Add files from ibiblio as of 2025-03-03 08:51:57HEADmain

1 files changed, 0 insertions, 7024 deletions

diff --git a/44888.txt b/44888.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index 55e15bc..0000000
--- a/44888.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,7024 +0,0 @@
-                        THE DIARY OF A FRESHMAN
-
-
-
-
-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 http://www.gutenberg.org/license.
-
-
-
-Title: The Diary of a Freshman
-Author: Charles Macomb Flandrau
-Release Date: February 12, 2014 [EBook #44888]
-Language: English
-Character set encoding: US-ASCII
-
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DIARY OF A FRESHMAN ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Al Haines.
-
-
-
-
-
-                               THE DIARY
-                            _of a_ FRESHMAN
-
-
-                                  _By_
-
-                        CHARLES MACOMB FLANDRAU
-
-                      Author of "Harvard Episodes"
-
-
-
-                               _NEW YORK_
-                      DOUBLEDAY, PAGE AND COMPANY
-                               _MDCCCCI_
-
-
-
-
-                         _Copyright, 1900, by_
-                       The Curtis Publishing Co.
-
-                         _Copyright, 1901, by_
-                       Doubleday, Page & Company
-
-
-
-                            University Press
-                          John Wilson and Son
-                           Cambridge, U.S.A.
-
-
-
-
-                                _TO THE_
-                "_For Ever Panting and For Ever Young._"
-
-
-
-
-                   _Courteous acknowledgment is here
-                      made to the Saturday Evening
-                   Post, Philadelphia, in which these
-                      papers first saw the light._
-
-
-
-
-                                _*THE*_*
-                       DIARY *_*of a*_* FRESHMAN*
-
-
-
-                                  *I*
-
-
-Mamma left for home this afternoon.  As I want to be perfectly truthful
-in my diary, I suppose I must confess that before she actually went away
-I sometimes thought I should be rather relieved when she was no longer
-here. Mamma has a fixed idea that I came to college for the express
-purpose of getting my feet wet by day, and sleeping in a draught by
-night. She began the furnishing of my rooms by investing in a pair of
-rubber boots,--the kind you tie around your waist with a string.  The
-clerk in the shop asked her if I was fond of trout-fishing, and she
-explained to him that I had always lived in the West where the climate
-was dry, and that she did n't know how I would stand the dampness of the
-seacoast.  Mamma thought the clerk was so interested in my last attack
-of tonsillitis I didn't have the heart to tell her that all the time he
-was looking sympathetic with his right eye, he was winking at me with
-his left.
-
-Now that she is gone, however, I don't see how I could have thought,
-even for a moment, that I should be glad, and I 've been sitting here
-for an hour just looking at my room and all the nice things she advised
-me about and helped me to choose--wishing she could see how cosey it is
-late at night with the green lamp lighted and a little fire going.  (It
-is n't really cool enough for a fire; I had to take my coat off for a
-while, the room got so warm--but I was anxious to know how the andirons
-looked with a blaze behind them.) I suppose she is lying awake in the
-sleeping-car thinking of me.  She made me move my bed to the other side
-of the room, so that it would n't be near the window.  I moved it back
-again; but I think now I 'll change it again to the way she liked it.
-
-Of course I was disappointed last May when I found I hadn't drawn a room
-in one of the college buildings.  I had an idea that if you did n't live
-in one of the buildings owned by the college you would n't feel,
-somehow, as if you "belonged."  Before I arrived in Cambridge I worried
-a good deal over it.  The old Harvard men at home were most
-unsatisfactory about this when I asked their advice. The ones who had
-lived in the Yard when they were in college seemed to think there was
-n't any particular use in going to college at all unless you could live
-either in their old rooms or some in the same building; and the ones who
-had lived outside as I am going to do (this year, anyhow) said the
-college buildings were nice enough in their way, but if I could only get
-the dear old place (which was pulled down fifteen years ago) where James
-Russell Lowell had scratched his name on the window-pane, and where
-somebody else (I 've forgotten who it was) crawled up the big chimney
-when the sheriff came to arrest him for debt and was discovered because
-he did not crawl far enough, I should be all right.
-
-I don't see how the good times and the advantages of a place like this
-hold out for so long; everybody who has been here speaks as if he had
-about used them up.
-
-Well, we found rooms pleading to be rented; every other house in
-Cambridge has a "Student's Room to Let" card in the window.  Even some
-of the rooms in the Yard had been given up at the last minute by fellows
-who flunked their exams.  Mamma said she felt very sorry for the poor
-boys; and after that the enormity of my having been conditioned in
-physics and solid geometry decreased considerably.  The trouble (there
-were four days full of it) wasn't in finding a good place, but in trying
-to decide on some one place.  For a while it looked as though I should
-either have to live in five separate houses--some of them over a mile
-apart--or give up going to college.  We dragged up and down all the
-quiet side streets within a reasonable distance of the Yard, ringing
-bells and asking questions until the words "I should like to look at"
-and "What is the price of?" began to sound like some kind of a silly
-English Meisterschaft system. Several times when we were very tired we
-wandered by mistake into houses we had been to before.  This made the
-landladies exceedingly peevish; but mamma said it was just as well,
-because now we knew what their true characters really were.
-
-We found that we could rent some of the rooms lighted and heated; but
-most of them were merely "lit and het."
-
-All the houses in Cambridge and many of the buildings in the Yard seemed
-to be disgorging roomfuls of old furniture and consuming cartloads of
-new, and everywhere we went we met strings of cheerful, energetic
-mothers with tired, rather cross-looking sons.  I've seen only one
-fellow with his father so far, and they sort of apologized for the fact
-by being dressed in deep mourning.
-
-At the end of three days we 'd picked out five rooms.  Considered in a
-lump, they seemed fine; but tackling them separately, mamma could n't
-decide which one was least objectionable.  One was in a part of town
-that "looked damp"--a man across the street unfortunately sneezed just
-as we were passing a stone wall covered with green moss. The second
-smelt of cooking.  On the steps of the third a groceryman was waiting to
-deliver several gallons of gasoline (this one was almost struck off the
-list).  The fourth was near the river (we had the bad luck to be in that
-part of town when the tide was out), and from the windows of the fifth
-there was a merry little view of a graveyard.  We simply could n't make
-up our minds, and were standing in the middle of a narrow, rather shabby
-little street two or three blocks below the Square discussing the
-matter, when a door behind us opened and a mother and son (we turned to
-look) came out, followed by a gray-haired woman--evidently the
-landlady--who was doing the talking, in a very New England voice, for
-all three.  The mother was slim and pretty, and had on a beautiful dress
-that went swish-swash-swish when she walked away, and the fellow looked
-like her; he was very handsome.
-
-"Well, I 'm real glad to know you," the landlady said to the fellow's
-mother.  "Jus' seems 's if I could n't rest till I knew the young men's
-folks; dustin' their photographs every day makes it sort of different.
-It do--don't it?  Oh, yes--I 'll take care of him. They get real mad at
-me, the young men do, sometimes, for makin' them change their shoes when
-it's snow-in' and makin' them wear their rubber coats when it's
-rai-nin'.  _They 're_ in too much of a hurry, _they_ are.  That's what's
-the matter with _them_."  She gave the fellow a roguish look, and he and
-his mother walked up the street laughing as if they were very much
-pleased.
-
-"I think," said mamma (who had become strangely animated on hearing of
-the change of shoes)--"I think that before we decide on one of these
-five rooms we 'll go in there."  So we went up to the gray-haired woman,
-who had lingered outside to talk baby talk to a cat that was making
-gothic arches of itself all over the piazza, and in about seven minutes
-by the watch we 'd signed the lease of the last vacant rooms in the
-house.
-
-A short, steep staircase like the companionway of a ship leads up to a
-landing about the size of a kitchen table.  The edges of the steps are
-covered with tin and are terribly slippery. The door on the left opens
-into my study, and at the end of that is my bedroom, and next to that is
-a great big bathroom (it's bigger than the other two) with a porcelain
-tub and a shower which I am to share with the fellow who lives just
-across the staircase on the right. Mrs. Chester, the landlady, says:
-"All the young men thinks an awful lot of that bathroom."
-
-The study is so small that we did n't have to buy as much furniture as
-we expected to. I have an oak desk with a rolling top that makes a noise
-like some one shovelling coal when you open and shut it, and usually
-sticks half-way.  Of course, when we finally got it out from town
-(Boston is about four miles from Cambridge, and it takes anywhere from
-three days to a week for an express wagon to make the trip), we found
-that it was much too large to go up the staircase.  But Mrs. Chester
-said we could take out the back of the house and have it swung up to the
-room on ropes--the "young men" always did that when they wanted pianos
-or sofas, or desks like mine.  I wasn't present at the operation, as I
-had to go in town to lunch with mamma, but it was successfully performed
-(by "a real handy gentleman from down Gloucester way, who used to be a
-fisherman and is a carpenter now"), for I found the desk in the room
-when I returned and the walls of the house looked about the same.
-
-Besides the desk I have an oak chair with a back that lets up and down
-by means of a brass rod; its cushions are covered with gray corduroy.
-Then there is another chair, a revolving one (very painful), that goes
-with the desk.  We bought a bookcase at a shop just off the Square, from
-an odious little man who put his hand on my shoulder and said to mamma,
-"They _will_ grow up, won't they?"  It looks rather bare, as there
-aren't any books in it yet; but mamma would n't let me fill it, although
-right next door to the place where we bought it there were loads of
-books in the window for five and ten cents apiece.
-
-We got some Turkish rugs at an auction in town.  The man said they never
-would wear out.  When they arrived here and I saw them for the first
-time by daylight (they had gas at the sale) I knew what he meant.
-However, mamma darned them very nicely, and as everything else looks so
-new, perhaps it's just as well.
-
-I 've put the photographs of mamma and papa, and the one of Mildred in
-the ball dress and big hat with white ostrich feathers, and the one of
-Sidney in his little cart with the two goats, on the mantelpiece.  I 'm
-afraid I never cared much for the goats when I was at home, but to-night
-I 've been thinking of all the funny things they used to do and
-wondering if I'll ever see them again.  They're such cute little beasts.
-Over the mantelpiece I have two crimson flags with the sticks crossed.
-
-This evening while I was sitting in front of the fire trying to decide
-whether I ought to begin my diary now or wait until college opened
-to-morrow and things began to happen, the door downstairs suddenly
-rattled and slammed, and some one came clattering up the tin steps at a
-great rate.  Then the door across the landing was unlocked, and I heard
-whoever it was falling over chairs and upsetting things in the dark; and
-all the time he kept roaring at the top of his voice: "Oh, Mrs. Chester!
-Ay-y-y-y-y, Mrs. Chester, where are you?"  Mrs. Chester had told me a
-few minutes before that she was "just goin' to step up street to see how
-Mis' Buckson 's comin' along with them rooms o' hers," so I called out
-that she was n't at home.  Then the voice answered, "Oh, thank you;" and
-after a few more things in the other room had fallen on the floor and
-smashed, the fellow who was making all the fuss came across and stood in
-my doorway.
-
-I thought for a second that the reason he did n't come in was that he
-was so big he could n't.  I knew that the ceilings of the house were low
-and that my study wasn't very large, but I had n't realized before how
-small it all was.  The fellow blocked up the whole doorway; his
-shoulders, in a loose, shaggy gray coat, stretched clear across. His
-face was burned a deep brown, and his hair was very black and looked
-rather long, as it evidently had n't been brushed for a good while, and
-he wanted to know if I could let him have a match.  I could see that he
-was taking in my room as he stood there, and I think he smiled a little
-at something; but then he seemed to be smiling anyhow (in a different
-way), so I was n't sure.  I jumped up and got him a box of matches
-(somehow I knew at once that he wasn't the other Freshman who has rooms
-in the house, although I can't think why, as he did n't look old), and
-he thanked me, saying he was sorry to trouble me, and went back to his
-room.
-
-I felt sort of excited and restless after that, and thought I would sit
-down and write mamma all about him; but just as I was beginning to he
-stopped humming (I don't think he can be a member of the Glee Club, as
-he only struck the right note once by accident; still I knew perfectly
-well what he was trying to sing) and began to laugh.  Then he came over
-to my door again with his hands in his pockets and said,--
-
-"You did n't happen to see an iron bedstead lying around the streets
-anywhere, did you? The good Chester has evidently spent the last three
-months in putting my rooms in order and I can't find a thing."  I told
-him I had seen a bed in the back yard this afternoon, but that I did n't
-think it could be his.  He asked me very seriously why not.  And then
-all at once I got horribly rattled.  I didn't like to tell him that the
-bed had n't looked nearly big enough for him (it was a little narrow
-thing), for I was afraid he might think me fresh. Then besides, I found
-that I had instinctively stood up when I saw him, and as there wasn't
-any particular reason why I should have done this, I got sort of
-confused.
-
-"Of course it's a very nice little bed," I hastened to add.  Whereupon
-he burst out laughing with a loud whoop.
-
-"If it 's such a nice one it certainly can't be mine, and I 'd better go
-down and swipe it right away," he said at last, and clattered
-downstairs.  I tried again to write to mamma, but he made such a noise
-coming upstairs with pieces of bed and running down again that I could
-n't fix my mind.  Then, too, I kept wondering whether I ought to offer
-to help him.  Finally I went out as he was coming up with a mattress on
-his shoulder and asked, "Was it your bed, after all?" which made him
-laugh again and say: "I wouldn't tell you for anything in the world.  If
-you aren't too busy, though, I wish you would help me put the beastly
-thing together."
-
-We tried for about half an hour to make the bed stand up.  It looked
-simple enough, but whenever we got the sides firm and more or less
-parallel, the back and front would wobble and fall to the floor.  Once
-we had all four pieces standing beautifully, but just as we put on the
-woven wire business and Mr. Duggie (that's what Mrs. Chester calls
-him--I don't think it 's his real name, though) exclaimed, "I have the
-honor to report, sir, that the allied forces have taken New Bedford,"
-the whole thing collapsed and pinched his finger fearfully as it came
-down. After that we sat on the floor awhile.  He smoked a pipe and
-glanced meditatively at the ruins of the bed every now and then, and at
-last turned to me and said, "Is this your first year here?"  I didn't
-let him see how pleased I was that he had not discovered I was a
-Freshman, and merely answered, "Yes."
-
-We talked a long time--about all kinds of things.  I asked him a string
-of questions that had been on my mind for months: whether it is better
-to live in a private house, one of the big private halls, or in the Yard
-(I called it the "Campus," and he looked queer for a moment and said it
-was known as the Yard here); where would be a good place to eat; whether
-he thought my allowance was big enough (I told him how much I was going
-to have); and what was the best way to make friends and get on teams and
-clubs and musical societies and crews and papers.  He answered
-everything, although once or twice he puffed at his pipe and looked at
-me a good while before speaking.  I couldn't tell whether the questions
-had n't occurred to him before, or whether he didn't know just what to
-tell me.  Of course I can't remember all he said, but it sounded so
-important that afterward I scribbled as much of it as I could in a
-notebook.
-
-
-                           ROOMS IN THE YARD
-
-                               ADVANTAGES
-
-General Washington may have stabled his horse (the iron-gray that never
-put his front feet to the ground in the presence of an artist) in your
-bedroom.
-
-When girls come out to vespers (Thursdays from November to May) and stop
-to look at the Yard, you can stop whatever you happen to be doing and
-look at them.
-
-In May and June the morning and evening views from your windows are
-different from and more beautiful than anything in the world.
-
-The Glee Club (weather permitting) sings under the trees; you lie on
-your window-seat in the twilight and wonder whether, after graduating,
-you will accept Fame or Fortune.
-
-Proximity to lectures during the annual inundations of December,
-January, February, March, and April.
-
-
-                             DISADVANTAGES
-
-Too much effort involved in taking a bath. What ought to be an innocent
-pleasure becomes a morbid family pride.
-
-Accessibility to bores who want to kill time while waiting for their
-next lecture.  At first you think this is Popularity.
-
-Enforced quiet after 9 P.M.--at which hour you usually close your books
-and feel like making a noise.
-
-Enforced activity before 9 A.M.--until which hour you always close your
-eyes and try not to feel at all.
-
-Necessity of burning a kind of coal that refuses to light (or to stay
-lighted) for anybody but the janitor, who is never in the basement,
-where you always firmly believe (in spite of your daily failure) that
-you are going to find him.
-
-
-                                 BOARD
-
-Mrs. Muldooney's is by all means the most desirable place.  It is
-crowded, hot, noisy, expensive, and not particularly nourishing. Mrs.
-Muldooney is a tall, grim, steel-armored old cruiser of sixty-five, with
-dark-blue hair, who doles out eleven canned cherries to every man at
-luncheon and sends in word from the kitchen that there aren't any more.
-She tries to collect twenty-five cents when you have a guest; but as you
-promptly disown your guest, she is usually foiled.  Her place, however,
-is always crowded with Freshmen, and I ought to go there.
-
-
-                               ALLOWANCE
-
-My allowance is generous.  It ought to satisfy my every need; but it
-won't.
-
-
-                    TEAMS, CREWS, SOCIETIES, PAPERS
-
-Try enthusiastically but not too seriously to take part in everything.
-In this way you find out what kind of amusement really amuses you--which
-as you grow older is a source of great content.
-
-
-                                FRIENDS
-
-Friends, in the true sense of the word, are divine accidents beyond all
-human control. You will probably meet with four or five such accidents
-in your college career.  For the rest--be polite to everybody, and you
-will soon have the satisfaction of knowing that your position, both in
-the University and in the world, is, at least, unique.
-
-
-                                 CLUBS
-
-_Vide supra_, under "Friends."
-
-
-I was just going to ask him something else, when we heard Mrs. Chester
-exclaiming,--
-
-"Land sakes, if it ain't Mr. Duggie!  I saw the light from Mis'
-Buckson's parlor."
-
-"Hello, you dear old buzzard!  How dare you turn me out in the cold this
-way?" he called to her; and as she came in, he jumped up and took both
-her hands.  "I 'm so glad to see you again."  She gave him a little
-push, and looked pleased.
-
-"Law, Mr. Duggie--how you talk!  He's got real fleshy--ain't he?" she
-added, looking at me.  She asked him where he 'd been all summer, and he
-told her he 'd been off shooting in the Rocky Mountains, and had brought
-her a breastpin made of an elk's tooth that she'd have to wear on
-Sundays when she went to see her married daughter in Somerville. I
-thought I ought to leave, but did not know how to interrupt them
-exactly; so I turned and examined some silver cups on the mantelpiece.
-There were five beauties, but I could n't make out the inscriptions on
-them.
-
-"You 've had lots of visitors the last few days.  They kept a-comin' to
-find out when you 'll be back.  The Dean was here to-day--a real
-sociable gentleman, aren't he?--and he wants you to go right 'round and
-see him as soon as you can.  And yesterday that little man--I forget his
-name--oh, you know, he's the President of the Crimson--came to find out
-about something.  He said you were the only one who could tell him.  And
-then there 've been lots of young men to see about the football--oh, my,
-just crowds of them, and they all left notes.  I 'll run down and get
-them, and then I 'll put up your bed."
-
-After she left, I said good-night.  It's awfully late, and I have to get
-up early, to be in time to register.
-
-I wonder who he is.  I hope he didn't think I was fresh.  I don't
-believe he did, though, for as I was going he said,--
-
-"We 're such near neighbors, you must drop in when you haven't anything
-better to do."
-
-Mamma's train must have passed Utica by this time.
-
-
-
-
-                                  *II*
-
-
-Well, I 've learned a lot of things during the past week, that are n't
-advertised in the catalogue.  If I 've neglected to make a note of them
-until now, it has been my misfortune, and not my fault.
-
-We registered on Wednesday morning--Freshmen have to register the day
-before college really opens--and I confess I was a little disappointed
-at the informal way such an important act of one's life is done.  In the
-first place, as you can drop in any time between nine A.M. and one P.M.,
-you don't see the whole class together.  Then the room we registered in
-might have been in the High School at home.  I don't know what I
-expected exactly, but it certainly was n't a bare, square room, a desk
-on a low platform, some plaster casts, and a lot of plain wooden chairs
-arranged in rows on an inclined plane. However, when I think the matter
-over, I don't see what else they could have.
-
-A dissatisfied-looking little man with a red necktie sat reading a
-newspaper at the desk when I went in, and near him--reading a book--was
-a younger fellow who looked as if he might be a student.  There were
-piles of registration cards on the desk, and after I had stood there a
-moment, not knowing what to do, the little man looked up absently from
-his paper, handed me some cards with a feeble sort of gesture, and
-murmured in a melancholy, slightly trembling, and very sarcastic
-voice,--
-
-    "... This gentleman is come to me
-    With commendation from great potentates,
-    And here he means to spend his time awhile."
-
-Then he yawned, and took up the paper again. The young man, without
-apparently thinking this remark in the least odd, closed his book on his
-thumb so as not to lose the place, and gave me another card, saying in a
-perfectly businesslike voice,--
-
-"Please fill this one out, too."  I sat down at a bench to write, and
-just then five or six other fellows came in.  One of them was the
-good-looking chap (with the pretty mother) who rooms in the same house
-with me.  I hadn't seen him since the day I signed my lease.  I listened
-to hear if the little man at the desk would spring anything weird on
-them; but as they went right up to him, and took cards as if they knew
-all about it, and retreated to the back of the room, he didn't have
-time.  They talked and laughed a good deal, and once they got into a
-scuffle, but the instructors didn't even glance up.  I finished
-answering the questions on my cards, and was reading them over, when one
-of the fellows behind me said,--
-
-"I'll ask him--we live in the same house;" and the handsome one came and
-sat down beside me.  There was something they did n't understand in
-making out the cards, and the first thing I knew, they were all gathered
-around me examining mine.  I felt quite important.  But the next minute
-I felt equally cheap.
-
-The cards that had been given us by the young man with the book had to
-be filled out with one's name and address and religion. When the
-good-looking one (whose name I 've since found out is Berrisford) came
-to it, he began to giggle, and after he had written on it he showed it
-to the man next to him, who burst out laughing, and passed it on to the
-others.  They all laughed as soon as they saw it, and I was just about
-to hold out my hand to take it, when the young instructor closed his
-book, and said in a rather tired, dry tone,--
-
-"By the way, unless you actually happen to be Buddhists or Hindus or
-Mohammedans, or followers of Confucius, kindly refrain from saying so on
-the card; only four men have indulged in that particular jest this
-morning, which, in comparison with former years, is really very few.  I
-begin to feel encouraged; pray don't depress me."
-
-I don't know what Berrisford had written, but he got very red while the
-instructor was speaking, and crumpled the card into a little lump which
-he afterward slipped into his pocket.  The others pretended to be deeply
-absorbed in their writing just then; but one of them snorted
-hysterically.
-
-If anything like that had happened to me, I think I should have expired
-with mortification; but Berrisford after a minute or two did n't seem to
-mind it at all.  I almost think it encouraged him to do something even
-more idiotic.
-
-There are two large, fine statues standing in the front corners of the
-room.  One of them is a Greek athlete in the act of hurling something
-not unlike a pancake, and is called, I believe, The Discus Thrower.  (We
-have a little one in the library at home.)  The other is a venerable old
-man in flowing robes--probably Homer or Sophocles or some such person.
-Well, we had all gone up to the desk with our cards.  Berrisford was
-first, and just as he got there he stopped (without giving his cards to
-the little man who reached out for them), and looked inquiringly from
-statue to statue.  Berrisford has a beautiful, silly face with big,
-innocent eyes, and when he talks his manner is graceful--almost timid;
-you can't help liking it.  I could see that he impressed the instructors
-just the way he did mamma and me the day we saw him with his mother.  He
-looked at the statues a moment, and then said to the little man,--
-
-"Would you mind telling me, please, which of these gentlemen is the
-President of the college?"  His voice was so deferential, and there was
-something so eager and earnest and pure in his expression, I really
-believe that for a moment the instructor thought he was just a nice
-fool, and was on the point of kindly explaining what the statues
-represented.  He didn't, though, for one of the fellows in the
-background tittered and ran out of the room, and the little man leaned
-back in his chair, examined Berrisford very deliberately, and then
-remarked in his queer, sarcastic way,--
-
-"'Sir, thy wit is as quick as the greyhound's mouth; but it speeds too
-fast--'twill tire!'"
-
-As soon as we got outside, Berrisford said,--
-
-"What a disappointing little creature!  I had an idea he would be very
-angry, and he was n't at all."
-
-"Did you want him to be angry?" I asked, rather surprised.
-
-"Why, yes, of course," he answered.  "It's so interesting to watch them;
-there are so many different ways of losing a temper. Sea-captains are
-the most satisfactory, I think.  I discovered that last spring on my way
-to Europe.  I go up to them when they 're very busy--just getting out of
-a harbor or something--and exclaim, 'Oh, I say, Captain--shall I steer?'
-You can't imagine how furious it makes them."  I said I thought I could,
-and we parted.  He seems to have a great many friends; he has n't spent
-a night at home since college opened--a week ago.
-
-Well, I went to see my adviser, who helped me select my studies for the
-year.  That is to say, he hypnotized me into taking a lot of things I
-really don't see why I should know. However, as I don't seem to have
-what he called "a startling predilection" for anything (my entrance
-exams. divulged this), and as he was a pleasant young man who invited me
-to dinner next week, I allowed myself to be influenced by him.  He gave
-me a lot of little pamphlets with the courses and the hours at which
-they come marked in red ink.  I 've forgotten what some of them are, as
-we have n't had any real lectures yet--just rigmaroles about what books
-to buy.
-
-For the first few days the whole college and all the streets and
-buildings near it seemed to be in such confusion that I couldn't walk a
-block without feeling terribly excited--the way I used to feel when I
-was a kid, and we were all going to the State fair or the circus, and
-mamma would insist on our eating luncheon although we did n't want a
-thing. Along the sidewalk in the Square there was a barricade of trunks
-so high that you could n't see over it, to say nothing of huge mounds of
-travelling bags and dress-suit cases and queer-shaped leather things,
-with banjos and mandolins and guitars and golf-sticks in them. And from
-morning till night there were always at least four or five fellows
-telling the expressmen that it was "perfectly absurd;" that they simply
-had to have their trunks immediately; that the service was abominable,
-and that the whole place was a hundred and fifty years behind the times,
-anyhow.  All of which the expressmen may or may not have agreed with,
-for they hardly ever answered back, and just went on digging steamer
-trunks and hatboxes out of the ruins and slamming them into wagons to
-make room for the loads that kept arriving every little while from town.
