacably sweet.
+Ramsey was accustomed to all this charm, and Milla had never before
+been of more importance to him than an equal weight of school
+furniture--but all at once some magic had enveloped her.  That curl
+upon the shoulder nearest him was shot with dazzling fibres of
+sunshine.  He seemed to be trembling.
+
+"I don't see it," he murmured, huskily, afraid that she might remove
+her hand.  "I can't see any fish, Milla."
+
+She leaned farther out over the bank.  "Why, there, goosie!" she
+whispered.  "Right there."
+
+"I can't see it."
+
+She leaned still farther, bending down to point.  "Why right th--"
+
+At this moment she removed her hand from his shoulder, though
+unwillingly.  She clutched at him, in fact, but without avail.  She
+had been too amiable.
+
+A loud shriek was uttered by throats abler to vocalize, just then,
+than Milla's, for in her great surprise she said nothing whatever--
+the shriek came from the other girls as Milla left the crest of the
+overhanging bank and almost horizontally disappeared into the brown
+water.  There was a tumultuous splash, and then of Milla Rust and her
+well-known beautifulness there was nothing visible in the superficial
+world, nor upon the surface of that creek.  The vanishment was total.
+
+"~Save~ her!"
+
+Several girls afterward admitted having used this expression, and
+little Miss Floy Williams, the youngest and smallest member of the
+class, was unable to deny that she had said, "Oh, God!"  Nothing
+could have been more natural, and the matter need not have been
+brought before her with such insistence and frequency, during the
+two remaining years of her undergraduate career.
+
+Ramsey was one of those who heard this exclamation, later so famous,
+and perhaps it was what roused him to heroism.  He dived from the
+bank, headlong, and the strange thought in his mind was "I guess
+~this~'ll show Dora Yocum!"  He should have been thinking of Milla,
+of course, at such a time, particularly after the little enchantment
+just laid upon him by Milla's touch and Milla's curls; and he knew
+well enough that Miss Yocum was not among the spectators.  She was
+half a mile away, as it happened, gathering "botanical specimens"
+with one of the teachers--which was her idea of what to do at a
+picnic!
+
+Ramsey struck the water hard, and in the same instant struck
+something harder.  Wesley Bender's bundle of books had given him no
+such shock as he received now, and if the creek bottom had not been
+of mud, just there, the top of his young head might have declined the
+strain.  Half stunned, choking, spluttering he somehow floundered to
+his feet; and when he could get his eyes a little cleared of water
+he found himself wavering face to face with a blurred vision of Milla
+Rust.  She had risen up out of the pod and stood knee deep, like a
+lovely drenched figure in a fountain.
+
+Upon the bank above them, Willis Parker was jumping up and down,
+gesticulating and shouting fiercely.  "Now I guess you're satisfied
+our fishin' ~is~ spoilt!  Whyn't you listen me?  I ~told~ you it
+wasn't more'n three feet deep!  I and Heinie waded all over this
+creek gettin' our bait.  You're a pretty sight!"
+
+Of Milla he spoke unwittingly the literal truth.  Even with her hair
+thus wild and sodden, Milla rose from immersion blushing and prettier
+than ever; and she was prettiest of all when she stretched out her
+hand helplessly to Ramsey and he led her up out of the waters.  They
+had plenty of assistance to scramble to the top of the bank, and
+there Milla was surrounded and borne away with a great clacketing and
+tumult.  Ramsey gave his coat into the hands of friends, who twisted
+the water out of it for him, while he sat upon the grass in the sun,
+rubbed his head, and experimented with his neck to see if it would
+"work."  The sunshine was strong and hot; in half an hour he and his
+clothes were dry--or at least "dry enough," as he said, and except
+for some soreness of head and neck, and the general crumpledness of
+his apparel, he seemed to be in all ways much as usual when shouts
+and whistlings summoned all the party to luncheon at the rendezvous.
+The change that made him different was invisible.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+The change in Ramsey was invisible, and yet something must have been
+seen, for everyone appeared to take it for granted that he was to
+sit next to Milla at the pastoral meal.  She herself understood it,
+evidently, for she drew in her puckered skirts and without any words
+make a place for him beside her as he driftingly approached her,
+affecting to whistle and keeping his eyes on the foliage overhead.
+He still looked upward, even in the act of sitting down.
+
+"Squirrel or something," he said, feebly, as if in explanation.
+
+"Where?" Milla asked.
+
+"Up there on a branch."  He accepted a plate from her (she had
+provided herself with an extra one), but he did not look at it or
+her.  "I'm not just exactly sure it's a squirrel," he said.  "Kind of
+hard to make out exactly what it is."  He continued to keep his eyes
+aloft, because he imagined that all of the class were looking at him
+and Milla, and he felt unable to meet such publicity.  It was to him
+as if the whole United States had been scandalized to attention by
+this act of his in going to sit beside Milla; he gazed upward so long
+that his eyeballs became sensitive under the strain.  He began to
+blink.  "I can't make out whether it's a squirrel or just some leaves
+that kind o' got fixed like one," he said.  "I can't make out yet
+which it is, but I guess when there's a breeze, if it's a squirrel
+he'll prob'ly hop around some then, if he's alive or anything."
+
+It had begun to seem that his eyes must remain fixed in that upward
+stare forever; he wanted to bring them down, but could not face the
+glare of the world.  So the fugitive ostrich is said to bury his head
+in the sand; he does it, not believing himself thereby hidden but
+trying to banish from his own cognizance terrible facts which his
+unsheltered eyes have seemed to reveal.  So, too, do nervous children
+seek to bury their eyes under pillows, and nervous statesmen theirs
+under oratory.  Ramsey's ostrichings can happen to anybody.  But
+finally the brightness of the sky between the leaves settled matters
+for him; he sneezed, wept, and for a little moment again faced his
+fellowmen.  No one was looking at him; everybody except Milla had
+other things to do.
+
+Having sneezed involuntarily, he added a spell of coughing for which
+there was no necessity.  "I guess I must be wrong," he muttered
+thickly.
+
+"What about, Ramsey?"
+
+"About it bein' a squirrel."  With infinite timidity he turned
+his head and encountered a gaze so soft, so hallowed, that it
+disconcerted him, and he dropped a "drumstick" of fried chicken, well
+dotted with ants, from his plate.  Scarlet he picked it up, but did
+not eat it.  For the first time in his life he felt that eating fried
+chicken held in the fingers was not to be thought of.  He replaced
+the "drumstick" upon his plate and allowed it to remain there
+untouched, in spite of a great hunger for it.
+
+Having looked down, he now found difficulty in looking up, but gazed
+steadily at his plate, and into this limited circle of vision came
+Milla's delicate and rosy fingers, bearing a gift.  "There," she said
+in a motherly little voice.  "It's a tomato mayonnaise sandwich and
+I made it myself.  I want you to eat it, Ramsey."
+
+His own fingers approached tremulousness as he accepted the thick
+sandwich from her and conveyed it to his mouth.  A moment later his
+soul filled with horror, for a spurt of mayonnaise dressing had
+caused a catastrophe the scene of which occupied no inconsiderable
+area of his right cheek; which was the cheek toward Milla.  He groped
+wretchedly for his handkerchief but could not find it; he had lost
+it.  Sudden death would have been relief; he was sure that after such
+grotesquerie Milla could never bear to have anything more to do with
+him; he was ruined.
+
+In his anguish he felt a paper napkin pressed gently into his hand; a
+soft voice said in his ear, "Wipe it off with this, Ramsey.  Nobody's
+noticing."
+
+So this incredibly charitable creature was still able to be his
+friend, even after seeing him mayonnaised!  Humbly marvelling, he did
+as she told him, but avoided all further risks.  He ate nothing more.
+
+He sighed his first sigh of inexpressibleness, had a chill or so
+along the spine, and at intervals his brow was bedewed.
+
+Within his averted eyes there dwelt not the Milla Rust who sat
+beside him, but an iridescent, fragile creature who had beome
+angelic.
+
+He spent the rest of the day dawdling helplessly about her; wherever
+she went he was near, as near as possible, but of no deliberate
+volition of his own.  Something seemed to tie him to her, and Milla
+was nothing loth.  He seldom looked at her directly, or for longer
+than an instant, and more rarely still did he speak to her except as
+a reply.  What few remarks he ventured upon his own initiative nearly
+all concerned the landscape, which he commended repeatedly in a weak
+voice, as "kind of pretty," though once he said he guessed there
+might be bugs in the bark of a log on which they sat; and he became
+so immoderately personal as to declare that if the bugs had to get on
+anybody he'd rather they got on him than on Milla.  She said that was
+"just perfectly lovely" of him, asked where he got his sweet nature,
+and in other ways encouraged him to continue the revelation, but
+Ramsey was unable to get forward with it, though he opened and closed
+his mouth a great many times in the effort to do so.
+
+At five o'clock everybody was summoned again to the rendezvous for a
+ceremony preliminary to departure:  the class found itself in a large
+circle, standing, and sang "The Star Spangled Banner."  Ordinarily,
+on such an open-air and out-of-school occasion, Ramsey would have
+joined the chorus uproariously with the utmost blatancy of which his
+vocal apparatus was capable; and most of the other boys expressed
+their humour by drowning out the serious efforts of the girls; but he
+sang feebly, not much more than humming through his teeth.  Standing
+beside Milla, he was incapable of his former inelegancies and his
+voice was in a semi-paralyzed condition, like the rest of him.
+
+
+Opposite him, across the circle, Dora Yocum stood a little in advance
+of those near her, for of course she led the singing.  Her clear and
+earnest voice was distinguishable from all others, and though she did
+not glance toward Ramsey he had a queer feeling that she was assuming
+more superiority than ever, and that she was icily scornful of him
+and Milla.  The old resentment rose--he'd "show" that girl yet, some
+day!
+
+When the song was over, cheers were given for the class, "the good ole
+class of Nineteen Fourteen," the school, the teachers, and for the
+picnic, thus officially concluded; and then the picnickers, carrying
+their baskets and faded wild flowers and other souvenirs and burdens,
+moved toward the big "express wagons" which were to take them back
+into the town.  Ramsey got his guitar case, and turned to Milla.
+
+"Well--" he said.
+
+"Well what, Ramsey?"
+
+"Well--g'bye."
+
+"Why, no," said Milla.  "Anyways not yet.  You can go back in the
+same wagon with me.  It's going to stop at the school and let us out
+there, and then you could walk home with me if you felt like it.  You
+could come all the way to our gate with me, I expect, unless you'd be
+late home for your supper."
+
+"Well--well, I'd be perfectly willing," Ramsey said.  "Only I heard
+we all had to go back in whatever wagon we came out in, and I didn't
+come in the same wagon with you, so--"
+
+Milla laughed and leaned toward him a little.  "I already 'tended to
+that," she said confidentially.  "I asked Johnnie Fiske, that came
+out in my wagon, to go back in yours, so that makes room for you."
+
+"Well--then I guess I could do it."  He moved toward the wagon with
+her.  "I expect it don't make much difference one way or the other."
+
+"And you can carry my basket if you want to," she said, adding
+solicitously, "Unless it's too heavy when you already got your guitar
+case to carry, Ramsey."
+
+This thoughtfulness of hers almost overcame him; she seemed divine.
+He gulped, and emotion made him even pinker than he had been under
+the mayonnaise.
+
+"I--I'll be glad to carry the basket, too," he faltered.  "It-it
+don't weigh anything much."
+
+"Well, let's hurry, so's we can get places together."
+
+Then, as she manoeuvred him through the little crowd about the wagon,
+with a soft push this way and a gentle pull that, and hurried him up
+the improvised steps and found a place where there was room for them
+to sit, Ramsey had another breathless sensation heretofore unknown to
+him.  He found himself taken under a dovelike protectorship; a
+wonderful, inexpressible Being seemed to have become his proprietor.
+
+"Isn't this just perfectly lovely?" she said cozily, close to his
+ear.
+
+He swallowed, but found no words, for he had no thoughts; he was only
+an incoherent tumult.  This was his first love.
+
+"Isn't it, Ramsey?" she urged.  The cozy voice had just the hint of
+a reproach.  "Don't you think it's just perfectly lovely, Ramsey?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+The next morning Ramsey came into his father's room while Mr.
+Milholland was shaving, an hour before church time, and it became
+apparent that the son had someting on his mind, though for a while
+he said nothing.
+
+"Did you want anything, Ramsey?"
+
+"Well--"
+
+"Didn't want to borrow my razors?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+Mr. Milholland chuckled.  "I hardly supposed so, seriously!  Shaving
+is a great nuisance and the longer you keep away from it, the better.
+And when you do, you let my razors alone, young feller!"
+
+"Yes, sir."  (Mr. Milholland's rzaors were safe, Ramsey had already
+achieved one of his own, but he practised the art in secret.)  He
+passed his hand thoughtfully over his cheeks, and traces of white
+powder were left upon his fingers, whereupon he wiped his hand
+surreptitiously, and stood irresolutely waiting.
+
+"What is it you really want, Ramsey?"
+
+"I guess I don't want anything."
+
+"Money?"
+
+"No, sir.  You gay' me some Friday."
+
+Mr. Milholland turned from his mirror and looked over the edge of a
+towel at his son.  In the boy's eyes there was such a dumb agony of
+interrogation that the father was a little startled.
+
+"Why, what is it, Ramsey?  Have you--"  He paused, frowning and
+wondering.  "You haven't been getting into some mess you want to
+tell me about, have you?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+His tone was meek, but a mute distress lurked within it, bringing
+to the father's mind disturbing suspicions, and foreshadowings of
+indignation and of pity.  "See here, Ramsey," he said, "if there's
+anything you want to ask me, or to tell me, you'd better out with
+it and get it over.  Now, what is it?"
+
+"Well--it isn't anything."
+
+"Are you ~sure?~"
+
+Ramsey's eyes fell before the severe and piercing gaze of his father.
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Mr. Milholland shook his head doubtfully; then, as his son walked
+slowly out of the room, he turned to complete his toilet in a 
+somewhat uneasy frame of mind.  Ramsey had undoubtedly wanted to say
+something to him and the boy's expression had shown that the matter
+in question was serious, distressing, and, it might be, even
+critical.
+
+In fact it was--to Ramsey.  Having begun within only the last few
+hours to regard haberdashery as of vital importance, and believing
+his father to be possessed of the experience and authority lacking
+in himself, Ramsey had come to get him to settle a question which had
+been upsetting him badly, in his own room, since breakfast.  What he
+want to know was:  Whether it was right to wear an extra handkerchief
+showing out of the coat breast pocket or not, and, if it was right--
+ought the handkerchief to have a coloured border or to be plain
+white?  But he had never before brought any such perplexities to his
+father, and found himself too diffident to set them forth.
+
+However, when he left the house, a few minutes later, he boldly
+showed an inch of purple border above the pocket; then, as he was
+himself about to encounter several old lady pedestrians, he blushed
+and thrust the handkerchief down into deep concealment.  Having gone
+a block farther, he pulled it up again; and so continued to operate
+this badge of fashion, or unfashion, throughout the morning; and
+suffered a great deal thereby.
+
+Meantime, his father, rather relieved that Ramsey had not told his
+secret, whatever it was, dismissed the episode from his mind and
+joined Mrs. Milholland at the front door, ready for church.
+
+"Where's Ramsey?" he asked.
+
+"He's gone ahead," she answered, buttoning her gloves as they went
+along.  "I heard the door quite a little while ago.  Perhaps he went
+over to walk down with Charlotte and Vance.  Did you notice how neat
+he looks this morning?"
+
+"Why, no, I didn't; not particularly.  Does he?"
+
+"I never saw anything like it before," said Mrs. Milholland.  "He
+went down in the cellar and polished his own shoes."
+
+"What!"
+
+"For about an hour, I think," she said, as one remaining calm before
+a miracle.  "And he only has three neckties, but I saw him several
+times in each of them.  He must have kept changing and changing.
+I wonder--"  She paused.
+
+"I'm glad he's begun to take a little care of his appearance at
+last.  Business men think a good deal about that, these days, when
+he comes to make his start in the world.  I'll have to take a look
+at him and give him a word of praise.  I suppose he'll be in the pew
+when we get there."
+
+But Ramsey wasn't in the pew; and Charlotte, his sister, and her
+husband, who were there, said they hadn't seen anything of him.  It
+was not until the members of the family were on their way home after
+the services that they caught a glimpse of him.
+
+They were passing a church a little distance from their own; here
+the congregation was just emerging to the open, and among the sedate
+throng descending the broad stone steps appeared an accompanied
+Ramsey--and a red, red Ramsey he was when he beheld his father and
+mother and sister and brother-in-law staring up at him from the
+pavement below.  They were kind enough not to come to an absolute
+halt, but passed slowly on, so that he was just able to avoid
+parading up the street in front of them.  The expressions of his
+father, mother, and sister were of a dumfoundedness painful to bear,
+while such lurking jocosity as that apparent all over his brother-
+in-law no dignified man should either exhibit or be called upon to
+ignore.
+
+In hoarse whispers, Mrs. Milholland chided her husband for an
+exclamation he had uttered.  "John!  On Sunday!  You ought to be
+ashamed."
+
+"I couldn't help it," he exclaimed.  "Who on earth is his clinging
+vine?  Why, she's got ~lavender~ tops on her shoes and--"
+
+"Don't look round!" she warned him sharply.  "Don't--"
+
+"Well, what's he doing at a Baptist church?  What's he fidgeting at
+his handkerchief about?  Why can't he walk like people?  Does he
+think it's obligatory to walk home from church anchored arm-in-arm
+like Swedes on a Sunday Out?  Who ~is~ this cow-eyed fat girl that's
+got him, anyhow?"
+
+"Hush!  Don't look round again, John."
+
+"Never fear!" said her husband, having disobeyed.  "They've turned
+off; they're crossing over to Bullard Street.  Who is it?"
+
+"I think her name's Rust," Mrs. Milholland informed him.  "I don't
+know what her father does.  She's one of the girls in his class at
+school."
+
+"Well, that's just like a boy; pick out some putty-faced flirt to
+take to church!"
+
+"Oh, she's quite pretty--in that way!" said his wife, deprecatingly.
+"Of course that's the danger with public schools.  It would be
+pleasanter if he'd taken a fancy to someone whose family belongs
+to our own circle."
+
+"'Taken a fancy'!" he echoed, hooting.  "Why, he's terrible!  He
+looked like a red-gilled goldfish that's flopped itself out of the
+bowl.  Why, he--"
+
+"I ~say~ I wish if he felt that he had to take girls anywhere," said
+Mrs. Milholland, with the primmest air of speaking to the point--"if
+this sort of thing ~must~ begin, I wish he might have selected some
+nice girl among the daughters of our own friends, like Dora Yocum,
+for instance."
+
+Upon the spot she began to undergo the mortification of a mother who
+has expected her son, just out of infancy, to look about him with the
+eye of a critical matron of forty-five.  Moreover, she was indiscreet
+enough to express her views to Ramsey, a week later, producing thus a
+scene of useless great fury and no little sound.
+
+"I do think it's in ~very~ poor tast to see so much of any one girl,
+Ramsey," she said, and, not heeding his protest that he only walked
+home from school with Milla, "about every other day," and that it
+didn't seem any crime to him just to go to church with her a couple
+o' times, Mrs. Milholland went on:  "But if you think you really
+~must~ be dangling around somebody quite this much--though what in
+the world you find to ~talk~ about with this funny little Milla Rust
+you poor father says he really cannot see--and of course it seems
+very queer to us that you'd be willing to waste so much time just now
+when your mind ought to be entirely on your studies, and especially
+with such an absurd ~looking~ little thing--
+
+"No, you must listen, Ramsey, and let me speak now.  What I meant
+was that we shouldn't be ~quite~ so much distressed by your being
+seen with a girl who dressed in better taste and seemed to have
+some notion of refinement, though of course it's only natural she
+~wouldn't~, with a father who is just a sort of ward politician, I
+understand, and a mother we don't know, and of course shouldn't care
+to.  But, oh, Ramsey! if you ~had~ to make yourself so conspicuous
+why couldn't you be a little ~bit~ more fastidious?  Your father
+wouldn't have minded nearly so much if it had been a self-respecting,
+intellectual girl.  We both say that if you ~must~ be so ridiculous
+at your age as to persist in seeing more of one girl than another,
+why, oh why, don't you go and see some really nice girl like Dora
+Yocum?"
+
+Ramsey was already dangerously distended, as an effect of the earlier
+part of her discourse, and the word "fastidious" almost exploded him;
+but upon the climax, "Dora Yocum," he blew up with a shattering
+report and, leaving fragments of incoherence ricochetting behind him,
+fled shuddering from the house.
+
+For the rest of the school term he walked home with Milla every
+afternoon and on sundays appeared to have become a resolute Baptist.
+It was supposed (by the interested members of the high-school class)
+that Ramsey and Milla were "engaged."  Ramsey sometimes rather
+supposed they were himself, and the dim idea gave him a sensation
+partly pleasant, but mostly apprehensive:  he was afraid.
+
+He was afraid that the day was coming when he ought to kiss her.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+Vacation, in spite of increased leisure, may bring inconvenience to
+people in Ramsey's strange but not uncommon condition.  At home his
+constant air was that of a badgered captive plaintively silent under
+injustice; and he found it difficult to reply calmly when asked where
+he was going--an inquiry addressed to him, he asserted, every time he
+touched his cap, even to hang it up!