-
-It was very interesting to watch so many fellows of my own age or a
-little older hurrying about or standing in groups talking and laughing
-and looking glad to be here.  But at the same time it was sort of
-unsatisfactory and hopeless.  I didn't like to stay in my room much of
-the time, as I had a feeling (I have n't got over it yet) that if I did
-I might miss something.  Yet, when I went out, I had so few things to do
-that, unless I took a walk--which of course leads one away from the
-excitement--there was n't much point in my being around at all.  No one
-stuck his head from an upper window in the Yard and called out,
-"Ay-y-y-y-y, Tommy Wood, come up here," when _I_ passed by; and no one
-slipped up behind me, and put his hands over my eyes and waited for me
-to guess who it was, because, with the exception of Mr. Duggie and Dick
-Benton and Berrisford, I didn't know a soul.  I often saw Mr. Duggie in
-the Square, but as he was always with a crowd or striding along in a
-great hurry, and being stopped every few feet by some one who asked him
-questions that made him laugh and run away, I got a chance to speak to
-him only once.  He nodded his head and smiled in a professional kind of
-way without in the least remembering who I was.  Dick Benton I did n't
-have any hesitation in going right up to, as at home I had heard him
-solemnly promise mamma that he would look out for me and keep his eye on
-me.  Of course I don't expect him to do this; but I confess I did feel
-sort of disappointed for a minute when he said: "Well, Wood" (he calls
-me Tommy at home), "when did you arrive? Getting settled?  Got your
-courses picked out?  Awful bore, is n't it?  Well, here 's my car--going
-to meet some people in town and am late now.  How 's Mrs. Wood?  So
-glad. Hunt me up when you 're settled.  So long."  He swung himself on a
-passing car and I turned away and stared at a shop window.  I must have
-stood there several minutes before I realized it was a bakery, and that
-there was absolutely nothing to look at behind the glass except three
-loaves of bread and a dish of imitation ice cream that had n't been
-dusted for weeks (it has just this minute occurred to me for the first
-time that I must have been homesick that day and the next.  Isn't it
-queer, I didn't know what was the matter with me?)  I bet I can describe
-every article in every shop window in the Square; for there was nothing
-for me to do the first few days except to walk up and down and pretend I
-was going somewhere.  Of course I tried to get the books the various
-instructors told me about; but every time I asked for them at the three
-bookstores I found either that the last one had just been sold or that
-they had n't arrived yet.
-
-Mrs. Muldooney's tables were unfortunately full when I applied and I
-have been eating around at the most ridiculous places--ice-cream
-parlors, and dairy restaurants where you sit on high stools and grab
-things, because you can't get over the feeling that a conductor will
-stick his head in the door pretty soon and say, "All Abo-urrrd."
-
-On Bloody Monday night the Freshmen reception took place.  I scarcely
-know how to touch on that event, as my part in it (or rather in what
-followed) was so unexpectedly prominent and terrible.
-
-The old college men at home had let drop all kinds of mysterious hints
-about Bloody Monday.  In their time, apparently, it was the custom for
-the upper-classmen to send grewsome notices to the Freshmen, telling
-them what would happen if they did n't have a punch in their rooms on
-that occasion. These warnings were written in blood and began and ended
-with a skull and cross-bones. Then in the evening there was a rush in
-the Yard between the Freshmen and Sophomores. The old graduates knew
-perfectly well that the punches had been given up long ago; but I don't
-think they liked to admit it even to themselves--although they do groan
-a good deal about college days not being what they used to be.  From
-what they said I could not tell whether there really were such things
-nowadays or not, so I wrote a little note to Mr. Duggie and left it on
-the stairs, where the postman puts our letters, asking him what to do if
-I got a notice, and if there was going to be any rush.  He answered:
-"The custom, I am sorry to say, is _ausgespielt_; it must have been
-great sport.  As for the rush--theoretically we don't have it.  By the
-way, my name (Mrs. Chester to the contrary notwithstanding) is not Mr.
-Duggie, but Douglas Sherwin."
-
-At that time I did n't know what the second sentence of his note meant,
-but I understand now; it dawned on me during the speeches at the
-reception.  In some mysterious, indescribable way it was communicated to
-me as I sat there in the crowded theatre.  Whether it came to me most
-from my classmates--packed into the pew-like seats and standing in rows
-against the wall--or from the professors who spoke on the stage, I can't
-say. I simply became aware of the fact that something was going to
-happen--something that wasn't on the program.  It was in the air--it
-made me restless, and I could n't help thinking of that sultry afternoon
-out West when the seven pack-horses stampeded just as we were about to
-start; I knew the little devils were going to do something and they knew
-it, too, for they all began to buck at the same instant. But I hadn't
-said anything about it--and neither had they.
-
-It was just like that while the speeches of welcome were being made in
-Sanders Theatre. They were fine speeches; they really did make you
-welcome and part of it all--in a way you hadn't thought of before.  You
-couldn't help being proud that you "belonged," and after the President
-had spoken and the fellow next to me yelled in my ear (he had to yell,
-the cheering was so loud), "He 's a great man, all right," I felt all
-over that he was a great man--everybody did.  But nevertheless, there
-was something else tingling through the noise and excitement that we
-felt just as much.  The professors themselves felt it.  The elaborate
-way in which every one of them ignored the subject of Bloody Monday was
-almost pathetic.  The Dean in his speech ignored it so radiantly that
-the audience actually laughed.  Theoretically as (Douglas Sherwin had
-said) there would be no rush; the speeches made one quite ashamed to
-think of such a thing.
-
-I was n't there when it started, for after the speeches I went with the
-crowd into the great dining-hall to be received.  It would be nice, I
-thought, to be introduced to the distinguished men and to get to know
-some of my classmates.  Every one was trying to move toward the further
-left-hand corner of the vast place, and I soon found myself hemmed in
-and carried--oh, so slowly--along with the tide. It was very hot, and as
-I am not particularly tall I would more than once have given a good deal
-to be out in the fresh night air; but the thought of shaking hands with
-the President and the gentleman who invented plane geometry (I did n't
-know whether he had anything to do with solid or not; I never studied
-it), and another gentleman (a humorist) who wrote a book and called it
-The Easy Greek Reader, cheered me up.  I knew, too, that mamma would be
-glad to hear I had talked to these men.  But when, after at least half
-an hour of waiting and pushing, I reached the corner of the room, I
-discovered that it was n't the distinguished men we had all along been
-gasping and struggling for; it was the ice cream. The distinguished men
-were lined up away across the room all alone; if it had been rumored
-beforehand that they were indisposed with the plague, they could n't
-have been much more detached.  Every now and then some young
-fellow--probably an upperclassman--would snatch a Freshman from the
-throng, say something in his ear (it looked as if he were murmuring,
-"They 're all perfectly harmless--only you mustn't prod them or throw
-things in the cage)", and march him up to be introduced.  I watched
-these proceedings awhile, and then, as the ice cream in the meanwhile
-had given out, I left and started to walk to my room by way of the Yard.
-
-A sound of confused cheering reached me the moment I got outside, and
-when I passed through the gate I could see down the long quadrangle what
-seemed to be a battle of will-o'-the-wisps--a swaying, shifting,
-meeting, parting, revolving myriad of flickering lights and lurid faces.
-I ran until I reached the edge of the crowd, and stood for a minute or
-two staring and listening.  The fellows were surging wildly up and down
-and across the Yard with torches in their hands, cheering and singing.
-Whenever enough men got together, they would lower their torches and
-charge the whole length of the Yard--amid a howl of resentment--like a
-company of lancers. Then by the time they had turned to plough back
-again, another group would have formed, which usually met the first one
-half-way with a terrible roar and a clash of tin torches,--a drench of
-kerosene and a burst of flame.  Two German bands that never stopped
-playing the "Blue Danube" and the "Washington Post" were huddled at
-either end of the Yard.  Now and then a sort of tidal wave of lights and
-faces and frantic hands would swell rapidly toward them, lap them up,
-engulf them, and then go swirling back again to the middle.  But they
-never stopped playing,--even when they became hopelessly scattered and
-horribly reunited.
-
-I saw two policemen fluttering distractedly on the brink--pictures of
-conscious inefficiency--and felt sorry for the poor things. As I was
-standing there wondering where I could get a torch, a slim middle-aged
-man with an iron-gray beard bustled up to them, and the three held a
-sort of hurried consultation. It ended by the iron-gray man's (he was a
-professor) suddenly leaving them and mounting the steps of University
-Hall.  His expression as he turned to face the crowd was the kind that
-tries its best to be persuasive and popular and tremendously resolute
-all at once, but only succeeds in being wan and furtive. He filled his
-lungs and began to talk, I suppose, as loud as he could; yet all I heard
-was an occasional despairing "Now, fellows ... It seems to me, fellows
-... Don't you think it would be better..."
-
-No one paid any attention to him, however, and in an incredibly short
-time the crowd had crushed itself as far away as it could into the
-quadrangle's lower end.  I made my way over there, and as I was pushing
-into the thick of things a man next to me exclaimed to no one in
-particular: "They've sent for Duggie Sherwin, the captain of the team,
-as a last resort--he's going to say something from the porch of
-Matthews."  I saw I never could get near Matthews by trying to forge
-straight ahead; so, as I wanted to hear Mr. Duggie (I hadn't known until
-that minute what he was), I extricated myself and ran around the edge of
-the crowd.  Even then I wasn't very near, and, although I could n't hear
-a word he said, I could see him--standing on a chair--towering above
-everybody and smiling a little as if he enjoyed it.  I didn't know what
-he said; to tell the truth, I don't think anybody did, except perhaps
-the men right around him. Yet in about a minute two or three fellows
-began to yell, "All over," "The stuff is off," and "_Now_ will you be
-good;" and the crowd fell back a little, attempting to spread out. The
-spell somehow was broken; for owing to Mr. Duggie's wonderful influence
-we would have dispersed quietly if it had n't been for that flighty
-idiot, Berrisford.
-
-I had picked up a torch that some one had thrown away and was moving
-along with it when Berrisford dashed up to me with something
-round--about the size of a football--wrapped in a newspaper.  One of the
-sleeves of his coat was gone; he was breathing hard and seemed to be
-fearfully excited.
-
-"It's your turn now," he gasped, and thrust the parcel into my hand.
-
-"Why--what is it?--what are we going to do?  The rush is over," I
-answered, for I did n't understand.
-
-"Of course the rush is over--stupid," he said hurriedly.  "We're playing
-a game now--'The King's Helmet'--and you 're It.  I _was_ It--but I'm
-not any more; you are now. Hurry up, for Heaven's sake, or they'll get
-it. Here they come--run for all you 're worth; it may mean a lot for the
-class."  This last and the fact of my catching sight just then of some
-men running toward me decided me.  I clutched the parcel to my side and
-scudded down the Yard.  Every one fell back to let me pass, and my
-progress was followed by screams of delight.  I never had attracted so
-much attention before, and from the things that were shouted at me as I
-flew along I knew I was doing well.  At the end of the Yard I ran smash
-into a building, but although somewhat dazed I managed to hang on to the
-parcel, turn, and look back.  The only person pursuing me, apparently,
-was a bareheaded policeman--and he was alarmingly near.  But I managed
-to pass him, and on my return trip I noticed that I received even a
-greater ovation than the one the fellows had given me at first.  I did
-n't know what it all meant, and I was nearly dead, and suddenly tripped,
-staggered, and fell into the arms of a second policeman who handled me
-very roughly and seized Berrisford's package.  It contained the helmet
-of the bareheaded one, who arrived in a moment exceedingly exhausted,
-but able, nevertheless, to shake his fist in my face.
-
-The parade to the police station must have been several blocks long--I
-heard about it afterward.  First there was me with an escort of two
-officers, all the muckers in Cambridge, and the Freshman class in a
-body, who started a collection on the way over with which to bail me
-out.  Then there was a German band playing the "Blue Danube," and after
-that "a vast concourse" (as Berrisford called it) of Sophomores,
-upperclassmen, and law students with another German band playing the
-"Washington Post" in their midst.
-
-I was almost paralyzed with fright, and my head ached dreadfully from
-the blow I had given it against the building; but although I did n't
-show it I could n't help feeling furious at Berrisford.  He stayed right
-behind me on the way over and kept saying at intervals,--
-
-"It's all right, old man.  Don't worry--there's no use worrying; just
-leave everything to me."
-
-
-
-
-                                 *III*
-
-
-Perhaps, after all, my troubles were for the best.  It was not my fault
-that I fell into the hands of the law; nothing was further from my
-thoughts than a desire to be disorderly.  Of course the teasing I have
-had to endure is pretty hard, and it is most annoying to acquire a
-nickname at the outset (everybody calls me "Trusting Thomas" or "Tommy
-Trusting"), and although I realize now that I was pretty "easy" to do
-what Berrisford told me to, my conscience has been untroubled from the
-first. That, after all, is the main thing.
-
-Berrisford, I think, would have tried (as he said) "to smooth it all
-over" at the police station, but very fortunately the arrival of the
-Regent and my adviser and the iron-gray man at once took the matter out
-of his hands.  I don't know what they did to the officers, but I was
-quickly transferred from the police station to the room of my adviser.
-It was more or less impossible to return the money that had been
-collected from the class to bail me out with, so just as I left a fellow
-with a loud voice proposed amid great cheering to give it to the
-Freshman Eleven.
-
-There had been something spectacular and brilliant about my progress
-from the Yard to the lock-up that, terrified though I was, I could not
-help appreciating in an abject, wretched sort of a way.  But the silent
-walk down a back street to the hall in which my adviser lives was just
-common or garden melancholy.  The sidewalk was broad, so we swung along
-four abreast.  No one followed us, of course, and we went the entire
-distance in almost unbroken silence.  Once the Regent cleared his throat
-and said in hard, cheerful, deliberate tones,--
-
-"I see by the evening paper that Japan will not accede to the request of
-the Powers."  No one answered for about a minute, and I began to fear
-that neither my adviser nor the iron-gray man would take advantage of
-the opportunity to exclaim, "What a wonderful little people they are!"
-I was vaguely disappointed; for of course when the Japanese are
-mentioned one instinctively waits for somebody to say this.  However,
-just as I was beginning to lose hope and had almost made up my mind to
-risk the comment myself, the iron-gray man burst out with, "What a
-remarkable little people they are!" and my foolish heart was reassured!
-
-I must say that when we reached our destination and the inquisition
-began, they were--all three of them--mighty fair and square. The
-circumstances of my capture were decidedly against me, and my defence, I
-realized, sounded simply foolish.  (At one point my adviser jumped up
-abruptly and closed a window; I think he was afraid he was going to
-laugh.)  There was nothing for me to do but tell my story: how I had
-watched the rush from the bottom of the steps; how I had gone over to
-hear Mr. Duggie's speech, and how Berrisford (I didn't give his name,
-however) had come up to me with the helmet in a newspaper and told me we
-were playing a game and that I was It.  I felt very earnest and
-tremulous when I began, but by the time I finished I could n't help
-wanting to shut a few windows myself.  That--out of the whole howling
-mob--they had succeeded in seizing one miserable, little half-dead
-Freshman who had taken no part in the actual disturbance, struck me as
-being like something in an imbecile farce.  It impressed the others, I
-think, in much the same way, although the iron-gray man, after a moment
-of silence, said: "Do you really expect us to believe all this?"
-
-"No, sir," I answered; "I don't see how you conscientiously can."  But
-they decided to believe it, nevertheless.  My adviser asked me if I knew
-who gave me the helmet, and on learning that I did, he intimated that he
-would like to know the man's name.  I preferred, however, not to tell;
-and they were very nice about that, too.  (I shouldn't have told even if
-they had chosen to be disagreeable about it.)
-
-As far as I am concerned I don't believe any action will be taken.
-There is no end, though, to the ominous rumors of what the Faculty will
-do in general.  One day we hear that the two lower classes won't be
-allowed to play football this year, and the next, that all the Freshmen
-are to be put on what is called "probation;" everybody, in an indefinite
-sort of way, is very indignant. To tell the truth, I don't see why; but
-as all the rest are, I am, too.
-
-Berrisford has been very nice ever since that Monday night.  At first I
-think it was a desire to "make amends" that caused him to spend so much
-time in my room and ask me to do so many things with him and his
-friends; but of course he never put it that way.  He was very much
-worried when I told him that my adviser and the Regent had tried to find
-out who had given me the helmet, and he wanted to rush and confess.  It
-took me a good while to persuade him not to.  In fact, I did n't
-persuade him exactly, but only got him to agree at length to let Mr.
-Duggie decide.  Mr. Duggie thought the matter over for a moment, and
-said that as my refusal to tell hadn't, so far as he could see, made me
-a martyr on the altar of friendship, he thought it would be
-unnecessarily theatrical for Berrisford to give himself up.
-
-One day Berrisford asked me where I ate, and when I told him I had been
-trying the places in and about the Square, he said: "Why, you silly
-thing--why don't you join my crowd at Mrs. Brown's?"  He spoke as if the
-idea had just occurred to him, but that same morning when he introduced
-me to a man who came up to his room, the fellow said: "I hear you 're
-coming to our table. That's good."  So it must have all been arranged
-beforehand.  Berrisford 's awfully generous and impulsive and kind, only
-he's so scatter-brained and eccentric you never know what he 's going to
-do next.
-
-I 've done no end of interesting things since I last wrote in my diary.
-I bought a song called "Love's Sorrow" at a music store, had the man
-play it for me five or six times, learned the words and then attempted
-to sing it at the trial of Glee Club candidates.  I 'm sure I sang all
-the notes and I remembered the words without a mistake; but something
-was wrong.  For after I stopped singing the fellow at the piano went on
-playing the accompaniment several minutes.  And when I took my seat I
-heard one of the judges murmur as he wrote something on a slip of paper:
-"Fourth heat; Tommy Trusting shows heels to the bunch and wins in a
-canter."  They told me I would see my name in the "Crimson" when they
-wanted me for rehearsal.  It hasn't appeared yet and that was some time
-ago.
-
-Then one morning I borrowed a jersey and some moleskins from a fellow at
-our table and went over to Soldiers' Field to try for the football team.
-First we lined up for short sprints of twenty yards or so; then they
-divided us into squads and made us practise falling on the ball (I found
-chloroform liniment very good for this; but Berrisford maintains that
-there's nothing like osteopathy). Afterward we practised place kicks,
-drop kicks and punts; candidates for tackle were lined up against one
-another and tried breaking through; quarter-backs and centre-rushes
-practised passing and snapping back the ball. I tried everything--even
-the dummy.
-
-The dummy is an imitation man in football clothes, suspended by pulley
-from a wire stretched between posts twenty-five or thirty feet apart.
-It is weighted by sand in a bag that is supposed to slide up toward the
-pulley as you tackle the thing and grind its nose in the dirt; only it
-does n't.  What actually happens is that some one pulls the dummy
-rapidly from one post to the other, and while the creature is spinning
-through the air you hurl yourself at it, cling to it desperately with
-your finger-nails and teeth for about the tenth of a second, and are
-then flicked off--like a drop of water from a grindstone--into the next
-lot.  When you return, the coach says he thinks "that will do for this
-morning" and enrolls your name in "Squad H."  The members of this
-squad--it's the largest--are told to report for practice when they see
-their names in the "Crimson."  All the others have been out every day or
-so; but although I've read the "Crimson" carefully every morning I
-haven't seen Squad H notified once.
-
-I 've got so that I don't have to look at the printed schedule any more
-to see the days and hours of my various lectures.  I just go to the
-right one when the bell rings as if I had been doing it all my life.  In
-fact the college world has settled down to a routine of lectures and
-recitations, pleasantly broken by football games on Wednesdays and
-Saturdays, dining in town now and then, and the theatre afterward.  Come
-to think of it, I 've been to the theatre rather oftener than "now and
-then."  At home there are only two; and the things we have there--except
-once in a long time--are pretty fierce.  But here there are about seven
-or eight big ones, and all sorts of continuous performance places, dime
-museums and "nickelodeons" besides.  You simply have to go pretty often
-or you miss something good that everybody 's talking about.  Berrisford
-goes every night.
-
-I know now what Mr. Duggie meant when he said my allowance would not be
-big enough. He said it was generous; there, however, I disagree with
-him.  I 'm not in the _least_ extravagant, but papa does n't seem to
-appreciate how many unexpected things happen that cost money.  There was
-my new overcoat, for instance.  Berrisford was having one made, and I
-realized when I saw him trying it on at the tailor's (it's a great,
-soft, loose thing; the kind all the fellows are wearing now) that my old
-one wouldn't do at all.  In fact I had n't cared to put mine on,
-although the wind has been pretty sharp once or twice on the way home
-from town late at night.  The tailor said that now was the time to get a
-coat like Berrisford's, as it would be much more expensive later in the
-season; so I ordered one. In a certain way it was real economy to do so.
-Then, I 've gone to town in the afternoon several times with some of the
-fellows who are at our table and stayed at the last moment to dinner and
-the theatre. I did n't have enough money with me to do all this and was
-n't going to at first; but I found that the others did n't, either, and
-expected to charge their dinners at the hotel. You can even charge
-theatre tickets if you get them from an agent and pay fifty cents more.
-It's very convenient.  I bought a few pictures for my study--it looked
-so bare (Berrisford has all sorts of queer, interesting prints and
-embroideries on his walls that he brought back from abroad); and I
-simply had to get some more chairs.  For I had only one (the whirligig
-in front of the desk doesn't count; it's too uncomfortable), which made
-it embarrassing when four or five men dropped in.  Then I had a dozen
-shirts made at a place just off Tremont Street.  The shirts mamma got me
-at home are very nice and all that; but they're not the kind the fellows
-are wearing here.  Everybody has colored ones--pale pinks and blues, or
-white with a little stripe of something running through them.  Mine were
-all white.  I really did n't need more than six new ones, I suppose, but
-the man said they were cheaper by the dozen.  He showed me some really
-beautiful neckties that had arrived that day from London.  Against the
-materials I had picked out for the shirts they were stunning, and as
-they weren't dear--considering the duty, the originality of the designs
-and the heavy silks they were made of--I let him send me five of them.
-There were the prettiest old pair of brass andirons and a fender in the
-window of an "antique" shop on Beacon Street that I used to stop and
-covet whenever I went into town.  They were just the things for my
-fireplace, which looked rather shabby--although comfortable. I didn't
-think I could afford them at first; but one day when I happened to be
-passing everything in the window was for sale at a discount of ten per
-cent.  The man was very kind and obliging and let me charge them.
-
-They let you do that at all the shops, it seems; but I do think they
-might have a little more decency about sending in their bills.  The
-first of November is three days off--and yet I 've heard from every cent
-I 've spent.  I don't quite know what to do about it, as my
-allowance--even when it comes--won't be nearly enough to pay for
-everything; and of course I 'll have to keep some of it for my board and
-washing and schoolbooks, and all the other little expenses one can't
-very well steer clear of.  Before going to bed the last two nights I 've
-spent an hour or more in itemizing everything and adding it all up, and
-then checking off the people who have to be paid immediately, the ones
-who could wait a short time, and the ones about whom there is no
-particular hurry.  This makes the financial outlook a little more
-possible, but not much.  And yet Duggie had the _nerve_ to say he
-thought my allowance _generous_!
-
-Another matter that I try not to think of is the fact that very soon we
-are to be given what is called "hour examinations" in all our studies.
-I never imagined they would come so--well, abruptly; when we began it
-seemed as if we would take much longer to learn enough to be examined
-in.  To tell the truth--with the exception of my English course--I
-haven't become deeply interested as yet in the lectures.  After the
-first few times I gave up trying to take notes; everything I wrote
-seemed so unimportant.  And I haven't done any of the reading, either.
-They expect you to do a lot of reading at home or in the library, and
-hold you responsible for it in the examination.  The man Berrisford and
-I have in history is a dreamy old thing who goes into thoughtful trances
-every now and then in the middle of a sentence, while three hundred and
-fifty stylographic pens hang in mid-air waiting to harpoon the next
-word.  One day, after telling us to read a certain work on the feudal
-system, he added in a kind of vague, helpless way,--
-
-"We haven't the book in the library and I believe it is out of print, so
-I don't think you will be able to buy it anywhere; but it's a singularly
-perfect exposition of the subject and I strongly advise you all to read
-it."  They say he knows more about fen-drainage in the thirteenth
-century than any other living person except one dreadfully old man in
-Germany who 's beginning to forget about it.
-
-We were instructed to make ourselves familiar with another work that is
-in the library, and told that without a knowledge of it we could not
-expect to accomplish much in the examination.
-
-"I don't suppose many of you will read every word of it," the old man
-said, "although it will do you a vast amount of good if you do."  I
-privately made up my mind to plough through the whole thing--even if it
-were in two volumes; I thought it would please him.  So, the other day
-as it was raining and there was n't anything in particular going on,
-Berrisford suggested that we run over to the library and glance through
-the book.  We'd never been in the library before and had to ask one of
-the pages at the delivery desk where the history alcove was.  He
-couldn't attend to us at first, as there was an angry old gentleman with
-a very red face prancing up and down in front of the desk exclaiming:
-"It's an outrage--an outrage!  I shall certainly speak to the President
-about this before the sun goes down upon my wrath!"  Several other pages
-were cowering behind the desk, and a terrified librarian was murmuring:
-"I can have it here the first thing in the morning, sir--the first
-thing; can you wait that long?"
-
-"But I want it _now_!" the old gentleman declared; "I shall _not_ wait
-until the first thing in the morning.  You 're preposterous. It's an
-outrage!"  He was so emphatic and peevish that some of the students in
-the big reading-room pushed open the swinging doors and stuck their
-heads in to see what the trouble was.
-
-Well, Berrisford and I found out from the page that he is the greatest
-philosopher of modern times.  He had come in to get a book that hadn't
-been asked for in fourteen years, and had just learned that it had been
-carted away to the crypt of Appleton Chapel to make room for something
-that seemed to be rather more universal in its appeal.
-
-The page took us to the alcove we were looking for, and Berrisford found
-our book almost immediately.  My back was toward him when he discovered
-it, and I turned around only because of his unusual and prolonged
-silence.  He was standing petrified in front of eighteen fat, dog-eared
-volumes, with his big eyes blinking like an owl confronted by a dazzling
-light.
-
-"Is that it?" I inquired after a moment in a cold, hushed voice.  By way
-of answer he merely rolled his eyes and swallowed as if his throat were
-dry.
-
-"It's a masterly little thing--isn't it?" he at length managed to say.