+
+The amount of evening walking he did must also have been a trial to
+his nerves, on account of fatigue, though the ground covered was not
+vast.  Milla's mother and father were friendly people but saw no
+reason to "move out of house and home," as Mr. Rust said, when Milla
+had "callers"; and on account of the intimate plan of their small
+dwelling a visitor's only alternative to spending the evening with
+Mr. and Mrs. Rust as well as with Milla, was to invite her to "go
+out walking."
+
+Evening after evening they walked and walked and walked, usually in
+company--at perhaps the distance of half a block--with Albert Paxton
+and Sadie Clews, though Ramsey now and then felt disgraced by having
+fallen into this class; for sometimes it was apparent that Albert
+casually had his arm about Sadie's waist.  This allured Ramsey
+somewhat, but terrified him more.  He didn't know how such matters
+were managed.
+
+Usually the quartet had no destination; they just went "out walking"
+until ten o'clock, when both girls had to be home--and the boys did,
+too, but never admitted it.  On Friday evenings there was a "public
+open-air concert" by a brass band in a small park, and the four
+were always there.  A political speechmaker occupied the bandstand
+one night, and they stood for an hour in the midst of the crowd,
+listening vaguely.
+
+The orator saddled his politics upon patriotism.  "Do you intend
+to let this glorious country go to wrack and ruin, oh, my good
+friends," he demanded, "or do you intend to save her?  Look forth
+upon this country of ours, I bid you, oh, my countrymen, and tell
+me what you see.  You see a fair domain of forest, mountain, plain,
+and fertile valleys, sweeping from ocean to ocean.  Look from the
+sturdy rocks of old New England, pledged to posterity by the stern
+religious hardihood of the Pilgrim Fathers, across the corn-bearing
+midland country, that land of milk and honey, won for us by the
+pluck and endurance of the indomitable pioneers, to where in
+sunshine roll the smiling Sierras of golden California, given to
+our heritage by the unconquerable energy of those brave men and
+women who braved the tomahawk on the Great Plains, the tempest,
+of Cape Horn, and the fevers of Panama, to make American soil
+of El Dorado!  America!  Oh, my America, how glorious you stand!
+Country of Washington and Valley Forge, out of what martyrdoms
+hast thou arisen!  Country of Lincoln in his box at Ford's theatre,
+his lifeblood staining to a brighter, holier red the red, white,
+and blue of the Old Flag!  Always and always I see the Old Flag
+fluttering the more sacredly encrimsoned in the breeze for the
+martyrs who have upheld it!  Always I see that Old Flag--"
+
+Milla gave Ramsey's arm, within her own, a little tug.  "Come on,"
+she said.  "Sade says she don't want to hang around here any longer.
+It's awful tiresome.  Let's go."
+
+He consented, placidly.  The oration meant nothing to him and stirred
+no one in the audience.  The orator was impassioned; he shouted
+himself into coughing fits, gesticulated, grew purple; he was so hot
+that his collar caved in and finally swooned upon his neck in soggy
+exhaustion, prostrate round his thunderings.  Meanwhile, the people
+listened with an air of patience, yawning here and there, and
+gradually growing fewer.  It was the old, old usual thing, made up
+of phrases that Ramsey had heard dinning away on a thousand such
+occasions, and other kinds of occasions, until they meant to him no
+more than so much sound.  He was bored, and glad to leave.
+
+"Kind o' funny," he said, as they sagged along the street at their
+usual tortoise gait.
+
+"What is it, Ramsey?"
+
+"Seems kind o' funny they never have anything to say any one can
+take any interest in.  Always the same ole whoopety-whoop about
+George Washington and Pilgrim Fathers and so on.  I bet five dollars
+before long we'd of heard him goin' on about our martyred Presidents,
+William McKinley and James A. Garfield and Benjamin Harrison and all
+so on, and then some more about the ole Red, White, and Blue.  Don't
+you wish they'd ~quit~, sometimes, about the 'Ole Flag'?"
+
+"I dunno," said Milla.  "I wasn't listening any at all.  I hate
+speeches."
+
+"Well, I could ~stand~ 'em," Ramsey said, more generously, "if they'd
+ever give anybody a little to think about.  What's the use always
+draggin' in George Warshington and the Ole Flag?  And who wants to
+hear any more ole truck about 'from ole rocky New England to golden
+California,' and how big and fine the United States is and how it's
+the land of the Free and all that?  Why don't they ever say anything
+new?  That's what I'd like to know."
+
+Milla laughed, and when he asked why, she told him she'd never heard
+him talk so much "at one stretch."  "I guess that speech got you kind
+of wound up," she said.  "Let's talk about something different."
+
+"I just soon," he agreed.  And so they walked on in silence, which
+seemed to suit Milla.  She hung weightily upon his arm, and they
+dawdled, drifting from one side of the pavement to the other as
+they slowly advanced.  Ablert and Sadie, ahead of them, called
+"good-night" from a corner, before turning down the side street
+where Sadie lived; and then, presently, Ramsey and Milla were at
+the latter's gate.  He went in with her, halting at the front
+steps.
+
+"Well, g'night, Milla," he said.  "Want to go out walking to-morrow
+night?  Albert and Sadie are."
+
+"I can't to-morrow night," she told him with obvious regret.  "Isn't
+it the worst luck!  I got an aunt comin' to visit from Chicago, and
+she's crazy about playing 'Five Hundred,' and Mama and Papa said
+I haf to stay in to make four to play it.  She's liable to be here
+three or four days, and I guess I got to be around home pretty much
+all the time she's here.  It's the worst luck!"
+
+He was doleful, but ventured to be literary.  "Well, what can't be
+helped must be endured.  I'll come around when she's gone."
+
+He moved as if to depart, but she still retained his arm and did not
+prepare to relinquish it.
+
+"Well--" he said.
+
+"Well what, Ramsey?"
+
+"Well--g'night."
+
+She glanced up at the dark front of the house.  "I guess the family's
+gone to bed," she said, absently.
+
+"I s'pose so."
+
+"Well, good-night, Ramsey."  She said this but still did not release
+his arm, and suddenly, in a fluster, he felt that the time he dreaded
+had come.  Somehow, without knowing where, except that it was
+somewhere upon what seemed to be a blurred face too full of
+obstructing features, he kissed her.
+
+She turned instantly away in the darkness, her hands over her cheeks;
+and in a panic Ramsey wondered if he hadn't made a dreadful mistake.
+
+"S'cuse me!" he said, stumbling toward the gate.  "Well, I guess I
+got to be gettin' along back home."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+He woke in the morning to a great self-loathing:  he had kissed a
+girl.  Mingled with the loathing was a curious pride in the very fact
+that caused the loathing, but the pride did not last long.  He came
+downstairs morbid to breakfast, and continued this mood afterward.
+At noon Albert Paxton brought him a note which Milla had asked Sadie
+to ask Albert to give him.
+
+  Dearie:  I am just wondering if you thought as much about something
+  so sweet that happened last night as I did you know what.  I think
+  it was the sweetest thing.  I send you one with this note and I
+  hope you will think it is a sweet one.  I would give you a real
+  one if you were here now and I hope you would think it was sweeter
+  still than the one I put in this note.  It is the sweetest thing
+  now you are mine and I am yours forever kiddo.  If you come around
+  about friday eve it will be all right.  aunt Jess will be gone
+  back home by then so come early and we will get Sade and Alb and
+  go to the band Concert.  Don't forget what I said about my putting
+  something sweet in this note, and I hope you will think it is a
+  sweet one but not as sweet as the ~real~ sweet one I would like
+  to--
+
+At this point Ramsey impulsively tore the note into small pieces.
+He turned cold as his imagination projected a sketch of his mother
+in the act of reading this missive, and of her expression as she
+read the sentence:  "It is the sweetest thing now you are mine and
+I am yours forever kiddo."  He wished that Milla hadn't written
+"kiddo."  She called him that, sometimes, but in her warm little
+voice the word seemed not at all what it did in ink.  He wished,
+too, that she hadn't said she was his forever.
+
+Suddenly he was seized with a horror of her.
+
+Moisture broke out heavily upon him; he felt a definite sickness,
+and, wishing for death, went forth upon the streets to walk and
+walk.  He cared not whither, so that his feet took him in any
+direction away from Milla, since they were unable to take him away
+from himself--of whom he had as great a horror.  Her loving face
+was continually before him, and its sweetness made his flesh creep.
+Milla had been too sweet.
+
+When he met or passed people, it seemed to him that perhaps they
+were able to recognize upon him somewhere the marks of his low
+quality.  "Softy! Ole sloppy fool!" he muttered, addressing himself.
+"Slushy ole mush!... ~Spooner!~"  And he added, "Yours forever,
+kiddo!"  Convulsions seemed about to seize him.
+
+Turning a corner with his head down, he almost charged into Dora
+Yocum.  She was homeward bound from a piano lesson, and carried a
+rolled leather case of sheet music--something he couldn't imagine
+Milla carrying--and in her young girl's dress, which attempted to
+be nothing else, she looked as wholesome as cold spring water.
+Ramsey had always felt that she despised him and now, all at once,
+he thought that she was justified.  Leper that he had become, he
+was unworthy to be even touching his cap to her!  And as she nodded
+and went briskly on, he would have given anything to turn and walk
+a little way with her, for it seemed to him that this might fumigate
+his morals.  But he lacked the courage, and, besides, he considered
+himself unfit to be seen walking with her.
+
+He had a long aftgernoon of anguishes, these becoming most violent
+when he tried to face the problem of his future course toward Milla.
+He did not face it at all, in fact, but merely writhed, and had
+evolved nothing when Friday evening was upon him and Milla waiting
+for him to take her to the "band concert" with "Alb and Sade."  In
+his thoughts, by that time, this harmless young pair shared the
+contamination of his own crime, and he regarded them with aversion;
+however, he made shift to seek a short interview with Albert, just
+before dinner.
+
+"I got a pretty rotten headache, and my stomach's upset, too,"
+he said, drooping upon the Paxton's fence.  "I been gettin' worse
+every minute.  You and Sadie go by Milla's, Albert, and tell her
+if I'm not there by ha'-pas'-seven, tell her not to wait for me
+any longer."
+
+"How do you mean 'wait'?" Albert inquired.  "You don't expect her
+to come pokin' along with Sadie and me, do you?  She'll keep on
+sittin' there at home just the same, because she wouldn't have
+anything else to do, if you don't come like she expects you to.
+She hasn't got any way to ~stop~ waitin'!"
+
+At this, Ramsey moaned, without affectation.  "I don't expect I
+~can~, Albert," he said.  "I'd like to if I could, but the way it
+looks now, you tell her I wouldn't be much surprised maybe I was
+startin' in with typhoid fever or pretty near anything at all.
+You tell her I'm pretty near as disappointed as she's goin' to be
+herself, and I'd come if I could--and I ~will~ come if I get a good
+deal better, or anything--but the way it's gettin' to look now,
+I kind o' feel as if I might be breaking out with something any
+minute."  He moved away, concluding, feebly:  "I guess I better
+crawl on home, Albert, while I'm still able to walk some.  You tell
+her the way it looks now I'm liable to be right sick."
+
+And the next morning he woke to the chafings of remorse, picturing a
+Milla somewhat restored in charm waiting hopefully at the gate, even
+after half-past seven, and then, as time passed and the sound of the
+distant horns came faintly through the darkness, going sadly to her
+room--perhaps weeping there.  It was a picture to wring him with
+shame and pity, but was followed by another which electrified him,
+for out of school he did not lack imagination.  What if Albert had
+reported his illness too vividly to Milla?  Milla was so fond!  What
+if, in her alarm, she should come here to the house to inquire of
+his mother about him?  What if she told Mrs. Milholland they were
+"engaged"?  The next moment Ramsey was projecting a conversation
+between his mother and Milla in which the latter stated that she
+and Ramsey were soon to be married; that she regarded him as already
+virtually her husband, and demanded to nurse him.
+
+In a panic he fled from the house before breakfast, going out by way
+of a side door, and he crossed back yeards and climbed back fences to
+reach Albert Paxton the more swiftly.  This creature, a ladies' man
+almost professionaly, was found exercising with an electric iron and
+a pair of flannel trousers in a basement laundry, by way of stirring
+his appetite for the morning meal.
+
+"See here, Albert," his friend said breathlessly.  "I got a favour.
+I want you to go over to Milla's--"
+
+"I'm goin' to finish pressin' these trousers," Albert interrupted.
+"Then I've got my breakfast to eat."
+
+"Well, you could do this first," said Ramsey, hurriedly.  "It
+wouldn't hurt you to do me this little favour first.  You just slip
+over and see Milla for me, if she's up yet, and if she isn't, you
+better wait around there till she is, because I want you to tell
+her I'm a whole lot better this morning.  Tell her I'm pretty near
+practick'ly all right again, Albert, and I'll prob'ly write her a
+note or something right soon--or in a week or so, anyhow.  You tell
+her--"
+
+"Well, you act pretty funny!" Albert exclaimed, fumbling in the
+pockets of his coat.  "Why can't you go on over and tell her
+yourself?"
+
+"I would," said Ramsey.  "I'd be perfectly willing to go only I got
+to get back home to breakfast."
+
+Albert stared.  "Well, I got to go upstairs and eat my own breakfast
+in about a minute, haven't I?  But just as it happens there wouldn't
+be any use your goin' over there, or me, either."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Milla ain't there," said Albert, still searching the pockets of his
+coat.  "When we went by her house last night to tell her about your
+headache and stomach and all, why, her mother told us Milla'd gone
+up to Chicago yesterday afternoon with her aunt, and said she left
+a note for you, and she said if you were sick I better take it and
+give it to you.  I was goin' to bring it over to your house after
+breakfast."  He found it.  "Here!"
+
+Ramsey thanked him feebly, and departed in a state of partial
+stupefaction, brought on by a glimpse of the instabilities of life.
+He had also, not relief, but a sense of vacancy and loss; for Milla,
+out of his reach, once more became mysteriously lovely.
+
+Pausing in an alley, he read her note.
+
+  Dearie:  Thought I ought to call you up but over the 'phone is just
+  nix for explations as Mama and Aunt Jess would hear everything and
+  thought I might seem cold to you not saying anything sweet on
+  account of them listening and you would wonder why I was so cold
+  when telling you good-by for a wile maybe weeks.  It is this way
+  Uncle Purv wired Aunt Jess he has just taken in a big touring car
+  on a debt and his vacation starts to-morrow so if they were going
+  to take a trip they better start right way so Aunt Jess invited me.
+  It is going to be a big trip up around the lakes and I have always
+  wanted to go touring more than anything in the world stopping at
+  hotels and all and Mama said I ought to it would be so splend for
+  my health as she thinks I am failing some lately.  Now dearie I have
+  to pack and write this in a hury so you will not be disappointed
+  when you come by for the B. C. to-night.  Do not go get some other
+  girl and take her for I would hate her and nothing in this world
+  make me false for one second to my kiddo boy.  I do not know just
+  when home again as the folks think I better stay up there for a
+  visit at Aunt Jess and Uncle Purvs home in Chicago after the trip
+  is over.  But I will think of you all the time and you must think
+  of me every minute and believe your own dearie she will never no
+  not for one second be false.  So tell Sade and Alb good-by for me
+  and do not be false to me any more than I would be to you and it
+  will not be long till nothing more will interupt our sweet
+  friendship.
+
+As a measure of domestic prudence, Ramsey tore the note into
+irreparable fragments, but he did this slowly, and without
+experiencing any of the revulsion created by Milla's former
+missive.
+
+He was melancholy, aggrieved that she should treat him so.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+He never saw her again.  She sent him a "picture postal" from
+Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, which his father disengaged from the family
+mail, one morning at breakfast, and considerately handed to him
+without audible comment.  Upon it was written, ~"Oh, you Ramsey!"~
+This was the last of Milla.
+
+Just before school opened, in the autumn, Sadie Clews made some
+revelations.  "Milla did like you," said Sadie.  "After that time
+you jumped in the creek to save her she liked you better than any
+boy in town, and I guess if it wasn't for her cousin Milt up in
+Chicago she would of liked you the best anywhere.  I guess she did,
+anyway, because she hadn't seen him for about a year then.
+
+"Well, that afternoon she went away I was over there and took in
+everything that was goin' on, only she made me promise on my word of
+honour I wouldn't even tell Albert.  They didn't get any wire from
+her uncle about the touring car; it was her cousin Milt that jumped
+on the train and came down and fixed it all up for Milla to go on the
+trip, and everything.  You see, Ramsey, she was turned back a couple
+of times in school before she came in our class and I don't exactly
+know how old she is and she don't ~look~ old yet, but I'm pretty
+sure she's at least eighteen, and she might be over.  Her mother
+kept tellin' her all the time you were just a kid, and didn't have
+anything to support her on, and lots of things like that.  I didn't
+think such a great deal of this Milt's looks, myself, but he's anyway
+twenty-one years old, and got a good position, and all their family
+seem to think he's just fine!  It wasn't his father that took in the
+touring car on debt, like she said she was writing to you; it was
+Milt himself.  He started out in business when he was only fifteen
+years old, and this trip he was gettin' up for his father and mother
+and Milla was the first vacation he ever took.  Well, of course she
+wouldn't like my tellin' you, but I can't see the harm of it, now
+everything's all over."
+
+"All--all over?  You mean Milla's going to be--to be married?"
+
+"She already is," said Sadie.  "They got married at her Aunt Jess
+and Uncle Purv's house, up in Chicago, last Thursday.  Yes, sir;
+that quiet little Milla's a regular old married woman by this time,
+I expect, Ramsey!"
+
+When he got over the shock, which was not until the next day, one
+predominating feeling remained:  it was a gloomy pride--a pride in
+his proven maturity.  He was old enough, it appeared, to have been
+the same thing as engaged to a person who was now a Married Woman.
+His manner thenceforth showed an added trace of seriousness and
+self-consideration.
+
+Having recovered his equipoise and something more, he entirely
+forgot that moment of humble admiration he had felt for Dora Yocum
+on the day of his flattest prostration.  When he saw her sitting
+in the classroom, smiling brightly up at the teacher, the morning
+of the school's opening in the autumn, all his humility had long
+since vanished and she appeared to him not otherwise than as the
+scholar whose complete proficiency had always been so irksome to
+him.
+
+"Look at her!" he muttered to himself.  "Same ole Teacher's Pet!"
+
+Now and then, as the days and seasons passed, and Dora's serene
+progress continued, never checked or even flawed, there stirred
+within some lingerings of the old determination to "show" her; and
+he would conjure up a day-dream of Dora in loud lamentation, while
+he led the laughter of the spectators.  But gradually his feelings
+about her came to be merely a dull oppression.  He was tired of
+having to look at her (as he stated it) and he thanked the Lord
+that the time wouldn't be so long now until he'd be out of that
+ole school, and then all he'd have to do he'd just take care never
+to walk by her house; it was easy enough to use some other street
+when he had to go down-town.
+
+"The good ole class of Nineteen-Fourteen is about gone," he said
+to Fred Mitchell, who was still his most intimate friend when they
+reached the senior year.  "Yes, sir; it's held together a good many
+years, Fred, but after June it'll be busted plum up, and I hope
+nobody starts a move to have any reunions.  There's a good many
+members of the ole class that I can stand and there's some I can't,
+but there's one I just won't!  If we ever did call a reunion, that
+ole Yocum girl would start in right away and run the whole shebang,
+and that's where I'd resign!  You know, Fred, the thing ~I~ think
+is the one biggest benefit of graduating from this ole school?
+It's never seein' Dora Yocum again."
+
+This was again his theme as he sat by the same friend's side, in
+the rear row of the class at Commencement, listening to the delivery
+of the Valedictory.  "Thinks she's just sooblime, don't she!" he
+whispered morosely.  "She wouldn't trade with the President of the
+United States right now.  She prob'ly thinks bein' Valedictorian is
+more important than Captain of the State University Eleven.  Never
+mind!"  And here his tone became huskily jubilant.  "Never mind!
+Just about a half-an-hour more and that's the last o' ~you~, ole
+girl!  Yes, sir, Fred; one thing we can feel pretty good over:
+this is where we get through with Dora Yocum!"
+
+Ramsey and Fred had arranged to room together at Greenfield, the seat
+of the state university, and they made the short journey in company
+the following September.  They arrived hilarious, anticipating
+pleasurable excitements in the way of "fraternity" pledgings and
+initiations, encounters with sophomores, class meetings, and
+elections; and, also, they were not absolutely without interest in
+the matter of Girls, for the state university was co-educational, and
+it was but natural to expect in so broad a field, all new to them, a
+possible vision of something rather thrilling.  They whispered
+cheerfully of all these things during the process of matriculation,
+and signed the registrar's book on a fresh page; but when Fred had
+written his name under Ramsey's, and blotted it, he took the liberty
+of turning over the leaf to examine some of the autographs of their
+future classmates, written on the other side.  Then he uttered an
+exclamation, more droll than dolorous, though it affected to be
+wholly the latter; for the shock to Fred was by no means so painful
+as it was to his friend.
+
+Ramsey leaned forward and read the name indicated by Fred's
+forefinger.
+
+~Dora Yocum.~
+
+...When they got back to their pleasant quarters at Mrs. Meig's,
+facing the campus, Ramsey was still unable to talk of anything except
+the lamentable discovery; nor were his companion's burlesquing
+efforts to console him of great avail, though Fred did become serious
+enough to point out that a university was different from a high
+school.
+
+"It's not like havin' to use one big room as a headquarters, you
+know, Ramsey.  Everything's all split up, and she might happen not
+to be in a single of your classes."
+
+"You don't know my luck!" the afflicted boy protested.  "I wish
+I'd gone to Harvard, the way my father wanted me to.  Why, this
+is just the worst nuisance I ever struck!  You'll see!  She'll
+be in everything there is, just the way she was back home."
+
+He appeared to be corroborated by the events of the next day,
+when they attended the first meeting to organize the new class.
+The masculine element predominated, but Dora Yocum was elected
+vice-president.  "You see?" Ramsey said.  "Didn't I tell you?
+You see what happens?"
+
+But after that she ceased for a time to intrude upon his life,
+and he admitted that his harassment was less grave than he had
+anticipated.  There were about five hundred students in the
+freshman class; he seldom saw her, and when he did it was not more
+than a distant glimpse of her on one of the campus paths, her
+thoughtful head bent over a book as she hurried to a classroom.
+This was bearable; and in the flattering agitations of being sought,
+and even hunted, by several "fraternities" simultaneously desirous
+of his becoming a sworn Brother, he almost forgot her.  After a
+hazardous month the roommates fell into the arms of the last "frat"
+to seek them, and having undergone an evening of outrage which
+concluded with touching rhetoric and an oath taken at midnight,
+they proudly wore jewelled symbols on their breasts and were free
+to turn part of their attention to other affairs, especially the
+affairs of the Eleven.
+
+However, they were instructed by the older brethren of their Order,
+whose duty it was to assist in the proper manoeuvring of their young
+careers, that, although support of the 'varsity teams was important,
+they must neglect neither the spiritual nor the intellectual
+by-products of undergraduate doings.  Therefore they became members
+of the college Y.M.C.A. and of the "Lumen Society."
+
+According to the charter which it had granted itself, the "Lumen
+Society" was an "Organization of male and female students"--so
+"advanced" was this university--"for the development of the powers
+of debate and oratory, intellectual and sociological progress, and
+the discussion of all matters relating to philosophy, metaphysics,
+literature, art, and current events."  A statement so formidable was
+not without a hushing effect upon Messrs. Milholland and Mitchell;
+they went to their first "Lumen" meeting in a state of fear and came
+away little reassured.
+
+"I couldn't get up there," Ramsey declared, "I couldn't stand up
+there before all that crowd and make a speech, or debate in a debate,
+to save my soul and gizzard!  Why, I'd just keel right over and haf
+to be carried out."
+
+"Well, the way I understand it," said Fred, "we can't get out of
+it.  The seniors in the 'frat' said we had to join, and they said we
+couldn't resign, either, after we had joined.  They said we just had
+to go through it, and after a while we'd get used to it and not mind
+it much."
+
+"~I~ will!" Ramsey insisted.  "I couldn't any more stand up there
+on my feet and get to spoutin' about sociology and the radical
+metempsychorus of the metaphysical bazoozum than I could fly a
+flyin' machine.  Why, I--"
+
+"Oh, that wasn't anything," Fred interrupted.  "The only one that
+talked like that, he was that Blickens; he's a tutor, or something,
+and really a member of the faculty.  Most o' the others just kind
+of blah-blahhed around, and what any of 'em tried to get off their
+chests hardly amounted to terribly much."
+
+"I don't care.  I couldn't do it at ~all!~"
+
+"Well, the way it looks to me," Fred observed, "we simply ~got~ to!
+From what they tell me, the freshmen got to do more than anybody.
+Every other Friday night, it's all freshmen and nothin' else.  You
+get a postal card on Monday morning in your mail, and it says
+'Assignment' on it, and then it's got written underneath what you
+haf to do the next Friday night--oration or debate, or maybe just
+read from some old book or something.  I guess we got to stand up
+there and ~try~, anyway."
+
+"All right," said Ramsey.  "If they want me to commit suicide they
+can send me one o' their ole 'Assignments.'  I won't need to commit
+suicide, though, I guess.  All I'll do, I'll just fall over in a
+fit, and stay in it."
+
+And, in truth, when he received his first "Assignment," one Monday
+morning, a month later, he seemed in a fair way to fulfil his
+prophecy.  The attention of his roommate, who sat at a window of
+their study, was attracted by sounds of strangulation.
+
+"What on earth's the matter, Ramsey?"
+
+"Look!  Look at ~this!~"
+
+Fred took the card and examined it with an amazement gradually
+merging into a pleasure altogether too perceptible:
+
+  ASSIGNMENT
+
+  TWELVE-MINUTE DEBATE, CLASS OF 1918.
+  ~Subject, Resolved:~  That Germany is both legally and morally
+  justified in her invasion of Belgium.
+
+  (Debaters are notified that each will be held strictly to the
+  following schedule:  Affirmative, 4 min., first.  Negative, 4 min.,
+  first.  Affirm, 2 min., second.  Neg., 2 min., second.)
+
+  Afirmative                     Negative
+  R. MILHOLLAND, '18        D. YOCUM, '18
+
+Concluding his reading, which was oral, the volatile Mitchell made
+use of his voice in a manner of heathenish boisterousness, and
+presently reclined upon a lounge to laugh the better.  His stricken
+comrade, meanwhile, recovered so far as to pace the floor.  "I'm
+goin' to pack up and light out for home!" he declared, over and over.
+And even oftener he read and reread the card to make sure of the
+actuality of that fatal coincidence, "D. Yocum, '18."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+"If I ~could~ do it," he vociferated, "if I ~could~ stand up there
+and debate one o' their darn ole debates in the first place--if I had
+the gall to even try it, why, my gosh! you don't suppose I'm goin'
+to get up there and argue with ~that girl~, do you?  That's a hot way
+to get an education:  stand up there and argue with a girl before a
+couple o' hundred people!  My ~gosh!~"
+
+"You got to!" his prostrate companion cackled, weakly.  "You can't
+get out of it.  You're a goner, ole Buddy!"
+
+
+"I'll be sick.  I'll be sick as a dog!  I'll be sick as the sickest
+dog that ever--"
+
+"No use, ole man.  The frat seniors'll be on the job.  They'll know
+whether you're sick or not, and they'll have you there, right on the
+spot to the minute!"
+
+The prediction was accurate.  The too fatherly "frat seniors" did all
+that Fred said they would, and more.  For the honour of the "frat,"
+they coached the desperate Ramsey in the technic of Lumen debate,
+told him many more things to say than could be said in six minutes,
+and produced him, despairing, ghastly, and bedewed, in the large hall
+of the Lumen Society at eight o'clock on Friday evening.
+
+Four other "twelve-minute debates" preceded his and the sound of
+these, in Ramsey's ears, was the sound of Gabriel practising on
+his horn in the early morning of Judgment Day.  The members of the
+society sat, three rows deep, along the walls of the room, leaving
+a clear oblong of green carpet in the centre, where were two small
+desks, twenty feet apart, the rostrums of the debaters.  Upon a
+platform at the head of the room sat dreadful seniors, the officers
+of the society, and, upon benches near the platform, the debaters
+of the evening were aligned.  One of the fraternal seniors sat with
+sweltering Ramsey; and the latter, as his time relentlessly came
+nearer, made a last miserable squirm.
+
+"Look here, Brother Colburn, I got to get out o' here."
+
+"No, you don't, young fellow."
+
+"Yes, I do!" Ramsey whispered, passionately.  "Honest, I do.  Honest,
+Brother Colburn, I got to get a drink of water.  I ~got~ to!"
+
+"No.  You can't."
+
+"Honest, Colburn, I ~got~--"
+
+"Hush!"
+
+Ramsey grunted feebly, and cast his dilating eyes along the rows of
+faces.  Most of them were but as blurs, swimming, yet he was aware
+(he thought) of a formidable and horrible impassive scrutiny of
+himself, a glare seeming to pierce through him to the back of the
+belt round his waist, so that he began to have fearful doubts about
+that belt, about every fastening and adjustment of his garments,
+about the expression of his countenance, and about many other things
+jumbling together in his consciousness.  Over and over he whispered
+gaspingly to himself the opening words of the sentence with which
+Colburn had advised him to begin his argument.  And as the moment
+of supreme agony drew close, this whispering became continuous:
+"In making my first appearance before this honor'ble membership
+I feel constrained to say in making my first appearance before this
+honor'ble membership I feel constrained to say in making my first
+appearance before this honor'ble mem--"
+
+...It had come.  The chairman announced the subject of the fourth
+freshman twelve-minute debate; and Dora Yocum, hitherto unperceived
+by Ramsey, rose and went forward to one of the small desks in the
+open space, where she stood composedly, a slim, pretty figure in
+white.  Members in Ramsey's neighbourhood were aware of a brief and
+hushed commotion, and of Colburn's fierce whisper, "You can't!  You
+get up there!"  And the blanched Ramsey came forth and placed himself
+at the other desk.
+
+He stood before the silent populace of that morgue, and it seemed to
+him that his features had forgotten that he was supposed to be their
+owner and in control of them; he felt that they were slipping all
+over his face, regardless of his wishes.  His head, as a whole, was
+subject to an agitation not before known by him; it desired to move
+rustily in eccentric ways of its own devising; his legs alternately
+limbered and straightened under no direction but their own; and his
+hands clutched each other fiercely behind his back; he was not one
+cohesive person, evidently, but an assembled collection of parts
+which had relapsed each into its own indivuality.  In spite of them,
+he somehow contrived the semblance of a bow toward the chairman and
+the semblance of another toward Dora, of whom he was but hazily
+conscious.  Then he opened his mouth, and, not knowing how he had
+started his voice going, heard it as if from a distance.
+
+"In making my first appearance before this honor'ble membership I
+feel restrained to say--"  He stopped short, and thenceforward shook
+visibly.  After a long pause, he managed to repeat his opening,
+stopped again, swallowed many times, produced a handkerchief and
+wiped his face, an act of necessity--then had an inspiration.
+
+"The subject assigned to me," he said, "is resolved that Germany is
+mor'ly and legally justified in Belgians--Belgiums!  This subject was
+assigned to me to be the subject of this debate."  He interrupted
+himself to gasp piteously; found breathing difficult, but faltered
+again:  "This subject is the subject.  It is the subject that was
+assigned to me on a postal card."  Then, for a moment or so, he had
+a miraculous spurt of confidence, and continued rather rapidly:  "I
+feel constrained to say that the country of Belgian--Belgium, I mean
+--this country has been constrained by the--invaded I mean--invaded
+by the imperial German Impire and my subject in this debate is
+whether it ought to or not, my being the infernative--affirmative,
+I mean--that I got to prove that Germany is mor'ly and legally
+justified.  I wish to state that--"
+
+He paused again, lengthily, then struggled on.  "I have been
+requested to state that the German Imp--Empire--that it certainly
+isn't right for those Dutch--Germans, I mean--they haven't got any
+more business in Belgium than I have myself, but I--I feel
+constrained to say that I had to accept whatever side of this debate
+I got on the postal card, and so I am constrained to take the side of
+the Dutch.  I mean the Germans.  The Dutch are sometimes called--I
+mean the Germans are sometimes called the Dutch in this country, but
+they aren't Dutch, though sometimes called Dutch in this country.
+Well, and so--so, well, the war began last August or about then,
+anyway, and the German army invaded the Belgian army.  After they got
+there, the invasion began.  First, they came around there and then
+they commenced invading.  Well, what I feel constrained--"
+
+He came to the longest of all his pauses here, and the awful gravity
+of the audience almost suffocated him.  "Well," he concluded, "it
+don't look right to me."
+
+"Four minutes!" the chairman announced, for Ramsey's pauses had
+worn away a great deal more of this terrible interval than had his
+eloquence.  "Opening statement for the negative:  Miss D. Yocum.
+Four minutes."
+
+As Dora began to speak, Ramsey experienced a little relief, but
+only a little--about the same amount of relief as that felt by a
+bridegroom when it is the bride's turn to "respond," not really
+relief at all, but merely the slight relaxation of a continuing
+strain.  The audience now looked at Ramsey no more than people look
+at a bridegroom, but he failed to perceive any substantial mitigation
+of his frightful conspicuousness.  He had not the remotest idea of
+what he had said in setting forth his case for Germany, and he knew
+that it was his duty to listen closely to Dora, in order to be able
+to refute her argument when his two-minute closing speech fell due
+but he was conscious of little more than his own condition.  His legs
+had now gone wild beyond all devilry, and he had to keep shifting his
+weight from one to the other in order even to hope that their frenzy
+might escape general attention.
+
+He realized that Dora was speaking rapidly and confidently, and that
+somewhere in his ill-assembled parts lurked a familiar bit of him
+that ojbected to her even more than usual; but she had used half of
+her time, at least, before he was able to gather any coherent meaning
+from what she was saying.  Even then he caught only a fragment, here
+and there, and for the rest--so far as Ramsey was concerned--she
+might as well have been reciting the Swedish alphabet.
+
+In spite of the rather startling feebleness of her opponent's
+statement, Dora went at her task as earnestly as if it were to
+confute some monster of casuistry.  "Thus, having demonstrated
+that ~all~ war is wrong," she said, approaching her conclusion,
+"it is scarcely necessary to point out that whatever the actual
+circumstances of the invasion, and whatever the status of the case
+in international law, or by reason of treaty, or the German oath
+to respect the neutrality of Belgium, which of course was grossly
+and dishonorably violated--all this, I say, ladies and gentlemen
+of the Lumen Society, all this is beside the point of morals.  Since,
+as I have shown, ~all~ war is wrong, the case may be simplified
+as follows:  All war is morally wrong.  ~Quod erat demonstrandum~.
+Germany invaded Belgium.  Invasion is war.  Germany, therefore,
+did moral wrong.  Upon the legal side, as I began by pointing out,
+Germany confessed in the Reichstag the violation of law.  Therefore,
+Germany was justified in the invasion neither morally nor legally;
+but was both morally and legally wrong and evil.  Ladies and
+gentlemen of the Lumen Society, I await the refutation of my
+opponent!"
+
+Her opponent appeared to be having enough trouble with his legs,
+without taking any added cares upon himself in the way of
+refutations.  But the marvellous Dora had calculated the length of
+her statement with such nicety that the chairman announced "Four
+minutes," almost upon the instant of her final syllable; and all
+faces turned once more to the upholder of the affirmative.
+"Refutation and conclusion by the affirmative," said the chairman.
+"Mr. R. Milholland.  Two minutes."
+
+Therewith, Ramsey coughed as long as he could cough, and when he felt
+that no more should be done in this way, he wiped his face--again an
+act of necessity--and quaveringly began:
+
+"Gentlemen and ladies, or ladies and gentlemen, in making the
+refutation of my opponent, I feel that--I feel that hardly anything
+more ought to be said."
+
+He paused, looked helplessly at his uncontrollable legs, and resumed:
+"I am supposed to make the reputa--the refutation of my opponent,
+and I feel that I ought to say quite a good deal more.  In the first
+place, I feel that the invasion has taken place.  I am supposed--
+anyhow I got a postal card that I am supposed to be here to-night.
+Well, in talking over this matter with a couple of seniors, they told
+me I was supposed to claim this invasion was mor'ly and legally all
+right.  Well--"  Here, by some chance, the recollection of a word of
+Dora's flickered into his chaotic mind, and he had a brighter moment.
+"My opponent said she proved all war is wrong--or something like
+that, anyhow.  She said she proved it was wrong to fight, no matter
+what.  Well, if she wasn't a girl, anybody that wanted to get her
+into a fight could prob'ly do it."  He did not add that he would like
+to be the person to make the experiment (if Dora weren't a girl), nor
+did the thought enter his mind until an hour or so later.  "Well," he
+added, "I suppose there is little more to be said."
+
+He was so right, in regard to his own performance, at least, that,
+thereupon drying up utterly, he proceeded to stand, a speechless
+figure in the midst of a multitudinous silence, for an eternity
+lasting forty-five seconds.  He made a racking effort, and at the
+end of this epoch found words again.  "In making my argument in this
+debate, I would state that--"
+
+"Two minutes!" said the chairman.  "Refutation by the negative.
+Miss D. Yocum.  Two minutes."
+
+"I waive them," said Dora, primly.  "I submit that the affirmative
+has not refuted the argument of the negative."
+
+"Very well."  With his gavel the chairman sharply tapped the desk
+before him, "The question is now before the house.  'Resolved, that
+Germany is both morally and legally justified in her invasion of
+Belgium.'  All those in favour of the--"
+
+But here there was an interruption of a kind never before witnessed
+during any proceedings of the Lumen Society.  It came from neither
+of the debaters, who still remained standing at their desks until the
+vote settling their comparative merits in argument should be taken.
+The interruption was from the rear row of seats along the wall, where
+sat new members of the society, freshmen not upon the program for the
+evening.  A loud voice was heard from this quarter, a loud but nasal
+voice, shrill as well as nasal, and full of a strange hot passion.
+"Mr. Chairman!" it cried.  "Look-a-here, Mr. Chairman!  Mr. Chairman,
+I demand to be heard!  You gotta gimme my say, Mr. Chairman!  I'm
+a-gunna have my ~say~!  You look-a-here, Mr. Chairman!"
+
+Shocked by such a breach of order, and by the unseemly violence of
+the speaker, not only the chairman but everyone else looked there.
+A short, strong figure was on its feet, gesticulating fiercely; and
+the head belonging to it was a large one with too much curly black
+hair, a flat, swarthy face, shiny and not immaculately shaven; there
+was an impression of ill-chosen clothes, too much fat red lip, too
+much tooth, too much eyeball.  Fred Mitchell, half-sorrowing, yet
+struggling to conceal tears of choked mirth over his roommate's late
+exhibition, recognized this violent interrupter as one Linski, a
+fellow freshman who sat next to him in one of his classes.  "What's
+~that~ cuss up to?" Fred wondered, and so did others.  Linski showed
+them.
+
+He pressed forward, shoving himself through the two rows in front of
+him till he emerged upon the green carpet of the open space, and as
+he came, he was cyclonic with words.
+
+"You don't put no such stuff as this over, I tell you!" he shouted
+in his hot, nasal voice.  "This here's a free country, and you call
+yourself a debating society, do you?  Lemme tell you ~I~ belong to
+a debating society in Chicago, where I come from, and them fellas up
+there, they'd think they'd oughta be shot fer a fake like what you
+people are tryin' to put over, here, to-night.  I come down here to
+git some more education, and pay fer it, too, in good hard money I've
+made sweatin' in a machine shop up there in Chicago; but if ~this~
+is the kind of education I'm a-gunna git, I better go on back there.
+You call this a square debate, do you?"
+
+He advanced toward the chairman's platform, shaking a frantic fist.
+"Well, if you do, you got another think comin', my capitalis' frien'!
+you went and give out the question whether it's right fer Choimuny
+to go through Belgium; and what do you do fer the Choimun side?  You
+pick out this here big stiff"--he waved his passionate hand at the
+paralyzed Ramsey--"you pick out a boob like that for the Choimun
+side, a poor fish that gits stagefright so bad he don't know whether
+he's talkin' or dead; or else he fakes it; because he's a speaker so
+bum it looks more to me like he was faking.  You get this big stiff
+to fake the Choimun side, and then you go and stick up a goil agains'
+him that's got brains and makes a pacifis' argument that wins the
+case agains' the Choimuns like cuttin' through hog lard!  But you
+ain't a-gunna git away with it, mister!  Lemme tell you right here
+and now, I may be a mix blood, but I got some Choimun in me with the
+rest what I got, and before you vote on this here question you gotta
+hear a few woids from somebody that can ~talk!~  This whole war is
+a capitalis' war, Belgium as much as Choimuny, and the United States
+is sellin' its soul to the capitalis' right now, I tell you, takin'
+sides agains' Choimuny.  Orders fer explosives and ammanition and
+guns and Red Cross supplies is comin' into this country by the
+millions, and the capitalis' United States is fat already on the
+blood of the workers of Europe!  Yes, it is, and I'll have my ~say,~
+you boorjaw faker, and you can hammer your ole gavel to pieces at
+me!"
+
+He had begun to shriek; moisture fell from his brow and his mouth;
+the scandalized society was on its feet, nervously into groups.
+Evidently the meeting was about to disintegrate.  "I'll have my
+~say~!" the frenzied Linski screamed.  "You try to put up this
+capitalis' trick and work a fake to carry over this debate agains'
+Choimuny, but you can't work it on ~me~, lemme tell you!  I'll have
+my ~say!~"
+
+The outraged chairman was wholly at a loss how to deal with the
+"unprecedented situation"--so he defined it, quite truthfully; and he
+continued to pound upon the desk, while other clamours began to rival
+Linski's; shouts of "Put him out!"  "Order!"  "Shut up, Freshman!"
+"Turn him over to the sophomores!"