-Then without further comment we removed the volumes from the shelf and
-piled them on a table in the alcove.  They almost covered it.  When we
-had finished, Berrisford, with a grim look about his under lip, opened
-one of them and began to read.  I did the same.  It was just three
-o'clock.  We read for an hour without speaking or looking at each other,
-and at the end of that time Berrisford took a pencil from his pocket and
-began to make calculations on the back of a letter.  At last he looked
-up as if to demand my attention.
-
-"I have read this book conscientiously--footnotes and everything--for an
-hour," he said; he was deliberate and there was an air of finality in
-his tone.  "I find that I have completed five pages--the meaning of
-which has since escaped me.  Now, as there are four hundred pages in
-this volume and as many, presumably, in every one of the other
-seventeen, it will take me one thousand four hundred and forty
-hours--sixty days, or two months--to 'familiarize' myself with the whole
-set.  If we sit here night and day for the next two months without
-taking a second off to eat, sleep, or bathe, we shall have glanced
-through this superficial pamphlet and pleased the old man."
-
-"I think it has stopped raining," I replied.
-
-We have a new inmate at our house.  I woke up one morning hearing such a
-strange, wild, sad little song coming from my study. At first I thought
-I must have dreamed it, but even after I sat up in bed and knew I was
-awake, the sound continued.  It was the queerest, most barbaric little
-refrain, all in a minor key with words I could n't make out, and was the
-sort of thing one could imagine a "native" of some kind crooning to
-himself in the middle of a rice-field.  I listened to it awhile--almost
-afraid to go in; but when it began to grow louder, and then was
-interrupted from time to time by the most horrible gurgling and
-strangling noises, I jumped up and opened my study door.  At the same
-moment Berrisford and Mrs. Chester appeared at the other door. In the
-middle of the room was a bristling brown thing with pointed ears and
-muzzle and shrewd little eyes.  It had absurdly big feet and looked like
-a baby wolf.  Something that seemed to be a piece of leather was
-dangling from its mouth.  Berrisford threw himself on the floor,
-exclaiming: "My darling--my Saga--what is it--speak to me!" and pulled
-gently at the piece of leather.  The brute rolled his eyes, gagged a
-little, and let him have it.  "Why, it's the thumb of a glove,"
-Berrisford said, holding up his prize for us to look at, "and he dess
-tould n't eat it 'tause it had a nassy tin button wivetted on uzzer end,
-so he tould n't," he added to the animal.
-
-"That doesn't seem to have stood in the way of his eating the other
-one," I remarked coldly, for there was enough of the chewed thing in
-Berrisford's hand to enable me to identify the remains of a pair of very
-expensive gloves I had bought two days before.
-
-"Heavens!--do you suppose he really did?" Berrisford asked in great
-alarm.  "Do you think it will hurt him?"
-
-"Of course he ate it.  I don't see it anywhere, and they were both
-together on that chair.  I hope it _will_ hurt him," I said.
-
-"It is n't like you, Wood, to talk that way about a poor, lonely,
-foreign thing who 's never been in a house before in all his life,"
-Berrisford muttered resentfully.
-
-"Well, he certainly do make the most outlandish sounds," Mrs. Chester
-interposed.
-
-"It isn't outlandish--it's Icelandic," Berrisford replied.  "He came all
-the way from Reikiavik on a Gloucester fishing-smack.  I bought him at
-Gloucester yesterday for a dollar--didn't I, my booful Saga; ess he did.
-And he dess chewed all de checks often de trunks in dat nassy old
-baggage car on de way up--didn't he, darlin'?  And dat horrid baggage
-man was dess crazy 'tause he did n't know where to put off any baggage
-and had to delay de twain like evvysing."  Berrisford became quite
-incoherent after this, so I returned to my bedroom and slammed the door.
-
-I don't think it's right for any one man to inflict a whole community
-with a beast like Saga, and I 've told Berrisford so several times; but
-he always says: "You seem to forget that I suffer as much, if not more,
-than any one.  Do you ever hear _me_ complain when he wallows in the mud
-and then snuggles up in _my_ bed?  Was there any outcry when he ate _my_
-gloves and _my_ patent leather shoes and _my_ Russia leather notebook
-with hundreds of exhaustive, priceless notes on the first part of
-'Paradise Lost'? Did I make a violent scene--the way you and Duggie do
-every day--when I gave the tea for my sister and found him just before
-the people came--behind the bathtub in a state of coma from having eaten
-thirty-six perfectly _delicious_ lettuce sandwiches?  You might at least
-admit that you think he 's just as distinguished and quaint-looking as
-he can be; because, of course, you do think so. You know you love him to
-follow you through the Square--with everybody turning to look--you know
-you do.  Does n't he, _mon tou-tou, mon bebe, mon chien de race_?"
-
-One of the fellows at the table invited us to dine at his house in town
-last Sunday evening.  Berrisford was to meet me at a hotel in the Back
-Bay at a quarter past seven and we were to go together.  I took a long
-walk that afternoon, and the air was so delicious and the autumn foliage
-in the country so beautiful that I didn't realize how late it was until
-I looked at a clock in a jeweller's window on the way back.  I hurried
-to my room to dress, and as I opened the front door my heart suddenly
-sank--for upstairs I heard Saga chanting his terrible little refrain.
-We have all come to dread that sound at our house, for it invariably
-means the loss of a cherished object to somebody. Berrisford calls it
-the "Icelandic Hunger and Death Motif."  I ran upstairs and found Saga
-eating one of the tails of my dress-coat which I had hung over the back
-of a chair in my study to get the creases out.  He had apparently first
-torn it off, then divided it into small pieces, and was consuming them
-one by one as I came in.  I was already late for dinner, and as it was
-Sunday evening there was no one in town from whom I could borrow another
-coat. For a moment I could n't decide whether to sit down and cry or to
-commit Sagacide.
-
-
-
-
-                                  *IV*
-
-
-Of course I went to the dinner--and what is more, I arrived almost on
-time.  I can't give myself any particular credit for this achievement,
-however, as it was luck, pure and simple, that got me there.  There is
-no doubt about it, I am marvellously lucky; I seem to have a knack of
-falling on my feet, and although Duggie has taken to worrying about my
-"shiftlessness" (as he is pleased to call it) in money matters, and the
-calmness with which I regard the approaching examinations and the
-academic side of college in general, I have a feeling that everything
-will come out all right somehow.
-
-It would sound heartless, I suppose, to speak as if I thought it
-fortunate that Jerry Brooks had been stricken with appendicitis just in
-time to get me into the dinner, if it were n't for the fact that he is
-recovering so splendidly.  (I went up to the hospital this afternoon to
-inquire.)  But under the circumstances it is hard not to look upon his
-sudden seizure rather cheerfully--as I know he will enjoy hearing about
-it when he is well enough to see people.  I was in despair that evening
-when his roommate came clattering up our tin steps and pounded on
-Berrisford's door; but the instant I ran into the hall and saw him my
-heart gave a great throb of hope.  He had his dress clothes on; but he
-didn't look in the least like a person on the way to dine in town--and I
-felt with indescribable relief that, if this were the case, I could have
-his coat.
-
-"Isn't Berrisford here?  Has he gone?" he exclaimed excitedly.  (I had
-never seen him before--although I knew his chum, Brooks, slightly.)  "We
-were going to dine at the same house in town, but my roommate, Jerry
-Brooks, got sick just as I was starting and I can't go, and two doctors
-have taken him up to the hospital, and the Hemingtons haven't a
-telephone, and I thought I'd let Berrisford know, for, of course----"
-
-Well, his coat didn't fit me in a way to make a tailor expire with envy
-exactly, but I was mighty glad to get it--and anyhow, I think people are
-inclined to take a dress-suit for granted.  Berrisford attached no
-importance whatever to the fact that his beast had ruined my coat, but
-merely said reproachfully: "I hope you let him have the pieces to play
-with; he 'll be so lonely this evening with no one in the house except
-Mrs. Chester."
-
-I have mentioned the fact that of late Duggie has given intimations of
-having me "on his mind."  Of course when a man like Duggie finds time to
-care one way or the other about what he thinks you ought to do, it's a
-great honor.  He is the busiest, hardest worked, and most influential
-person I ever knew.  He belongs to no end of clubs, and besides being
-captain of the team he's at the head of a lot of other college things.
-Almost every day there's a reporter or two lying in wait for him out
-here to ask about the team, and whether he approves of the athletic
-committee's latest mandate, and what he thinks about all sorts of things
-in regard to which he hasn't any opinion whatever--and would n't express
-it even if he had. Besides all this he manages in some way to study
-awfully hard and to get high marks in everything he takes.  Furthermore,
-he's in training most of the year, and just now he has to go to bed
-every night except Saturday at half-past nine or ten.  He's almost
-always amiable and kind to people, and I think he's great.  I can't help
-liking the fact that he drops into my room and sits down and talks the
-way he does.  Some of the fellows at our table found him there the other
-day and were scared to death.  But at the same time I have a feeling
-that he does n't think Berrisford and I are just what we ought to be.
-As if people could be different from the way they 're made!  I know that
-sometimes he would like to say things that, after all, he never quite
-does.
-
-Of Berrisford, I 'm sure, he doesn't approve at all.  I don't, of
-course, believe for a moment that he was anything but amused at the way
-Berrisford conjugated the French verb for him the other day; but as it
-is the sort of thing that Berri takes an uncontrollable joy in doing, I
-think Duggie has an idea that he is n't good for anything else.
-
-Duggie--I can't imagine why--has never studied French until this year.
-He enrolled in a class only a week or so ago, and though it's merely an
-extra course with him and he could get his degree just as easily without
-it, he goes at it as if it were all-important. Berrisford knows French
-as well as he knows English, and volunteered to help him with his
-exercises.  The other afternoon Duggie ran into Berri's room and said:
-"I 've an idea that we're going to have '_je suis bon_' in French
-to-day; I wish you would write out a few tenses for me so I can learn
-them on the way over--I simply have n't had a minute to myself for two
-days."  Naturally Berrisford seemed delighted to help him, and gravely
-wrote something on a piece of paper that Duggie carried off just as the
-bell was ringing.  When he got into the Yard and slowed up to look at
-it, this is what he found:
-
-    _Je suis bon_
-    _Tu es bones_
-    _Il est beans_
-    _Nous sommes bonbons_
-    _Vous etes bonbonnieres_
-    _Ils sont bon-ton._
-
-
-Of course he did n't actually care; but I don't think the incident
-helped in Duggie's opinion to throw any very dazzling light on
-Berrisford's really serious qualities.  Duggie regarded it, I 'm sure,
-as about on a par with the way we get out of sitting through our history
-lecture.
-
-One day when the dreamy old gentleman who conducts the history course
-was trying to prove that Charlemagne either was or was n't surprised (I
-'ve forgotten which) when the Pope suddenly produced a crown and stuck
-it on his head, a ripple of mirth swept gently across the room, very
-much as a light breeze ruffles the surface of a wheatfield. No one
-laughed out loud; but when between three and four hundred men all smile
-at once, it makes a curious little disturbance I can't quite describe.
-The old gentleman looked up from his notes, took off his spectacles,
-chose one of the other pairs lying on the desk in front of him (he has
-three or four kinds that he uses for different distances), and inspected
-the room.  But by the time he had got himself properly focused there was
-nothing to see; the fellow who had made every one giggle by climbing out
-of the window and down the fire-escape was probably a block away.  So,
-after a troubled, inquiring look from side to side, the dear old man
-changed his spectacles again and went on with the lecture.
-
-Now, although it had never occurred to any one to crawl down the
-fire-escape until that day, every one in our part of the room has become
-infatuated with the idea, and three times a week--shortly after
-half-past two--there is a continuous stream of men backing out the
-window, down the iron ladder and into the Yard.  In fact, the struggle
-to escape became so universal and there were so many scraps at the
-window and in mid-air on the way down over who should go first, that
-Berrisford evolved the idea of distributing numbers the way they do in
-barbershops on Saturday afternoon when everybody in the world becomes
-inspired with the desire to be shaved at the same time.  It works
-beautifully; but of late the undertaking is attended by considerable
-risk.
-
-At first Professor Kinde stopped lecturing and fumbled for his other
-spectacles only when he heard the class titter; I don't believe he in
-the least knew what was going on. But recently he has become extremely
-foxy. Although he has n't spoken of the matter, he realizes what is
-happening, and I think the ambition of his declining years is to catch
-somebody in the act of darting toward the window.  At irregular
-intervals now, throughout his lectures, he--apropos of nothing--drops
-his notes, seizes a fresh pair of spectacles, makes a lightning change,
-and then peeks craftily about the room while the class tries hard not to
-hurt his feelings by laughing.  Then, disappointed, but with an air of
-"I 'll-surely-strike-it-right-next-time," he changes back again and
-continues.  The lectures have become so exciting and fragmentary that
-Berrisford and I are torn with the conflicting desires to stay and see
-what happens and to get out into the wonderful autumn weather.  Usually,
-however, we leave, and the last time, just as I was preparing to drop to
-the ground, Duggie strode in sight. Berrisford, half-way down, happened
-to glance over his shoulder.  When he saw Duggie he swung around, struck
-an Alexandre Dumas attitude, and exclaimed dramatically,--
-
-"Sire, we have liberated the prisoners, cut away the portcullis and
-fired the powder magazine.  Is 't well?"  Duggie laughed.
-
-"Powder magazines aren't the only things that get fired around these
-parts, monsieur," he answered as he passed on.
-
-Now, there was nothing disagreeable either in the remark or the way
-Duggie made it; he seemed perfectly good-natured, and, although in a
-great hurry, very much amused.  But, somehow, it was n't quite as if any
-one else had said it.  I don't know what "reading between the lines" is
-called when there aren't any lines to read between; but anyhow that's
-what I couldn't help doing.  Duggie's little thrust was made at
-Berri--but it was intended for me.  And that 's what I mean when I say
-Duggie has me on his mind.  He would have Berri there, too, if he liked
-him; but he does n't.  I think he firmly believes that he regards us
-both with the utmost impartiality; yet I know (this is recorded in all
-modesty, merely as a fact) that he likes me, and that for poor Berri he
-has no use at all.  Berrisford is tactless; he had no business, for
-instance, to tell Duggie about the watch.
-
-One Saturday morning when Berrisford had finished his lectures for the
-day, and I found that a cut was to be given in my last one, we strolled
-along Massachusetts Avenue, without really meaning to go anywhere, until
-we came to the bridge across the Back Bay.  We leaned over the rail
-awhile and watched the tide clutching viciously at the piers as it
-swirled out, and then, farther up, I noticed a flock of ducks paddling
-about in a most delightful little mud-hole left by the falling tide.
-
-"I could hit one of those birdies if I had a shotgun," I said, closing
-one eye.  (It just shows what a trivial remark may sometimes lead one
-into.)
-
-"It wouldn't do you any good," Berrisford yawned; "you couldn't get it."
-
-"I don't see why not.  I could borrow a boat from the Humane Society and
-row out," I answered, rather irritated by Berrisford's languid
-scepticism.
-
-"Well, what on earth would you do with the poor little beast after you
-did get him?" he pursued.
-
-"What do you suppose?" I exclaimed. "What do people usually do when they
-shoot a duck?"
-
-"I think they usually say that they really hit two, but that the other
-one managed to crawl into a dense patch of wild rice growing near by,"
-Berrisford answered.
-
-"I should have it cooked and then I 'd eat it," I said, ignoring his
-remark.
-
-"What an extremely piggish performance! There would not be enough for
-any one but yourself.  I would much rather go into town with somebody
-and have one apiece at the Touraine."
-
-"Oh, Berrisford," I murmured; "this is so sudden!"
-
-When we reached the other side of the bridge we got on a passing car,
-and after we sat down Berrisford said, "You 'll have to pay for me; I
-have n't any money either here or in Cambridge."  As I had just eight
-cents in the world and had taken it for granted that Berri was going to
-pay for me, we jumped out before the conductor came around, and resumed
-our walk.
-
-"If you have n't any money and I haven't any money, I 'm inclined to
-think the ducks will not fly well to-day," I mused; for the last time we
-had been to the Touraine the head waiter--a most tiresome person--told
-me we could n't charge anything more there until we paid our bills.
-
-"I suppose you would just sit on the curbstone and starve," Berrisford
-sniffed. And as we walked along I saw that he had some kind of a plan.
-He took me through one of the queer little alleys with which Boston is
-honeycombed and out into a noisy, narrow, foreign-looking street, lined
-with shabby second-hand stores and snuffy restaurants,--the kind that
-have red tablecloths. At first I thought it was Berri's intention to get
-luncheon in one of these places, although I did n't see how even he
-could manage it very well on eight cents. However, I asked no questions.
-Suddenly he stopped and took off his sleeve-links.  Then we walked on a
-few steps and went into a pawnbroker's.
-
-It sounds absurd, but when I discovered what Berrisford was about to do
-I felt curiously excited and embarrassed.  Of course I knew that lots of
-people pawn things, but I had never seen it done before, and like most
-of the things you can think about and read about in cold blood, I found
-that it made my heart beat a good deal faster actually to do it. In
-fact, I did n't care to do it at all, and told Berrisford so in an
-undertone; but he said,--
-
-"Why not?  There 's nothing wrong in it. You own something more or less
-valuable and you happen for the moment to need something else; why
-should n't you exchange them?  If the soiled vampire who runs this place
-(what's become of him, anyhow?) would give me two small roasted ducks
-and some bread and butter and currant jelly and two little cups of
-coffee and a waiter to serve them, and a mediaeval banquet hall to eat
-them in, and a perfectly awful orchestra behind a thicket of imitation
-palm-trees to play Hungarian rhapsodies while we ate--instead of five
-dollars and a half, I should be just as well pleased; because it will
-amount to about the same thing in the end."
-
-Just then the proprietor of the shop emerged from behind a mound of
-trousers and overcoats and shuffled toward us very unwillingly, it
-seemed to me.  But Berrisford said he was always like that.
-
-"You can't expect a display of pleasing emotions for a paltry five per
-cent a month," Berrisford whispered in my ear.  I don't think, however,
-that the pawnbroker could have looked pleasant no matter what per cent
-he got.  He took Berri's beautiful sleeve-links (they 're made of four
-antique Japanese gold pieces), went into a sort of glass cage built
-around a high desk and a safe, and did all sorts of queer things to
-them.  He scratched the under side of two of the coins with a small
-file; then he dabbed some kind of a liquid that he got out of a tiny
-bottle on the rough places and examined them through one of those inane
-spool things that jewellers hang on their eyeballs just before telling
-you that you 've busted your mainspring.  Next he weighed them in a pair
-of scales that he fished out of a drawer in the desk, and finally he
-held up his claw of a hand with all the fingers distended, for us to
-inspect through the glass.
-
-"Why, you dreadful old man!" Berrisford exclaimed indignantly.  "You
-gave me five and a half last time.  I wouldn't think of taking less."
-
-For a moment I supposed that the game was up and we 'd have to walk all
-the way back to Cambridge and be too late for luncheon when we got
-there; for Berrisford took his sleeve-links and strolled over to the
-door, saying in a loud voice,--
-
-"Come on, Tommy; there 's a better one across the street."  But just as
-we were leaving, "the soiled vampire" made a guttural sound that
-Berrisford seemed to understand, and we went back and got the amount
-Berri considered himself entitled to.
-
-"The quality of mercy is a little strained this morning," he said when
-Mr. Hirsch went into the glass cage again to make out the ticket.  I
-always had an idea that a pawn ticket was a piece of blue
-cardboard--something like a return theatre ticket.  But it is n't, at
-all.  It's simply a thin slip of paper resembling a check--only smaller.
-
-Well, we had a delightful luncheon.  After luncheon we thought of going
-to the matinee and sitting in the gallery, but Berri all at once
-exclaimed, as if the idea were a sort of inspiration,--
-
-"I 'll tell you what we 'll do; let 's economize.  I 've always wanted
-to; they say you can be awfully nice and contented if you never spend a
-cent, but just think noble thoughts."
-
-"We might go and look at the pictures in the Public Library and then
-cross over to the Art Museum," I suggested.  "It's free on Saturdays,
-you know."  Berri thought that would be charming, so we walked up
-Boylston Street, stopping at a florist's on the way to send some
-American beauties and some violets to Mrs. Hemington, at whose house we
-dined that Sunday night.  (She was thrown out of a carriage the other
-day and sprained her thumb, and we thought we ought to take some notice
-of it, as she was very nice about asking us to come to Sunday luncheon
-whenever we wanted to.)
-
-Berrisford did n't care much for the Puvis de Chavannes pictures in the
-library,--that is, after he found out that they were as finished as they
-were ever going to be.  At first he was inclined to think them rather
-promising, and said that by the time they got the second and third coats
-of paint on they would no doubt do very nicely.
-
-"But the artist is dead," I explained. "And anyhow, he always painted
-like that."
-
-"Why did n't some one speak to him about it?" said Berri.
-
-"There would n't have been any use; he painted that way on purpose.  It
-was his style--his individuality," I said.
-
-"Do you like it?" he suddenly demanded. He was looking at me very
-intently, and I did n't know just what to say; for although I 've gone
-to see the pictures several times, it never occurred to me to ask myself
-whether I really liked them or not.  I supposed--as every one says they
-are so fine--that I did.
-
-"I don't mean do you know how much they cost, or what people said about
-them in the backs of magazines when they were first put up.  What I want
-to know is--  Does looking at them give you great pleasure?"
-
-"I think they 're simply preposterous," I said; and then we went
-outdoors again and over to the Art Museum.
-
-We spent the rest of the afternoon there, sitting in front of a painting
-by Turner called The Slave Ship, and listening to what the people who
-passed by said about it.  I did n't think there was very much to
-it--it's merely some small, dark brown legs in a storm at sea with a
-fire burning.  But the people who came to look at it murmured all sorts
-of things in low, sad voices, and several of them read long extracts
-from a book that Berri said was by Ruskin.  When I asked him how he
-knew, he answered that it could n't well be by any one else.  (A great
-many people say that Berri's a fool, but I think he knows an awful lot.)
-
-It makes one tired and hungry to criticise pictures all afternoon, and
-when we left the gallery Berri sat down on the steps and said he could
-never walk all the way to Cambridge in his exhausted condition; so once
-more we found ourselves confronted by famine.
-
-Now, if mamma were only here I know I could explain everything to her,
-and she would n't think me so lacking in respect for my ancestors--so
-utterly lost--as she evidently does.  But until she gets my letter (and
-perhaps even afterward) she will be unhappy over the crude, unqualified
-fact that I pawned my watch.
-
-It belonged to my great-grandfather and is a fine old thing with a
-wreath of gold and platinum roses on its round gold face.  I got
-twenty-five dollars on it.  Nobody but Berri would have known, and there
-would n't have been the least fuss if Uncle Peter had n't come to town.
-
-He was in Boston on business and appeared in my room one afternoon a few
-days afterward.  I was ever so glad to see somebody from home, and I
-introduced him to Berri, who helped me show him the gym and Soldiers'
-Field and the glass flowers and pretty much everything open to visitors.
-He had a lovely time and asked us to dinner in the evening.
-
-We had a pleasant dinner--only Uncle Peter kept glancing at his watch
-every few minutes (he was leaving on an early train). Finally he said:
-"What time is it, Tommy? I 'm afraid I 'm slow."
-
-From force of habit I felt for my watch, and then, I suppose, I must
-have looked queer, for Berrisford began to chuckle, and Uncle Peter,
-after a moment of mystification, jumped hastily to a conclusion that, I
-am sorry to say, happened to be correct. He rubbed it in all through
-dinner and on the way to the station, and I suppose when he reached home
-he told mamma the first thing.  For the evening of the day he arrived I
-got a telegram from mamma that said: "Redeem watch immediately. Keep
-this from your father; it would kill him."
-
-Of course Berri had to elaborate the thing in his best style and keep
-Duggie awake for half an hour while he told him about it.
-
-"I made it very graphic," he said to me gloomily, "but somehow or other
-it didn't seem to take."
-
-
-
-
-                                  *V*
-
-
-The crash has come, and the Dean and my adviser, two or three
-instructors, some of the fellows at the table, and even Berrisford (this
-last is a little too much), have all taken occasion to inform me
-regretfully that they foresaw it from the first.  This is the sort of
-thing that makes a man bitter.  How did I know what was ahead of me?  If
-they all realized so well that I was going to flunk the hour exams, why
-did n't they let me know then?  It might have done some good if they had
-told me three weeks ago that they thought me stupid; but I fail to see
-the point of their giving me to understand at this stage of the game
-that they themselves all along have been so awfully clever.  Yet, that's
-just what they've done; all except Duggie.  And strangely enough it was
-Duggie that I most dreaded.  As a matter of fact he has scarcely
-mentioned the subject.  When I went into his room one night and stood
-around for a while without knowing how to begin and finally came out
-with,--
-
-"Well, I suppose Berri 's told you that I didn't get through a single
-exam?"--he merely said,--
-
-"That 's tough luck; I 'm darned sorry;" and then after a moment he
-added: "Oh, well, there 'll be some more coming along in February; it is
-n't as if they were n't going to let you have another whack at things."
-
-"Of course I know it is n't my last chance," I answered drearily; "but I
-can't help feeling that the fact of its being my first makes it almost
-as bad.  It starts me all wrong in the opinion of the Dean and my
-adviser and the college generally."  Somehow I could n't bring myself to
-tell Duggie what I thought, and what, in a measure, I still
-think--namely, that the marks I got were most unjust. There 's something
-about Duggie--I don't know what it is exactly--that always makes you try
-to take the tone, when you 're telling him anything, that you feel he
-would take if he were telling the same thing to you.  This sounds rather
-complicated, but what I mean, for instance, is that if he got E in all
-his exams and thought the instructors had been unjust, he would probably
-go and have it out with them, but he would n't complain to any one else.
-Of course it 's simply nonsense even to pretend, for the sake of
-argument, that Duggie could flunk in anything; but, anyhow, that 's what
-I mean.
-
-However, I did n't have the same hesitation in saying to Berrisford that
-I considered myself pretty badly treated.
-
-"I know, of course, that I didn't write clever papers," I told him, "but
-I at least wrote long ones.  They ought to give me some credit for that;
-enough to squeeze through on, anyhow."  Berri agreed with me perfectly
-that all the instructors were unjust, yet at the same time he said, with
-a peculiarly irritating, judicial manner that he sometimes assumes when
-you least expect it,--
-
-"But I can understand--I can understand. It's most unfortunate--but it
-'s very human--very natural.  As long as we employ this primitive,
-inadequate method of determining the amount of a man's knowledge, we
-must expect to collide every now and then with the personal equation."
-This sounded like a new superintendent addressing the village school
-board for the first time, but I did n't say anything, as I knew there
-was something behind it that Berri did n't care just then to make more
-clear.  Berri has exceedingly definite ideas about things, but he "aims
-to please;" he finds it hard to express himself and at the same time to
-make everything come out pleasantly in the end.
-
-"What you say is no doubt important and true," I answered; "but I don't
-know what it means."
-
-"Why, I simply mean that in thinking the matter over one can't get
-around the fact that ever since college opened you 've been--what shall
-I say?  People have been more aware of you than your size would seem to
-justify; you 've been, as it were, a cinder in the public eye."
-Berrisford stopped abruptly, and for a moment looked sort of aghast.
-
-"Oh, I beg your pardon," he exclaimed, more in his natural tone; "I had
-n't any idea it was coming out that way; that's the trouble with
-metaphors."
-
-"I don't see how I 've been more of a cinder than any one else--than
-you've been, for instance," I objected.  "I 've seen more of you than I
-'ve seen of any one, and I 've been seen more with you," I added.
-
-"That's the frightful injustice of it," Berrisford put in triumphantly.
-"That's what I 'm trying to get at."  (I don't believe he was at all,
-but I let him continue.)  "We 've always done about the same things--but
-fate has ordained that in every instance you were to leave your impress
-upon the wax of hostile opinion, while I was as the house of sand,
-effaced by Neptune's briny hand.  (Doesn't that last sound exactly like
-Pope at his worst?)  You see, you got yourself arrested at the very
-beginning of things.  Of course, socially speaking, it was a brilliant
-move; it simply made you.  But on the other hand, I don't think it
-helped very much to--to--well, to bring you thoroughly in touch with the
-Faculty; and one has to look out for that. Then, you know, of all the
-hundreds that swarmed down the fire-escape during Professor Kinde's
-lectures, you were the only one who had the misfortune to be caught.
-This naturally made the fire-escape impossible from then on, and once
-more turned the garish light of publicity upon you.  And to cap all--you
-were inspired to give Mr. Much the fine arts book.  Why, my dear child,
-your name is a household word!"
-
-The incident of the fine arts book, I confess, was enough to make a man
-just give up and turn cynical.
-
-Mr. Much is a Boston architect who comes out from town twice a week to
-lecture on ancient art.  They think a great deal of him in Boston.  He
-stands at the head of his profession there, because, as he's never built
-anything, even the most critical have no grounds for complaint.  Berri
-says there are lots of people like that in Boston,--painters and writers
-and musicians who are really very great, but think it more refined just
-to "live" their works.  He meets them at his aunt's house, where they
-often gather to talk it all over.  Well, at the first lecture Much told
-us to buy and read carefully a certain treatise on ancient art and
-always bring it to the lectures, as he would refer to it frequently. I
-acted on his advice to the extent of examining the book in the
-co-operative store one day; but it was large and heavy and the
-illustrations were rather old-fashioned, and it cost two dollars, so I
-decided I could get along without it.  Most of the fellows did the same
-thing, and the impulsive few who actually bought it got tired after a
-while of lugging it to the lectures, as Much did n't show any intention
-of ever referring to it.
-
-One morning as I was strolling over to hear him tell about the influence
-of Greek something or other on something else, and the deplorable
-decadence it had undergone later at the hands of the Romans, Hemington
-darted out of a bookstore in the Square and said: "If you 're going to
-Fine Arts, just take this book and give it to Bertie Stockbridge."
-(Bertie is his roommate.)  "I 'm going to cut; I have to meet my father
-in town."  I took the book and pursued my way.
-
-Now, that morning, for the first time, Much, after lecturing for about
-half an hour, surprised every one by breaking off abruptly and saying,--
-
-"There's a very helpful note on page eighteen of Geschmitzenmenger's
-Ancient Art that I wish you would all turn to."  Then after a moment he
-added: "As some of us may have failed to bring the book this morning, I
-think I shall read the note in question aloud."  He came to the edge of
-the platform and with a solicitous smile held out his hand; but no one
-in the front row had a book to lend him.  His smile changed to an
-expression of mild disgust, and he glanced along the second row of
-seats.  No one responded, however, and he swept the room with a look of
-annoyance, exclaiming, "Come--come," and snapping his fingers
-impatiently.  Just then the fellow next to me murmured: "Will any lady
-or gentleman in the audience kindly lend me a high hat, three rabbits,
-and a dozen fresh eggs?" and I laughed.  And as I laughed, I leaned over
-to hide my face--and there on my lap was Geschmitzenmenger's Ancient
-Art; after Hemington had given it to me I was so interested in whether
-he would catch his car or not that I had never looked at it at all.
-
-"Is it possible that no one has provided himself with the book I
-requested you to procure?" Mr. Much was asking incredulously. I saw my
-chance to make a hit, and after a moment of impressive silence I arose
-and walked to the platform.  There was a gust of dumfounded laughter,
-followed by prolonged applause.  As I went back to my seat all the
-fellows who could reach me insisted on patting me on the back and
-grasping me by the hand.  It was most embarrassing.  But the really
-sickening part of it was to come.
-
-Mr. Much made a little speech about me, saying, "I am glad that there is
-at least one, etc., etc., etc.," and when he had finished he opened the
-book with a flourish and found, as was quite natural, that none of the
-leaves had been cut.  I suppose this was in the nature of a last straw,
-for he simply stood there a minute, fingering the pages helplessly and
-smiling the pitiful, philosophic smile of one who has lived long enough
-to have had even his most conservative illusions dispelled; then he
-turned the book around and held it open for every one to howl at, and
-finally he dismissed us with a hopeless gesture that expressed the
-unutterable.  Whereupon I was seized by strong, willing hands and borne
-aloft all over the Yard, followed by the whole class hooting and
-jeering.
-
-It was this that led Berri to say that my name had become a household
-word.
-
-"You see," Berri went on, "when an instructor reads my examination book,
-for instance, the signature of the writer conveys nothing to him; but
-when he strikes yours--he stops and exclaims, 'Where have I seen that
-name before?'  Then he sharpens his pencil to its finest possible point
-and gives you E."
-
-"But you do agree with me that it's terribly unjust?" I asked him; for
-that, after all, seemed to be the main thing.
-
-"Why, of course it's unjust," Berrisford answered decidedly.  "It 's one
-of the worst cases that has ever come to my notice."
-
-It did n't occur to me until afterward that, as these were our first
-examinations, Berrisford's "notice" had not been particularly extensive.
-For I felt so badly about the whole thing that it was agreeable to know
-that an intelligent person like Berrisford believed I had been shabbily
-treated.  It was his moral support, I think, that gave me nerve enough
-to complain to my adviser.
-
-My adviser is a young man and seems like an appreciative, well-disposed
-sort of person (he offered me a cigar after I had sat down in his
-study), so I did n't have any difficulty in telling him right off what I
-had come for.
-
-"I 've heard from my hour examinations," I said, "and I find that I have
-been given E in all of them."  (I was careful not to say that I had
-failed or flunked, or had n't passed, as that was not the impression I
-wished to convey.)
-
-"We have met the enemy and we are theirs," he answered pleasantly.
-"Yes, I heard about that," he went on, "and I hoped you would come in to
-see me."  Then he waited awhile--until the clock began to get noisy--and
-at last he glanced up and said,--
-
-"What was it doing when you came in? It looked like snow this
-afternoon."  But I had n't gone there to discuss meteorology, so I
-ignored his remark.
-
-"I can scarcely think I could have failed in everything," I suggested.
-
-"It is somewhat incredible, isn't it?" the young man murmured.
-
-"I never stopped writing from the time an examination began until it
-stopped," I said.
-
-"What did you think it was--a strength test?" he asked brutally.
-
-"I told all I knew."
-
-"Yes," he acknowledged; "your instructors were convinced of that."
-
-"And I don't think I got enough credit for it.  If I had the books here,
-I feel sure I could make this plain."
-
-"Well, let 's look them over," he answered readily; and much to my
-astonishment he went to his desk and brought back all my blue-books.
-
-I confess I had n't expected anything quite so definite as this, but I
-tried to appear as if I had hoped that it was just what might happen.
-We sat down side by side and read aloud--first an examination question
-(he had provided himself with a full set of the papers) and then my
-answer to it.
-
-"'Explain polarized light,'" he read.
-
-"'The subject of polarized light, as I understand it, is not very well
-understood,'" I began; at which my adviser put his hands to his head and
-rocked to and fro.
-
-"If you don't mind," I said, "I think I'd rather begin on one of the
-others; this physics course is merely to make up a condition, and
-perhaps I 've not devoted very much time to it; it isn't a fair test."
-So we took up the history paper and read the first question, which was:
-"What was the Lombard League?"  My answer I considered rather neat, for
-I had written: "The Lombard League was a coalition formed by the
-Lombards."  I paused after reading it and glanced at my adviser.
-
-"It was a simple question, and I gave it a simple answer," I murmured.
-
-"I 'm afraid you depreciate yourself, Mr. Wood," he replied.  "Your use
-of the word 'coalition' is masterly."
-
-"But what more could I have said?" I protested.
-
-"I don't think you could have said anything more," he answered
-inscrutably.
-
-I read on and on, and he interrupted me only twice--once in the
-philosophy course to point out politely that what I constantly referred
-to as "Hobbe's Octopus" ought to be "Hobbe's Leviathan," and once in the
-questions in English Literature, to explain that somebody or other's
-"Apologia Pro Vita Sua" was not--as I had translated it--"an apology for
-living in a sewer."  (I could have killed Berrisford for that--and it
-sounded so plausible, too; for any one who lived in a sewer would
-naturally apologize.)  He let me proceed, and after a time I could n't
-even bring myself to stop and contest the decisions as I had done at
-first; for I dreaded the way he had of making my most serious remarks
-sound rather childish.  So I rattled on, faster and faster, until I
-found myself mumbling in a low tone, without pronouncing half the words;
-and then I suddenly stopped and put the blue-book on the table and
-stared across the room at the wall.  He did n't express any surprise,
-which, on the whole, was very decent of him, and after a minute or two
-of silence, during which he gathered up the evidence and put it back in
-his desk, we began to talk football and our chances of winning the big
-game. He said some nice things about Duggie, and hoped the rumor that he
-was overtrained was n't true.  I told him that I lived in the same house
-with Duggie and knew him very well, and feared it was true.  He seemed
-glad that I knew Duggie.  I stayed for about fifteen minutes so as not
-to seem abrupt or angry at the way my visit had turned out, and then
-left.  We did n't refer to the exams again, so I don't see exactly how I
-can ever right the wrong they have done me.  If my adviser were a
-different kind of man, I could have managed it, I think.
-
-I have n't seen very much of the fellows lately, except, of course, at
-meals--that is to say, at luncheon and dinner, for I can't stand their
-comments at breakfast.  They greet me with "Hello, old man--what's this
-I hear about your trying for the Phi Beta Kappa?"  "Is it true that
-you're going to get your degree in three years?"  "I should n't go in
-for a _summa cum_ if I were you; a _magna_ is just as good;" and all
-that sort of thing.  They evidently find it very humorous, for it never
-fails to make them all laugh.  I 've taken to breakfasting at The Holly
-Tree, as I don't often meet any one I know there.  I did one morning,
-however, come across the little instructor who had charge of the
-Freshman registration and made quavering remarks at me in a kind of
-Elizabethan dialect.  He's a most extraordinary person.  As he does n't
-say more than half he means, and as I don't understand more than half he
-says, I find conversation with him very exhausting.  But I like him,
-somehow.
-
-I was reading a newspaper when he came in and did n't realize that he
-was standing near me until I heard a slow, tremulous, reproachful voice
-saying,--
-
-"Who's been sitting in my chair?"  It seems that he always has his
-breakfast at the same table in the chair that I, in my ignorance, had
-taken.  I jumped up, of course, and after he had sat down and leaned
-back, he murmured feebly, "I 'm an old man; but I know my place."  I did
-n't know why he said this, as he is n't an old man at all; he can't be
-more than thirty-six or thirty-seven.
-
-"I'm a young man, but I seem to know your place, too," I laughed, as I
-looked around for another chair.
-
-"You clever boys chaff me so," he replied mournfully.  "You mustn't
-chaff me; I'm only a simple villager."  Just then the waitress appeared
-at a hole in the buff-colored fence that deludes itself into thinking it
-differentiates the kitchen from the dining-room, and the little man
-pounded softly and gently on the table, exclaiming,--
-
-"What ho--Katy; some sack--some sack!"  A request that Katy evidently
-understood better than I did, for she withdrew and came back in a moment
-with a cup of tea.
-
-"How now, Sir John--is not my hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench?"
-the instructor inquired of me; which caused Katy--who had lingered to
-hear what we wanted for breakfast--to twist a corner of her apron around
-her finger and gurgle ecstatically,--
-
-"Now, Mr. Fleetwood, you stop."
-
-We sat there talking for more than an hour, and I don't know when I 've
-had so improving a conversation.  We talked mostly about books and
-plays.  Mr. Fleetwood seems to care a great deal about both and
-discussed them differently from the way most people do. At our table at
-Mrs. Brown's, for instance, a book or a play is always either "rotten"
-or a "corker."  But Fleetwood has no end of things to tell about them.
-He seems to know all the people who do the writing and acting, and
-remembers all the clever remarks they 've made to him at various times,
-and the even cleverer ones he made in reply.  Finally, when I got up to
-go he relapsed suddenly into his more doleful manner and said,--
-
-"You will come to my Wednesday Evenings--won't you?"  I felt as if I
-ought to have known what they were; but I 'd never heard of them, so I
-suppose I looked mystified.
-
-"The lions roar at my Wednesday Evenings," he explained, turning on the
-tremolo in his voice, "but they won't hurt you--because they like me.
-They 'll like you, too, if you 'll come."  I said I should like to come
-very much.
-
-"When do you have your Wednesday Evenings?" I asked; for he was so
-dreadfully vague.  He looked at me vacantly and then stared at the
-ceiling awhile, as if trying to think.
-
-"On Wednesday evenings," he at last petulantly quavered; and I left, for
-I began to think I was losing my mind.
-
-With the exception of Fleetwood that morning I have n't met any one else
-I know at The Holly Tree.  To tell the truth, I haven't been very
-sociable of late.  The result of the exams was rather depressing, and
-besides--I can't help realizing that solitude is inexpensive, if nothing
-else.  I don't like to go in town unless I can pay my share, and, as I
-have n't been able as yet even to get my watch out of hock, in spite of
-mamma's urgent telegram, I don't see my way to going to the theatre and
-eating around at expensive hotels.  Of course I could have the tickets
-charged--but they 're the least of it.  And anyhow I owe so much already
-I hate to make it worse.  Berri advised me to pawn the old-fashioned fob
-that belongs to my watch and get the watch back.  (The fob has a huge
-topaz or some such thing in it that ought to bring a lot.)  But I 'm
-tired of disposing of heirlooms.
-
-I went to the first Symphony in Sanders' Theatre the other night.
-Duggie gave me his ticket, as the head coach, and the doctor who looks
-after the team told him he was n't feeling well and made him go to bed
-instead. It was a wonderful concert, and I enjoyed it very much,
-although I could n't help wondering all the time why I was enjoying it;
-for a man who looked like a Skye terrier played beautiful, sad things on
-the 'cello until I felt so lonely and homesick and as if I had wasted my
-life and broken my mother's heart, that I began to sniff; and the lady
-who was sitting next to me (she had a huge music book on her lap and was
-following every note with her finger and swaying from side to side like
-a cobra) turned and glared at me.
-
-On Saturday afternoon they would n't let Duggie play in the game, and
-advised him to go home for Sunday.  He came into my room where I was
-sitting by the fire feeling pretty blue, and after talking awhile said
-he wanted me to go with him.  Berrisford came in while I was getting
-ready, and when he saw how little I was taking with me he exclaimed:
-"Good Heavens, man--you can't go that way!  Duggie wouldn't mind, and
-neither would his family; but you must show _some_ consideration for the
-servants.  And you 'd better take a piece of bread in your pocket, to
-munch when nobody 's looking, as you 'll get there too late for tea, and
-they don't dine until sometime during the middle of the night."  He made
-me pack my dress-clothes (they've been mended) and gave me his
-hairbrushes, as they have ivory backs with black monograms on them.  I
-can't feel thankful enough that he warned me in time; for everything
-turned out just as he said.  (Berri _is_ clever; there's no getting
-around it.)
-
-I can't write about my visit to-night; it's too late to do justice to
-the novel and delightful time I had.  I enjoyed every minute of it; even
-the thing that Duggie told me on Sunday morning did n't spoil it.
-(Berri said he probably took me home with him in order to break the news
-gently.)
-
-We had been sitting on the rocks in the sun, looking out to sea and
-listening to the lazy waves break over the beach about half a mile away
-(at that distance they looked like a flock of sheep playing on the
-sand), when Duggie told me in as nice a way as one possibly can tell
-disagreeable news that the Administrative Board had decided to put me on
-probation.
-
-
-
-
-                                  *VI*
-
-
-It's curious how little you know, after all, about the fellows here of
-whom you know most.  As time goes on I suppose you gradually learn
-more--although I 've been told by upperclassmen that they 've seen
-certain fellows every day for years, and, while apparently intimate with
-them, have never taken the trouble to find out their real names--their
-first names, that is to say.  And as for knowing what their families are
-like--what they 've been used to before they came to college--you can
-only guess; and you usually guess wrong.  At least, I do. Berrisford,
-however, is very wonderful.  He has a mind as comprehensive in its scope
-as the last seventy-five pages of an unabridged dictionary, and his
-talent for sizing people up and telling you all about them is really
-remarkable.  He is the last person in the world, though, that I should
-have picked out as a citizen of Salem, and one day I told him so.  He
-explained himself by saying that his mother had made an unfortunate
-marriage. I felt very sorry, as the only time I saw his mother I thought
-her lovely.
-
-"He was very handsome and had a great deal of money, and was the best
-and most delightful man I ever knew," Berri went on.
-
-"Well, I don't see anything so dreadfully unfortunate in all that," I
-ventured.
-
-"Ah, but he was n't from Salem," Berri explained simply.  "He didn't
-even have any cousins there, although for a time mamma's family tried to
-delude themselves into believing they were on the track of some.  They
-traced him back to Humphrey de Bohun and Elizabeth Plantagenet, but
-there they lost the scent; and as mamma's people--perhaps you know--came
-from the King of Navarre and Urracca, Heiress of Arragon, why--of
-course--well, you know how people talk.  It was all very sad.  Naturally
-mamma never cared to live in Salem after that, and I think my
-grandparents were rather relieved that she preferred to stay most of the
-time in France.  They used to come over and see us every few years, but
-of course no one in Salem ever knew about that; every one believed that
-grandfather had to take a cure at Carlsbad--at least that was what was
-given out whenever he went abroad.  I suppose I can't help seeming
-somewhat crude now and then," he mused dismally; "dilute the strain and
-it's bound to show sooner or later.  But there--I don't know why I've
-told you all this; it is n't the sort of thing one can discuss with
-everybody."
-
-"All this" was intensely interesting and mysterious to me, but I don't
-think I can ever get on to it entirely; just when I 'm beginning to feel
-that I 've mastered the details I collide with a perfectly new phase and
-find I don't know anything at all.  My ignorance has led to several
-discussions with Berri--the heated kind that always result in coldness.
-When I told him, for instance, that I 'd met Billy in town one morning
-and he 'd taken me home for luncheon, Berri said, "How nice," and
-proceeded to effect a union of his eyebrows and the top of his head.
-
-"Now what on earth is the matter with Billy?" I exclaimed indignantly,
-for I 'd enjoyed my luncheon exceedingly, and the house was the biggest
-thing I had ever seen.
-
-"Oh, Billy 's all right.  He 's really very nice, I imagine--although,
-of course, I don't know him very well," said Berri.  "Why do you ask?"
-
-"Who wouldn't ask when you hang your eyebrows on your front hair that
-way at the mere mention of his name?" I demanded. "Why do you say 'of
-course,' and why do you always make a point of the fact that you don't
-know him well?  Who cares whether you do or not?" I pursued, for I
-wanted to clear this mystery up once and for all.
-
-"Well, you seem to care a good deal," Berrisford laughed.
-
-"Oh, not personally," I assured him, "only in the interest of science."
-
-We squabbled for an hour, and at the end of that time I had discovered
-that (1) Billy's family spell their name with an _e_--a most
-incriminating thing to do, apparently, and (2) their house is on the
-left-hand side of the street as you go up, which (3) makes it easier for
-a rich man to pass through the moat into Heaven than to draw a beam of
-recognition from the eye of his neighbor.  It was all very
-confusing--especially as Berrisford insisted that no one had ever told
-him these things--he had known that they were so when he came into the
-world.
-
-"Well, I don't see how you 've allowed yourself to be so friendly with
-me," I wondered sarcastically.  "You 've been pretty reckless, it
-strikes me.  How do you know what side of the street our house is on in
-Perugia, Wisconsin--or whether, indeed, we live in a house at all?"
-
-"Oh, you 're different," Berri laughed.
-
-"Different from what?"
-
-"From everything; that's why I 'm willing to run the risk.  You 're a
-strange, barbarous thing, and I like you immensely."
-
-That was all the satisfaction I got.  The reason I thought of this was
-because Duggie and I discussed it among other things that Sunday morning
-on the rocks.
-
-It was perfectly evident that Duggie's family lived on the right side of
-the street, and didn't "spell their name with an e," although I should
-never have seen them in this light if Berrisford hadn't opened my eyes
-("poisoned my mind," Duggie called it).  Duggie's father resembles the
-Duke in Little Lord Fauntleroy, and his mother--well, his mother is like
-Duggie; one could n't say very much more than that.  My impression of
-them is that they are between nineteen and twenty feet high, and when
-they and Duggie and his elder sister and two younger brothers were
-assembled, they looked the way family groups of crowned heads ought to
-look and don't.
-
-The sister met us at the station with a cart and two ponies.
-
-"They told me to take care of myself," Duggie said to her sort of
-doubtfully.
-
-"He 's afraid of my nags," she explained to me as I clambered up beside
-her.
-
-"I 'm afraid of your driving," Duggie answered.  "I brought Jack Hollis
-down here to rest one Saturday and Sunday," he said to me, "and after
-she'd whirled him around the country for several hours on two wheels and
-run into a few trees and spilled him over a cliff, the poor thing went
-back to town with heart disease and has never been the same since."
-
-Now, of course, Duggie merely meant to give me an exaggerated idea of
-his sister's driving, and she, of course, knew that his remark was quite
-innocent; but nevertheless she began to blush (it was then, I think,
-that I first noticed how pretty she was) and abruptly gave one of the
-horses a slap with the whip that sent us plunging and nearly snapped my
-head off.
-
-"Hold on, Tommy," Duggie called to me. "This is what I go through every
-time I come home."  Then, as a flock of terrified hens scuttled
-shrieking from under the ponies' feet, he added: "Tell them I was very
-brave and hopeful to the end and that my last words were about the
-team."  But pretty soon the horses settled down into a fast, steady
-trot, and we bowled along the prettiest road I 've ever seen--between
-thick woods, and, farther on, great, uneven meadows marked off in
-irregular shapes with low fences of rough stone. The meadows to the
-right ran back to the woods, but the ones on the left stretched away
-ahead of us into a vast plain.  It gave me a queer, happy feeling that I
-can't explain--as if I were going to soar out of the cart and over the
-meadows--straight on into space. I could n't imagine where such a sweep
-of luminous horizon led to--it seemed extraordinary to come across
-anything so much like a prairie in New England.  The air, too, had a lot
-to do with the way I felt.  It was wonderful air--not cold exactly, and
-not wet; although I thought every minute that it was going to be both.
-It had a peculiar smell to it that, without knowing why, I liked.  I
-filled my lungs with it, and somehow it made me feel bigger than I
-usually do.  Then all at once the ponies scampered over the top of a
-little incline, and, although Miss Sherwin was telling me something, I
-gasped out:
-
-"Oh-h-h-h--it's the ocean!" and forgot what she was saying, and even
-that she and Duggie and the cart were with me at all. For I had never
-seen it before; and it was right there in front of me--brimming over in
-long, slow, green, pillowy things that rolled forward and slipped back,
-forward and back, until all at once they got top heavy and lost control
-of themselves and tumbled over the edge in a delirious white and green
-confusion that slid across the sand in swift, foamy triangles almost up
-to our wheels and made the ponies shrink to the other side of the road
-in a sort of coquettish dance.  Then there was a very slim,
-refined-looking lighthouse on a gray rock bordered by a little white
-frill where it touched the water, and beyond that, putting out to sea,
-was a great ship with bulging sails, and a steamer that left a lonely
-trail of black smoke sagging after it for miles.
-
-I don't know how long I stared at these things, or how long I should
-have kept on staring at them, if I had n't happened to glance up and see
-that Miss Sherwin was looking down at me and laughing.  I think she
-expected me to say something, but I couldn't bring myself to come out
-with either of the only two things that occurred to me--one of which was
-that as it looked so exactly as I always thought it was going to, I did
-n't see why I felt almost like bursting into tears when we came over the
-hill-top and actually saw it; and the other was--that I should have very
-much liked to get down and taste it. However, Miss Sherwin had about all
-she could do to attend to the horses and did n't insist on an
-explanation; so we said hardly anything all the rest of the way, and
-just let the wind blow in our faces and watched the waves tumble across
-the hard sand for miles.
-
-At first nothing at the Sherwins' seemed in the least real to me.  Even
-Duggie struck me as altogether different, although he was, of course,
-just the same--only seen in unexpected surroundings.
-
-First of all, when we arrived, a groom popped up from behind a hedge and
-took the horses; then two young men in dark green clothes with brass
-buttons and yellow waistcoats bustled down from the piazza to get our
-things out of the cart.  They were rather handsome, but had very
-troubled expressions, and looked as if they worried a good deal for fear
-they shouldn't do it right.  Duggie nodded to them over his shoulder,
-and I think they were secretly gratified at this--although I suspect
-them of having worried terribly for fear they might betray it.  They
-helped us off with our coats and hats when we got inside, which is all
-well enough, and makes you feel as grand as you do in a barber-shop, but
-has its disadvantages, for they run away with everything you have, and
-lock them up somewhere in a safe, and when you want to go out to play
-with the dogs or take a walk and think it all over, you usually have to
-tell Vincent to tell Dempsey to tell Chamberlain that you would like a
-hat.