+
+"This meeting is ~adjourned!~" bellowed the chairman, and there was
+a thronging toward the doors, while the frothing Linski asseverated:
+"I'm a-gunna git my say, I tell you!  I'll have my say!  I'll have my
+~say!~"
+
+He had more than that, before the hour was over.  A moment after he
+emerged from the building and came out, still hot, upon the cool,
+dark campus, he found himself the centre of a group of his own
+classmates whom he at first mistook for sophomores, such was their
+manner.
+
+...As this group broke up, a few minutes later, a youth running to
+join it, scenting somewhat of interest, detained one of those who
+were departing.
+
+"What's up?  What was that squealing?"
+
+"Oh, nothing.  We just talked to that Linski.  Nobody else touched
+him, but Ramsey Milholland gave him a ~peach~ of a punch on the
+snoot."
+
+"Whoopee!"
+
+Ramsey was laconic in response to inquiries upon this subject.  When
+someone remarked:  "You served him right for calling you a boob and
+a poor fish and so on before all the society, girls and all," Ramsey
+only said:
+
+"That wasn't what I hit him for."
+
+He declined to explain further.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+The way I look at it, Ramsey," Fred Mitchell said, when they reached
+their apartment, whither the benevolent Colburn accompanied them,
+"the way I look at it, this Linski kind of paid you a compliment,
+after all, when he called you a fake.  He must have thought you
+anyway ~looked~ as if you could make a better speech than you did.
+Oh, golly!"
+
+And as Ramsey groaned, the jovial Mitchell gave himself up to the
+divan and the mirth.  "Oh, oh, oh, ~golly~!" he sputtered.
+
+"Never you mind, Brother Milholland," Colburn said gently.  "The
+Lumen is used to nervous beginners.  I've seen dozens in my time,
+just like you; and some of 'em got to be first rate before they
+quit.  Besides, this crazy Linski is all that anybody'll ever
+remember about to-night's meeting, anyhow.  There never was any such
+outbreak as that in ~my~ time, and I guess there nver was in the
+whole history of the society.  We'll probably suspend him until he
+apologizes to the society--I'm on the board, and I'm in favour of it.
+Who is the bird, anyhow?  He's in your class."
+
+"I never saw him before," Ramsey responded from the deep chair, where
+he had moodily thrown himself; and, returning to his brooding upon
+his oratory.  "Oh, murder!" he moaned.
+
+"Well," said the senior, "you'll know him when you see him again.
+You put your mark on him where you can see it, all right!"  He
+chuckled.  "I suppose I really ought to have interfered in that, but
+I decided to do a little astronomical observation, about fifty feet
+away, for a few minutes.  I'm 'way behind in my astronomy, anyhow.
+Do you know this Linski, Brother Mitchell?"
+
+"I've talked to him a couple o' times on the campus," said Fred.
+"He's in one of my classes.  He's about the oldest in our class, I
+guess--a lot older than us, anyhow.  He's kind of an anarchist or
+something; can't talk more'n five minutes any time without gettin off
+some bug stuff about 'capitalism.'  He said the course in political
+economy was all 'capitalism' and the prof was bought by Wall Street."
+
+"Poor old Prof. Craig!" Colburn laughed.  "He gets fifteen hundred
+a year."
+
+"Yes; I'd heard that myself, and I told Linski, and he said he had
+an uncle workin' in a steel mill got twice that much; but it didn't
+make any difference, ole Craig was bought by Wall Street.  He said
+'capitalism' better look out; he and the foreign-born workmen were
+goin' to ~take~ this country some day, and that was one of the
+reasons he was after an education.  He talked pretty strong pro-
+German, too--about the war in Europe--but I sort of thought that was
+more because he'd be pro-anything that he thought would help upset
+the United States than because he cared much about Germany."
+
+"Yes," said Colburn, "that's how he sounded to-night.  I guess
+there's plenty more like him in the cities, too.  That reminds me,
+I'd better arrange a debate on immigration for the Lumen.  We'll put
+Brother Milholland for the negative, this time."
+
+Ramsey started violently.  "See here--"
+
+But the senior reassured him.  "Just wanted to see you jump," he
+explained.  "Don't fear; you've done your share."
+
+"I should think I have!" Ramsey groaned.
+
+"Yes, you won't be called on again this term.  By the way," said
+Colburn, thoughtfully, "that was a clever girl you had against you
+to-night.  I don't believe in pacificism much, myself, but she used
+it very niftily for her argument.  Isn't she from your town, this
+Miss Yocum?"
+
+Fred nodded.
+
+"Well, she's a clever young thing," said the senior, still
+thoughtful.  And he added:  "Graceful girl, she is."
+
+At this, the roommates looked at him with startled attention.  Ramsey
+was so roused as to forget his troubles and sit forward in his chair.
+
+"Yes," said the musing Colburn, "she's a mighty pretty girl."
+
+"What!"
+
+This exclamation was a simultaneous one; the astounded pair stared
+at him in blank incredulity.
+
+"Why, don't you think so?" Colburn mildly inquired.  "She seems to me
+very unusual looking."
+
+"Well, yes," Fred assented, emphatically.  "We're with you there!"
+
+"Extraordinary eyes," continued Colburn.  "Lovely figure, too;
+altogether a strikingly pretty girl.  Handsome, I should say,
+perhaps.  Yes, 'handsome' rather than 'pretty'."  He looked up from
+a brief reverie.  "You fellows known her long?"
+
+"You bet!" said Ramsey.
+
+"She made a splendid impression on the Lumen," Colburn went on.
+"I don't remember that I ever saw a first appearance there that
+quite equalled it.  She'll probably have a brilliant career in the
+society, and in the university, too.  She must be a very fine sort
+of person." He deliberated within himself a few moments longer,
+then, realizing that his hosts and Brethren did not respond with
+any heartiness--or with anything at all--to the theme, he changed
+it, and asked them what they thought about the war in Europe.
+
+They talked of the war rather drowsily for a while; it was an
+interesting but not an exciting topic:  the thing they spoke of was
+so far away.  It was in foreign countries where they had never been
+and had no acquaintances; and both the cause and the issue seemed to
+be in confusion, though evidently Germany had "started" the trouble.
+Only one thing emerged as absolutely clear and proved:  there could
+be no disagreement about Germany's "dirty work," as Fred defined
+it, in violating Belgium.  And this stirred Ramsey to declare with
+justice that "dirty work" had likewise been done upon himself by the
+official person, whoever he or she was, who had given him the German
+side of the evening's debate.  After this moment of fervour, the
+conversation languished, and Brother Colburn rose to go.
+
+"Well, I'm glad you gave that Linski a fine little punch, Brother
+Milholland," he said, at the door.  "It won't do you any harm in the
+'frat,' or with the Lumen either.  And don't be discouraged about
+your debating.  You'll learn.  Anybody might have got rattled by
+having to argue against as clever and good-looking a girl as that!"
+
+The roommates gave each other a look of serious puzzlement as the
+door closed.  "Well, Brother Colburn is a mighty nice fellow," Fred
+said.  "He's kind of funny, though."
+
+Ramsey assented, and then, as the two prepared for bed, they entered
+into a further discussion of their senior friend.  They liked him
+"all right," they said, but he certainly must be kind of queer, and
+they couldn't just see how he had "ever managed to get where he was"
+in the "frat" and the Lumen and the university.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+Ramsey passed the slightly disfigured Linski on the campus next day
+without betraying any embarrassment or making a sign of recognition.
+Fred Mitchell told his roommate, chuckling, that Linski had sworn
+to "get" him, and, not knowing Fred's affiliations, had made him the
+confidant of his oath.  Fred had given his blessing, he said, upon
+the enterprise, and advised Linski to use a brick.  "He'll hit you
+on the head with it," said the light-hearted Fred, falling back upon
+this old joke.  "Then you can catch it as it bounces off and throw
+it back at him."
+
+However, Linski proved to be merely an episode, not only so far as
+Ramsey was concerned but in the Lumen and in the university as well.
+His suspension from the Lumen was for a year, and so cruel a
+punishment it proved for this born debater that he noisily declared
+he would found a debating society himself, and had a poster printed
+and distributed announcing the first meeting of "The Free Speech and
+Masses' Rights Council."  Several town loafers attended the meeting,
+but the only person connected with the university who came was an
+oriental student, a Chinese youth of almost intrusive amiability.
+Linski made a fiery address, the townsmen loudly appluading his
+advocacy of an embargo on munitions and the distribution of
+everybody's "property," but the Chinaman, accustomed to see students
+so madly in earnest only when they were burlesquing, took the whole
+affair to be intended humour, and tittered politely without
+cessation--except at such times as he thought it proper to appear
+quite wrung with laughter.  Then he would rock himself, clasp his
+mouth with both hands and splutter through his fingers.  Linski
+accused him of being in the pay of "capital."
+
+Next day the orator was unable to show himself upon the campus
+without causing demonstrations; whenever he was seen a file of
+quickly gathering students marched behind him chanting repeatedly
+and deafeningly in chorus:  "Down with Wall Street!  Hoch der Kaiser!
+Who loves Linski?  Who, who, who?  Hoo Lun!  Who loves Linski?  Who,
+who, who?  Hoo Lun!"
+
+Linski was disgusted, resigned from the university, and disappeared.
+
+"Well, here it isn't mid-year Exams yet, and the good ole class of
+Nineteen-Eighteen's already lost a member," said Fred Mitchell.  "I
+guess we can bear the break-up!"
+
+"I guess so," Ramsey assented.  "That Linski might just as well
+stayed here, though."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He couldn't do any harm here.  He'll prob'ly get more people to
+listen to him in cities where there's so many new immigrants and all
+such that don't know anything, comin' in all the time."
+
+"Oh, well," said Fred.  "What do ~we~ care what happens to Chicago!
+Come on, let's behave real wild, and go on over to the 'Teria and get
+us a couple egg sandwiches and sassprilly."
+
+Ramsey was willing.
+
+After the strain of the "mid-year Exams" in February, they lived a
+free-hearted life.  They had settled into the ways of their world;
+they had grown used to it, and it had grown used to them; there was
+no longer any ignominy in being a freshman.  They romped upon the
+campus and sometimes rioted harmlessly about the streets of the town.
+In the evenings they visited their fellows and Brethren and were
+visited in turn, and sometimes they looked so far ahead as to talk
+vaguely of their plans for professions or business--though to a
+freshman this concerned an almost unthinkably distant prospect.  "I
+guess I'll go in with my father, in the wholesale drug business,"
+said Fred.  "My married brother already is in the firm, and I suppose
+they'll give me a show--send me out on the road a year or two first,
+maybe, to try me.  Then I'm going to marry some little cutie and
+settle down.  What you goin' to do, Ramsey?  Go to Law School, and
+then come back and go in your father's office?"
+
+"I don't know.  Guess so."
+
+It was always Fred who did most of the talking; Ramsey was quiet.
+Fred told the "frat seniors" that Ramsey was "developing a whole lot
+these days"; and he told Ramsey himself that he could see a "big
+change" in him, adding that the improvement was probably due to
+Ramsey's having passed through "terrible trials like that debate."
+
+Ramsey kept to their rooms more than his comrade did, one reason for
+this domesticity being that he "had to study longer than Fred did,
+to keep up"; and another reason may have been a greater shyness than
+Fred possessed--if, indeed, Fred possessed any shyness at all.  For
+Fred was a cheery spirit difficult to abash, and by the coming of
+spring knew all of the best-looking girl students in the place--knew
+them well enough, it appeared, to speak of them not merely by their
+first names but by abbreviations of these.  He had become fashion's
+sprig, a "fusser" and butterfly, and he reproached his roommate for
+shunning the ladies.
+
+"Well, the truth is, Fred," said Ramsey one day, responding darkly;
+--"well, you see the truth is, Fred, I've had a--a--I've had an
+experience--"
+
+So, only, did he refer to Milla.
+
+Fred said no more; and it was comprehended between them that the past
+need never be definitely referred to again, but that it stood between
+Ramsey and any entertainment to be obtained of the gentler but less
+trustworthy sex.  And when other Brethren of the "frat" would have
+pressed Ramsey to join them in various frivolous enterprises
+concerning "co-eds," or to be shared by "co-eds," Fred thought it
+better to explain to them privately (all being sacred among Brethren)
+how Ramsey's life, so far as Girls went, had been toyed with by one
+now a Married Woman.
+
+This created a great deal of respect for Ramsey.  It became
+understood everywhere that he was a woman-hater.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+That early spring of 1915 the two boys and their friends and Brethren
+talked more of the war than they had in the autumn, though the
+subject was not an all at absorbing one; for the trenches in Flanders
+and France were still of the immense, remote distance.  By no stretch
+of imagination could these wet trenches be thought greatly to concern
+the "frat," the Lumen, or the university.  Really important matters
+were the doings of the "Track Team," now training in the "Gym" and on
+the 'Varsity Field, and, more vital still, the prospects of the Nine.
+But in May there came a shock which changed things for a time.
+
+The ~Lusitania~ brought to every American a revelation of what had
+lain so deep in his own heart that often he had not realized it was
+there.  When the Germans hid in the sea and sent down the great
+merchant ship, with American babies and their mothers, and gallantly
+dying American gentlemen, there came a change even to girls and boys
+and professors, until then so preoccupied with their own little aloof
+world thousands of miles from the murder.
+
+Fred Mitchell, ever volatile and generous, was one of those who went
+quite wild.  No orator, he nevertheless made a frantic speech at the
+week's "frat meetings," cursing the Germans in the simple old English
+words that their performance had demonstrated to be applicable, and
+going on to demand that the fraternity prepare for its own share in
+the action of the country.  "I don't care ~how~ insignificant we few
+fellows here to-night may seem," he cried; "we can do our little,
+and if everybody in this country's ready to do their own little, why,
+that'll be plenty!  Brothers, don't you realize that all ~over~ the
+United States to-night the people are feeling just the way we are
+here?  Millions and millions and millions of them!  Wherever there's
+an American he's ~with~ us--and you bet your bottom dollar there are
+just a few more Americans in this country of ours than there are
+big-mouthed lobsters like that fellow Linski!  I tell you, if
+Congress only gives the word, there could be an army of five million
+men in this country to-morrow, and those dirty baby-killin' dachshunds
+would hear a word or two from your Uncle Samuel!  Brothers, I demand
+that something be done right here and now, and by us!  I move we
+telegraph the Secretary of War to-night and offer him a regiment from
+this university to go over and help ~hang~ their damn Kaiser."
+
+The motion was hotly seconded and instantly carried.  Then followed
+a much flustered discussion of the form and phrasing of the proposed
+telegram, but, after everything seemed to have been settled, someone
+ascertained by telephone that the telegraph company would not accept
+messages containing words customarily defined as profane; so the
+telegram had to be rewritten.  This led to further amendment, and it
+was finally decided to address the senators from that state, instead
+of the Secretary of War, and thus in a somewhat modified form the
+message was finally despatched.
+
+Next day, news of what the "frat" had done made a great stir in the
+university; other "frats" sent telegrams, so did the "Barbarians,"
+haters of the "frats" but joining them in this; while a small band
+of "German-American" students found it their duty to go before the
+faculty and report these "breaches of neutrality."  They protested
+heavily, demanding the expulsion of the "breachers" as disloyal
+citizens, therefore unfit students, but suffered a disappointment;
+for the faculty itself had been sending telegrams of similar spirit,
+addressing not only the senators and congressmen of the state but
+the President of the United States.  Flabbergasted, the "German-
+Americans" retired; they were confused and disgusted by this
+higher-up outbreak of unneutrality--it overwhelmed them that citizens
+of the United States should not remain neutral in the dispute between
+the United States and Germany.  All day the campus was in ferment.
+
+At twilight, Ramsey was walking meditatively on his way to dinner
+at the "frat house," across the campus from his apartment at Mrs.
+Meig's.  Everybody was quiet now, both town and gown; the students
+were at their dinners and so were the burghers.  Ramsey was late
+but did not quicken his thoughtful steps, which were those of one
+lost in reverie.  He had forgotten that spring-time was all about
+him, and, with his head down, walked unregardful of the new gayeties
+flung forth upon the air by great clusters of flowering shrubs, just
+come into white blossom and lavender.
+
+He was unconscious that somebody behind him, going the same way,
+came hastening to overtake him and called his name, "Ramsey!  Ramsey
+Milholland!"  Not until he had been called three times did he realize 
+that he was being hailed--and in a girl's voice!  By that time, the
+girl herself was beside him, and Ramsey halted, quite taken aback.
+The girl was Dora Yocum.
+
+She was pale, a little breathless, and her eyes were bright and
+severe.  "I want to speak to you," she said, quickly.  "I want to
+ask you about something.  Mr. Colburn and Fred Mitchell are the only
+people I know in your 'frat' except you, and I haven't seen either
+of them to-day, or I'd have asked one of them."
+
+Most uncomfortably astonished, Ramsey took his hands out of his
+pockets, picked a leaf from a lilac bush beside the path, and put
+the stem of the leaf seriously into a corner of his mouth, before
+finding anything to say.  "Well--well, all right," he finally
+responded.  "I'll tell you--if it's anything I know about."
+
+"You know about it," said Dora.  "That is, you certainly do if you
+were at your 'frat' meeting last night.  Were you?"
+
+"Yes, I was there," Ramsey answered, wondering what in the world she
+wanted to know, though he supposed vaguely that it must be something
+about Colburn, whom he had several times seen walking with her.  "Of
+course I couldn't tell you much," he added, with an afterthought.
+"You see, a good deal that goes on at a 'frat' meeting isn't supposed
+to be talked about."
+
+"Yes," she said, smiling faintly, though with a satire that missed
+him.  "I've been a member of a sorority since September, and I think
+I have an idea of what could be told or not told.  Suppose we walk
+on, if you don't mind.  My question needn't embarrass you."
+
+Nevertheless, as they slowly went on together, Ramsey was embarrassed.
+He felt "queer."  They had known each other so long; in a way had
+shared so much, sitting daily for years near each other and undergoing
+the same outward experiences; they had almost "grown up together,"
+yet this was the first time they had ever talked together or walked
+together.
+
+"Well--" he said.  "If you want to ask anything it's all right for me
+to tell you--well, I just as soon, I guess."
+
+"It has nothing to do with the secret proceedings of your 'frat',"
+said Dora, primly.  "What I want to ask about has been talked of all
+over the place to-day.  Everyone has been saying it was ~your~ 'frat'
+that sent the first telegram to members of the Government offering
+support in case of war with Germany.  They say you didn't even wait
+until to-day, but sent off a message last night.  What I wanted to
+ask you was whether this story is true or not?"
+
+"Why, yes," said Ramsey, mildly.  "That's what we did."
+
+She uttered an exclamation, a sound of grief and of suspicion
+confirmed.  "Ah!  I was afraid so!"
+
+"'Afraid so'?  What's the matter?" he asked, and because she seemed
+excited and troubled, he found himself not quite so embarrassed as
+he had been at first; for some reason her agitation made him feel
+easier.  "What was wrong about that?"
+
+"Oh, it's all so shocking and wicked and mistaken!" she cried.
+"Even the faculty has been doing it, and half the other 'frats'
+and sororities!  And it was yours that started it."
+
+"Yes, we did," he said, throughly puzzled.  "We're the oldest 'frat'
+here, and of course"--he chuckled modestly--"of course we think we're
+the best.  Do you mean you believe we ought to've sat back and let
+somebody else start it?"
+
+"Oh, ~no~!" she answered, vehemently.  "Nobody ought to have started
+it!  That's the trouble; don't you see?  If nobody had started it
+none of it might have happened.  The rest mightn't have caught it.
+It mightn't have got into their heads.  A war thought is the most
+contagious thought in the world; but if it can be kept from starting,
+it can be kept from being contagious.  It's just when people have got
+into an emotional state, or a state of smouldering rage, that
+everybody ought to be so terribly careful not to think war thoughts
+or make war speeches--or send war telegrams!  I thought--oh, I was so
+sure I'd convinced Mr. Colburn of all this, the last time we talked
+of it!  He seemed to understand, and I was sure he agreed with me."
+She bit her lip.  "He was only pretending--I see that now!"
+
+"I guess he must 'a' been," said Ramsey, with admirable simplicity.
+"He didn't talk about anything like that last night.  He was as much
+for it as anybody."
+
+"I've no doubt!"
+
+Ramsey made bold to look at her out of the side of his eye, and as
+she was gazing tensely forward he continued his observation for some
+time.  She was obviously controlling agitation, almost controlling
+tears, which seemed to threaten her very wide-open eyes; for those
+now fully grown and noticeable eyewinkers of hers were subject to
+fluctuations indicating such a threat.  She looked "hurt," and Ramsey
+was touched; there was something human about her, then, after all.
+And if he had put his feeling into words at the moment, he would have
+said that he guessed maybe he could stand this ole girl, for a few
+minutes sometimes, better than he'd always thought he could.
+
+"Well," he said, "Colburn prob'ly wouldn't want to hurt your feelings
+or anything.  Colburn--"
+
+"He?  He didn't!  I haven't the faintest personal interest in what he
+did."
+
+"Oh!" said Ramsey.  "Well, excuse me; I thought prob'ly you were sore
+because he'd jollied you about this pacifist stuff, and then--"
+
+"No!" she said, sharply.  "I'm not thinking of his having agreed with
+~me~ and fooling ~me~ about it.  He just wanted to make a pleasant
+impression on a girl, and said anything he thought would please her.