-
-Miss Sherwin led me through some beautiful rooms, and as we walked along
-she turned to me and exclaimed,--
-
-"Aren't you fearfully keen for your tea?"
-
-I really don't care in the least for tea; in fact, I rather dislike it.
-But she seemed to take it so for granted that I should be in a sort of
-tea-guzzling frenzy by half-past five o'clock that I hated to disappoint
-her, and was going to say, "Oh, yes--fearfully," when it flashed through
-me that I could make my reply more elaborate and interesting than this,
-and thought it would be rather effective to murmur, "One gets so out of
-the habit in Cambridge."  Then (all this took only about a second) it
-occurred to me that I 'd never in my whole life drunk a cup of tea in
-the afternoon with the exception of the time that Berrisford had some
-people out to his rooms.  So I merely said--which was perfectly true: "I
-don't like tea; but I like those thin, round cakes that are brown at the
-edges and yellow in the middle."  This made her laugh, and I was glad I
-had n't said the other thing, because she 's very pretty when she
-laughs.
-
-One corner of the piazza is enclosed in glass, and we had tea out there
-where we could watch the sunset and the pink lights on the water as it
-rolled up almost to the lawn in the front yard.  The two younger
-brothers came in--one of them has a tutor and the other goes to St.
-Timothy's--and while we were waiting for the tea things to be brought,
-Mr. and Mrs. Sherwin sauntered across the grass.  I forget whether they
-had been gathering orchids in the conservatory or merely feeding the
-peacocks, but they were both exceedingly gracious and glad to see me.
-Yet their very way of taking me so for granted (just as Miss Sherwin had
-about the tea) made me uncomfortable at first.  They could n't, of
-course, have asked me to explain myself--to tell them what right I had
-to consume cakes in their crystal palace and enjoy their sunset; but the
-mere fact that they did n't seem to expect me to justify myself in any
-way made me feel like an impostor.
-
-The man who brought in the tea things had a good deal to do with this.
-I 'm quite sure that he disapproved of me from the first.  He was older
-than the two who met us at the door, and I think he had probably long
-since ceased to worry on his own account; but he worried a lot over me.
-Later--at dinner--he just gave up all his other duties and stood behind
-my chair, mentally calculating the chances of my coming out even or
-behind the game in the matter of knives and forks. Whenever I used too
-many or too few (which I did constantly) he would glide away and remedy
-the defect, or craftily remove the damning evidence of my inattention.
-In writing to mamma about my visit I ended my letter by saying: "I had a
-delightful time--but it would take me years to get used to their
-butler."  To which mamma replied: "I'm glad you enjoyed yourself, dear;
-they must live charmingly.  But I simply can't see why they should n't
-have good butter.  It's so easy to get it now almost anywhere.  Perhaps
-they don't eat it themselves and don't realize that they are being
-imposed upon."  (This will be one of the greatest triumphs of papa's
-declining years, as he is always blowing me up about my handwriting.)
-Whenever Dempsey (the other servants call him "Mr. Dempsey") came into
-the glass place I waited in a sort of trembling eagerness, half
-expecting him to announce "Lord and Lady Belgrave and Miss Muriel Fitz
-Desmond," but the only person who dropped in was an old man named Snagg,
-and although Dempsey made as much out of his arrival as any one possibly
-could--you can't, after all, do miracles with a name like Snagg.
-However, I was grateful to Mr. Snagg for coming, as it brought me back
-to earth again.
-
-To tell the truth, before the evening was finished I began to get over
-the unreal sensation I had at first, and saw very plainly that whether
-or not I felt at home depended entirely on me.  Duggie and his
-family--poor things--did n't have any idea that their Dempsey paralyzed
-me with fright, or that (just as Berri had predicted) by the time dinner
-was ready I was shaky in the knees with hunger.  They assumed that a
-friend of Duggie's naturally would feel at home and know beforehand what
-was going to happen. This dawned on me when I realized that Duggie was
-exactly as he always is, and that the others were probably exactly as
-they always were, and I couldn't help appreciating after a time that if
-they took me so calmly, it was rather unreasonable of me not to feel the
-same way about them.  No one made any effort to entertain me, which is
-very nice--after you get used to it.  Mrs. Sherwin played solitaire
-after dinner, while Duggie and his sister (she was embroidering
-something) and I sat around a fire that Miss Sherwin said was built of
-driftwood from an old whaler, and Duggie declared was manufactured with
-chemicals by a shrewd person in Maine.  I don't know who was right, but
-with the sea murmuring just outside the windows and coming down every
-now and then with a great thud on the little beach at the end of the
-lawn, I preferred to believe in the old whaler theory. Mr. Sherwin would
-appear every few minutes to read us something he had come across in a
-volume of literary reminiscences which reminded him of something
-entirely different that had happened to Thoreau or Emerson or Hawthorne
-or Margaret Fuller--all of whom he had, as a young man, known very well,
-indeed.  He was delightful.
-
-The next day was Sunday, and as no one awoke me, I found when I got
-downstairs that it was after ten o'clock and that everybody, with the
-exception of Duggie, had gone to church.  Duggie had been up for hours
-taking a long walk with the dogs.  He came into the glass place on the
-piazza, where I had breakfast, and read aloud about the game of the day
-before.  Out-of-doors it was almost as warm as in summer, so we took
-some books and strolled along a cliff to a sheltered place on the rocks,
-and sat down in the sun.  I did n't feel much like reading, although
-when you 're sitting out-of-doors in the sun I think it's rather
-pleasanter, somehow, to have a book on your lap.  Duggie had a shabby
-little volume that he read for a minute or two at a time; then he would
-stop for five or ten and look at the sea swirling around a rock away
-below us.  After a while I became curious to know what the book was, and
-the next time he closed it over his finger I reached out and took it.
-The name of it was M. Aurelius Antoninus, and it seemed to be a series
-of short, disconnected paragraphs with a great many footnotes.  A good
-many of the paragraphs were marked.  The only one I can remember went
-something like this,--
-
-"Don't act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years.  Death
-hangs over thee. While thou livest--while it is in thy power, be good."
-
-"I suppose you 're studying this for some course," I remarked after I
-had read the extract aloud.  "It's so solemn I didn't think you could be
-reading it for fun," I added.
-
-"I don't suppose I am reading it for fun exactly," Duggie laughed.  "It
-isn't very funny to realize the force of that paragraph when there are
-so many things you hope to do."
-
-"Well, of course I know I 'm not going to live ten thousand years, but
-it's so lovely down here that I don't feel a bit as if I were n't," I
-said, lying back in the sun and closing my eyes.
-
-"That's why I read the book," answered Duggie; "it's tremendously easy
-to feel that way almost anywhere--down here particularly."  He was more
-serious, I think, than he looked.
-
-"Why should n't one?" I asked.  But he only laughed and told me I 'd
-better read the book, too, and find out.
-
-"It might be a short cut--a sort of revelation. It took me a good while
-to arrive at it by myself," he added.  "Why, when I first went to
-Cambridge I had an idea that if a man's family were what's called
-'nice,' and well known, and if he had good manners and knew a lot of
-other fellows whose families were nice and well known, and people went
-around saying that he 'd make the first ten of the Dickey, and be
-elected into some club or other--I had an idea that he really amounted
-to a great deal."
-
-"Well, does n't he?" I asked boldly, for all that seemed to me pretty
-fine.
-
-I think Duggie was going to answer rather sharply, but he must have
-decided not to, for after a moment he said:
-
-"I suppose whether he does or not depends on the point of view."
-
-"From yours, I take it, he doesn't?" I mused.
-
-"He has a lot in his favor--all sorts of opportunities that other people
-have n't," Duggie admitted, "but I 've come to look at him as quite
-unimportant until he tries at least to take some advantage of them.
-Good Heavens! the wheels of the world are clogged with 'nice' people,"
-said Duggie.
-
-"But what on earth can a person do in a place like college, for
-instance?" I objected. "You 're there, and you know your own crowd, and
-you 're satisfied with it because it's awfully--awfully----"  I
-hesitated.
-
-"Awfully nice," Duggie laughed; "and you never see any one else, and
-they 're all more or less like you--and the rest of your class is
-composed of grinds, muckers, and 'probably very decent sort of chaps,
-_but_'----"  Here Duggie reached over and gave me a push that nearly
-sent me into the sea.  "But dontche care--I didn't mean to get started.
-And anyhow there 's plenty of time."
-
-"Only ten thousand years," I replied.
-
-"Fleetwood's Wednesday Evenings begin next week.  If you want to remove
-your infamous towhead from its richly upholstered barrel for a minute,
-you 'd better come around," he suggested.  "Fleetwood had his Wednesday
-Evenings on Friday last year because he thought it was more quaint--but
-I see he 's changed back."
-
-"He told me if I came I should hear a lion roar," I said, trying to
-remember my talk with Fleetwood at The Holly Tree.  At this Duggie lay
-back and shrieked aloud.
-
-"That man will be found some day torn into small, neat shreds," he
-managed to say at last.
-
-"Why?" I asked--for I knew he liked Fleetwood.
-
-"Why, because I'm the lion," Duggie giggled.
-
-
-
-
-                                 *VII*
-
-
-It must be several weeks since I 've written a word in my diary.  To
-tell the truth, I spend so much time writing other things--things that
-are printed and sold--actually--at the bookstores--that somehow my own
-every-day affairs don't seem so important as they did.  In a word--I 've
-been made an editor of the Advocate.  It seems so wonderful to be an
-anything of anything with my name in print on the front page just above
-the editorials--the editorials that, as Duggie says sarcastically, have
-made the President and the University what they are. Mamma was delighted
-at my success, and so was Mildred--although she tried to be funny over
-my triolet, When Gladys Sings, in the last number, and wrote me that,
-unless Gladys were the name of a quadruped of some kind, amputation here
-and there would have improved her.  Even papa was pleased, I think,
-although my first story made him very angry and he wrote me a terrible
-letter about it.  I had simply described, as accurately as I could
-remember it, the time he went as "The Silver-Tongued Orator from
-Perugia" to make a political speech in the country and took Mildred and
-me with him.  I told about the people at whose house we stayed,
-described the house and recorded our conversations at dinner and supper.
-That was really all there was to it.  I considered it quite harmless.
-The Crimson in criticising it said: "The Jimsons--a humorous sketch by a
-new writer--is the only ray of sunlight in a number devoted almost
-exclusively to battle, murder, and sudden death;" a Boston paper
-reprinted it in full, and papa was perfectly furious.  He wrote to me
-saying (among several pages of other things): "While admitting that your
-description of my friends is photographic and, in an inexpensive and
-altogether odious fashion, rather amusing, I take occasion to call your
-attention to the fact--it seems to have escaped you--that they are,
-after all, my friends.  Furthermore (passing from the purely ethical to
-the sternly practical), it is among just these people that you will, in
-the not very distant future, be engaged in making (or trying to make) a
-living.  Kindly snatch a moment or two from your literary pursuits and
-think this over in some of its more grim possibilities."  He also rather
-superfluously informed me that I would "be older some day" than I am
-now.  (This remark, by the way, seems to have a peculiar fascination for
-men who have passed the age of fifty.)  I showed the letter to Berri,
-and when he had finished it he said thoughtfully: "A few communications
-like this, and the keen edge of one's humor would become a trifle
-dulled."
-
-My election to the Advocate came about in the most unexpected way
-possible.  It's queer how things happen.  Berri was sitting in my room
-one afternoon apparently reading by the fire.  Suddenly he looked up and
-exclaimed:
-
-"Do you realize, Tommy, that failure is staring us in the face?"
-
-"Why, I was in hopes that it had begun to--to avert its gaze somewhat,"
-I answered, for I thought of course he was referring to the hour
-exams--and I 've studied a little every day since that calamity.
-"Besides," I added, "I don't see why you need complain; you got
-through."
-
-"Oh, I'm not talking about our studies," Berri said impatiently; "they
-'re a detail. I mean that we don't seem to be getting anywhere; we 're
-not turning our accomplishments to any practical account; we 're not
-helping the college any and making ourselves prominent--prominent in a
-lawful sense, I mean."
-
-"But we haven't any accomplishments," I objected.  "We both tried for
-the Glee Club and they would n't have us; and everybody agreed that we
-couldn't play football--although we went out and did everything they
-told us to.  We can't play the banjo or mandolin, and it's too early in
-the year to find out whether we 're any good at rowing or track
-athletics or baseball; so there 's nothing left. What on earth can a
-person do who has n't any talent or skill or ability of any kind?" I
-demanded gloomily.
-
-"He can always write," Berri answered, "and he can always be an editor."
-
-"Oh! you mean we ought to try for the Crimson or something."
-
-"Well, not the Crimson exactly," Berrisford mused; "they say you have to
-work like anything on the Crimson; they make you rush about finding out
-when things are going to happen, or why they didn't happen when they
-said they would.  That would be awfully tiresome--because of course you
-wouldn't care whether they happened or not.  I 'd just like to sit
-around and edit; any one could do that."
-
-"I should think you 'd go in for the Lampoon," I suggested; for I
-remembered that one of the Lampoon men had drawn a picture of something
-Berri had done.  Professor Snook, who knows such a lot about folk-lore,
-was going to give a lecture in Sever Hall on The Devil.  It was
-announced on all the bulletin boards by means of printed placards that
-read like this: "Thursday, November 10, Professor John Snook will
-deliver a lecture on The Devil;" and under the one outside of
-University, Berri wrote in pencil: "The first of a series on
-personalities that have influenced me."  If he got himself noticed by
-the Lampoon without trying, I thought there was no telling what he could
-do if he put his mind to it.  We discussed the matter awhile without,
-however, deciding on any definite plan.
-
-That night we went to Fleetwood's first Wednesday Evening, and there I
-was introduced to--  But I 'm going too fast.  I 'd better tell about
-the Wednesday Evening first.
-
-When I suggested going Berri was n't particularly enthusiastic about it.
-He said he was afraid it would resemble one of his aunt's receptions
-where everybody was so cultivated that it was just like reading Half
-Hours with the Best Authors on a warm Sunday afternoon. I had an idea
-that it might be something like that myself, but I finally persuaded
-Berri to go with me notwithstanding.
-
-I don't know what to make of myself sometimes.  When I 'm with Duggie I
-'m inclined to take things rather seriously; but when I 'm with Berri it
-all seems like a joke.  They 're so different, and yet I feel as if I
-were so much a friend of both.  When all three of us happen to be
-together I find it most uncomfortable.  Of course Berri thought the
-Wednesday Evening highly amusing.
-
-It was rather late when we arrived, and the room was crowded with
-fellows, very few of whom I had ever seen before.  Fleetwood opened the
-door for us, with a Shakespearian quotation trembling aptly on his lips,
-and led us through the crowd to his inside room, where we left our coats
-and hats.
-
-"You must come and meet my lions and hear them roar," Fleetwood said to
-us; and was about to take us across the study to where Duggie was
-standing against the wall with a semicircle of Freshmen in front of him
-drinking in his every word.
-
-"Good gracious, man--you don't mean to say you got me away over here on
-a cold night to hear Duggie Sherwin drool about football," Berri
-exclaimed to me.  Mr. Fleetwood laughed, and seemed to think this was
-very funny.
-
-"Just look how glad of the chance all those others are, you
-unappreciative boy," he said reproachfully to Berri.
-
-"Oh, well--he doesn't wake them up at a horrible hour every morning
-yelling like a fiend under a shower-bath," Berri explained. "You see,
-the lion and I occupy the same lair--or do lions live in a den?  I never
-can remember."
-
-"Perhaps Mr. Ranny knows," said Fleetwood to a tall, studious-looking
-fellow who had evidently planned his escape and was in the act of shyly
-carrying it out when Fleetwood detained him.  Fleetwood introduced him
-to Berri and slid away to greet another man who had just opened the
-door.  As I moved off to join Duggie's group, Berri gave me a queer
-look; but a few minutes later I happened to glance across at him, and as
-the tall fellow was laughing at everything Berri said I knew that Berri
-was enjoying himself.
-
-Duggie shook hands with me and said good-evening just as if he had n't
-been in my room sprawling on the floor in front of the fire an hour and
-a half before, and then went on with what he was saying to the fellows
-nearest him--some polite looking little chaps; Freshmen, although I had
-never seen them before.
-
-The talk was mostly about football; the games that had been played and
-the ones still to come--comparative scores and the merits and defects of
-players at other colleges.  Of course Duggie could discuss only with the
-fellows just in front of him.  I think he realized how embarrassing it
-would be to any of the others if he were to single them out and address
-remarks to them.  Besides, it might have sounded patronizing.  Yet every
-now and then, when whoever was talking happened to say something funny,
-Duggie somehow included the whole crowd in the laugh that followed.  I
-think he managed it by catching everybody's eye at just the right time;
-I know that--although I was merely standing there looking on--whenever
-he caught mine, I felt as if I were right in the game.  This often had
-the effect of causing a fellow to say something to the fellow next to
-him, and so it frequently happened that people who had joined the group
-merely to rubber in embarrassed silence at Duggie, found themselves
-making acquaintances and talking on their own account.  I learned
-afterward that this was precisely what Fleetwood and Duggie counted on.
-It was Fleetwood's chief reason for having Duggie as often as he could
-at his Wednesday Evenings, and Duggie's only reason for going.
-
-Across the room there was another centre of attraction in the person of
-a fine but rather pompous-looking old gentleman with a pink face and a
-snowy beard.  His audience was more talkative than Duggie's, but not so
-large.  It was n't composed entirely of Freshmen, either.  As I was
-standing there making up my mind to slide through the intervening crowd
-and find out what he was talking about, Berri, who had been standing
-with a rapt expression on the outskirts of the second group, detached
-himself and came over to me.  "You simply must come and listen to him;
-it's perfectly thrilling," he said.
-
-"I was just going over to investigate," I answered.  "What 's his
-specialty?"
-
-"I don't know how to describe it exactly," Berri replied; "he's a kind
-of connecting link with the literary past; he 's what phonographs will
-be when we get them perfected. Dickens once borrowed his opera-glasses
-on the evening of the twelfth of June years ago, and some years later
-Thackeray stepped on his foot at a dinner-party.  He remembers what they
-said perfectly, and gets asked out a lot. I 've heard him tell the
-Thackeray thing twice now, and he 's going to do it again in a minute if
-there 's enough of a crowd."
-
-We went over and listened to him for ever so long, and although Dickens
-_had_ borrowed his opera-glasses and Thackeray _had_ stepped on his
-foot, he was n't in the least what Berri had led me to expect.  I found
-him delightful and was sorry when he had to leave.  (Berri insisted that
-he was driven rapidly to town to the Palace Theatre, where he was due to
-appear at 10.50--between a trick bicyclist and a Dutch comedian.)
-
-When we had said good-by to him, Fleetwood came up bringing a
-pleasant-looking chap with spectacles.  (I had often seen him in the
-Yard.)
-
-"This is Mr. Paul," Fleetwood said to me, "and he wants to have words
-with you."
-
-Mr. Paul talked about the old gentleman for a minute or two, and then
-said quite abruptly,--
-
-"We 've been reading your stuff in English 83, Mr. Wood, and the fellows
-think it's darned good.  I wish you 'd let us have some of it for the
-Advocate."
-
-I was so astonished I just looked at him. Then he went on to say that he
-wanted to print two of my themes--The Jimsons, and a description of
-something I saw one night in town--and that if I wrote a third and it
-turned out to be good, they would make me an editor!  He had said that
-the Monthly had designs on me (imagine), and that although the Advocate
-did n't often do things so hastily, it (I wonder if it's silly of me to
-write this down?) didn't want to lose me.  I told him that I 'd never
-dreamed of getting on one of the papers and felt as if he were making
-fun of me.  But he assured me he was n't.
-
-Duggie and Berrisford and I walked home together, and when we reached my
-room Duggie and Berri began to squabble over Fleetwood's Wednesday
-Evenings, and talked and talked until Duggie, seeing how late it was,
-got undressed (talking all the time) and left his clothes on my floor,
-and continued the conversation even after he had gone into his own room,
-turned out the lights and got into bed.
-
-Berri, of course, started out by saying,--
-
-"Well, I don't see what 's the good of it," and Duggie immediately
-undertook to enlighten him.  Whereupon Berri--fearing that the attempt
-might be successful--took another tack and exclaimed,--
-
-"I should think you'd feel so ridiculous backed up there against the
-wall making conversation--or perhaps you enjoy being an object of
-curiosity."  Duggie got very red, and I think he considered Berri
-unusually cheeky and impertinent, but he did n't snub him and I 'm sure
-Berri was disappointed; he loves to irritate people.
-
-"I don't think my feelings in the matter are particularly important,"
-Duggie answered. "I don't see why you haul them in."
-
-"Oh! but they are," Berri insisted.  "I was n't in the least interested
-in you when you were over there doing your stunts; but here, at home--in
-the bosom of the family, so to speak--you 're perfectly absorbing. Now,
-honestly, Duggie, don't you think that in the end it 'll do you a lot of
-harm--exhibiting yourself this way, and sort of saying to yourself: 'I
-am the only Duggie Sherwin; when Fleetwood tells the Freshmen that I am
-going to be there, the room is jammed'--and all that sort of thing.  For
-of course that's what it amounts to."
-
-Duggie threw back his head and laughed. Then he leaned forward and gave
-Berrisford (who was sitting on the floor with his hands clasped around
-his knees), a neat little push that rolled him back until he seemed to
-be standing on his neck and groping for the ceiling with his feet.
-
-"Berrisford, sometimes you make me very, very sick," Duggie said to him.
-
-"But own up like a man--isn't that the way you look at it?" Berri
-pursued after he had collected himself.
-
-"Of course it is n't--idiot!" Duggie declared indignantly.  "Fleetwood
-can't do the whole thing himself; he can't turn a lot of shy kids into a
-pen and say, 'Now talk and get to know one another.'  So he asks other
-people to help him.  Once in a while he asks me.  To-night there were
-two of us."
-
-"Two Little Evas--two Uncle Toms--two side-splitting Topsies," Berri
-giggled.
-
-"Heaven knows I can talk about other things than football," Duggie went
-on, "but I like to talk about it, and they do, too--so why shouldn't we?
-And when they have enough of me they get to talking with some one
-else--some one in their own class, very likely--or maybe to two or
-three.  Then they come back again next week, and after a few times they
-find that they 've made a lot of acquaintances, and perhaps some
-friends. And there you are!  Their whole four years is probably changed
-for them and made infinitely more worth while, merely because Fleetwood
-takes the trouble to round them up and make them feel that somebody
-really wants them.  It's perfectly natural that you should think his
-Wednesdays funny and boresome; you always had dozens of rooms to go to
-from the first day you came here, and some one in every room who was
-glad to see you when you went.  But I tell you it isn't that way with
-everybody, and you 're not the kind that Fleetwood tries to get at."
-
-"Why did he invite me, then?" Berri asked.
-
-"Upon my soul, I don't know," Duggie declared sarcastically, "but I 'd
-be willing to bet that if I see him first he won't invite you again," he
-laughed.
-
-Then Berri admitted that Fleetwood's idea was well enough in theory, but
-doubted if it really worked.
-
-"That tall spook I jollied this evening for a while was exceedingly
-nice; but I sha'n't dash off and call on him to-morrow. I don't suppose
-I'll ever see him again," Berri said.
-
-"No, probably not," Duggie assented, "but it's altogether likely that
-after time has healed the wound left by your indifference, he may find
-consolation in the companionship of some one else.  You may not be able
-to grasp the fact, Berri, but it is a fact that 'there are others.'"  It
-was in the midst of this that he began to get ready for bed.
-
-"Why don't you open a salon yourself if you think they 're such
-'life-sweeteners'?" Berri called after him when he went into his own
-room.
-
-"When I come to the Law School next year, I'm going to," Duggie shouted
-back, "but _you 'll_ never see the inside of it; I 'll tell you that
-right now."
-
-I did n't join in the discussion at all, for I got to thinking how lucky
-I had been from the first.  Mamma overheard an old woman on a piazza say
-that she made the "young men" change their shoes when it was
-"snow-in'"--and that was all there was to it.  That chance remark led to
-my living in the same house with Duggie and Berri; and what a difference
-it has made!  Without Berri I never in the world should have known such
-a lot of people in so short a time; and without Duggie--well, I think I
-understand what my adviser meant when he said he was glad I knew Duggie.
-
-There has been one Advocate meeting since my election and I thought it
-was great.  All the editors meet in the Advocate President's room on
-Tuesday evening to hear the Secretary read the manuscripts that have
-been sent in or collected from the English courses during the week.  It
-took them a long time to settle down to business; in fact no one seemed
-to want to hear the manuscripts at all--although I secretly thought this
-would be very interesting--and several fellows made remarks and tried to
-interrupt (the poetry especially) all the time the Secretary was
-reading. But he read on in a businesslike voice and never paid any
-attention to them except once, when he grabbed a college catalogue from
-the table, and without looking away from the page shied it at a fellow
-who was repeating the verses the Secretary was trying to read--only
-repeating them all wrong and making them sound ridiculous.  In the case
-of most of the contributions the fellows began to vote "no" before they
-had read them half through; but several of them were hard to decide on,
-and the board had a lively time making up its mind.  After the reading
-we sat around the fire and had beer and crackers and cheese while (as
-several of the manuscripts expressed it) "the storm howled without."
-
-A few afternoons ago the Secretary (he has such a queer name--it's
-Duncan Duncan), came to my room to see how much I had done on a story I
-was writing.  It was a little after six o'clock when he got up to go,
-and as he was on his way to dinner at Memorial he asked me to dine with
-him.  I had never been to Memorial at meal time and was glad of the
-chance to go.  It's a very interesting experience, although I think I
-prefer the comparative peacefulness of Mrs. Brown's as a usual thing.
-
-We were joined in the Yard by a friend of Duncan's who sits at the same
-table.  Duncan is a thoughtful, rather dreamy kind of person (he writes
-a lot of poetry for the Advocate), and on the way over he told me how
-much he enjoyed living at Memorial--that he never got tired of looking
-up at the stained-glass windows and the severe portraits.
-
-"Even with the crowd and clatter there 's always something inspiring
-about its length and height," he said.  "It has a calmness and dignity
-that quite transcend the fact of people's eating there.  It's so
-academic."
-
-"It's so cheap," the other fellow amended; but Duncan did n't mind him
-and became almost sentimental on the subject.
-
-Well, I felt sorry for Duncan.  We had hardly begun on our turkey and
-cranberry sauce when two of the colored waiters got into the most
-dreadful fight and rushed at each other with drawn forks.  All the men
-jumped up on their chairs and waved their napkins and yelled: "Down in
-front--down in front!" and "Trun him out!"  As the newspapers say of the
-Chamber of Deputies, "A scene of indescribable confusion ensued."  It
-was several minutes before the combatants were hustled off to the
-kitchen and we could go on with our dinner.  Then a party appeared in
-the visitors' gallery--a middle-aged man, two women, and some girls.
-One of the girls was decidedly pretty and attracted everybody's
-attention the moment she leaned over the rail.  The man, however, was
-what caused the demonstration in the first place. He didn't take his hat
-off, which Duncan says always makes trouble.  I don't think anybody
-really cares one way or the other, but it furnishes an excuse for noise.
-A murmur of disapproval travelled across the room and grew louder and
-louder until the man with a genial air of "Ah--these boys have
-recognized me," came to the front of the gallery and bowed.  He took off
-his hat, which produced a burst of applause from below, and then put it
-on again, which changed the clapping of hands to ominous groans.  The
-poor thing looked mystified and embarrassed, and I don't know how it
-would have ended if the pretty girl hadn't just at that instant been
-inspired to pluck a big rose from her belt and toss it over the rail.
-It fell with a thud in the middle of our table and twenty-four eager
-hands shot out to seize it.  I grabbed instinctively with the others,
-and with the others I 'm exceedingly ashamed of what happened. The
-tablecloth and all the dishes were swept off, and in the scrimmage that
-followed the table was overturned.  I have a terrifying, hideous
-recollection of everybody in the world kneeling on my chest and of
-something warm and wet on my face and neck.  Then Duncan was saying,--
-
-"It's all right, old man--lie perfectly still; you 've cut yourself a
-little, but it doesn't amount to anything.  Only don't exert yourself."
-He looked so scared and white that I began to be frightened myself and
-tried to get up.  But he and some of the other fellows very gently
-restrained me, saying that I was all right in the peculiar, hurried
-fashion that, more than anything else, convinces you that you're all
-wrong.  Duncan's friend and another fellow were mumbling somewhere near
-me; I caught these fragments of their conversation: "It _must_ be an
-artery--eight or ten minutes if it is n't attended to--Doctor Banning
-and Doctor Merrick--telephoned--don't talk so loud--he might hear."
-
-Then I lay quite still and closed my eyes and tried to think.
-
-
-
-
-                                 *VIII*
-
-
-Looked at in one way, it was a humiliating thing to have happen; but on
-the other hand, after it was all over, I was able to derive considerable
-satisfaction from the fact that I had n't lost my presence of mind.  The
-remarks I overheard as I lay on the floor of Memorial were anything but
-reassuring.  I realized that in the scrimmage for the rose I had been
-submerged in china, glass, and cutlery,--that some of these things had
-severed one of my arteries and that the worst might happen.  Of course I
-was very much frightened at first, and it was then that I tried to get
-up; but after they restrained me, I sank back and began to think of poor
-mamma. I was on the point of asking for writing materials, but on
-remembering that an accident of this kind was always attended by a sort
-of dreamy weakness, I became--actually--so languid that I recall telling
-myself that it would be of no use--I would n't have strength with which
-to write, even if a pen were thrust into my hand.  So I went on thinking
-about mamma until suddenly a man with a pointed beard (I have since
-learned he was a medical student who happened to be dining with some
-friends at Memorial) dropped on one knee beside me and with rapid,
-skilful fingers began to open my shirt.  Then he stopped very abruptly,
-and with the most disgusted expression I ever saw, turned toward the
-light and examined his fingers.  After which he got up, brushed the dust
-from his knee, and said in a loud, peevish voice,--
-
-"Tell that child to get up and go home and wash the cranberry-sauce off
-his face and neck and put on clean clothes," which I did as quickly as
-possible without even waiting to say good-bye to Duncan.
-
-They don't call me "Tommy Trusting" any more.  It became "Cranberry" for
-a day or two, then it was shortened to "Cranny," and now it's
-"Granny"--"Granny Wood."  Berri says that it has a ring of finality to
-it, and that I 'll never be known by any other name.
-
-Since the great game (I don't believe I 've touched upon the great
-game), the college seems to have settled down once more to an every-day
-sort of existence, with the Christmas holidays looming up now and then
-in letters from home.  (As I was going out this morning, the postman met
-me at the gate and gave me four letters with the Perugia postmark.  It
-'s funny how my feelings toward that poor man vary.  When he hands me
-letters from home, I think he 's one of the nicest-looking persons I
-ever saw, but when he doles out a lot of bills, he seems to have a hard,
-cynical expression that I hate.  I meet him at The Holly Tree
-occasionally, where he goes to snatch a nourishing breakfast of coffee
-and lemon-pie.)
-
-I have n't alluded to the great game for several reasons--the chief one
-being that (as Berri says when people explain why they didn't pass
-certain exams), "I dislike post-mortems."  I suppose it might have been,
-in various ways, a more distressing event than it actually was.  The
-seats, for instance, might have collapsed and killed all the spectators;
-there might have been a railway collision on the way down; there might
-have been an earthquake or a tidal-wave.  That none of these things
-happened is, of course, cause for congratulation--if not for bonfires
-and red lights on Holmes' Field.  It is always well, I suppose, to have
-something definite to rejoice over.  The long trip in the train back to
-Boston after the game, with every one hoarse and tired out and cross and
-depressed, was--  But I had determined not to mention it at all.
-
-Poor Duggie!  I know it nearly killed him. He has tried to refer to it
-philosophically and calmly in my room once or twice since then; but he
-never gets very far.  He knows what he wants to say and ought to say,
-but he 's so intimate with Berri and me that I don't think he altogether
-trusts himself to say it.  I imagine he finds it easier to talk to
-comparative strangers.  I was afraid at first that Berri was going to
-find in the subject a sort of inexhaustible opportunity for the exercise
-of his genius for making people uncomfortable; but instead of that, I
-'ve never known him to be so nice.  For the first time he has allowed
-himself to show some of the admiration for Duggie that, all along, I 've
-felt sure he really has, and Duggie appreciates his delicacy--although
-in one way it grates on him almost as much, I think, as if Berri were
-just as he always is.
-
-The other day mamma said in one of her letters, "I often wonder how you
-spend your days; just what you do from the time you go out to breakfast
-until you go to bed at--I hesitate to think _what_ o'clock."  So when I
-answered her letter I tried to put in everything I did that day, and
-here it is:--
-
-8.30 A.M.--Woke up in the midst of a terrible dream in which a burglar
-was pressing a revolver to my temple, and found that beast, Saga,
-standing by my bed with his cold, moist nose against my cheek.  I threw
-shoes at him until he ran away yelping, which hurt Berri's feelings and
-made him very disagreeable to Duggie and me about the bathtub.  He said
-we ought to let him have his bath first, as it took him so much longer!
-
-9.15.  Breakfast at The Holly Tree.  Berri came with me, as he said he
-disliked last chapters, and it was Mrs. Brown's day for concluding her
-great serial story entitled "Corned Beef."  At The Holly Tree we found
-Mr. Fleetwood, who hid coquettishly behind a newspaper when he saw us
-coming and exclaimed,--
-
-"Go away,--go away, you unreverend, clever boy.  You--you!" he added,
-shaking his finger at Berri.  "I don't mind the other one--the little
-one," he went on when we had hung up our coats and hats and went over to
-his table; "but you have 'a tongue with a tang.'  I sha'n't ask you
-again to my Wednesday Evenings."  Of course this was perfect fruit for
-Berri, who sat down at once and implored Fleetwood with tears in his
-eyes to tell him what he had done, and begged him not to blight his
-(Berri's) career at the outset by denying him admission to the Wednesday
-Evenings.  He vowed that he felt ever so much "older" and "broader" and
-"thoughtfuller," and all sorts of things that he never in the world will
-feel, just for going that once. But Fleetwood pretended not to listen to
-him, and went on reading the paper, interrupting Berri every now and
-then with: "Viper--viper!" or "Serpent--serpent!"  I think he really
-likes Berri immensely, but is shrewd enough to know that he never can
-get at him by being serious.  We had a very jolly breakfast, and Berri
-left declaring that he would n't rest until he had induced some famous
-man to step on his feet.
-
-"Then I 'll be a lion myself and I sha'n't go to your Wednesday
-Evenings, no matter how much you ask me," he said.  At which Fleetwood
-held his head with one hand and waved toward the door with the other,
-moaning,--
-
-"Go away,--go away, both of you! You 've caused me to drink four cups of
-tea without knowing what I was doing.  I think you want to drive me
-mad."
-
-10.30.  Neither of us had a lecture until eleven o'clock, and we were
-looking at some new books in a window on the Square when Hemington
-appeared.  He touched us on the shoulders in a confidential kind of way,
-and then, looking furtively at the people who were waiting near by for a
-car, lowered his voice mysteriously, and asked us to go with him to his
-room.
-
-"I have something over there that I don't mind letting you in on," he
-said.  "Only you must n't of course speak of it; it might get us into a
-good deal of trouble with the government."
-
-This sounded rather exciting, so we hurried to Hemington's room without
-talking much on the way over, as Hemington did n't communicate anything
-further and we, of course, could n't help wondering what he was going to
-show us.  When we got into his study, he gave a peculiar rap on his
-bedroom door and out came a strange-looking little person,--short and
-plump, with black, curly hair and big black eyes and a sallow, almost
-dusky skin.  A bright red handkerchief knotted loosely around his neck
-gave him a picturesque, a tropical air, that, considering we were in
-Hemington's prosaic study in Stoughton Hall, thrilled us from the first.
-
-"This is Amadeo," said Hemington.  (Hemi is taking Spanish I., and I
-think he enjoyed as much as anything pronouncing the name in a deep,
-rich, careless sort of way; he hauled it in every other second.)  "It's
-all right, Amadeo," he went on, for although Amadeo smiled a most
-beautiful smile full of very regular and dazzling teeth, he turned to
-Hemington with a look intended to express inquiry and misgiving.  "You
-can trust these men; they are your friends."
-
-At this Amadeo flashed his teeth again and kissed Berri's hands.  Berri
-looked exceedingly shocked, and I craftily put mine in my pocket.
-
-"He 's a deserter," Hemington explained; for Berri began to rub his
-knuckles with a handkerchief, Amadeo looked hurt, and there was a moment
-of embarrassment all round. "He escaped from a merchantman that got in a
-few days ago from ----"  (As I don't take Spanish I., it's impossible
-for me to give the luscious name of the island that Amadeo's boat had
-come from.  It sounded something like Santa Bawthawthawthoth.)  "The
-skipper was a brute--a regular old timer, and Amadeo could n't stand it
-any longer.  He and a pal swam ashore with all their worldly possessions
-on their backs done up in tarpaulins (they were fired at six times when
-they were in the water), and his possessions" (here Hemington lowered
-his voice and Amadeo glanced sharply at the door) "consisted of three or
-four hundred of the best cigars you ever smoked in your life.  He got
-them at Santa Bawthawthawthoth, and as he has n't a cent, of course he
-wants to sell them.  He asks about a fourth as much as you have to pay
-for a perfectly wretched cigar at any place in town.  They naturally did
-n't go through the custom house, and that's why you have to keep it all
-so quiet."
-
-Amadeo went into Hemington's bedroom and returned with an oil-skin
-bundle that looked like those round, flat cheeses you see under cages of
-green wire in grocery stores. He untied it (glancing apprehensively at
-the door from time to time, and once clasping it to his breast when he
-heard a step in the hall outside), and disclosed the smuggled treasure.
-I have n't begun to smoke yet, but Berri and Hemington each took a
-cigar, and after puffing away for several seconds, Berri said his was
-simply delicious.  It certainly smelled very good, and I was very sorry
-I had to run away in a few minutes to my eleven o'clock lecture, for
-Amadeo began to tell of some of his experiences on the merchantman, and
-they were pretty fierce.  Berri cut his lecture, and I should have, if I
-were n't on probation.  One of the penalties of probation is that you
-can't cut without an excuse that holds water at every pore.
-
-11-12 M.  Listened to a lecture--with experiments--on physics.  The
-experiments did n't turn out well, and the instructor seemed much
-annoyed.  I don't think he has the right idea.  My experiments in the
-laboratory always give beautiful results.  I find out first of all from
-the book what Nature is expected to do; and then I see that she does it.
-I 'm one of the most successful little experimenters in the class.
-
-12 M.  Ran back to Hemington's room. Amadeo had gone, but Berri and
-Hemington had bought all the cigars.  Berri had learned a lot of Spanish
-in my absence, and could say "Amadeo" and "Santa Bawthawthawthoth" with
-almost as fluent a hot-mush effect as Hemington could.  He packed his
-share of the cigars in Hemi's dress-suit case, and we took them over to
-our house.
-
-1 P.M.  Went to luncheon at Mrs. Brown's, and tried to borrow a shirt
-from everybody at the table, but without success.  Duncan Duncan asked
-me to a tea in his rooms this afternoon to meet his mother and sisters
-and some girls from town.  I promised to go, but Miss Shedd, my
-washerwoman, slipped on the ice and hurt herself and has n't been able
-to do my clothes for more than two weeks, and I discovered this morning
-that there were no more shirts in my drawer.  Berri or Duggie would lend
-me one, but Berri unfortunately hasn't any, either, as Miss Shedd does
-his washing too, and of course anything of Duggie's on me is ridiculous.
-I wore a suit of his pajamas one night when I had a cold, as they 're
-thicker than mine, and the shoulders hung down around my elbows.  Well,
-nobody would lend me a shirt--for no reason in the world except that
-they realized I simply had to have one and thought it would be amusing
-not to.
-
-While we were at luncheon, Berri and Hemington gave every one two or
-three cigars, and Berri said knowingly: "I wish you fellows would try
-these and tell me what you think of them.  I happened to get hold of
-them in a rather odd way; I can't tell you how exactly--at least not for
-a few days. They 're not the usual thing you buy at a store.  They come
-from Santa Bawthawthawthoth."
-
-We went on talking and forgot all about the cigars, until Berri, who is
-very sensitive to any kind of scent or odor, suddenly looked up and
-said,--
-
-"What a perfectly excruciating smell!  It's like overshoes on a hot
-register, only much worse.  What on earth is it?"  At this the rest of
-us at the table began to sniff the air, and I confess it was pretty bad.
-Bertie Stockbridge had finished his luncheon while we were still eating,
-and had taken his chair over to the window, where he was reading
-something for a half-past one recitation and smoking one of Amadeo's
-cigars.  He was too absorbed in his book to hear the rest of us, but all
-at once he looked up with a very pained expression and exclaimed,--
-
-"What a beastly cigar!  I was reading and did n't notice how queer it
-was; it 's made me very sick."  Then of course we all discovered at once
-where the hot rubbery fumes came from,--all but Berri and Hemington,
-that is to say; they refused to believe it. So everybody began to light
-cigars, and in a minute or two the room was simply unendurable.
-Stockbridge said they were like the trick cigars you see advertised
-sometimes; the kind that "explode with a red light,--killing the smoker
-and amusing the spectators."  We dissected several of them; they seemed
-to contain a little of everything except tobacco. The fellows insisted
-on knowing all the details of the colossal sell, and although Berri and
-Hemington felt awfully cheap about their part in it, they finally told.
-Duggie says an Amadeo or a Manuele or a Luigi or an Anselmo appears in
-Cambridge every year at about this time, and invariably returns to Santa
-Bawthawthawthoth laden with Freshman gold.
-
-1.25 P.M.  Rushed home; got a shirt and took it to a Chinese laundry
-just off Mt. Auburn Street and implored the proprietor to wash it and
-have it ready for me by five o'clock.  He seemed to think me somewhat
-insane, and said in a soothing, fatherly kind of way,--
-
-"You come back day aftle to-mollel."  Then I explained the situation and
-told him I would give him anything he asked if he would do me this
-favor.  He made strange Oriental sounds, at which sleepy, gibbering
-things tumbled out of a shelf behind a green calico curtain, and from a
-black hole in the partition at the end of the shelf there began a
-tremendous grunting and snuffling, pierced by squeaks of rage and
-anguish.  Then five Chinamen swarmed about my shirt, gesticulating
-murderously, and uttering raucous cries like impossible birds. I wanted
-to stay and see how it all turned out; but the bell had rung for my
-half-past one o'clock, and I hurried away.
-
-The Oriental temperament is an impassive, deliberative, sphinx-like,
-inscrutable thing.
-
-1.40-2.30 P.M.  This hour I spent in class listening to a lecture on
-narration.  I enjoyed it very much, and the hour went by so quickly that
-when the instructor dismissed us, I thought he had made a mistake.  He
-gave us short scenes from various famous books in illustration of his
-points; and ended, as usual, by reading a lot of daily themes written by
-the class.  Two of them were mine.  He said they were good, but pointed
-out how they could have been better.  One of his suggestions I agree
-with perfectly, but I think he 's all off in regard to the other.  I 'll
-talk it over with him at his next consultation hour.  Some of the
-fellows thought the whole thing perfect drool; but I confess it
-interested me very much.  I never feel like cutting this course,
-somehow.
-
-2.30.  Went to my room with the intention of reading history until it
-was time to go for my shirt, and--if it was done up--get ready for the
-tea.  I had read only part of a chapter when some fellows, passing by,
-yelled at my windows.  I had made up my mind, when I began to read, not
-to answer any one, as it 's impossible to accomplish anything if you do.
-But of course I forgot and yelled back, and in a minute three fellows
-clattered up the stairs and I realized that they were good for the rest
-of the afternoon.
-
-It's a queer thing about going to see people here.  I don't think that
-any one ever goes with the intention of staying any length of time, or
-even of sitting down; you merely drop in as you 're passing by and
-happen to think of it.  You would n't believe it if somebody told you
-you were destined to stay for several hours.  But that's what usually
-happens.  Another queer thing is that very few fellows admit that they
-'re studying when you come in, unless of course it's in the midst of the
-exams.  If you find a man at a desk with a note-book and several large
-open volumes spread out before him, and you say to him, "Don't mind
-me--go on with your grinding," nine times out of ten he'll answer, "Oh,
-I wasn't grinding; I was just glancing over these notes."  The tenth man
-fixes you with a determined eye and replies: "You get out of here, or
-take a book and go into a corner and shut up."
-
-3.45.  We all took a walk up Brattle Street past the Longfellow house as
-far as James Russell Lowell's place and back.  It's a great old street,
-even with the leaves all gone--which makes ordinary places so dreary.
-Duggie pointed out the most famous houses to me one day and told me who
-had lived in them.  I tried to do it this afternoon, but the fellows
-said they did n't care.
-
-5.  Got my shirt at the Chinaman's.  It looked all right, but it was
-still damp in spots--wet, in fact.  I went prepared to pay almost any
-price after all the excitement I had caused; but the proprietor was
-surprisingly moderate in his demands.  I gave him something more than he
-asked, but he would n't take it until I accepted some poisonous-looking
-dried berries done up in a piece of oiled paper.  He seemed to have
-grasped the idea of a tea, for he kept saying over and over again with a
-delighted smile: "You go see girl--you go see girl."
-
-5.20.  Went to Duncan's tea and "saw girl"--lots of them.  They were
-very nice, and pretended they were dreadfully excited at being in a
-college room.  They asked all sorts of silly questions, and the fellows
-replied with even sillier answers.  Duncan had taken them to see the
-museums and the glass flowers and Memorial and the Gym, and had done the
-honors of Cambridge generally.
-
-6.30.  Went to dinner at Mrs. Brown's, but as I had just come from
-Duncan's, where I had drunk two cups of tea (I don't know why, as I hate
-it) and had eaten several kinds of little cakes, I had no appetite
-whatever. Somebody had put a chocolate cigar on Berri's and Hemington's
-plate,--the kind that has a piece of gilt paper glued to the large end.
-Berri and Hemington had to stand a good deal of guying during dinner,
-but were consoled by the fact that Amadeo's pal had worked precisely the
-same game on some other men we know slightly at the very moment that
-Amadeo himself was doing us.
-
-7.15.  Went to my room and made a big fire, as I had a curious kind of
-chill, although the house was warm and it was n't cold outside.  I had
-just decided to stay at home and read, when I came across an Advocate
-postal card on my desk, and remembered that there was a meeting of the
-board in the Secretary's room at eight o'clock.
-
-8.11.  Listened to manuscripts and voted on them, and then sat around
-and talked afterwards.  It's rather embarrassing sometimes when a story
-happens to be by one of the editors and isn't good.  This evening we had
-a long, terribly sentimental passage from the life of a member of the
-board.  We all knew who had written it, and although it was ever so much
-worse than the tale that had just been read (which had been most
-unmercifully jumped on), the criticisms were painfully cautious and
-generously sprinkled with the praise that damns.  Of course it isn't
-always this way when the editors submit things; they 're often made more
-fun of than anybody else. But this man for some reason is n't the kind
-with whom that sort of thing goes down.  He has been known to refer to
-writing for the Advocate as "My Art."
-
-One thing that happened during the evening made a good deal of fun.  The
-advertisers have kicked about our not having the leaves of the paper
-cut.  They say that the subscribers cut the leaves of the reading matter
-only, and never get a chance to see the advertisements at all.  We think
-it is ever so much nicer not to have it done by machinery, for when the
-subscribers do it themselves with a paper-cutter, the effect on the
-thick paper is very rough and artistic.  Well, we discussed this for a
-long time, until some one exclaimed: "I don't see why we shouldn't have
-it done by hand.  It would take a little longer, but the expense would
-n't amount to much, and in that way we could have our rough edges and
-appease the advertisers at the same time." So after some more talk it
-was voted on and carried unanimously.  Then the President got up, and
-turning to a solemn person who had been very much in favor of the
-motion, said:
-
-"It has been moved and carried that the leaves of the Advocate be cut
-henceforth by Hand.  Mr. Hand, you will kindly see that the work is done
-on time; I think there are only eight or nine hundred copies printed
-this year."
-
-11.  On the way home from the Advocate meeting I saw the most gorgeous
-northern lights I ever imagined,--great shafts of deep pink that shot up
-from the horizon and all joined at the middle of the sky like a glorious
-umbrella.  I ran upstairs to get Duggie and Berri, but neither of them
-was in; so, as I simply had to have some one to marvel with, I called
-Mrs. Chester.  She and another old crone--Mis' Buckson--were having a
-cup of tea in the kitchen, and did n't seem particularly enthusiastic
-over my invitation to come out and see the display, but they finally
-bundled up in shawls and followed me to the piazza.  We stood there a
-minute or two looking up in silence, and I thought at first that they
-were as much impressed as I was. Finally, however, Mrs. Chester gave a
-little society cough and remarked,--
-
-"It's real chilly, aren't it?" and Mis' Buckson, drawing her shawl more
-tightly about her bent shoulders, jerked her chin in an omnipotent,
-blase kind of fashion towards the heavens, and croaked,--
-
-"That there's a sign o' war."  Then they both limped back to the house.
-
-11.30.  Made a big blaze in the fireplace, as I was cold again and did
-n't feel well at all. I sat down to write to mamma, and was just
-finishing when Duggie came in on his way to bed.  He 's not in training
-now and can stay up as long as he pleases.  He asked me how often I
-wrote to mamma, and I told him that I had written twice a week at first
-because there was so much to tell, but that now since things had settled
-down and I did n't have so much to say, I write about once a week.  He
-answered that there was just as much to say now as there ever was, and
-told me to write twice a week or he 'd know the reason why.
-
-Then I went to bed and had a chill.  And that's how a whole day was
-spent from half-past eight in the morning until half-past twelve at
-night.
-
-The next morning I woke up with a very bad sore throat and a stiff neck
-and pains all over.  Duggie and Berri made me send for a doctor, and
-signed off for me at the office.  I can't imagine how I caught cold,
-unless, perhaps, it was from wearing that wet shirt.
-
-
-
-
-                                  *IX*
-
-
-I was very sick for about three days, and just sick for three or four
-days more.  When Berri signed off for me at the office, the college
-doctor bustled around to my room at noon to see what was the matter.
-His motives in doing this are somewhat mixed, I believe.  He has not
-only the health but the veracity of the undergraduate very much at
-heart.  If you are laid up, of course he has to know about it; and if
-you are n't well enough to attend lectures but manage with a heroic
-effort to go skating,--well, he likes to know about that too.
-
-"Of course you haven't measles," Duggie said when he came in a few
-minutes after Dr. Tush had gone, "but equally, of course, he said you
-had,--did n't he?"
-
-"Yes, he did," I answered dismally; for he had told me this at
-considerable length, and I remembered that measles a good many years
-before had almost been the end of me.
-
-"Well, _that_'s a relief," Duggie went on cheerfully.  "You may have all
-sorts of things, but it's a cinch that you have n't measles.  Tush is a
-conservative old soul; he always gambles on measles, and of course every
-now and then he wins.  It pleases him immensely.  He usually celebrates
-his success by writing a paper on 'The University's Health,' and getting
-it printed in the Graduates' Magazine."
-
-When the other doctor--the real one--came, he found that I was
-threatened with pneumonia.
-
-Oh, I had a perfectly miserable time of it at first.  The feeling
-dreadfully all over and not being able to breathe was bad enough, but I
-think the far-away-from-homeness and the worrying about mamma were
-worse.  I was afraid all the time that she would hear (although I could
-n't imagine how that would be possible), and then in the middle of the
-night I lay awake hoping and praying that she _would_ hear and leave for
-Cambridge by the next train.  I don't suppose I realized just then how
-wonderfully good Duggie and Berri and Mrs. Chester were to me.  Duggie
-and Berri took turns in sitting up all night and putting flannel soaked
-in hot mustard-water on my chest (ugh! how I loathe the smell of
-mustard), and when they had to go to lectures during the day,--I think,
-as a matter of fact, they cut a great many of them,--Mrs. Chester would
-come in and hem endless dish-cloths by the window.  Berri says that he
-ceased to worry about me from the time I looked over at Mrs. Chester
-after about half an hour's silence and exclaimed,--
-
-"Sew some more with the crisscross pattern; I 'm tired of those dingy
-white ones."
-
-As I began to get better, I appreciated how much trouble I 'd given them
-all and tried to thank them; but Berri said,--
-
-"Why, your illness has been a perfect god-send to me.  I 've done more
-grinding lately between midnight and six in the morning than I ever
-thought would be possible.  I 've caught up with almost everything."
-And Duggie stopped me with,--
-
-"But if it had n't been Berri and I, it would have been someone
-else--which we're very glad it was n't."