+I don't care whether he does things like that or not.  What I care
+about is that the ~principle~ didn't reach him and that he mocked it!
+I don't care about a petty treachery to me, personally, but I--"
+
+Fraternal loyalty could not quite brook this.  "Brother Colburn is
+a perfectly honor'ble man," said Ramsey, solemnly.  "He is one of
+the most honor'ble men in this--"
+
+"Of course! she cried.  "Oh, can't I make you understand that I'm not
+condemning him for a little flattery to me?  I don't care two straws
+for his showing that ~I~ didn't influence him.  He doesn't interest
+me, please understand."
+
+Ramsey was altogether perplexed.  "Well, I don't see what makes you
+go for him so hard, then."
+
+"I don't."
+
+"But you said he was treach--"
+
+"I don't ~condemn~ him for it," she insisted, despairingly.  "Don't
+you see the difference?  I'm not condemning anybody; I'm only
+lamenting.
+
+"What about?
+
+"About all of you that want ~war~!"
+
+"My golly!" Ramsey exclaimed.  "You don't think those Dutchmen were
+right to drown babies and--"
+
+"No!  I think they were ghastly murderers!  I think they were
+detestable and fiendish and monstrous and--"
+
+"Well, then, my goodness!  What do you want?"
+
+"I don't want war!"
+
+"You don't?"
+
+"I want Christianity!" she cried.  "I can't think of the Germans
+without hating them, and so to-day, when all the world is hating
+them, I keep myself from thinking of them as much as I can.  Already
+half the world is full of war; you want to go to war to make things
+right, but it won't; it will only make more war!"
+
+"Well, I--"
+
+"Don't you see what you've done, you boys?" she said.  "Don't you
+see what you've done with your absurd telegram?  That started the
+rest; they thought they ~all~ had to send telegrams like that."
+
+"Well, the faculty--"
+
+"Even they mightn't have thought of it if it hadn't been for the
+first one.  Vengeance is the most terrible thought; once you put
+it into people's minds that they ought to have it, it runs away
+with them"
+
+"Well, it isn't mostly vengeance we're after, at all.  There's a lot
+more to it than just getting even with--"
+
+She did not heed him.  "You're all blind!  You don't see what you're
+doing; you don't even see what you've done to this peaceful place
+here.  You've filled it full of thoughts of fury and killing and
+massacre--"
+
+"Why, no," said Ramsey.  "It was those Dutch did that to us; and,
+besides, there's more to it than you--"
+
+"No, there isn't," she interrupted.  "It's just the old brutal spirit
+that nations inherit from the time they were only tribes; it's the
+tribe spirit, and an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  It's
+those things and the love of fighting--men have always loved to fight.
+Civilization hasn't taken it out of them; men still have the brute in
+them that loves to fight!"
+
+"I don't think so," said Ramsey.  "Americans don't love to fight;
+I don't know about other countries, but we don't.  Of course, here
+and there, there's some fellow that likes to hunt around for scrapes,
+but I never saw more than three or four in my life that acted that
+way.  Of course a football team often has a scrapper or two on it,
+but that's different."
+
+"No," she said.  "I think you all really love to fight."
+
+Ramsey was roused to become argumentative.  "I don't see where you
+get the idea.  Colburn isn't that way, and back at school there
+wasn't a single boy that was anything like that."
+
+"What!"  She stopped, and turned suddenly to face him.
+
+"What's the matter?" he said, stopping, too.  Something he said
+had startled her, evidently.
+
+"How can you say such a thing?" she cried.  "~You~ love to fight!"
+
+"Me?"
+
+"You do!  You love fighting.  You always have loved fighting."
+
+He was dumbfounded.  "Why, I never had a fight in my life!"
+
+She cried out in protest of such prevarication.
+
+"Well, I never did," he insisted, mildly.
+
+"Why, you had a fight about ~me~!"
+
+"No, I didn't."
+
+"With Wesley Bender!"
+
+Ramsey chuckled.  "~That~ wasn't a fight!"
+
+"It wasn't?"
+
+"Nothing like one.  We were just guyin' him about--about gettin'
+slicked up, kind of, because he at in front of you; and he hit me
+with his book strap and I chased him off.  Gracious, no; ~that~
+wasn't a fight!"
+
+"But you fought Linski only last fall."
+
+Ramsey chuckled again.  "That wasn't even as much like a fight as
+the one with Wesley.  I just told this Linski I was goin' to give
+him a punch in the sn--  I just told him to look out because I was
+goin' to hit him, and then I did it, and waited to see if he wanted
+to do anything about it, and he didn't.  That's all there was to
+it, and it wasn't any more like fighting than--than feeding chickens
+is."
+
+She laughed dolefully.  "It seems to me rather more like it than
+that!"
+
+"Well, it wasn't."
+
+They had begun to walk on again, and Ramsey was aware that they had
+passed the "frat house," where his dinner was probably growing cold.
+He was aware of this, but not sharply or insistently.  Curiously
+enough, he did not think about it.  He had begun to find something
+pleasant in the odd interview, and in walking beside a girl, even
+though the girl was Dora Yocum.  He made no attempt to account to
+himself for anything so peculiar.
+
+For a while they went slowly together, not speaking, and without
+destination, though Ramsey vaguely took it for granted that Dora was
+going somewhere.  But she wasn't.  They emerged from the part of the
+small town closely built about the university and came out upon a bit
+of parked land overlooking the river; and here Dora's steps slowed to
+an indeterminate halt near a bench beneath a maple tree.
+
+"I think I'll stay here a while," she said; and as he made no
+response, she asked, "Hadn't you better be going back to your 'frat
+house' for your dinner?  I didn't mean for you to come out of your
+way with me; I only wanted to get an answer to my question.  You'd
+better be running back."
+
+"Well--"
+
+He stood irresolute, not sure that he wanted his dinner just then.
+It would have amazed him to face the fact deliberately that perhaps
+he preferred being with Dora Yocum to eating.  However, he faced no
+such fact, nor any fact, but lingered.
+
+"Well--" he said again.
+
+"You'd better go."
+
+"I guess I can get my dinner pretty near any time.  I don't--"  He
+had a thought.  "Did you--"
+
+"Did I what?"
+
+"Did you have your dinner before I met you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, aren't you--"
+
+She shook her head.  "I don't want any."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't think people have very much appetite to-day and yesterday,"
+she said, with the hint of a sad laugh, "all over America."
+
+"No; I guess that's so."
+
+"It's too terrible!" she said.  "I can't sit and eat when I think
+of the ~Lusitania~--of all those poor, poor people strangling in
+the water--"
+
+"No; I guess nobody can eat much, if they think about that."
+
+"And of what it's going to bring, if we let it," she went on.  "As
+if this killing weren't enough, we want to add ~our~ killing!  Oh,
+that's the most terrible thing of all--the thing it makes within us!
+Don't you understand?"
+
+She turned to him appealingly, and he felt queerer than ever.  Dusk
+had fallen.  Where they stood, under the young-leaved maple tree,
+there was but a faint lingering of afterglow, and in this mystery her
+face glimmered wan and sweet; so that Ramsey, just then, was like one
+who discovers an old pan, used in the kitchen, to be made of chased
+silver.
+
+"Well, I don't feel much like dinner right now," he said.  "We--we
+could sit here awhile on this bench, prob'ly."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+Ramsey kept very few things from Fred Mitchell, and usually his
+confidences were immediate upon the occasion of them; but allowed
+several weeks to elapse before sketching for his roommate the
+outlines of this adventure.
+
+"One thing that was kind o' funny about it, Fred," he said, "I didn't
+know what to call her."
+
+Mr. Mitchell, stretched upon the window seat in their "study," and
+looking out over the town street below and the campus beyond the
+street, had already thought it tactful to ambush his profound
+amusement by turning upon his side, so that his face was toward the
+window and away from his companion.  "What did you want to call her?"
+he inquired in a serious voice.  "Names?"
+
+"No.  You know what I mean.  I mean I had to just keep callin' her
+'you'; and that gets kind of freaky when you're talkin' to anybody
+a good while like that.  When she'd be lookin' away from me, and I'd
+want to start sayin' something to her, you know, why, I wouldn't know
+how to get started exactly, without callin' her something.  A person
+doesn't want to be always startin' off with 'See here,' or things
+like that."
+
+"I don't see why you let it trouble you," said Fred.  "From how
+you've always talked about her, you had a perfectly handy way to
+start off with anything you wanted to say to her."
+
+"What with?"
+
+"Why didn't you just say, 'Oh, you Teacher's Pet!'  That would--"
+
+"Get out!  What I mean is, she called me 'Ramsey' without any bother;
+it seems funny I got stumped every time I started to say 'Dora.'  
+Someway I couldn't land it, and it certainly would 'a' sounded crazy
+to call her 'Miss Yocum' after sittin' in the same room with her
+every day from the baby class clear on up through the end of high
+school.  That ~would~ 'a' made me out an idiot!"
+
+"What did you call her?" Fred asked.
+
+"Just nothin' at all.  I started to call her something or other a
+hundred times, I guess, and then I'd balk.  I'd get all ready, and
+kind of make a sort of a sound, and then I'd have to quit."
+
+"She may have thought you had a cold," said Fred, still keeping his
+back turned.
+
+"I expect maybe she did--though I don't know; most of the time she
+didn't seem to notice me much, kind of."
+
+"She didn't?"
+
+"No.  She was too upset, I guess, by what she was thinkin' about."
+
+"But if it hadn't been for that," Fred suggested, "you mean she'd
+have certainly paid more attention to who was sitting on the bench
+with her?"
+
+"Get out!  You know how it was.  Everybody those few days thought we
+were goin' to have war, and she was just sure of it, and it upset
+her.  Of course most people were a lot more upset by what those
+Dutchmen did to the ~Lusitania~ than by the idea of war; and she
+seemed to feel as broken up as anybody could be about the
+~Lusitania~, but what got her the worst was the notion of her country
+wantin' to fight, she said.  She really was upset, too, Fred; there
+wasn't any puttin' on about it.  I guess that ole girl certainly must
+have a good deal of feeling, because, doggoned, after we'd been
+sittin' there a while if she didn't have to get out her handkerchief!
+She kept her face turned away from me--just the same as you're doin'
+now to keep from laughin'--but honestly, she cried like somebody at
+a funeral.  I felt like the darndest fool!"
+
+"I'm not laughing," said Fred, but he did not prove it by turning so
+that his face could be seen.  "What did she say?"
+
+"Oh, she didn't say such an awful lot.  She said one kind o' funny
+thing though:  she said she was sorry she couldn't quite control
+herself, but if anybody had to see her cry she minded it less because
+it was an old schoolmate.  What struck me so kind o' funny about that
+is--why, it looks as if she never knew the way I always hated her
+so."
+
+"Yes," said Fred.  "It wasn't flattering!"
+
+"Well, sir, it ~isn't~, kind of," Ramsey agreed, musingly.  "It
+certainly isn't when you look at it that way."
+
+"What did you say when she said that?" Fred asked.
+
+"Nothin'.  I started to, but I sort of balked again.  Well, we kept
+on sitting there, and afterwhile she began to talk again and got kind
+of excited about how no war could do anything or anybody any good,
+and all war was wicked, no matter what it was about, and nothin'
+could be good that was founded on fear and hate, and every war that
+ever was fought was always founded on fear and hate.  She said if the
+Germans wanted to fight us we ought to go to meet them and tell them
+we wouldn't fight."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"Nothin'.  I kind o' started to--but what's the use?  She's got that
+in her head.  Besides, how are you goin' to argue about a thing with
+a person that's crying about it?  I tell you, Fred, I guess we got to
+admit, after all, that ole girl certainly must have a lost of heart
+about her, anyway.  There may not be much ~fun~ to her--though of
+course I wouldn't know hardly any way to tell about that--but there
+couldn't be hardly any doubt she's got a lot of feeling.  Well, and
+then she went on and said old men made wars, but didn't fight; they
+left the fighting to the boys, and the suffering to the boy's
+mothers."
+
+"Yes!" Fred exclaimed, and upon that he turned free of mirth for the
+moment.  "That's the woman of it, I guess.  Send the old men to do
+the fighting!  For the matter of that, I guess my father'd about a
+thousand times go himself than see me and my brothers go; but
+Father's so fat he can't stoop!  You got to be able to stoop to dig
+a trench, I guess!  Well, suppose we sent our old men up against
+those Dutchmen; the Dutchmen would just kill the old men, and then
+come after the boys anyway, and the boys wouldn't be ready, and
+they'd get killed, too; and then there wouldn't be anybody but the
+Dutchmen left, and that'd be one fine world, wouldn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said Ramsey.  "Course I thought of that."
+
+"Did you tell her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"Nothin'.  I couldn't get started anyway, but, besides, what was the
+use?  But she didn't want the old men to go; she didn't want anybody
+to go."
+
+"What did she want the country to do?" Fred asked, impatiently.
+
+"Just what it has been doin', I suppose.  Just let things simmer
+down, and poke along, and let them do what they like to us."
+
+"I guess so!" said Fred.  "Then, afterwhile, when they get some
+free time on their hands, they'll come over and make it ~really~
+interesting for us, because they know we won't do anything but talk.
+Yes, I guess the way things are settling down ought to suit Dora.
+There isn't goin' to be any war."
+
+"She was pretty sure there was, though," Ramsey said, thoughtfully.
+
+"Oh, of course she was then.  We all thought so those few days."
+
+"No.  She said she thought it prob'ly wouldn't come right away, but
+now it was almost sure to come sometime.  She said our telegrams and
+all the talk and so much feeling and everything showed her that the
+war thought that was always ~in~ people somewhere had been stirred up
+so it would go on and on.  She said she knew from the way she felt
+herself about the ~Lusitania~ that a feeling like that in her would
+never be absolutely wiped out as long as she lived.  But she said her
+other feeling about the horribleness of war taught her to keep the
+first feeling from breaking out, but with other people it wouldn't;
+and even if war didn't break out right then, it would always be ready
+to, all over the country, and sometime it would, though she was goin'
+to do her share to fight it, herself, as long as she could stand.
+She asked me wouldn't I be one of the ones to help her."
+
+He paused, and after a moment Fred asked, "Well?  What did you say
+to that?"
+
+"Nothin'.  I started to, but--"
+
+Again Fred thought it tactful to turn and look out the window, while
+the agitation of his shoulders betrayed him."
+
+"Go on and laugh!  Well, so we stayed there quite a while, but before
+we left she got kind of more like everyday, you know, the way people
+do.  It was half-past nine when we walked back in town, and I was
+commencin' to feel kind of hungry, so I asked her if she wasn't, and
+she sort of laughed and seemed to be ashamed of it, as if it were a
+disgrace or something, but she said she guessed she was; so I left
+her by that hedge of lilacs near the observatory and went on over to
+the 'Teria and the fruit store, and got some stuffed eggs and olives
+and half-a-dozen peanut butter sandwiches and a box o' strawberries
+--kind of girl-food, you know--and went on back there, and we ate the
+stuff up.  So then she said she was afraid she'd taken me away from
+my dinner and made me a lot of trouble, and so on, and she was sorry,
+and she told me good-night--"
+
+"What did you say then?"
+
+"Noth--  Oh, shut up!  So then she skipped out to her Dorm, and I
+came on home."
+
+"When did you see her next, Ramsey?"
+
+"I haven't seen her next," said Ramsey.  "I haven't seen her at all
+--not to speak to.  I saw her on Main Street twice since then, but
+both times she was with some other girls, and they were across the
+street, and I couldn't tell if she was lookin' at me--I kind of
+thought not--so I thought it might look sort o' nutty to bow to her
+if she wasn't, so I didn't."
+
+"And you didn't tell her you wouldn't be one of the ones to help her
+with her pacifism and anti-war stuff and all that?"
+
+"No.  I started to, but--  Shut up!"
+
+Fred sat up, giggling.  "So she thinks you ~will~ help her.  You
+didn't say anything at all, and she must think that means she
+converted you.  Why didn't you speak up?"
+
+"Well, ~I~ wouldn't argue with her," said Ramsey.  Then, after a
+silence, he seemed to be in need of sympathetic comprehension.  "It
+~was~ kind o' funny, though, wasn't it?" he said, appealingly.
+
+"What was?"
+
+"The whole business."
+
+"What 'whole bus'--"
+
+"Oh, get out!  Her stoppin' me, and me goin' pokin' along with her,
+and her--well, her crying and everything, and me being around with
+her while she felt so upset, I mean.  It seems--well, it does seem
+kind o' funny to me."
+
+"Why does it?" Fred inquired, preserving his gravity.  "Why should
+it seem funny to you?"
+
+"I don't mean funny like something's funny you laugh at," Ramsey
+explained laboriously.  "I mean funny like something that's out of
+the way, and you wonder how it ever happened to happen.  I mean it
+seems funny I'd ever be sittin' there on a bench with that ole girl
+I never spoke to in my life or had anything to do with, and talkin'
+about the United States goin' to war.  What we were talkin' about,
+why, that seems just as funny as the rest of it.  Lookin' back to our
+class picnic, f'r instance, second year of high school, that day I
+jumped in the creek after--  Well, you know, it was when I started
+makin' a fool of myself over a girl.  Thank goodness, I got ~that~
+out o' my system; it makes me just sick to look back on those days
+and think of the fool things I did, and all I thought about that
+girl.  Why, she--  Well, I've got old enough to see now she was just
+about as ordinary a girl as there ever was, and if I saw her now I
+wouldn't even think she was pretty; I'd prob'ly think she was sort of
+loud-lookin'.  Well, what's passed is past, and it isn't either here
+nor there.  What I started to say was this:  that the way it begins
+to look to me, it looks as if nobody can tell in this life a darn
+thing about what's goin' to happen, and the things that do happen are
+the very ones you'd swear were the last that could.  I mean--you look
+back to that day of the picnic--my! but I was a rube then--well, I
+mean you look back to that day, and what do you suppose I'd have
+thought then if somebody'd told me the time would ever come when I'd
+be 'way off here at college sittin' on a bench with Dora Yocum--with
+~Dora Yocum~, in the first place--and her crying, and both of us
+talking about the United States goin' to war with Germany!  Don't it
+seem pretty funny to you, Fred, too?"
+
+"But as near as I can make out," Fred said, "that isn't what
+happened."
+
+"Why isn't it?"
+
+"You say 'and both us talking' and so on.  As near as I can make out,
+~you~ didn't say anything at all."
+
+"Well, I didn't--much," Ramsey admitted, and returned to his point
+with almost pathetic persistence.  "But doesn't it seem kind o' funny
+to you, Fred?"
+
+"Well, I don't know."
+
+"It does to me," Ramsey insisted.  "It certainly does to me."
+
+"Yes," said Fred cruelly.  "I've noticed you said so, but it don't
+look any funnier than you do when you say it."
+
+Suddenly he sent forth a startling shout.  "~Wow!~  You're as red as
+a blushing beet."
+
+"I am not!"
+
+"Y'are!" shouted Fred.  "Wow! The ole woman-hater's got the flushes!
+Oh, look at the pretty posy!"
+
+And, jumping down from the window seat, he began to dance round
+his much perturbed comrade, bellowing.  Ramsey bore with him for
+a moment, then sprang upon him; they wrestled vigorously, broke a
+chair, and went to the floor with a crash that gave the chandelier
+in Mrs. Meig's parlour, below, an atack of jingles.
+
+"You let me up!" Fred gasped.
+
+"You take your solemn oath to shut up?  You goin' to swear it?"
+
+"All right.  I give my solemn oath," said Fred; and they rose,
+arranging their tousled attire.
+
+"Well," said Fred, "when you goin' to call on her?"
+
+"You look here!" Ramsey approached him dangerously.  "You just gave
+me your sol--"
+
+"I beg!" Fred cried, retreating.  "I mean, aside from all that, why,
+I just thought maybe after such an evening you'd feel as a gentleman
+you ought to go and ask about her health."
+
+"Now, see here--"
+
+"No, I mean it; you ought to," Fred insisted, earnestly, and as
+his roommate glared at him with complete suspicion, he added, in
+explanation.  "You ought to go next Caller's Night, and send in your
+card, and say you felt you ought to ask if she'd suffered any from
+the night air.  Even if you couldn't manage to say that, you ought
+to start to say it, anyhow, because you--  Keep off o' me!  I'm only
+tryin' to do you a good turn, ain't I?"
+
+"You save your good turns for yourself," Ramsey growled, still
+advancing upon him.
+
+But the insidious Mitchell, evading him, fled to the other end of
+the room, picked up his cap, and changed his manner.  "Come on, ole
+bag o' beans, let's be on our way to the 'frat house'; it's time.
+We'll call this all off."
+
+"You better!" Ramsey warned him; and they trotted out together.
+
+But as they went along, Fred took Ramsey's arm confidentially, and
+said, "Now, honestly, Ram, ole man, when ~are~ you goin' to--"
+
+Ramsey was still red.  "You look here!  Just say one more word--"
+
+"Oh, ~no~," Fred expostulated.  "I mean ~seriously~, Ramsey.
+Honestly, I mean seriously.  Aren't you seriously goin' to call on
+her some Caller's Night?"
+
+"No, I'm not!"
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Because I don't want to."
+
+"Well, seriously, Ramsey, there's only one Caller's Night before
+vacation, and so I suppose it hardly will be worth while; but I
+expect you'll see quite a little of her at home this summer?"
+
+"No, I won't.  I won't see her at all.  She isn't goin' to be home
+this summer, and I wouldn't see anything of her if she was."
+
+"Where's she goin' to be."
+
+"In Chicago."
+
+"She is?" said Fred, slyly.  "When'd she tell you?"
+
+Ramsey turned on him.  "You look out!  She didn't tell me.  I just
+happened to see in the ~Bulletin~ she's signed up with some other
+girls to go and do settlement work in Chicago.  Anybody could see
+it.  It was printed out plain.  You could have seen it just as well
+as I could, if you'd read the ~Bulletin~."
+
+"Oh," said Fred.
+
+"Now look here--"
+
+"Good heavens!  Can't I even say 'oh'?"
+
+"It depends on the way you say it."
+
+"I'll be careful," Fred assured him, earnestly.  "I really and
+honestly don't mean to get you excited about all this, Ramsey.  I can
+see myself you haven't changed from your old opinion of Dora Yocum a
+bit.  I was only tryin' to get a little rise out of you for a minute,
+because of course, seriously, why, I can see you hate her just the
+same as you always did."
+
+"Yes," said Ramsey, disarmed and guileless in the face of diplomacy.
+"I only told you about all this, Fred, because it seemed--well, it
+seemed so kind o' funny to me."
+
+Fred affected not to hear.  "What did you say, Ramsey?"
+
+Ramsey looked vaguely disturbed.  "I said--why, I said it all seemed
+kind o'--"  He paused, then repeated plaintively:  "Well, to me, it
+all seemed kind o'--kind o' funny."
+
+"What did?" Fred inquired, but as he glanced in seeming naivete at
+his companion, something he saw in the latter's eye warned him, and
+suddenly Fred thought it would be better to run.
+
+Ramsey chased him all the way to the "frat house."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+Ramsey was not quite athlete enough for any of the 'varsity teams;
+neither was he an antagonist safely encountered, whether in play or
+in earnest, and during the next few days he taught Fred Mitchell to
+be cautious.  The chaffer learned that his own agility could not
+save him from Ramsey, and so found it wiser to contain an
+effervescence which sometimes threatened to burst him.  Ramsey as a
+victim was a continuous temptation, he was so good-natured and yet
+so furious.
+
+After Commencement, when the roommates had gone home, Mr. Mitchell's
+caution extended over the long sunshiny months of summer vacation;
+he broke it but once and then in well-advised safety, for the 
+occasion was semi-public.  The two were out for a stroll on a July
+Sunday afternoon; and up and down the street young couples lolled
+along, young families and baby carriages straggled to and from the
+houses of older relatives, and the rest of the world of that growing
+city was rocking and fanning itself on its front veranda.
+
+"Here's a right pretty place, isn't it, Ramsey? don't you think?"
+Fred remarked innocently, as they were passing a lawn of short-
+clipped, bright green grass before a genial-looking house, fresh in
+white paint and cool in green-and-white awnings.  A broad veranda,
+well populated just now, crossed the front of the house; fine trees
+helped the awnings to give comfort against the sun; and Fred's
+remark was warranted.  Nevertheless, he fell under the suspicion
+of his companion, who had begun to evince some nervousness before
+Fred spoke.
+
+"What place do you mean?"
+
+"The Yocum place," said Mr. Mitchell.  "I hear the old gentleman's
+mighty prosperous these days.  They keep things up to the mark,
+don't they, Ramsey?"
+
+"I don't know whether they do or whether they don't," Ramsey
+returned shortly.
+
+Fred appeared to muse regretfully.  "It looks kind of ~empty~ now,
+though," he said, "with only Mr. and Mrs. Yocum and their three
+married daughters, and eight or nine children on the front porch!"
+
+"You wait till I get you where they can't see us!" Ramsey warned
+him, firecely.
+
+"You can't do it!" said Fred, manifesting triumph.  "We'll both stop
+right here in plain sight of the whole Yocum family connection till
+you promise not to touch me."
+
+And he halted, leaning back implacably against the Yocum's iron
+fence.  Ramsey was scandalized.
+
+"Come on!" he said, hoarsely.  "Don't stop ~here~!"
+
+"I will, and if you go on alone I'll yell at you.  You got to stand
+right here with all of 'em lookin' at you until--"
+
+"I promise!  My heavens, come ~on~!"
+
+Fred consented to end the moment of agony; and for the rest of the
+summer found it impossible to persuade Ramsey to pass that house
+in his company.  "I won't do it!" Ramsey told him.  "Your word of
+honour means nothin' to me; you're liable to do anything that comes
+into your head, and I'm gettin' old enough to not get a reputation
+for bein' seen with people that act the idiot on the public streets.
+No, sir; we'll walk around the block--at least, we will if you're
+goin' with ~me~!"
+
+And to Fred's delight, though he concealed it, they would make this
+detour.
+
+The evening after their return to the university both were busy
+with their trunks and various orderings and disorderings of their
+apartment, but Fred several times expressed surprise that his
+roommate should be content to remain at home; and finally Ramsey
+comprehended the implications.  Mrs. Meigs's chandelier immediately
+jingled with the shock of another crash upon the floor above.
+
+"You let me up!" Fred commanded thickly, his voice muffled by the
+pile of flannels, sweaters, underwear, and raincoats wherein his
+head was being forced to burrow.  "You let me up, darn you!  ~I~
+didn't say anything."  And upon his release he complained that the
+attack was unprovoked.  "I didn't say anything on earth to even
+hint you might want to go out and look around to see if anybody
+in particular had got back to college yet.  I didn't even mention
+the ~name~ of Dora Yo--  Keep off o' me!  My goodness, but you are
+sensitive!"
+
+As a matter of fact, neither of them saw Dora until the first meeting
+of the Lumen, whither they went as sophomores to take their pleasure
+in the agony of freshmen debaters.  Ramsey was now able to attend the
+Lumen, not with complacence but at least without shuddering over the
+recollection of his own spectacular first appearance there.  He had
+made subsequent appearances, far from brilliant yet not disgraceful,
+and as a spectator, at least, he usually felt rather at his ease in
+the place.  It cannot be asserted, however, that he appeared entirely
+at his ease this evening after he had read the "Programme" chalked
+upon the large easel blackboard beside the chairman's desk.  Three
+"Freshmen Debates" were announced, and a "Sophomore Oration," this
+last being followed by the name, "D. Yocum, '18."  Ramsey made
+immediate and conspicuous efforts to avoid sitting next to his
+roommate, but was not so adroit as to be successful.  However, Fred
+was merciful:  the fluctuations of his friend's complexion were an
+inspiration more to pity than to badinage.
+
+The three debates all concerned the "Causes of the War in Europe,"
+and honours appeared to rest with a small and stout, stolidly
+"pro-German" girl debater, who had brought with her and translated
+at sight absa-loot proofs (so she called them), printed in German,
+that Germany had been attacked by Belgium at the low instigation of
+the envious English.  Everybody knew it wasn't true; but she made an
+impression and established herself as a debater, especially as her
+opponent was quite confounded by her introduction of printed matter.
+
+When the debates and the verdicts were concluded, the orator
+appeared, and Fred's compassion extended itself so far that he even
+refrained from looking inquisitively at the boy in the seat next
+to his; but he made one side wager, mentally--that if Ramsey had
+consented to be thoroughly confidential just then, he would have
+confessed to feeling kind o' funny.
+
+Dora was charmingly dressed, and she was pale; but those notable
+eyelashes of hers were all the more notable against her pallor.  And
+as she spoke with fire, it was natural that her colour should come
+back quite flamingly and that her eyes should flash in shelter of
+the lashes.  "The Christian Spirit and Internationalism" was her
+subject, yet she showed no meek sample of a Christian Spirit herself
+when she came to attakcing war-makers generally, as well as all
+those "half-developed tribesmen," and "victims of herd instinct" who
+believed that war might ever be justified under any circumstances 
+f atrocity.  She was eloquent truly, and a picture of grace and
+girlish dignity, even when she was most vigorous.  Nothing could
+have been more militant than her denunciation of militancy.
+
+"She's an actual wonder," Fred said, when the two had got back to
+Mrs. Meigs's, afterward.  "Don't you look at me like that:  I'm
+talkin' about her as a public character, and there's nothin'
+personal about it.  You let me alone."
+
+Ramsey was not clear as to his duty.  "Well--"
+
+"If any person makes a public speech," Fred protested, "I got a
+perfect right to discuss 'em, no matter what you think of 'em"--and
+he  added hastily--"or ~don't~ think of 'em!"
+
+"Look here--"
+
+"Good heavens!" Fred exclaimed.  "You aren't expecting to interfere
+with me if I say anything about that little fat Werder girl that
+argued for Germany, are you?  Or any of the other speakers?  I got
+a right to talk about 'em just as public speakers, haven't I?  Well,
+what I say is:  Dora Yocum as an orator is just an actual perfect
+wonder.  Got any objections?"
+
+"N-no."
+
+"All right then."  Fred settled himself upon the window seat with a
+pipe, and proceeded, "There's something about her, when she stands
+there, she stands so straight and knows just what she's up to, and
+everything, why, there's something about her makes the cold chills
+go down your spine--I mean ~my~ spine, not yours particularly!  You
+sit down--I mean ~anybody's~ spine, doggone it!"  And as Ramsey
+increased the manifestations of his suspicions, lifting a tennis
+racket over the prostrate figure, "Oh, murder," Fred said,
+resignedly.  "All right, we'll change the subject.  That fat little
+Werder cutie made out a pretty good case for Germany, didn't she?"
+
+Ramsey tossed the racket away, disposed himself in an easy chair with
+his feet upon the table, and presently chuckled.  "You remember the
+time I had the fuss with Wesley Bender, back in the ole school days?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"All the flubdub this Werder girl got off to-night puts me in mind
+of the way I talked that day.  I can remember it as well as anything!
+Wesley kept yelpin' that whoever mentioned a lady's name in a public
+place was a pup, and of course I didn't want to hit him for that;
+a boy's got a reg'lar instinct for tryin' to make out he's on the
+right side in a scrap, and he'll always try to do something, or say
+something, or he'll get the other boy to say someting to make it look
+as if the other boy was in the wrong and began the trouble.  So I
+told poor ole Wes that my father spoke my mother's name in a public
+place whenever he wanted to, and I dared him to say my father was a
+pup.  And all so on.  A boy startin' up a scrap, why, half the time
+he'll drag his father and mother if there's any chance to do it.
+He'll fix up some way so he can say, 'Well, that's just the same as
+if you called my father and mother a fool,' or something like that.
+Then, afterward, he can claim he was scrappin' because he had to
+defend his father and mother, and of course he'll more than half
+believe it himself.
+
+"Well, you take a Government--it's only just some ~men~, the way
+I see it, and if they're goin' to start some big trouble like this
+war, why, of course they'll play just about the same ole boy trick,
+because it's instinct to do it, just the same for a man as it is for
+a boy--or else the principle's just the same, or something.  Well,
+anyhow, if you want to know who started a scrap and worked it up,
+you got to forget all the ~talk~ there is about it, and all what
+each side ~says~, and just look at two things:  Who was fixed for
+it first, or thought they were, and who hit first?  When you get
+the answer to those two questions everything's settled about all
+this being 'attacked' business.  Both sides, just the same as boys,
+they'll both claim they ~had~ to fight; but if you want to know
+which one ~did~ have to, why forget all the arguing and don't take
+your eye off just what ~happened~.  As near as I can make out, this
+war began with Germany and Austria startin' in to wipe out two
+little countries; Austria began shootin' up Serbia, and Germany
+began shootin' up Belgium.  I don't need to notice any more than
+that, myself--all the Werder girls in the country can debate their
+heads off, they can't change what happened and they can't excuse
+it, either."
+
+He was silent, appearing to feel that he had concluded conclusively,
+and the young gentleman on the window seat, after staring at him for
+several moments of genuine thoughtfulness, was gracious enough to
+observe, "Well, ole Ram, you may be a little slow in class, but when
+you think things out with yourself you do show signs of something
+pretty near like real horse-sense sometimes.  Why don't you ever say
+anything like that to--to some of your pacifist friends?"
+
+"What do you mean?  Who you talkin' about?  Whose 'pacifist
+friends'?"
+
+"See here!" Fred exclaimed, as Ramsey seemed about to rise.  "You
+keep sitting just where you are, and don't look at me out of the side
+of your eye like that--pretendin' you're a bad horse.  I'm ~really~
+serious now, and you listen to me.  I don't think argufying and
+debating like that little Fraulein Werder's does much harm.  She's
+a right nifty young rolypoly, by the way, though you didn't notice,
+of course."
+
+"Why didn't I?" Ramsey demanded, sharply.  "Why didn't I notice?"
+
+"Oh, nothing.  But, as I was saying, I don't think that sort of talk
+does much harm:  everybody knows it goes on among the pro-Germans,
+and it's all hot air, anyhow.  But I think Linski's sort of talk
+does do harm, prob'ly among people that don't know much; and what's
+more, I think Dora Yocum's does some, too.  Well, you hit Linski in
+the snoot, so what are you--  Sit still!  My lord!  You don't think
+I'm askin' you to go and hit Dora, do you?  I mean:  Aren't you ever
+goin' to talk to her about it and tell her what's what?"
+
+"Oh, you go on to bed!"
+
+"No, I'm in earnest," Fred urged.  "Honestly, aren't you ever goin'
+to?"
+
+"How could I do anything like that?" Ramsey demanded explosively.
+"I never see her--to speak to, that is.  I prob'ly won't happen to
+have another talk with her, or anything, all the time we're in
+college."
+
+"No," Fred admitted, "I suppose not.  Of course, if you did, then
+you would give her quite a talking-to, just the way you did the
+other time, wouldn't you?"  But upon that, another resumption of
+physical violence put an end to the conversation.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+Throughout the term Ramsey's calculation of probabilities against
+the happening of another interview with Dora seemed to be well
+founded, but at the beginning of the second "semester" he found her
+to be a fellow member of a class in biology.  More than that, this
+class had every week a two-hour session in the botanical laboratory,
+where the structure of plants was studied under microscopic
+dissection.  The students worked in pairs, a special family of
+plants being assigned to each couple; and the instructor selected
+the couples with an eye to combinations of the quick with the slow.
+D. Yocum and R. Milholland (the latter in a strange state of mind
+and complexion) were given two chairs, but only one desk and one
+microscope.  Their conversation was strictly botanical.
+
+Thenceforth it became the most pressing care of Ramsey's life to
+prevent his roommate from learning that there was any conversation
+at all, even botanical.  Fortunately, Fred was not taking the
+biological courses, though he appeared to be taking the sentimental
+ones with an astonishing thoroughness; and sometimes, to Fred's
+hilarious delight, Ramsey attempted to turn the tables and rally
+him upon whatever last affair seemed to be engaging his fancy.
+The old Victorian and pre-Victorian ~blague~ word "petticoat" had
+been revived in Fred's vocabulary, and in others, as "skirt."  The
+lightsome sprig was hourly to be seen, even when university rulings
+forbade, dilly-dallying giddily along the campus paths or the town
+sidewalks with some new and pretty Skirt.  And when Ramsey tried to
+fluster him about such a matter Fred would profess his ardent love
+for the new lady in shouts and impromptu song.  Nothing could be done
+to him, and Ramsey, utterly unable to defend his own sensibilities
+in like manner, had always to retire in bafflement.  Sometimes he
+would ponder upon the question thus suggested:  Why couldn't he do
+this sort of thing, since Fred could?  But he never discovered a
+satisfying answer.
+
+Ramsey's watchfulness was so careful (lest he make some impulsive
+admission in regard to the botanical laboratory, for instance) that
+Mr. Mitchell's curiosity gradually became almost quiescent; but there
+arrived a day in February when it was piqued into the liveliest
+activity.  It was Sunday, and Fred, dressing with a fastidiousness
+ever his daily habit, noticed that Ramsey was exhibiting an unusual
+perplexity about neckties.
+
+"Keep the black one on," Fred said, volunteering the suggestion, as
+Ramsey muttered fiercely at a mirror.  "It's in better taste for
+church, anyhow.  You're going to church, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes.  Are you?"
+
+"No.  I've got a luncheon engagement."
+
+"Well, you could go to church first, couldn't you?  You better;
+you've got a lot of church absences against you."
+
+"Then one more won't hurt.  No church in mine this morning, thanks!
+G'by, ole sox; see you at the 'frat house' for dinner."
+
+He went forth, whistling syncopations, and began a brisk trudge into
+the open country.  There was a professor's daughter who also was not
+going to church that morning; and she lived a little more than three
+miles beyond the outskirts of the town.  Unfortunately, as the
+weather was threatening, all others of her family abandoned the idea
+of church that day, and Fred found her before a cozy fire, but
+surrounded by parents, little brothers, and big sisters.  The
+professor was talkative; Fred's mind might have been greatly
+improved, but with a window in range he preferred a melancholy
+contemplation of the snow, which had begun to fall in quantity.  The
+professor talked until luncheon, throughout luncheon, and was well
+under way to fill the whole afternoon with talk, when Fred, repenting
+all the errors of his life, got up to go.
+
+Heartily urged to remain, for there was now something just under a
+blizzard developing, he said No; he had a great deal of "cirriculum
+work" to get done before the morrow, and passed from the sound of the
+professor's hospitable voice and into the storm.  He had a tedious
+struggle against the wind and thickening snow, but finally came in
+sight of the town, not long before dark.  Here the road led down into
+a depression, and, lifting his head as he began the slight ascent on
+the other side, Fred was aware of two figures outlined upon the low
+ridge before him.  They were dimmed by the driving snow and their
+backs were toward him, but he recognized them with perfect assurance.
+They were Dora Yocum and Ramsey Milholland.
+
+They were walking so slowly that their advance was almost
+imperceptible, but it could be seen that Dora was talking with great
+animation; and she was a graceful thing, thus gesticulating, in her
+long, slim fur coat with the white snow frosting her brown fur cap.
+Ramsey had his hands deep in his overcoat pockets and his manner was
+wholly that of an audience.
+
+Fred murmured to himself, "'What did you say to her?'  'Nothin'. I
+started to, but'--"  Then he put on a burst of speed and passed them,
+sweeping off his hat with operatic deference, yet hurrying by as if
+fearful of being thought a killjoy if he lingered.  He went to the
+"frat house," found no one downstairs, and established himself in a
+red leather chair to smoke and ruminate merrily by a great fire in
+the hall.
+
+Half an hour later Ramsey entered, stamped off the snow, hung up his
+hat and coat, and sat himself down defiantly in the red leather chair
+on the other side of the fireplace.
+
+"Well, go on," he said.  "Commence!"
+
+"Not at all!"  Fred returned, amiably.  "Fine spring weather to-day.
+Lovely to see all the flowers and the birds as we go a-strolling by.
+The little bobolinks--"
+
+"You look here!"  That's the only walk I ever took with her in my
+life.  I mean by--by asking her and her saying she would and so
+forth.  That other time just sort of happened, and you know it.  Well,
+the weather wasn't just the best in the world, maybe, but she's an
+awful conscientious girl and once she makes an engagement--"
+
+"Why, of course," Fred finished for him, "She'd be too pious to break
+it just on account of a mere little blizzard or anything.  Wonder how
+the weather will be next Sunday?"
+
+"I don't know and I don't care," said Ramsey.  "You don't suppose I
+asked her to go ~again~, do you?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, for one thing, you don't suppose I want her to think I'm a
+perfect fool, do you?"
+
+Fred mused a moment or two, looking at the fire.  "What was the
+lecture?" he asked, mildly.
+
+"What lecture?"
+
+"She seemed to me to be--"
+
+"That wasn't lecturing; she was just--"
+
+"Just what?"
+
+"Well; she thinks war for the United States is coming closer and
+closer--"
+
+"But it isn't."
+
+"Well, she thinks so, anyhow," said Ramsey, "and she's all broken up
+about it.  Of course she thinks we oughtn't to fight and she's trying
+to get everybody else she can to keep working against it.  She isn't
+goin' home again next summer, she's goin' back to that settlement
+work in Chicago and work there among those people against our goin'
+to war; and here in college she wants to get everybody she can to talk
+against it, and--"
+
+"What did you say?" Fred asked, and himself supplied the reply:
+"Nothin'.  I started to, but--"
+
+Ramsey got up.  "Now look here!  You know the 'frat' passed a rule
+that if we broke any more furniture in this house with our scrappin'
+we'd both be fined the cost of repairs and five dollars apiece.
+Well, I can afford five dollars this month better than you can,
+and--"
+
+"I take it back!" Fred interposed, hastily.  "But you just listen to
+me; you look out--letting her think you're on her side like that."