-
-Old Mrs. Chester is a jewel.  I didn't pay much attention to her at
-first, but was just glad to know she was in the room.  Later, however,
-when I began to want to get up and she devoted the whole of her
-marvellous art to keeping me amused, I appreciated her. She is
-wonderful.  I was going to assert that she inspires the kind of
-affection one can't help feeling for a person who is all heart and no
-intelligence; but that, somehow, misses the mark.  She has
-intelligence--lots of it--only it's different.  And before my recovery
-was complete I began to wonder if it wasn't the only kind that is, after
-all, worth while. For it's the kind with which books and newspapers and
-"going a journey" and other mechanical aids have nothing to do.
-(Perhaps I should concede something to the influence of foreign travel,
-as there was a very memorable expedition "to Goshen in New York State"
-some time in the early sixties.)  Mrs. Chester's intelligence gushes
-undefiled from the rock, and then flows along in a limpid, ungrammatical
-stream that soothes at first and then enslaves.  Her gift for narrative
-of the detailed, photographic, New England variety positively
-out-Wilkins Mary, and I am to-day, perhaps, the greatest living male
-authority on what Berri calls _la cronique scandaleuse_ of Cambridge.
-One of her studies in the life of the town forty years ago (it was a
-sort of epic trilogy that lasted all morning and afternoon and part of
-the evening with intermissions for luncheon and dinner) I mean to write
-some time for the Advocate.  It all leads up to the New Year's Eve on
-which "old Mrs. Burlap passed away," but it includes several new and
-startling theories as to the real cause of the Civil War, an impartial
-account of the war itself, a magnificent tribute to the late General
-Butler, a description of Mrs. Chester's wedding,--the gifts and floral
-tributes displayed on that occasion together with a dreamy surmise as to
-their probable cost,--a brief history of religion from the point of view
-of one who is at times assailed by doubt,--but who doesn't make a
-practice of "rushin' around town tellin' folks who'd only be too glad to
-have it to say" (this last I assumed to be a thrust at Mis' Buckson),--a
-spirited word picture of the festivities that took place when Cambridge
-celebrated its fiftieth anniversary as a city, and at the end a
-brilliant comparison between Cambridge and "Goshen in New York State."
-There was, I believe, some mention of the passing away of old Mrs.
-Burlap on New Year's Eve, but of this I am not sure.
-
-One thing I discovered that rather astonished me in this part of the
-world (a locality that Berri in one of his themes called "a cold hot-bed
-of erudition"), and that is--Mrs. Chester doesn't know how to read.  I
-never would have found it out but for an embarrassing little
-miscalculation on her part, in the method by which until then she had
-delightfully concealed the fact.  More than once while I was sick, she
-sat by the lamp apparently enjoying the evening paper that Duggie
-subscribes to, and I had n't the slightest suspicion that she was
-probably holding it upside down, even when I would ask her what the news
-was and she would reply,--
-
-"Oh, shaw--these papers!  They 're every one of 'em alike.  They don't
-seem to be any news to 'em.  I don't see why you young gentlemen waste
-your good money a-buyin' 'em."
-
-Often on the way upstairs she takes the letters that the postman leaves
-between the banisters in the little hall below, and manages to
-distribute them with more or less accuracy.
-
-"I 've got somethin' for you, and it 's from your mother too, you
-naughty little man, you," is her usual way of handing me a communication
-from mamma.  I did n't realise until the other day that, as mamma's
-letters always came in the same kind of gray-blue envelopes, it doesn't
-take a chirographic expert to tell whom they are from.  Nor did I recall
-that, when Mrs. Chester appears with a whole handful of things, she
-invariably stops short in the middle of the room and artlessly
-exclaims,--
-
-"Well, now, if that does n't beat all! Here I 've climbed up them steep
-stairs again and forgotten my specs.  Who 's gettin' all these letters
-anyhow?"
-
-A few mornings ago, however,--when they let me sit up for the first
-time,--Mrs. Chester appeared with two letters.  One of them was
-unmistakably gray-blue, but the other was white and oblong and
-non-committal.  She paused at the door as if about to examine the
-address, and then suddenly,--
-
-"If I ain't the most careless woman in the world," she said.  "I 've
-gone and brought up the letters again, and forgotten--"  But just at
-this point we both became aware that her steel-rimmed spectacles were
-dangling in her other hand.  They not only dangled, but they seemed to
-me a moment later to dangle almost spitefully; for Mrs. Chester's worn
-cheeks became very pink.  She looked at the spectacles and at the white
-envelope and at me.  Then she said with a sort of wistful lightness,--
-
-"Maybe you can make it out; your eyes are younger than mine.  I never
-seen such a letter; it's so--so--it's so flung together like."
-
-"It is--isn't it?" I agreed hastily, as I stretched out my hand, to
-receive a letter from papa with the address in type-writing.
-
-Just as I thought would happen, mamma heard I was sick and was, of
-course, very much worried.  Dick Benton--who has never come near me, and
-whom I 've only seen twice on the street since College opened--mentioned
-the fact of my illness in a letter home. (I suppose he did it in a
-despairing effort to make his sentences reach the middle of page two.)
-Of course Mrs. Benton had to throw a shawl around her meddling old back
-and waddle across the street to our house, to find out the latest news;
-and as there had n't been any news, mamma's letter to me expressed a
-"state of mind."  But I fixed her (and incidentally Dick Benton) with a
-telegram.
-
-By the way, I really must speak to mamma about her recent letters to me.
-Mildred has been away from home, and as mamma writes very regularly to
-both of us, she often refers to things she remembers having written to
-somebody, but without pausing to consider how maddening they are when
-the somebody doesn't happen to be myself.  From her last, for instance,
-I gleaned these interesting items without having the vaguest idea what
-they belong to:--
-
-"Your father and I have just got back from the funeral.  I suppose, when
-one arrives at such a great age, death is a relief.  But it is always
-solemn.
-
-"Is n't it nice about the Tilestons?  I don't know when--in a purely
-impersonal way--I 've been so pleased.  They 've struggled so long and
-so bravely and now it seems as if their ship had come in at last.  Of
-course, I should n't care to spend so much time in South America myself,
-(Guatemala _is_ in South America, is n't it?) but they all seem
-delighted at the prospect."
-
-Now would n't that jar you?
-
-My acquaintances generally found out that I was sick about the time that
-Duggie and Berri and Mrs. Chester discharged me, so to speak, as well.
-I could n't go out, and the doctor made me stay in bed longer than was
-really necessary, as the bottom of the furnace fell to pieces one
-morning and it was impossible to heat the house for several days.  But I
-felt pretty well.  By that time, as I say, there was all at once a
-ripple of interest among my friends over the fact that I was sick.  They
-were awfully kind, and came to my room from early in the morning--right
-after breakfast--until late at night, when they would drop in on their
-way back from the theatre.  My desk was a perfect news-stand of
-illustrated magazines and funny papers, and I had left in my book-case,
-probably, the queerest collection of novels that was ever assembled
-outside of a city hospital.  Duggie had a fit over them, and as he read
-out the titles one evening, he kept exclaiming, "What, oh, what are the
-children coming to!"  The only volume that was n't fiction was a thing
-called "The Statesman's Year Book," and was brought by a queer sort of
-chap who is very much interested in sociology.  I know him pretty well;
-so after I thanked him, I could n't help saying,--
-
-"What on earth did you lug this thing up here for?--it looks like an
-almanac."  To which he replied,--
-
-"Well, it's darned interesting, I can tell you.  Until I got it I never
-knew, for instance, how many quarts of alcohol per head were consumed
-annually in Finland."
-
-Although Duggie did n't say anything, I don't think he was particularly
-pleased at the fellows dropping in so often and staying so long.  They
-played cards a lot, and smoked all the time until you could hardly see
-across the room; and sometimes when night came I felt rather tired and
-my eyes and throat hurt a good deal.  But I confess I liked it, even if
-Duggie and Mrs. Chester did n't.
-
-Only one change of any importance took place while I was laid up:
-Berri's Icelandic dog--Saga--has been removed from our midst.  I was
-aware that an unusual spirit of peace and order reigned in the house as
-soon as I began to be about once more, but I attributed it vaguely to
-the chastening influence of my illness.  However, one morning, when on
-my way to a lecture I remembered that I had noticed my best hat lying on
-a chair in my study as I came away, and ran back to save it from being
-eaten, it occurred to me that I had n't seen Saga for days.  So, while
-Berri and I were strolling home from luncheon, I asked him what had
-happened.
-
-"He 's gone--gone, poor old darling!" said Berri; "I hate to speak of
-it."
-
-"He was n't stolen or run over or anything, was he?" I asked
-sympathetically; for now that Saga was no longer an hourly source of
-anxiety and conflict, I felt reasonably safe in expressing some regret.
-"Did he run away?"
-
-"No, he did n't leave me," Berri answered sadly; "I gave him up.  You
-see--I found out that there is a law against bringing them into the
-State; they always go mad as soon as the warm weather comes.  So I gave
-him to one of the little Cabot girls on her birthday.  She was awfully
-pleased."
-
-I am rather worried over something that I got into lately without
-stopping to think how much it might involve.  Berri and that tall spook,
-named Ranny, that he met at Fleetwood's Wednesday Evening, struck up
-quite an intimacy not long ago, although I can't for the life of me see
-how they managed it.  He isn't a Freshman, as we thought, but a
-Sophomore.  Berri was waiting in a bookstore in town one day to go to a
-matinee with a fellow who did n't turn up; and while he was standing
-there, Ranny came in and began to drive the clerks insane over some
-Greek and Sanscrit books he had ordered weeks before and that no one had
-ever heard of.  Berri looked on for a while, and, as his friend did n't
-come and it was getting late and he--Berri--did n't like to waste the
-extra ticket, he invited Ranny to go with him.  Well, they not only went
-to the matinee, they dined in town together and went again to another
-show in the evening.  Between the acts Ranny explained to him just
-wherein the wit of "The Girl from Oskosh" differed from the comedies of
-Aristophanes, and Berri says that before they parted he had learned all
-about the Greek drama from A to Izzard.  Since then Ranny has been to
-our house several times, and although Berri likes him, he usually finds
-after about an hour that he isn't equal to the intellectual strain; so
-he lures Ranny into my room and then gracefully fades away.
-
-Now I like Ranny too.  He has, in his ponderous, bespectacled way, an
-enthusiasm for several bespectacled, ponderous subjects that is simply
-irresistible.  One of them is Egyptology and the study of hieroglyphics.
-Of course I don't know anything about this, any more than Berri knew
-about the Greek drama,--not as much even; for he did, at least, pretend
-to play a pagan instrument of some kind in a play they gave at school
-once, while a Frenchman behind the scenes toodled away on a flute.  But
-when Ranny gets to talking about dynasties and cartouches and draws
-fascinating little pictures of gods and goddesses named Ma and Pa, and
-explains how the whole business was deciphered by means of a piece of
-stone somebody picked up in the mud one day,--a regular old Sherlock
-Holmes, he must have been,--you simply can't help being carried away and
-wishing you could discover something on your own account.  He talked so
-much about it and made it all seem so real and important that one day
-when he exclaimed,--
-
-"And the mystery is that the University ignores this subject--ignores
-it!"  I really felt that the Faculty was treating us rather shabbily and
-that we were n't, somehow, getting our money's worth.  We talked the
-matter over very seriously, and decided at last that it could n't be
-stinginess on the part of the Corporation,--for why should it allow
-courses in higher mathematics and philosophy and Italian literature, to
-which only three or four fellows went, if it wanted to save the pennies?
-It was more likely just ignorance of the importance of hieroglyphics,
-and the growing demand for a thorough course of it.
-
-"We probably could get a course all right if we showed them how some of
-us feel about it," Ranny mused.  "There's a chap in Latin 47 who'd join,
-I think--you've seen that middle-aged man with the long sandy beard,
-have n't you?  He tries almost everything."
-
-The person Ranny referred to did n't seem very promising to me.  We
-sleep next each other in a history course.  He never wears a necktie,
-and the last time I saw him there were a lot of dead maple leaves
-tangled up in his beard.  No one seems to know why he is here.
-
-"Well, that makes three right away," Ranny declared enthusiastically.
-"Perhaps Berrisford will join; but even if he does n't three 's enough."
-
-The very next morning after this Ranny appeared to say he was going to
-consult Professor Pallas about the new course, and wanted me to go along
-and put in a word now and then.  This seemed a little sudden to me, and
-I said that perhaps I ought to consult my adviser before taking up a new
-study, as I had n't done particularly well in the old ones.  However,
-Ranny said that my adviser ought to be thankful at my showing so much
-interest and public spirit.  So we went over to Professor Pallas's
-little private room in Sever.  He was very glad to see us, and when
-Ranny began to explain the subject of our coming, his old eyes just
-glittered.  He kept smiling to himself and nodding his head in assent,
-and once, when Ranny paused for breath, he brought his fist down on the
-table, exclaiming,
-
-"I predicted this--predicted it."  Then he thrust his hands in his
-pockets and paced excitedly up and down the room.  Ranny was of course
-tremendously encouraged, and I was somewhat horrified a moment later, to
-have him turn toward me and with a wave of his hand declare,--
-
-"My friend, Mr. Wood, feels this weakness in the curriculum more,
-perhaps, than any of us; for long before he entered college with the
-purpose of specialising in the subject, he surrounded himself with a
-collection of Egyptian antiquities that far excels anything of the kind
-on this side of the British Museum."  (He was referring in his intense
-way to a handful of imitation scarabs and a dissipated-looking old
-mummified parrot that Uncle Peter brought home from his trip up the
-Nile. I had indiscreetly mentioned them one afternoon.)  "We are sure of
-four earnest workers, and there are, no doubt, many more."
-
-Now the thing that worries me about all this is that Professor Pallas
-seemed so gratified and eager to help the cause.  His attitude toward us
-was that of a scholar among scholars,--deep calling unto deep.  He said
-that he would love to conduct a course in hieroglyphics himself, but
-feared he was n't competent, as he had merely taken up the subject as a
-kind of recreation at odd moments during the last six or eight years.
-He could n't recall any one in the United States who was competent, in
-fact, but he knew of a splendid authority in Germany,--just the man for
-the place,--and he would speak to the President about him at the next
-Faculty meeting.  Ranny and I thanked him profusely, and that at present
-is where the matter stands.  I wake up in the night sometimes,
-positively cold at the thought of having added hieroglyphics to my other
-worries.  Think of a course for which you could n't buy typewritten
-notes,--a course the very lectures of which would be in German,--a
-course so terrible that no one in the United States would dare undertake
-to tutor you in it when you got stuck.
-
-The Christmas holidays are almost here, but it has not been decided yet
-whether or not I am to spend them at home.  Mildred is still gadding
-about, and papa may have to go to New York on business.  If he does,
-mamma will, no doubt, go with him, and I'll join them there, and we'll
-all have thin slabs of Christmas turkey surrounded by bird bath-tubs at
-a hotel.  Berri has invited me to spend the vacation with him (his
-mother is living in Washington this winter), but as he remarks dolefully
-every now and then that he has to stay in Cambridge to write a thesis
-that is due immediately after the holidays, I don't see how he means to
-manage.  He's been putting off that thesis from day to day until I don't
-see how he can possibly do all the reading and writing and note-taking
-it necessitates. I 've tried to get him started once or twice, but he
-has merely groaned and said,--
-
-"You 're a nice one to preach industry, are n't you?"  So I've given up.
-Well, it's none of my business if he gets fired from the course.
-
-
-
-
-                                  *X*
-
-
-I might have spared myself my anxiety in regard to the course in
-hieroglyphics. My adviser overtook me in the yard a day or so after our
-interview with Professor Pallas, and after walking along with me for a
-while he said,--
-
-"Well, Wood, I 'm glad to see you looking about as usual; I had almost
-come to the conclusion that you 'd gone stark mad."  I asked him what he
-meant, and it seems that old Pallas had made a speech at a Faculty
-meeting in which he declared that the deep and ever-growing interest
-throughout the undergraduate body in the subject of Egyptology had
-reached a climax that demanded a course of some kind.  He was very
-eloquent, and caused a good deal of mild excitement.  Then some one got
-up and asked who were concerned in the movement, and Pallas, after
-fumbling in his side pocket, finally produced a memorandum and said,--
-
-"The names of those imbued with a spirit for serious archaeological
-research are many, but I think that the youth who by his zeal in
-collecting and preserving valuable antiquities has done more than any
-one else to further this study among his fellows is Mr. Thomas Wood, of
-the class of ----"  But the poor old man did n't get any further, my
-adviser says, for everybody in the room began to roar and the meeting
-broke up in confusion. Well, that 's off my mind, anyhow; although I
-don't see why they should have taken it the way they did.  There 's
-nothing so very extraordinary in acquiring a love for study when that's
-what you 're supposed to come here for.
-
-Berri and I discovered the most fascinating little place the other
-evening.  We had been in town all afternoon on the trail of an express
-package of Berri's that had been lost for days, and were running along
-Tremont Street on the way to the Cambridge car, when Berri suddenly
-stopped in front of a sort of alley and clutched me.  From the other end
-came the sound of music,--a harp, a flute, and a violin playing one of
-those Neapolitan yayayama songs that always, somehow, make you feel as
-if you 'd been abroad, even when you 've never been nearer Naples than
-waving good-by to your sister from a North German Lloyd dock in Hoboken.
-
-"Let 's go see what it is," Berri said.  So we skipped to the other end
-of the alley, and found a brightly lighted little restaurant with the
-music wailing away in the vestibule.  We stood listening for a time and
-watching the people who went in.  They all stopped to peer through a
-glass door, and then after a moment of indecision passed on--up a flight
-of steep stairs.  Berri, of course, could n't be satisfied until he had
-solved the mystery of the glass door, and it was n't long before we were
-doing just as every one else did.  We saw a long, narrow room with three
-rows of little tables reaching from end to end.  The walls were covered
-with gay frescos of some kind (I could n't make them out, the tobacco
-smoke was so thick); foreign-looking waiters were tearing in and out
-among the tables; flower girls were wandering up and down with
-great-armfuls of roses and carnations for sale, and everybody was
-laughing and gesticulating and having such a good time, apparently,--the
-music was so shrill and the clatter of dishes so incessant,--that Berri
-and I turned and gazed at each other, as much as to say, "After all
-these years we 've found it at last."  But a moment later we realized
-why the people we had seen go in had, after a glance, turned away and
-climbed the stairs; all the tables were occupied.  I think we must have
-looked as dissatisfied as the others, for we felt that nothing upstairs
-could equal the scene we had just discovered.  And we were right.  The
-upper rooms were comparatively empty and quiet and rather dreary.  So we
-came down again and were about to take a farewell look and start for
-home, when Berri, with his nose flattened against the glass, suddenly
-exclaimed, "Saved!  Saved!" and pushing open the door, made his way
-across the room.  Who should be there but Mr. Fleetwood, dining alone at
-a table in the corner?  Berri, after shaking hands with him, beckoned to
-me, and in a moment we had both seated ourselves at Fleetwood's table.
-
-"This is almost as nice as if we 'd really been invited, isn't it?" said
-Berri, in his easy way.  "You know we were just on the point of giving
-up and going home."
-
-"Why didn't you go upstairs?" Fleetwood inquired.  (He pretended all
-through dinner that we had spoiled his evening.)  "It is n't too late
-even now," he suggested; "it's much nicer up there; there 's more air."
-
-"There's plenty of air, but no atmosphere," Berri answered.  "This is
-what we enjoy," he added with a wave of his hand.
-
-"I 'm glad you like my Bohemia," Fleetwood quavered.
-
-"Oh, Bohemia's all right," replied Berri. "Bohemia would be perfect--if
-it weren't for the Bohemians."
-
-"What are 'Bohemians'?" I asked, for I 'd often heard people called that
-without understanding just what it meant.
-
-"Bohemians?" Berri repeated.  "Why, Bohemians are perfectly horrid
-things who exist exclusively on Welsh rabbits and use the word
-'conventional' as a term of reproach.  My aunt knows hundreds of them."
-
-"I wrote a paper once on 'What is a Bohemian?'" Fleetwood put in.  "If
-you would really like to know--but of course you would n't," he broke
-off sadly; "no one does any more.  You clever boys know everything
-before you come."
-
-"Oh, Mr. Fleetwood, please let us read your paper," we both begged him
-enthusiastically. I think he was a little flattered, for we would n't
-allow him to talk about anything else until he had promised to tell me
-where I could find his article.  Berri, however, he refused absolutely,
-and made me promise, in turn, not to let him know where to look for it
-and never to quote from it in Berri's presence.
-
-"I know him," he muttered dolefully; "I know these memories that 'turn
-again and rend you;' I 'm an old man; '_Ich habe gelebt_' and
-ge-suffered."
-
-Well, we had a most delightful dinner. Fleetwood, when he saw that he
-was n't going to get rid of us, cheered up and made himself very
-agreeable.  He can be charming when he wants to be.  He and Berri did
-most of the talking, although his remarks, as a rule, were addressed to
-me.  The fact is, he likes me because I 'm sympathetic and a good
-listener, but Berri he finds vastly more interesting.  Berri has
-travelled such a lot, and, besides, he has the knack (I haven't it at
-all) of being able to discuss things of which he knows nothing in a way
-that commands not only attention but respect.  For instance, they got
-into a perfectly absorbing squabble over the novelist Henry James, in
-which Fleetwood deplored and Berri defended what Fleetwood called his
-"later manner."  Fleetwood ended up with,--
-
-"I 've read everything he 's ever done--some of them many times
-over--and I wrote a paper on him for Lesper's not long ago; but I could
-n't, conscientiously, come to any other conclusion."  To which Berri
-replied, as he smiled indulgently to himself and broke a bit of bread
-with his slim brown fingers,--
-
-"I often wonder if you people over here who write things about Harry
-James from time to time, really comprehend the man at all--notice that I
-say 'James the man,' not 'James the writer.'  '_Le style c'est
-l'homme_,' you know; is n't it Bossuet who tells us that?"
-
-"No, it is n't," said Fleetwood, rather peevishly; "it's Buffon--and he
-probably stole it from the Latin, '_Stylus virum arguit_.'"  Fleetwood,
-of course, knows what he 's talking about.  But, nevertheless, I could
-see that Berri's general air of being foreign and detached and knowing
-James from the inside--or rather from the other side--impressed him; and
-as for me, I was simply paralyzed. For I could have testified under oath
-that Berri had never read a word of Henry James' in his life, and that
-he 'd never laid eyes on the man.  I spoke to him about it afterward and
-asked him how he dared to do such things.
-
-"Have you ever read anything by James--have you ever seen 'Harry James
-the man,' as you called him?" I inquired.
-
-"No; of course not," Berri answered. "What difference does it make?"
-
-"But you went on as if you knew more about him than even Fleetwood; and
-I think that toward the end Fleetwood almost thought you did himself."
-
-"Oh--that," Berri shrugged, after trying to recall the conversation.
-"That was merely what an old frump of a woman said at my aunt's one day
-when I dropped in for luncheon. She and Aunt Josephine gabbled and
-gabbled, and never paid the slightest attention to me, and although they
-were both unusually tiresome, I suppose I could n't avoid remembering
-some of the things they said.  But it would have been impossible for me
-to dwell any longer on that particular topic with Fleetwood, even if my
-life had depended on it, because that day at luncheon, just as my aunt's
-friend got started on 'James the man,' I happened to glance up and
-notice that she was wearing an entirely different kind of wig from the
-ratty old thing she 'd flourished in before she went abroad.  She had
-brought back a new one that was--why, it was an architectural marvel; it
-looked like the dome of a mosque, and covered her whole head, from
-eyebrows to neck, with little cut-out places for her ears to peek
-through.  It hypnotized me all through luncheon, and I never heard a
-word about 'James the man,'--so of course when I got that far with
-Fleetwood I had to change the subject.  Don't you remember that we began
-to discuss Bernhardt's conception of Hamlet rather abruptly?  I 'll
-never trust that old woman again--after making the mistake about Buffon.
-Why, she's positively illiterate!"
-
-Fleetwood told me a lot about Mazuret's--that 's the name of the
-restaurant--which made me glad that we had come across it
-accidentally,--found it out for ourselves.  It's very famous.  All sorts
-of people--writers and painters and actors and exiled noblemen--used to
-make a kind of headquarters of it and dine there whenever they happened
-to be in town.  Fleetwood has been going there for years, and always
-sits at the same table. (That's the proper thing to do; you must have a
-favorite table, and when you come in and find it occupied, you must
-scowl and shrug and complain to the waiters in a loud voice that the
-place is going to the dogs. Then everybody in the room takes it for
-granted that you 're a writer or a painter, an actor or an exiled
-nobleman, and looks interested and sympathetic.  We saw several
-performances of this kind.)  But the place, of course, "isn't what it
-used to be."  I'm seven or eight years too late, as usual.  Some of the
-poets have become very successful--which means, Fleetwood says, that
-they 're doing newspaper work in New York; some of the painters and
-actors are beyond the reach of criticism--which means that they 're
-dead; and some of the noblemen are confident that their respective
-governments are about to recall them to posts of responsibility and
-honor--which means that they are in jail.
-
-It was more entertaining, Fleetwood says, in the days of Leontine,--the
-shrewd, vivacious, businesslike Frenchwoman who, when Monsieur Mazuret
-became too ill, and Madame too old, used to make change and scold the
-waiters and say good evening to you, and whose red-striped gingham
-shirt-waists fitted her like models from Paquin.  It was Leontine who
-brought back the wonderful wall-paper from Paris (through the glass door
-it looked like a painting) that represents a hunting scene, with willowy
-ladies in preposterous pink velvet riding-habits and waving plumes, and
-gentlemen blowing tasselled horns, and hounds and stags--all plunging
-through a perfectly impenetrable forest, whose improbable luxuriance
-Berri brilliantly accounted for by saying that it was evidently "Paris
-green."
-
-"Attend now--I tell you something," Leontine used to say confidentially
-when the evening was drawing to a close, and but one or two stragglers
-were left in the dining-room.
-
-"These peoples--they stay so long sometimes; I tell to them that they
-must go.  But _non_--they will not go; and they stay, and they stay, and
-they stay.  And all at once the--what you call?--the _chasse_--she begin
-to move!  The horses--he gallop; the ladies--she scream of laughing; the
-gentlemen--he make toot, toot, toot, tooooo!  The dogs--Ah-h h-h!
-The--the--_cet animal-la_--the deer?--the deer--Ah-h-h-h!"  Carried away
-by these midnight memories, Leontine would become a galloping horse, a
-screaming lady, a master of hounds, a savage pack, and a terrified
-monarch of the glen--all at once. Then, overpowered by the weird horror
-of it, she would cover her face with her apron and run coquettishly as
-if for protection to another table.