+
+"I don't--"
+
+"You ~don't?~"
+
+Ramsey looked dogged.  "I'm not goin' around always arguin' about
+everything when arguin' would just hurt people's feelings about
+something they're all excited about, and wouldn't do a bit o' good
+in the world--and you know yourself just ~talk~ hardly ever settles
+anything--so I don't--"
+
+"Aha!" Fred cried.  "I thought so!  Now you listen to me--"
+
+"I won't.  I--"
+
+But at this moment they were interrupted.  Someone slyly opened the
+door, and a snowball deftly thrown from without caught Ramsey upon
+the back of the neck and head, where it flattened and displayed
+itself as an ornamental star.  Shouting fiercely, both boys sprang
+up, ran to the door, were caught there in a barrage of snowballs,
+ducked through it in sipte of all damage, charged upon a dozen
+besweatered figures awaiting them and began a mad battle in the
+blizzard.  Some of their opponents treacherously joined them, and
+turned upon the ambushers.
+
+In the dusk the merry conflict waged up and down the snow-covered
+lawn, and the combatants threw and threw, or surged back and forth,
+or clenched and toppled over into snow banks, yet all coming to chant
+an extemporized battle-cry in chorus, even as they fought the most
+wildly.
+
+"Who?  Who?  Who?" they chanted.  "Who? Who? ~Who~ says there ain't
+goin' to be no war?"
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+So everywhere over the country, that winter of 1916, there were
+light-hearted boys skylarking--at college, or on the farms; and in
+the towns the young machinists snowballed one another as they came
+from the shops; while on this Sunday of the "frat" snow fight probably
+several hundreds of thousands of youthful bachelors, between the two
+oceans, went walking, like Ramsey, each with a girl who could forget
+the weather.  Yet boys of nineteen and in the twenties were not
+light-hearted all the time that winter and that spring and that
+summer.  Most of them knew long, thoughtful moments, as Ramsey did,
+when they seemed to be thinking not of girls or work or play--nor
+of anything around them, but of some more vital matter or prospect.
+And at such times they were grave, but not ungentle.
+
+For the long strain was on the country; underneath all its outward
+seeming of things going on as usual there shook a deep vibration,
+like the air trembling to vast organ pipes in diapasons too profound
+to reach the ear as sound:  one felt, not heard, thunder in the
+ground under one's feet.  The succession of diplomatic Notes came to
+an end after the torpedoing of the ~Sussex~; and at last the tricky
+ruling Germans in Berlin gave their word to murder no more, and
+people said, "This means peace for America, and all is well for us,"
+but everybody knew in his heart that nothing was well for us, that
+there was no peace.
+
+They said "All is well," while that thunder in the ground never
+ceased--it grew deeper and heavier till all America shook with it
+and it became slowly audible as the voice of the old American soil
+wherein lay those who had defended it aforetime, a soil that bred
+those who would defend it again, for it was theirs; and the meaning
+of it--Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--was theirs, and
+theirs to defend.  And they knew they would defend it, and that more
+than the glory of a Nation was at stake.  The Freedom of Man was at
+stake.  So, gradually, the sacred thunder reached the ears of the
+young men and gave them those deep moments that came to them whether
+they sat in the classroom or the counting-room, or walked with the
+plow, or stood to the machine, or behind the ribbon counter.  Thus
+the thunder shook them and tried them and slowly came into their
+lives and changed everything for them.
+
+Hate of the Germans was not bred; but a contempt for what Germany
+had shown in lieu of a national heart; a contempt as mighty and
+profound as the resolve that the German way and the German will
+should prevail in America, nor in any country of the world that
+would be free.  And when the German Kaiser laid his command upon
+America, that no American should take his ship upon the free seas,
+death being the penalty for any who disobeyed, then the German Kaiser
+got his answer, not only to this new law he had made for us, but to
+many other thoughts of his.  Yet the answer was for some time
+delayed.
+
+There was a bitter Sunday, and its bitterness went everywhere, to
+every place in the whole world that held high and generous hearts.
+Its bitterness came to the special meeting in the "Frat hall," where
+there were hearts, indeed, of that right sort, and one of them became
+vocal in its bitterness.  This was the heart of Fred Mitchell, who
+was now an authority, being president of the Junior Class, chairman
+of the Prom Committee, and other things pleasant to be and to live
+for at his age.
+
+"For me, Brothers," he said, "I'd think I'd a great deal rather
+have been shot through the head than heard the news from Washington
+to-day!  I tell you, I've spent the meanest afternoon I ever did in
+my life, and I guess it's been pretty much the same with all of us.
+The worst of it is, it looks as though there isn't a thing in the
+world we can do.  The country's been betrayed by a few blatherskites
+and boneheads that had the power to do it, and all we can do we've
+just got to stand it.  But there's some Americans that aren't just
+standing it, and I want to tell you a lot of 'em are men from the
+universities, just like us.  They're ~over there~ right now; they
+haven't said much--they just packed up and went.  They're flying for
+France and for England and for Canada; they're fighting under every
+flag on the right side of the Western Front; and they're driving
+ambulances at Verdun and ammunition trucks at the Somme.  Well,
+there's going to be a lot more American boys on all these jobs mighty
+soon, on account of what those men did in Congress to-day.  If they
+won't give us a chance to do something under our own flag, then we'll
+have to go and do it under some other flag; and I want to tell you
+I'm one that's going to ~go!~  I'll stick it out in college up to
+Easter, and then if there's still no chance to go under the Stars and
+Stripes I'll maybe have to go under the flag my great-great-
+randfather fought against in 1776, but, anyhow, I'll ~go!~"
+
+It was in speaking to Ramsey of this declaration that Dora said Fred
+was a "dangerous firebrand."  They were taking another February walk,
+but the February was February, 1917; and the day was dry and sunny.
+"It's just about a year ago," she said.
+
+"What is?" Ramsey asked.
+
+"That first time we went walking.  Don't you remember?"
+
+"Oh, ~that~ day?  Yes, I remember it was snowing."
+
+"And so cold and blowy!" she added.  "It seems a long time ago.
+I like walking with you, Ramsey.  You're so quiet and solid--I've
+always felt I could talk to you just anyhow I pleased, and you
+wouldn't mind.  I'll miss these walks with you when we're out of
+college."
+
+He chuckled.  "That's funny!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because we've only taken four besides this:  two last year, and
+another week before last, and another last week.  This is only the
+fifth."
+
+"Good gracious!  Is that all?  It seemed to me we'd gone ever so
+often!"  She laughed.  "I'm afraid you won't think that seems much
+as if I'd liked going, but I really have.  And, by the way, you've
+never called on me at all.  Perhaps it's because I've forgotten to
+ask you."
+
+"Oh, no," Ramsey said, and scuffed his shoes on the path, presently
+explaining rather huskily that he "never ~was~ much of a caller";
+and he added, "or anything."
+
+"Well, you must come if you ever care to," she said, with a big-
+sister graciousness.  "The Dorm chaperon sits there, of course, but
+ours is a jolly one and you'd like her.  You've probably met her--
+Mrs. Hustings?--when you've called on other girls at our old shop."
+
+"No," said Ramsey.  "I never was much of a--"  He paused, fearing
+that he might be repeating himself, and too hastily amended his
+intention.  "I never liked any girl enough to go and call on her."
+
+"Ramsey Milholland!" she cried.  "Why, when we were in school half
+the room used to be talking about how you and that pretty Milla--"
+
+"No, no!" Ramsey protested, again too hurriedly.  "I never called on
+her.  We just went walking."
+
+A moment later his colour suddenly became fiery.  "I don't mean--I
+mean--" he stammered.  "It was walking, of course--I mean we did go
+out walking but it wasn't walking like--like this."  He concluded
+with a fit of coughing which seemed to rack him.
+
+Dora threw back her head and laughed delightfully.  "Don't you
+apologize!" she said.  "~I~ didn't when I said it seemed to me that
+we've gone walking so often, when in reality it's only four or five
+times altogether.  I think I can explain, though:  I thhink it came
+partly from a feeling I have that I can rely on you--that you're a
+good, solid, reliable sort of person.  I remember from the time we
+were little children, you always had a sort of worried, honest look
+in school; and you used to make a dent in your forehead--you meant
+it for a frown--whenever I caught your eye.  You hated me so
+honestly, and you were so honestly afraid I wouldn't see it!"
+
+"Oh, no--no--"
+
+"Oh, yes--yes!" she laughed, then grew serious.  "My feeling about
+you--that you were a person to be relied on, I mean--I think it began
+that evening in our freshman year, after the ~Lusitania~, when I
+stopped you on campus and you went with me, and I couldn't help
+crying, and you were so nice and quiet.  I hardly realized then that
+it was the first time we'd ever really talked together--of course ~I~
+did all the talking!--and yet we'd known each other so many years.
+I thought of it afterward.  But what gave me such a different view
+of you, I'd always thought you were one of that truculent sort of
+boys, always just bursting for a fight; but you showed me you'd
+really never had a fight in your life and hated fighting, and that
+you sympathized with my feeling about war."  She stopped speaking to
+draw in her breath with a sharp sigh.  "Ah, don't you remember what
+I've told you all along?  How it keeps coming closer and closer--and
+now it's almost here!  Isn't it ~unthinkable?~  And what can we do
+to stop it, we poor few who feel that we ~must~ stop it?"
+
+"Well--" Ramsey began uncomfortably.  "Of course I--I--"
+
+"You can't do much," she said.  "I know.  None of us can.  What can
+any little group do?  There are so few of us among the undergraduates
+--and only one in the whole faculty.  All the rest are for war.  But
+we mustn't give up; we must never feel afterward that we left anything
+undone; we must fight to the last breath!"
+
+"'Fight'?" he repeated wonderingly, then chuckled.
+
+"Oh, as a figure of speech," she said, impatiently.  "Our language
+is full of barbaric figures left over from the dark ages.  But, oh,
+Ramsey!"--she touched his sleeve--"I've heard that Fred Mitchell is
+saying that he's going to Canada after Easter, to try to get into the
+Canadian aviation corps.  If it's true, he's a dangerous firebrand,
+I think.  Is it true?"
+
+"I guess so.  He's been talking that way some."
+
+"But why do you ~let~ him talk that way?" she cried.  "He's your
+roommate; surely you have more influence with him than anybody else
+has.  Couldn't you--"
+
+He shook his head slowly, while upon his face the faintly indicated
+modellings of a grin hinted of an inner laughter at some
+surreptitious thought.  "Well, you know, Fred says himself sometimes,
+I don't seem to be much of a talker exactly!"
+
+"I know.  But don't you see?  That sort of thing is contagious.
+Others will think they ought to go if he does; he's popular and
+quite a leader.  Can't you do anything with him?"
+
+She waited for him to answer.  "Can't you?" she insisted.
+
+The grin had disappeared, and Ramsey grew red again.  He seemed to
+wish to speak, to heave with speech that declined to be spoken and
+would not rouse up from his inwards.  Finally he uttered words.
+
+"I--I--well, I--"
+
+"Oh, I know," she said.  "A man--or a boy!--always hates to be
+intruding his own convictions upon other men, especially in a case
+like this, where he might be afraid of some idiot's thinking him
+unmanlike.  But Ramsey--"  Suddenly she broke off and looked at him
+attentively; his discomfort had become so obvious that suspicion
+struck her.  She spoke sharply.  "Ramsey ~you~ aren't dreaming of
+doing such a thing, are you?"
+
+"What such a thing?"
+
+"Fred hasn't influenced ~you~, has he?  You aren't planning to go
+with him, are you?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To join the Canadian aviation."
+
+"No; I hadn't thought of doing it."
+
+She sighed again, relieved.  "I had a queer feeling about you just
+then--that you ~were~ thinking of doing some such thing.  You looked
+so odd--and you're always so quiet, anybody might not really know
+what you do think.  But I'm not wrong about you, am I, Ramsey?"
+
+They had come to the foot of the steps that led up to the entrance
+of her dormitory, and their walk was at an end.  As they stopped and
+faced each other, she looked at him earnestly; but he did not meet
+the scrutiny, his eyelids fell.
+
+"I'm not wrong, am I, Ramsey?"
+
+"About what?" he murmured, uncomfortably.
+
+"You are my friend, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then it's all right," she said.  "That relieves me and makes me
+happier than I was just now, for of course if you're my friend you
+wouldn't let me make any mistake about you.  I believe you, and now,
+just before I go in and we won't see much of each other for a week
+--if you still want me to go with you again next Sunday--"
+
+"Yes--won't you, please?"
+
+"Yes, if you like.  But I want to tell you now that I count on you
+in all this, even though you don't 'talk much,' as you say; I count
+on you more than I do on anybody else, and I trust you when you say
+you're my friend, and it makes me happy.  And I think perhaps you're
+right about Fred Mitchell.  Talk isn't everything, nobody knows that
+better than I, who talk so much! and I think that, instead of talking
+to Fred, a steady, quiet influence like yours would do more good than
+any amount of arguing.  So I trust you, you see?  And I'm sorry I had
+that queer doubt of you."  She held out her hand.  "Unless I happen
+to see you on the campus for a minute, in the meantime, it's good-bye
+until a week from to-day.  So--well, so, good-bye until then!"
+
+"Wait," said Ramsey.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+He made a great struggle.  "I'm not influencing Fred not to go," he
+said.  "I--don't want you to trust me to do anything like that."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I think it's all right for him to go, if he wants to," Ramsey said,
+miserably.
+
+"You do?  For him to go to ~fight?~"
+
+He swallowed.  "Yes."
+
+"~Oh!~" she cried, turned even redder than he, and ran up the stone
+steps.  But before the storm doors closed upon her she looked down
+to where he stood, with his eyes still lowered, a lonely-seeming
+figure, upon the pavement below.  Her voice caught upon a sob as she
+spoke.
+
+"If you feel like that, you might as well go and enlist, yourself,"
+she said, bitterly.  "I can't--I couldn't--speak to you again after
+this!"
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+
+It was easy enough for him to evade Fred Mitchell's rallyings these
+days; the sprig's mood was truculent, not toward his roommate but
+toward Congress, which was less in fiery haste than he to be
+definitely at war with Germany.  All through the university the
+change had come:  athletics, in other years spotlighted at the centre
+of the stage, languished suddenly, threatened with abandonment;
+students working for senior honours forgot them; everything was
+forgotten except that growing thunder in the soil.  Several weeks
+elapsed after Dora's bitter dismissal of Ramsey before she was
+mentioned between the comrades.  Then, one evening, Fred asked, as
+he restlessly paced their study floor:
+
+"Have you seen your pacifist friend lately?"
+
+"No.  Not exactly.  Why?"
+
+"Well, for my part, I think she ought to be locked up," Fred said,
+angrily.  "Have you heard what she did this afternoon?"
+
+"No."
+
+"It's all over college.  She got up in the class in jurisprudence and
+made a speech.  It's a big class, you know, over two hundred, under
+Dean Burney.  He's a great lecturer, but he's a pacifist--the only
+one on the faculty--and a friend of Dora's.  They say he encouraged
+her to make this break and led the subject around so she could do it,
+and then called on her for an opinion, as the highest-stand student
+in the clas.  She got up and claimed there wasn't any such thing as
+a legitimate cause for war, either legally or morally, and said it
+was a sign of weakness in a nation for it to believe that it did have
+cause for war.
+
+"Well, it was too much for that little, spunky Joe Stansbury, and
+he jumped up and argued with her.  He made her admit all the Germans
+have done to us, the sea murders and the land murders, the blowing up
+of the factories, the propaganda, the strikes, trying to turn the
+United States into a German settlement, trying to get Japan and
+Mexico to make war on us, and all the rest.  He even made her admit
+there was proof they mean to conquer us when they get through with
+the others, and that they've set out to rule the world for their own
+benefit, and make whoever else they kindly allow to live, to work for
+them.
+
+"She said it might be true, but since nothing at all could be a right
+cause for war, than all this couldn't be a cause of war.  Of course
+she had her regular pacifist 'logic' working; she said that since war
+is the worst thing there is, why, all other evils were lesser, and
+a lesser evil can't be a just cause for a greater.  She got terribly
+excited, they say, but kept right on, anyway.  She said war was
+murder and there couldn't be any other way to look at it; and she'd
+heard there was already talk in the university of students thinking
+about enlisting, and whoever did such a thing was virtualy enlisting
+to return murder for murder.  Then Joe Stansbury asked her if she
+meant that she'd feel toward any student that enlisted the way she
+would toward a murderer, and she said, yes, she'd have a horror of
+any student that enlisted.
+
+"Well, that broke up the class; Joe turned from her to the platform
+and told old Burney that he was responsible for allowing such talk
+in his lecture-room, and Joe said so far as ~he~ was concerned, he
+resigned from Burney's classes right there.  That started it, and
+practically the whole class got up and walked out with Joe.  They
+said Burney streaked off home, and Dora was left alone in there,
+with her head down on her desk--and I gues she certainly deserves it.
+A good many have alread stopped speaking to her."
+
+Ramsey fidgeted with a pen on the table by which he sat.  "Well, I
+don't know," he said, slowly; "I don't know if they ought to do that
+exactly."
+
+"Why oughtn't they?" Fred demanded, sharply.
+
+"Well, it looks to me as if she was only fightin' for her principles.
+She believes in 'em.  The more it costs a person to stick to their
+principles, why, the more I believe the person must have something
+pretty fine about 'em likely."
+
+Yes!" said the hot-headed Fred.  "That may be in ordinary times, but
+not when a person's principles are liable to betray their country!
+We won't stand that kind of principles, I tell you, and we oughtn't
+to.  Dora Yocum's finding that out, all right.  She had the biggest
+position of any girl in this place, or any boy either, up to the last
+few weeks, and there wasn't any student or hardly even a member of
+the faculty that had the influence or was more admired and looked up
+to.  She had the whole show!  But now, since she's just the same as
+called any student a murderer if he enlists to fight for his country
+and his flag--well, now she hasn't got anything at all, and if she
+keeps on she'll have even less!"
+
+He paused in his walking to and fro and came to a halt behind his
+friend's chair, looking down compassionately upon the back of
+Ramsey's motionless head.  His tone changed.  "I guess it isn't just
+the ticket--me to be talking this way to you, is it?" he said, with
+a trace of huskiness.
+
+"Oh--it's all right," Ramsey murmured, not altering his position.
+
+"I can't help blowing up," Fred went on.  "I want to say, though, I
+know I'm not very considerate to blow up about her to you this way.
+I've been playing horse with you about her ever since freshman year,
+but--well, you must have understood, Ram, I never meant anything that
+would really bother you much, and I thought--well, I ~really~ thought
+it was a good thing, you--your--well, I mean about her, you know.
+I'm on, all right.  I know it's pretty serious with you."  He paused.
+
+Ramsey did not move, except that his right hand still fidgeted with
+the pen upon the table.
+
+"Oh--well--" he said.
+
+"It's--it's kind of tough luck!" his friend contrived to say; and
+he began to pace the floor again.
+
+"Oh--well--"
+
+"See here, ole stick-in-the-mud," Fred broke out abruptly.  "After
+her saying what she did--  Well, it's none o' my business, but--
+but--"
+
+"Well, what?" Ramsey murmured.  "I don't care what you say, if you
+want to say anything."
+
+"Well, I ~got~ to say it," Fred half groaned and half blurted.
+"After she said ~that~--and she meant it--why, if I were in your
+place I'd be darned if I'd be seen out walking with her again."
+
+"I'm not going to be," Ramsey said, quietly.
+
+"By George!"  And now Fred halted in front of him, both being huskily
+solemn.  "I think I understand a little of what that means to you,
+old Ramsey; I think I do.  I think I know something of what it costs
+you to make that resolution for your country's sake."  Impulsively he
+extended his hand.  "It's a pretty big thing for you to do.  Will you
+shake hands?"
+
+But Ramsey shook his head.  "I didn't do it.  I wouldn't ever have
+done anything just on account of her talkin' that way.  She shut the
+door on me--it was a good while ago."
+
+"She did!  What for?"
+
+"Well, I'm not much of a talker, you know, Fred," said Ramsey,
+staring at the pen he played with.  "I'm not much of anything,
+for that matter, prob'ly, but I--well--I--"
+
+"You what?"
+
+"Well, I had to tell her I didn't feel about things the way she did.
+She'd thought I had, all along, I guess.  Anyway, it made her hate me
+or something, I guess; and she called it all off.  I expect there
+wasn't much to call off, so far as she was concerned, anyhow."  He
+laughed feebly.  "She told me I better go and enlist."
+
+"Pleasant of her!" Fred muttered.  "Especially as we know what she
+thinks enlisting means."  He raised his voice cheerfully.  "Well,
+that's settled; and, thank God, old Mr. Bernstorff's on his way to
+his sweet little vine-clad cottage home!  They're getting guns on the
+ships, and the big show's liable to commence any day.  We can hold up
+our heads now, and we're going to see some great times, old Ramsey
+boy!  It's hard on the home folks--Gosh!  I don't like to think of
+that!  And I guess it's going to be hard on a lot of boys that
+haven't understood what it's all about, and hard on some that their
+family affairs, and business, and so on, have got 'em tied up so it's
+hard to go--and of course there's plenty that just can't, and some
+that aren't husky enough--but the rest of us are going to have the
+big time in our lives.  We got an awful lot to learn; it scares me
+to think of what I don't know about being any sort of a rear-rank
+private.  Why, it's a regular ~profession~, like practising law, or
+selling for a drug house on the road.  Golly!  Do you remember how we
+talked about that, 'way back in freshman year, what we were going to
+do when we got out of college?  You were going to be practising law,
+for instance, and I--well, f'r instance, remember Colburn; he was
+going to be a doctor, and he did go to some medical school for one
+year.  Now he's in the Red Cross, somewhere in ~Persia~.  Golly!"
+
+He paused to digest this impossibility, then chattered briskly on.
+"Well, there's ~one~ good old boy was with our class for a while,
+back in freshman year; I bet we won't see him in any good old army!
+Old rough-neck Linski that you put the knob on his nose for.  Tommie
+Hopper says he saw him last summer in Chicago soapboxin', yellin' his
+head off cussin' every government under the sun, but mostly ours and
+the Allies', you bet, and going to run the earth by revolution and
+representatives of unskilled labour immigrants, nobody that can read
+or write allowed to vote, except Linski.  Tommie Hopper says he knows
+all about Linski; he never did a day's work in his life--too busy
+trying to get the workingmen stirred up against the people that
+exploit 'em!  Tommie says he had a big crowd to hear him, though,
+and took up quite a little money for a 'cause' or something.  Well,
+let him holler!  I guess we can attend to him when we get back from
+over yonder.  By George, old Ram, I'm gettin' kind of floppy in the
+gills!"  He administered a resounding slap to his comrade's shoulder.
+"It certainly looks as if our big days were walking toward us!"
+
+
+He was right.  The portentous days came on apace, and each one
+brought a new and greater portent.  The faces of men lost a driven
+look besetting them in the days of badgered waiting, and instead of
+that heavy apprehension one saw the look men's faces must have worn
+in 1776 and 1861, and the history of the old days grew clearer in
+the new.  The President went to the Congress, and the true indictment
+he made there reached scoffing Potsdam with an unspoken prophecy
+somewhat chiling even to Potsdam, one guesses--and then through an
+April night went almost quietly the steady work:  we were at war with
+Germany.
+
+The bugles sounded across the continent; drums and fifes played up
+and down the city streets and in town and village squares and through
+the countrysides.  Faintly in all ears there was multitudinous noise
+like distant, hoarse cheering... and a sound like that was what Dora
+Yocum heard, one night, as she sat lonely in her room.  The bugles
+and fifes and drums had been heard about the streets of the college
+town, that day, and she thought she must die of them, they hurt her
+so, and now to be haunted by this imaginary cheering--
+
+She started.  Was it imaginary?
+
+She went downstairs and stood upon the steps of the dormitory in the
+open air.  No; the cheering was real and loud.  It came from the
+direction of the railway station, and the night air surged and beat
+with it.
+
+Below her stood the aged janitor of the building, listening.  "What's
+the cheering for?" she asked, remembering grimly that the janitor was
+one of her acquaintances who had not yet stopped "speaking" to her.
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"It's a good matter," the old man answered.  "I guess there must be
+a big crowd of 'em down there.  One of our students enlisted to-day,
+and they're givin' him a send-off.  Listen to 'em, how they ~do~
+cheer.  He's the first one to go."
+
+She went back to her room, shivering, and spent the next day in bed
+with an aching head.  She rose in the evening, however--a handbill
+had been slid under her door at five o'clock, calling a "Mass
+Meeting" of the university at eight, and she felt it her duty to go;
+but when she got to the great hall she found a seat in the dimmest
+corner, farthest from the rostrum.
+
+The president of the university addressed the tumultuous many
+hundreds before him, for tumultuous they were until he quieted them.
+He talked to them soberly of patriotism, and called upon them for
+"deliberation and a little patience."  There was danger of a stampede,
+he said, and he and the rest of the faculty were in a measure
+responsible to their fathers and mothers for them.
+
+"You must keep your heads," he said.  "God knows, I do not seek to
+judge your duty in this gravest moment of your lives, nor assume to
+tell you what you must or must not do.  But by hurrying into service
+now, without careful thought or consideration, you may impair the
+extent of your possible usefulness to the very cause you are so
+anxious to serve.  Hundreds of you are taking technical courses
+which should be completed--at least to the end of the term in June.
+Instructors from the United States Army are already on the way here,
+and military training will be begun at once for all who are
+physically eligible and of acceptable age.  A special course will
+be given in preparation for flying, and those who wish to become
+aviators may enroll themselves for the course at once.
+
+"I speak to you in a crisis of the university's life, as well as that
+of the nation, and the warning I utter has been made necessary by
+what took place yesterday and to-day.  Yesterday morning, a student
+in the junior class enlisted as a private in the United States
+Regular Army.  Far be it from me to deplore his course in so doing;
+he spoke to me about it, and in such a way that I felt I had no right
+to dissuade him.  I told him that it would be preferable for college
+men to wait until they could go as officers, and, aside from the fact
+of a greater prestige, I urged that men of education could perhaps
+be more useful in that capacity.  He replied that if he were useful
+enough as a private a commission might in time come his way, and, as
+I say, I did not feel at liberty to attempt dissuasion.  He left to
+join a regiment to which he had been assigned, and many of you were
+at the station to bid him farewell.
+
+"But enthusiasm may be too contagious; even a great and inspiring
+motive may work for harm, and the university must not become a
+desert.  In the twenty-four hours since that young man went to join
+the army last night, one hundred and eleven of our young men students
+have left our walls; eighty-four of them went off together at three
+o'clock to catch an east-bound train at the junction and enlist for
+the Navy at Newport.  We are, I say, in danger of a stampede."
+
+He spoke on, but Dora was not listening; she had become obsessed by
+the idea which seemed to be carrying her to the border of tragedy.
+When the crowd poured forth from the building she went with it
+mechanically, and paused in the dark outside.  She spoke to a girl
+whom she did not know.
+
+"I beg your pardon--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I wanted to ask:  Do you know who was the student Doctor Corvis
+spoke of?  I mean the one that was the first to enlist, and that they
+were cheering last night when he went away to be a private in the
+United States Army.  Did you happen to hear his name?"
+
+"Yes, he was a junior."
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"Ramsey Milholland."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+
+Fred Mitchell, crossing the campus one morning, ten days later, saw
+Dora standing near the entrance of her dormitory, where he would pass
+her unless he altered his course; and as he drew nearer her and the
+details of her face grew into distinctness, he was indignant with
+himself for feeling less and less indignation toward her in
+proportion to the closeness of his approach.  The pity that came over
+him was mingled with an unruly admiration, causing him to wonder what
+unpatriotic stuff he could be made of.  She was marked, but not
+whipped; she still held herself straight under all the hammering and
+cutting which, to his knowledge, she had been getting.
+
+She stopped him, "for only a moment," she said, adding with a wan
+profoundness:  "That is, if you're not one of those who feel that
+I shouldn't be 'spoken to'?"
+
+"No," said Fred, stiffly.  "I may share their point of view, perhaps,
+but I don't feel called upon to obtrude it on you in that manner."
+
+"I see," she said, nodding.  "I've wanted to speak with you about
+Ramsey."
+
+"All right."
+
+She bit her lip, then asked, abruptly:  "What made him do it?"
+
+"Enlist as a private with the regulars?"
+
+"No.  What made him enlist at all?"
+
+"Only because he's that sort," Fred returned briskly.  "He may be
+inexplicable to people who believe that his going out to fight for
+his country is the same thing as going out to commit a mur--"
+
+She lifted her hand.  "Couldn't you--"
+
+"I beg your pardon," Fred said at once.  "I'm sorry, but I don't know
+just how to explain him to you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+He laughed, apologetically.  "Well, you see, as I understand it, you
+don't think it's possible for a person to have something within him
+that makes him care so much about his country that he--"
+
+"Wait!" she cried.  "Don't you think I'm willing to suffer a little
+rather than to see my country in the wrong?  Don't you think I'm
+doing it?"
+
+"Well, I don't want to be rude; but, of course, it seems to me that
+you're suffering because you think you know more about what's right
+and wrong than anybody else does."
+
+"Oh, no.  But I--"
+
+"We wouldn't get anywhere, probably, by arguing it," Fred said.
+"You asked me."
+
+"I asked you to tell my why he enlisted."
+
+"The trouble is, I don't think I ~can~ tell that to anybody who needs
+an answer.  He just went, of course.  There isn't any question about
+it.  I always thought he'd be the first to go."
+
+"Oh, no!" she said.
+
+"Yes, I always thought so."
+
+"I think you were mistaken," she said, decidedly.  "It was a special
+reason--to make him act so cruelly."
+
+"Cruelly!" Fred cried.
+
+"It ~was!~"
+
+"Cruel to whom?"
+
+"Oh, to his mother--to his family.  To have him go off that way,
+without a word--"
+
+"Oh, no' he'd been home," Fred corrected her.  "He went home the
+Saturday before he enlisted, and settled it with them. They're all
+broken up, of course; but when the saw he'd made up his mind, they
+quit opposing him, and I think they're proud of him about it, maybe,
+in spite of feeling anxious.  You see, his father was an artilleryman
+in the war with Spain, and his grandfather was a Colonel at the end
+of the War of the Rebellion, though he went into it as a private,
+like Ramsey.  He died when Ramsey was about twelve; but Ramsey
+remembers him; he was talking of him a little the night before he
+enlisted."
+
+Dora made a gesture of despairing protest.  "You don't understand!"
+
+"What is it I don't understand?"
+
+"Ramsey!  ~I~ know why he went--and it's just killing me!"
+
+Fred looked at her gravely.  "I don't think you need worry about it,"
+he said.  "There's nothing about his going that you are responsible
+for."
+
+She repeated her despairing gesture.  "You don't understand.  But
+it's no use.  It doesn't help any to try to talk of it, though I
+thought maybe it would, somehow."  She wnet a little nearer the
+dormitory entrance, leaving him where he was, then turned.  "I
+suppose you won't see him?"
+
+"I don't know.  Most probably not till we meet-if we should--in
+France.  I don't know hwere he's stationed; and I'm going with the
+aviation--if it's ever ready!  And he's with the regulars; he'll
+probably be among the first to go over."
+
+"I see."  She turned sharply away, calling back over her shoulder
+in a choked voice.  "Thankd you.  Good-bye!"
+
+But Fred's heart had melted; gazing after her, he saw that her proud
+young head had lowered now, and that her shoulders were moving
+convulsively; he ran after her and caught her as she bagan slowly
+to ascend the dormitory steps.
+
+"See here," he cried.  "Don't--"
+
+She lifted a wet face.  "No, no!  He went in bitterness because I
+told him to, in my own bitterness!  I've killed him!  Long ago, when
+he wasn't much more than a child, I heard he'd said that some day
+he'd 'show' me, and now he's done it!"
+
+Fred whistled low and long when she had disappeared.  "Girls!" he
+murmured to himself.  "Some girls, anyhow--they will be girls!  You
+can't tell 'em what's what, and you can't change 'em, either!"
+
+Then, as more urgent matters again occupied his attention, he went on
+at an ardent and lively gait to attend his class in map-making.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI
+
+That thunder in the soil, at first too deep within it to be audible,
+had come to the surface now and gradually became heard as the thunder
+of a million feet upon the training grounds.  The bugles rang
+sharper; the drums and fifes of town and village and countryside were
+the drums and fifes of a war that came closer and closer to every
+hearth between the two oceans.
+
+All the old symbols became symbols bright and new, as if no one had
+ever seen them before.  "America" was like a new word, and the song
+"America" was like a new song.  All the dusty blatancies of orating
+candidates, seeking to rouse bored auditors with "the old flag"; all
+the mechanical patriotics of school and church and club; all these
+time-worn flaccid things leaped suddenly into living colour.  The
+flag became brilliant and strange to see--strange with a meaning that
+seemed new, a meaning long known, yet never known till now.
+
+And so hearts that thought they knew themselves came upon ambushes
+of emotion and hidden indwellings of spirit not guessed before.  Dora
+Yocum, listening to the "Star Spangled Banner," sung by children of
+immigrants to an out-of-tune old piano in a mission clubroom, in
+Chicago, found herself crying with a soul-shaking heartiness in a way
+different from other ways that she had cried.  Among the many things
+she thought of then was this:  That the banner the children were
+singing about was in danger.  The great country, almost a continent,
+had always seemed so untouchable, so safe and sure; she had never
+been able to conceive of a hostile power mighty enough to shake or
+even jar it.  And since so great and fundamental a thing could not be
+injured, a war for its defence had appeared to be, in her eyes, not
+only wicked but ridiculous.  At last, less and less vaguely, she had
+come to comprehend something of the colossal German threat, and the
+shadow that touched this bright banner of which the immigrants'
+children piped so briskly in the mission club-room.
+
+She had begun to understand, though she could not have told just why,
+or how, or at what moment understanding reached her.  She began to
+understand that her country, threatened to the life, had flung its
+line those thousands of miles across the sea to stand and hold
+Hindenburg and Ludendorff and all their Kaisers, Kings, Dukes, and
+Crown Princes, their Krupp and Skoda monstrous engines, and their
+monstrous other engines of men made into armies.  Through the long
+haze of misted sea-miles and the smoke of land-miles she perceived
+that brown line of ours, and knew it stood there that Freedom, and
+the Nation itself, might not perish from the earth.
+
+And so, a week later, she went home, and came nervously to Ramsey's
+mother and found how to direct the letter she wanted to write.  He
+was in France.
+
+As the old phrase went, she poured out her heart.  It seems to apply
+to her letter.
+
+She wrote:
+
+  Don't misunderstand me.  I felt that my bitter speech to you had
+  driven you to take the step you did.  I felt that I had sent you
+  to be killed, and that I ought to be killed for doing it, but I
+  knew that you had other motives, too.  I knew, of course, that you
+  thought of the country more than you did of me, or of any mad thing
+  I would say--but I thought that what I said might have been the
+  prompting thing, the word that threw you into it so hastily and
+  before you were ready, perhaps.  I dreaded to bear that terrible
+  responsibility.  I hope you understand.
+
+  My great mistake has been--I thought I sas so "logical"--it's been
+  in my starting everything with a thought I'd never proven; that war
+  is the worst thing, and all other evils were lesser.  I was wrong.
+  I was wrong, because war isn't the worst evil.  Slavery is the
+  worse evil, and now I want to tell you I have come to see that you
+  are making war on those that make slavery.  Yes, you are fighting
+  those that make both war and slavery, and you are right, and I
+  humbly reverence and honour all of you who are in this right war.
+  I have come home to work in the Red Cross here; I work there all
+  day, and all day I keep saying to myself--but I really mean to
+  ~you~--it's what I pray, and oh, how I pray it:  "God be with you
+  and grant you the victory!"  For you must win and you will win.
+
+  Forgive me, oh, please--and if you will, could you write to me?
+  I know you have things to do more important than "girls"--but oh,
+  couldn't you, please?
+
+This letter, which she had taken care not to dampen, as she wrote,
+went in slow course to the "American Expeditionary Forces in France,"
+and finally found him whom it patiently sought.  He delayed not long
+to answer, and in time she held in a shaking hand the pencilled
+missive he had sent her.
+
+  You forget all that comic talk about me enlisting because of your
+  telling me to.  I'd written my father I was going at the first
+  chance a month and a half before that day when you said it.  My
+  mind was made up at the first time there was any talk of war, and
+  you had about as much responsibility for my going as some little
+  sparrow or something.  Of course I don't mean I didn't pay any
+  attention to the different things you said, because I always did,
+  and I used to worry over it because I was afraid some day it would
+  get you in trouble, and I'm mighty glad you've cut it out.  That's
+  right; you be a regular girl now.  You always were one, and I knew
+  it all right.  I'm not as scared to write to you as I was to talk
+  to you, so I guess you know I was mighty tickled to get your
+  letter.  It sounded blue, but I was glad to get it.  You ~bet~ I'll
+  write to you!  I don't suppose you could have any idea how glad I
+  was to get your letter.  I could sit here and write to you all day
+  if they'd let me, but I'm a corporal now.  When you answer this, I
+  wish you'd say how the old town looks and if the grass in the front
+  yards is as green as it usually is, and everything.  And tell me
+  some more about everything you think of when you are working down
+  at the Red Cross like you said.  I guess I've read your letter five
+  million times, and that part ten million.  I mean where you
+  underlined that "~you~" and what you said to yourself at the Red
+  Cross.  Oh, murder, but I was glad to read that!  Don't forget
+  about writing anything else you think of like that.
+
+  Well, I was interrupted then and this is the next day.  Of course,
+  I can't tell you where we are, because that darned censor will read
+  this letter, but I guess he will let this much by.  Who do you
+  think I ran across in a village yesterday?  Two boys from the old
+  school days, and we certainly did shake hands a few times!  It was
+  the old foolish Dutch Krusemeyer and Albert Paxton, both of them
+  lieutenants.  I heard Fred Mitchell is still training in the States
+  and about crazy because they won't send him over yet.
+
+  If you had any idea how glad I was to get your letter, you wouldn't
+  lose any time answering this one.  Anyhow, I'm going to write to
+  you again every few days if I get the chance, because maybe you'll
+  answer more than one of 'em.
+
+  But see here, cut out that "sent you to be killed" stuff.  You've
+  got the wrong idea altogether.  We've got the big job of our lives,
+  we know that, but we're going to do it.  There'll be mistakes and
+  bad times, but we won't fall down.  Now you'll excuse me for saying
+  it this way, Dora, but I don't know just how to express myself
+  except saying of course we know everybody isn't going to get back
+  home--but listen, we didn't come over here to get killed
+  particularly, we came over here to give these Dutchmen h--l!
+
+  Perhaps you can excuse language if I write it with a blank like
+  that, but before we get back we're going to do what we came for.
+  They may not all of them be as bad as some of them--it's a good
+  thing you don't know what we do, because some of it would make you
+  sick.  As I say, there may be quite a lot of good ones among them;
+  but we know what they've done to this country, and we know what
+  they mean to do to ours.  So we're going to attend to them.  Of
+  course that's why I'm here.  It wasn't you.
+
+  Don't forget to write pretty soon, Dora.  You say in your letter--I
+  certainly was glad to get that letter--well, you say I have things
+  to do more important than "girls."  Dora, I think you probably know
+  without my saying so that of course while I have got important
+  things to do, just as every man over here has, and everybody at
+  home, for that matter, well, the thing that is most important in
+  the world to me, next to helping win this war, it's reading the
+  next letter from you.
+
+  Don't forget how glad I'll be to get it, and don't forget you
+  didn't have anything to do with my being over here.  That was--it
+  was something else.  And you bet, whatever happens I'm glad I came!
+  Don't ever forget ~that~!
+
+Dora knew it was "something else."  Her memory went back to her first
+recollection of him in school:  from that time on he had been just an
+ordinary, everyday boy, floundering somehow through his lessons in
+school and through his sweethearting with Milla, as the millions of
+other boys floundered along with their own lessons and their own
+Millas.  She saw him swinging his books and romping homeward from the
+schoolhouse, or going whistling by her father's front yard, rattling
+a stick on the fence as he went, care-free and masterful, but shy as
+a deer if strangers looked at him, and always "not much of a talker."
+
+She had always felt so superior to him, she shuddered as she thought
+of it.  His quiet had been so much better than her talk.  His
+intelligence was proven now, when it came to the great test, to be
+of a stronger sort than hers.  He was wise and good and gentle--and
+a fighting man!  "We know what they've done to this country and what
+they mean to do to ours.  So we're going to attend to them."  She
+read this over, and she knew that Ramsey, wise and gentle and good,
+would fight like an unchained devil, and that he and his comrades
+would indeed and indeed do what they "came for."
+
+"It wasn't you," he said.  She nodded gently, agreeing, and knew what
+it was that sent him.  Yet Ramsey had his own secret there, and did
+not tell it.  Sometimes there rose, faint in his memory, a whimsical
+picture, yet one that had always meant much to him.  He would see an
+old man sitting with a little boy upon a rustic bench under a walnut
+tree to watch the "Decoration Day Parade" go by--and Ramsey would see
+a shoot of sunshine that had somehow got through the walnut tree and
+made a bedazzlement of glinting fine lines over a spot about the size
+of a saucer, upon the old man's thick white hair.  And in Ramsey's
+memory, the little boy, sitting beside the veteran, would half close
+his eyes, drowsily, playing that this sunshine spot was a white
+bird's-nest, until he had a momentary dream of a glittering little
+bird that dwelt there and wore a blue soldier cap on its head.  And
+Ramsey would bring out of his memory toughts that the old man had got
+into the child's head that day.  "We knew that armies fighting for
+the Freedom of Man ~had~ to win, in the long run....  We were on the
+side of God's Plan....  Long ago we began to see hints of His
+Plan....  Man has to win his freedom from himself--men in the light
+have to fight against men in the dark....  That light is the
+answer....  We had the light that made us never doubt."
+
+
+A long while Dora sat with the letter in her hand before she answered
+it and took it upon her heart to wear.  That was the place for it,
+since it was already within her heart, where he would find it when
+he came home again.  And she beheld the revelation sent to her.  This
+ordinary life of Ramsey's was but the outward glinting of a high and
+splendid spirit, as high and splendid as earth can show.  And yet it
+was only the life of an everyday American boy.  The streets of the
+town were full, now, of boys like Ramsey.
+
+At first they were just boys in uniform; then one saw that they were
+boys no more.
+
+They were soldiers.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Ramsey Milholland, by Tarkington
+
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