-
-There was another tale--the description of a thunderstorm--a regular
-cloud-burst, it must have been--that, one afternoon, overtook Madame and
-Leontine in the Place de la Madeleine, Leontine personifying the truly
-Gallic elements--the lightning (reels backward--eyes covered with
-hands)--the thunder (fingers in ears--eyes rolling--mouth open and
-emitting groans)--the rain hissing back from the asphalt in a million
-silver bubbles (skirts lifted--tip-toes--mon dieus--shrieks--hasty exit
-to kitchen)--Leontine bringing this incoherent scene vividly before one,
-was worth one's eating a worse dinner, Fleetwood says, than the dinner
-at Mazuret's. But Monsieur is dead, and Madame just dried up and blew
-away, and Leontine is married, and--although I don't know when I 've
-enjoyed a dinner so much--"the place isn't what it used to be."
-
-While Fleetwood was telling me all this, I noticed that Berri called one
-of the waiters and spoke to him in French.  I don't know what he said,
-as he talked very fast--and anyhow it did n't sound much like the kind
-of French I 've been used to.  The waiter disappeared, and in half an
-hour or so a messenger boy came in and gave Berri a little envelope
-which he put in his pocket without saying anything.  Then, when we had
-finished dinner and were just about to push away from the table, Berri
-exclaimed,--
-
-"Now we 'll all go to the theatre."
-
-"My dear young man, if you could see the work I have to do this night,"
-Fleetwood protested with a gesture that seemed to express mountains of
-uncorrected themes, "you would realize, for once in your life, what work
-really is."
-
-"But I have the tickets," Berri explained; and he brought forth the
-little envelope that the messenger boy had given him.
-
-"No--no--no!" Fleetwood answered decidedly, and started for the door.
-But Berri detained him.
-
-"By inflicting our company on you we 've spoiled the evening for you, I
-know; but you won't spoil it for me by depriving us of yours," he begged
-in his engaging way.
-
-"'Sweet invocation of a child: most pretty and pathetical,'" Fleetwood
-laughed, and backed into the vestibule.  We followed and surrounded him,
-so to speak, each taking hold of an arm.  Then we all walked through the
-alley toward Tremont Street, Fleetwood quavering apprehensively from
-time to time, "Now you 'll take me to my car and then bid me adieu, like
-two good boys, won't you?" while we agreed to everything he said and
-clung to him like sheriffs.  Berri was giggling hysterically, but
-although I thought the situation rather amusing, I did n't see anything
-so terribly funny about it until we got to the parting of the ways and
-Fleetwood stopped. Then I noticed that, in addition to the three great
-red roses that Berri had bought for our button-holes, Fleetwood had a
-fourth one, with a long, flexible stem, growing apparently out of the
-top of his head.  He was so unconscious of the absurd, lanky thing
-nodding solemnly over him whenever he spoke, that when he held out his
-hand, exclaiming tremulously,--
-
-"'And so,' in the words of Jessica, 'Farewell; I will not have my father
-see me talk with thee,'" and the rose emphasized every word as if it
-were imitating him, I gave an uncontrollable whoop, and Berri doubled up
-on a near-by doorstep.
-
-"I only would that my father were alive at the present moment to see me
-talking with thee," Berri gasped.  "I don't know anything he would have
-enjoyed more."
-
-Fleetwood looked hurt and mystified and vaguely suspicious, and he stood
-there merely long enough to say,--
-
-"'You break jests as braggarts do their blades, which, God be thanked,
-hurt not.'"  Then, as Berri was still sitting on the doorstep and I was
-leaning against the wall, he made a sudden dash for the other side of
-the street.  We caught him, of course, grasped his arms once more, and
-walked him off to the theatre, pretending all the time that we did n't
-notice his struggles and how furious he was at having to go with us.
-Berri kept up an incessant stream of conversation, saying things that,
-to an outsider, would have given the impression that the theatre-party
-was Fleetwood's, and that we were the ones who were being dragged
-reluctantly away from the Cambridge car.  Just before we got to the
-theatre the solemn rose in Fleetwood's hat toppled over and dangled
-against his face. This also we pretended not to see, and as we had him
-firmly by the arms, he was unable to reach up and throw it away; so we
-made a spectacular entrance through the brightly lighted doorway, with
-Fleetwood ineffectually blowing at the rose and shaking his head like an
-angry bull.  A party of four or five fellows--students--who had been
-unable to get tickets were turning away from the box-office as we
-appeared, and they naturally stopped to look at us.
-
-This was in the nature of a last straw, for Fleetwood almost tearfully
-broke out with,--
-
-"You dreadful, dreadful boys, my reputation is ruined; they 'll think I
-'ve been drinking."  Even Berri began to see that we had gone somewhat
-far, for he plucked the rose from Fleetwood's cheek, exclaiming,--
-
-"Good gracious, man! where did you get this?  You must n't go to the
-theatre looking that way.  Just because Bernhardt plays Hamlet is no
-reason why you should undertake to do Ophelia;" and then he threw it on
-the floor.  Fleetwood rolled his eyes hopelessly.
-
-Well, we never got home until almost four in the morning.  A man whose
-seat was behind ours at the play tapped Fleetwood on the shoulder as
-soon as we had sat down, and after a whispered conversation he got up
-and went away.  Then Fleetwood told us the man was a dramatic critic--an
-acquaintance of his--who had been sent to write up the play for a
-morning paper, but that, as he did n't understand French and was n't
-much of a Shakespearian scholar and wanted to go to a progressive peanut
-party in West Roxbury anyhow, he had asked Fleetwood to do the thing for
-him.  Fleetwood used to be on a paper himself, and was delighted to
-renew old times.
-
-So all during the performance he made notes on the margin of his program
-and chuckled to himself.  The occupation, I think, diverted his mind
-from Berri and me and helped him to forgive us.
-
-Afterward we went to Newspaper Row and waited for hours in a bare,
-rather dirty little room while Fleetwood, standing at a high desk under
-an electric light in the corner, wrote his review.  He spent much more
-time in groaning, "My facility is gone--my hand has lost its cunning,"
-than in actual writing.  By the time he was ready to leave we were all
-famished; so before catching the owl car from Bowdoin Square we stopped
-at an all-night restaurant that Fleetwood used to patronize when he was
-a reporter, and had buckwheat cakes and maple syrup.  I 've never tasted
-anything so good.
-
-The Cambridge car was interesting, but fearful.  It was jammed with
-people, and I wondered where so many could have come from that hour of
-the morning.  They could n't all have been dramatic critics.  The
-majority of those who got seats went sound asleep, and as the conductor
-could n't very well wake them up at every street, he found out
-beforehand where they wanted to get off, and then hung little tags on
-their coats that told their destination.
-
-When we were saying good-by to Fleetwood in the Square, Berri laughed
-and asked,--
-
-"Have you decided yet what you 're going to do to me, Mr. Fleetwood?  I
-know you would like to give me E on my thesis, but I don't think I
-deserve quite that."  Instead of answering him, however, Mr. Fleetwood
-ran away, exclaiming,--
-
-"Don't talk shop,--don't talk shop; good-night,--good-night!"
-
-Berri has begun to get awfully scared about the thesis,--not that he's
-afraid that Fleetwood will give it a low mark, but because it does n't
-look at present as if there would be anything to mark at all.  I found
-him in his room the other day with a pile of books and a scratch-block
-on his table.  But he had n't taken a note, and his attitude was one of
-utter despair.  Of course he can't possibly write it unless he stays
-here during the holidays, for they begin day after to-morrow.
-
-
-
-
-                                  *XI*
-
-
-I don't think I 've had a pen in my hand, except when I wrote a note to
-Berri, for more than two weeks.  In the first place I left in such a
-hurry to meet the family in New York that, among the various things I
-forgot to pack at the last minute, my diary was one.  (Even if I had
-taken it, I probably shouldn't have found time to record all we did.)
-Then, as I was with mamma and papa and Mildred during the entire
-vacation, there was no necessity for writing letters.
-
-I did n't go to Washington with Berri for two reasons.  The family
-naturally wanted me to spend the holidays with them, and I could n't
-help feeling that, if I refused Berri's kind invitation, he would be
-much more likely to stay, part of the time at least, in Cambridge and
-write his thesis.  In a way I was right; for when I told him I simply
-could n't go with him, he said sort of listlessly,--
-
-"Well, then I suppose I ought to stay here and finish that thing,
-oughtn't I?" which was an optimistic way of letting me know that it had
-n't even been begun.  I did n't know what to answer exactly, because if
-I 'd agreed with him he would have thought me unsympathetic and looked
-hurt, and if I had advised him to let the whole matter slide, and forget
-about it, and have a good time (which was, of course, what he wanted me
-to do), I felt sure that he would eventually blame me for giving him bad
-advice.  That's Berri all over.  So I merely remarked, "You 'll have to
-be the judge; it 's too serious a matter for any one else to meddle
-with," and felt like a nasty little prig as I said it.  He was restless
-and gloomy after that, and took a long walk all alone, during which I 'm
-convinced that he very nearly made up his mind to stay in Cambridge and
-slave.  I say very nearly, because he didn't bring himself quite to the
-point of telling anybody about it.  But the next afternoon (college
-closed with the last lecture of that day), when I turned into our street
-on the way to my room, there was a cab with a steamer trunk on it
-standing in front of our house; and as I opened the front door, Berri
-and a dress-suit case clattered down the stairs.  He stopped just long
-enough to shake hands and exclaim, "Good-by, Granny--have a good time--I
-left a note for you on your desk.  The train goes in less than an hour."
-Then he rushed out of the gate and jumped into the cab, slamming the
-door after him with that sharp, thrilling "Now they're off" clack that
-cabs, and cabs only, possess.  That was the last I saw of him.
-
-New York was a pleasing delirium of theatres and operas and automobile
-rides up and down Fifth Avenue, with just enough rows between Mildred
-and me, and papa and me and Mildred and mamma (the other possible
-combinations never scrap), to make us realize that the family tie was
-the same dear old family tie and had n't been in any way severed by my
-long absence.  It took us three days to persuade mamma to ride in an
-automobile,--a triumph that we all lived bitterly to repent; for she
-ever afterwards refused to be transported from place to place by any
-other means,--which was not only inconvenient, but ruinous.  She
-justified her extravagance by declaring that in an emergency she
-preferred to be the smasher to the smashed.  I met lots of fellows I
-knew on the street, and some of them took me home with them to luncheon
-or to that curious
-five-o'clock-sit-around-and-don't-know-what-to-do-with-the-cup meal they
-call "tea."  Meeting their families was very nice, and I felt as if I
-knew the fellows ever so much better than I did in Cambridge.
-
-One incident might have ended in a tragedy if I hadn't happened to
-preserve a certain letter of mamma's.  ("Never write anything and never
-burn anything--isn't it Talleyrand who tells us that?" as the friend of
-Berri's aunt would say.)  It was the real reason of our spending the
-last two days of the vacation in Boston, and came about in the following
-way.
-
-One day at luncheon (we were going to a matinee afterwards) I glanced at
-my watch to see how late we were, and mamma noticed, for the first time,
-that I was carrying a cheap nickel-plated alarm-clock sort of an affair
-instead of the gold-faced heirloom that has been reposing for lo! these
-many weeks in Mr. Hirsch's pawn-shop.  Since our meeting she hadn't
-referred to this painful subject, and as I had become used to the dollar
-watch on the end of my chain, it never occurred to me to say anything
-about it.  That day she looked at the watch and then at me, and finally
-she murmured, "Why, Tommy!" with the expression of one who seems to see
-the foundations of Truth, Respectability, and Honor crumbling to dust;
-and she finished her luncheon in silence, breathing in a resigned kind
-of way and studying the table-cloth with eyes like smitten forget-me
-nots.  On the way upstairs I lagged behind, and Mildred said to me,--
-
-"Mamma has on her early-Christian-martyr look.  What on earth's the
-matter now?"  But I was unable to enlighten her.  Mamma had known from
-the first that the watch had been pawned; I could n't imagine why she
-was so upset.
-
-All was explained, however, when I went to her room.  Some time ago she
-had sent me a draft for thirty dollars.  It came in a cheerful letter
-(no letter containing a draft for thirty dollars is sad) about nothing
-in particular.  I remembered that at the time the postscript had puzzled
-me, for it said, "Of course I have told your father nothing about this,"
-and there was no clew in the body of the letter to what "this" referred.
-The draft wasn't mentioned.  It seems that mamma was under the
-impression she had written me several pages on the evils of
-extravagance, the horrors of debt, and the general desirability of
-redeeming one's watch as soon as possible,--which she hadn't at all. Not
-being a mind-reader, I assumed that her draft was a spontaneous outburst
-of maternal esteem, had it cashed with a loving grateful heart, and
-spent the money in three days. Therefore, when she caught sight of my
-tin timepiece (it keeps much better time, by the way, than the heirloom
-ever did), she had distressing visions of me indulging in a perfect
-carnival of embezzlement, and finally ending up with shorn locks,
-striped clothes, and a chain on my leg.
-
-I never realized before that the human brain is perfectly capable, under
-certain circumstances, of harboring two distinct beliefs at the same
-time,--the truth of either one of which necessarily excludes the other.
-(There is probably a more technical way of stating this, but I haven't
-got that far in my philosophy course as yet.)  Now, when I solemnly
-declared to mamma that she had never mentioned her check in connection
-with my watch or anything else in fact, I am sure she believed me.  She
-said she believed me, and seemed greatly relieved.  But, on the other
-hand, although she knew I was telling the truth, and rejoiced in the
-fact, I am certain that she was unable at the same time to abandon her
-equally strong conviction that she had written and sent precisely the
-letter she had intended to.  I don't pretend to explain this mental
-phenomenon, and I discreetly refrained from discussing it with mamma,
-for in the midst of our talk I began to have a dim, delicious suspicion
-that her letter was at that moment reposing in my inside pocket.  (When
-I am away from home, I always carry several plainly addressed letters in
-order that there may be as little trouble as possible in case anything
-should happen to me.  I remembered having put the letter with the
-postscript into my coat-pocket instead of my desk, as I wished to refer
-to it when I next wrote home.)  So, when mamma finally said, "Well, I
-believe you," and then added with an air of abstraction, "But I wish you
-had saved that letter," I thrust my hand into my pocket, glanced at
-several envelopes, and exclaimed dramatically as I showed her one of
-them,--
-
-"Madam, your most idle whim is my inexorable law."  Then we all went to
-the matinee.
-
-But that wasn't the end of the watch. Mamma made me give her the
-pawn-ticket, and insisted on going home by way of Boston for the purpose
-of redeeming it herself. The reason of this change in the family plans
-was not explained to Mildred and papa; but they were docile, and seemed
-to think it would be very nice to see my rooms before leaving for home.
-
-There was no opportunity to visit Mr. Hirsch when we arrived yesterday,
-as we spent most of the day in exploring Cambridge.  But this morning
-(they all left for the West this afternoon), while Mildred was packing
-and papa had gone to see about tickets, mamma, with her head swathed in
-a thick black veil, and I slipped out to go to the pawnbroker's.  I have
-an idea that by going herself instead of simply sending me mamma had a
-vague but noble belief that she was rescuing me somehow from moral
-shipwreck.  And then, no doubt, the mere fact of one's venturing out
-incognito, as it were, to wrest ancestral relics from usurious fingers
-is not without a certain charm.
-
-Well, of course we met papa at the door of the hotel.  The ticket-office
-was just around the corner, and he had engaged berths and tickets with a
-rapidity that was as unfortunate as it was incredible, for he greeted us
-with, "Starting for a walk?  I'm just in time," and proceeded to join
-the expedition with evident pleasure.  Mamma lingered uneasily on the
-sidewalk a moment, and then said,--
-
-"We 're not going for amusement, dear; we 're going to shop.  You know
-how that always tires you."  But papa, who was in good spirits at the
-prospect of leaving for home, quite unsuspiciously ignored the
-suggestion and replied cheerily,--
-
-"Well, I think I 'll go along, I might want to buy something myself."
-
-I exclaimed, "How jolly!" in a sepulchral tone, and we started.
-
-Now, mamma in the role of a gay deceiver is sublime.  The fact that she
-is trying to play a part and perhaps setting "an awful example" makes
-her miserable, although she sometimes succeeds in concealing the fact
-until afterwards.  I saw that we were in for a delightful morning, and
-would probably end by missing the train.  We loitered unscrupulously in
-front of shop windows, apparently entranced by everything from hardware
-to cigars. We sauntered in and out of countless dry-goods places in
-quest of dark-blue ribbon of such an unusual shade that Boston had never
-seen its like; we paused for half an hour, now and then, to inquire the
-price of diamond tiaras and alabaster clocks set with rhinestones; we
-bought a bouquet of frost-bitten roses (I had to carry it) from a
-one-armed man, and tarried to hear his reminiscences of life in a
-sawmill; we went to pianola recitals, phonograph exhibits, and assisted
-at an auction sale of bar-room furniture.  And papa wearied not.  Mamma
-and I were nearly dead, but he not only wasn't bored,--he seemed to be
-having the time of his life.  We could n't devise anything too silly and
-futile and tiresome for him to enjoy, and as the time before the train
-left was beginning to grow ominously short, mamma at last resorted to
-heroic measures.
-
-I don't think she had formed any definite plan when she abruptly led us
-into the subway; but our going there was probably not unconnected in her
-imagination with the boundless opportunities for losing oneself in the
-sewers of Paris and the catacombs of Rome. The subway may or may not
-resemble these historic places,--I'm sure I don't know,--but, at any
-rate, after we had been there five or six minutes we lost papa.
-
-We all three had stood aimlessly watching the cars whizz up to the
-platform and away again into the subterranean dusk, until papa (this was
-his first sign of impatience) mildly remarked, "I think, dear, that as
-you and Tommy seem to be rather attached to this place, I 'll buy a
-newspaper."  Then he strolled off, and mamma clutched me.  We watched
-him approach the news-stand and pick up a magazine.  His back was partly
-turned.
-
-"It 's our only chance," said mamma hoarsely, with a half-guilty,
-half-affectionate glance towards the news-stand.  I understood and,
-seizing her hand, ran with her to the nearest car.  An instant later we
-were buzzing through the bowels of the earth in quite the opposite
-direction from the pawn-shop.
-
-To tell the truth, the only thing I knew about the locality of Mr.
-Hirsch's establishment was that we should never reach it unless we got
-out and took a car going the other way.  This we did, and when I thought
-we had gone far enough on the return trip and we emerged once more into
-the daylight, we seemed to be miles from the place--the only place--from
-which I could have found my way.  So we jumped into a cab and told the
-man to drive as quickly as he could to that place.  (I had to describe
-it at some length, as I don't as yet know the names of many streets
-here.)  He was very intelligent, however, and it was n't his fault that,
-after we had jolted along for four or five blocks, the horse fell down.
-We left him lifting one of the poor thing's nervous hind legs in and out
-of the tangled harness.  He looked as if he were trying to solve some
-kind of a gigantic, hopeless puzzle.  We hurried on for about a quarter
-of a mile, and then I suddenly discovered that we had been in the right
-street all the time.  It was one of those queer streets that never look
-familiar when you 're going the other way.  I confess it took a great
-deal of courage to impart this discovery to mamma; but she appreciated
-the fact that we had very little time to lose, and did n't stop to point
-out to me that if I ever become a business man, I 'll be a failure.  The
-horse was on his feet again when we got back to the cab, so we jumped in
-once more, and after an interminable drive (half of me was out of the
-window most of the time, like a Punch-and-Judy doll, directing the
-cabman) we finally drew up in front of the pawn-shop.  It was then that
-we really distinguished ourselves.
-
-"I've come for my watch," I said to Mr. Hirsch.  He gave me the look of
-a bird of prey.  It reminded me of an eagle I had seen once,--an eagle
-that had been stuffed by an amateur.  He held out his hand and spoke a
-solitary, fateful word.  Mamma's face--in the excitement of the moment
-she had pushed up her veil--became dim with horror; her features for an
-instant were positively incoherent.
-
-"The ticket?" she whispered gropingly. "It's in the bottom of my trunk."
-
-Mildred and papa and a group of porters, peering up and down the street
-like a concourse of Sister Annes, were on the curbstone in front of the
-hotel when we got back.  The baggage was piled on a wagon, papa looked
-haggard and years older than when I had last seen him, and Mildred gave
-us a haughty stare as we alighted.  Mamma was hustled wildly from the
-cab to the carriage, and I had time merely to peck hastily at their
-tense faces and gasp good-by.  As the carriage swung around the corner,
-mamma appeared for a moment at the window, exclaiming, "I 'll send it to
-you in my first letter," and then sank from view.  This afternoon, when
-I returned to my peaceful little abode in Cambridge, who should be in
-his room but Berri? He was at his desk, bending earnestly over a big pad
-of thesis paper.
-
-"You've finished it, after all," I said, for the floor near his chair
-was littered with neat manuscript.
-
-"Yes, it's finished,--fifty beastly pages of it," Berri answered, as he
-jumped up to meet me.  I wanted to ask him all about it,--how he had
-managed to do it during the gayeties of Washington, and if it had taken
-much time.  But he said rather wearily,--
-
-"Oh, don't let's talk about it; I 'm so sick of it," and began at once
-to question me about my trip to New York.  We chatted for about half an
-hour, and then I got up to go into my room and unpack my trunk.  Thesis
-paper is n't like the ordinary paper on which themes are written; it has
-a margin on all four sides, and as I had never used any, I went over to
-Berri's desk to examine a sheet of his.
-
-"Why, you 've had the thing type-written," I exclaimed; for there was a
-pile of type-written notes in front of the thesis paper. "Why don't you
-hand it in that way instead of copying it again?  Your hand is so hard
-to read."
-
-Berri wrinkled his forehead in a queer, annoyed kind of way; then he
-looked confused and blushed a little, and finally he gave an
-uncomfortable laugh.
-
-"Oh, Granny, you 're so brutally guileless," he murmured.  "Why can't
-you just see and understand things?  It sounds so much worse than it
-really is, when you make me say it in so many words."  Even then I
-didn't altogether grasp the situation.
-
-"You mean that somebody helped you?" I asked.  That did n't seem to me
-worth making such a fuss about, somehow.
-
-"Well, that's a very refined and ladylike way of putting it," he
-answered.  "I got a man in the Law School to write it for me, and paid
-him ten dollars for his trouble."
-
-I had never thought much about this sort of thing, and it was impossible
-all at once to know just where I stood in the matter.  I didn't know
-what to say, and I think I blurted out,--
-
-"Oh, Berri, I 'm so sorry."
-
-"Well, I 'm sorry you know about it," Berri mused drearily.  "No, I 'm
-not, either," he added quickly, after a moment; "I 'm darned glad,--for
-now that you know, you can do what you like; I 'm not playing the
-hypocrite, anyhow.  Only, don't talk to me about it.  I 've thought the
-whole thing over from every point of view; it's the only thing I can do.
-I 'm willing to run the risks, and I 'm going to do it."
-
-It was impossible to go back to other topics after that, so I went into
-my room and unpacked my trunk.  I don't believe I ever unpacked so
-carefully and put everything away so neatly before.  Mrs. Chester came
-in and complimented me as I was finishing. It must have been because I
-was thinking.
-
-With all my thinking, however, I can't say that I 've got much farther
-than I was when Berri first told me.  I simply know that he oughtn't to
-have done it, and am very, very sorry that he has.  If he tried to
-defend himself in any way, I could have it out with him; but he does
-n't.  When he finished copying the thesis, he came into my room and
-said, "I 'm going over to drop this through Fleetwood's door; do you
-want to go along?" and I went with him, hoping that at the last minute
-he might, in his unexpected way, change his mind.  On the way over he
-did burst out with,--
-
-"You see, it's this way: If I didn't know Fleetwood so well, I should
-n't do it; I shouldn't care.  But he'll think, if I fail to hand in the
-written work, that I'm presuming on the fact that we 've breakfasted
-together at The Holly Tree and gone to the theatre and all that.  I hate
-that kind of thing."  I tried to make him see that Fleetwood would n't
-look at it in this way at all, and that even if he did it would be his
-fault, not Berri's.  But Berri answered: "You need n't go on to tell me
-how dishonest it is,--I know all that. I 'm not worse than lots of other
-people, though;" and by that time we had reached Fleetwood's door.  I
-put my hand on his arm as he was about to drop the thesis through
-Fleetwood's letter-slide and said, "Please don't, Berri; wait until
-to-morrow morning, anyhow;" but he pushed the roll through the door, and
-as it fell with a thud inside, he laughed and answered,--
-
-"Too late.  Now I'm going to forget about it."  He went to town for
-dinner, and I had mine about an hour ago at Mrs. Brown's. I was the only
-one there.  In a few minutes I have to go out again, as I promised----
-
-
-_Later_.
-
-
-Just as I had written that far, the front door opened and slammed and
-the tin steps clattered as they only do when Duggie is coming up.  The
-loneliness of the house, and the feeling that college opened to-morrow,
-and Duggie on the stairs all took me back to my first evening in
-Cambridge.  The only difference was that instead of going to his own
-room Duggie this time came bursting into mine.
-
-"I came to say good-by," he exclaimed; and when I got over my
-astonishment, he went on to tell me that he had decided during the
-vacation to go away--to Europe--and stay until Class Day.  He had never
-told me before that he had taken his degree in three years, and that it
-would n't have been necessary for him to come back this year at all if
-he had n't wanted to.  He has been entitled to his degree for months;
-but of course he is anxious to graduate with his own class in the
-spring.  He has n't talked to any one about going abroad, as he was n't
-sure of it until a few days ago.
-
-"I 'm leaving on the midnight train to-night," he said, "and I came out
-here on the chance of your having got back.  My family are all in the
-country, I left them this afternoon."  I wanted to tell him how sorry I
-was that he was leaving us, and how glad I was that he could go; but
-somehow I don't think I showed what I really felt.  The time was so
-short (I had promised Duncan Duncan to help him with some Advocate
-editorials at half past eight), and those things never seem to sound the
-way I should like to have them.  But in a way I had an opportunity to
-let him know how I felt toward him, for while we were sitting there, he
-laughed and said,--
-
-"As you won't stay and talk to me, I think you might at least do the
-next best thing. You know I 've always wanted to read this, and now that
-I 'm going away, you ought to let me."  Then he took my diary from the
-mantelpiece and pretended to read the first page.
-
-My first impulse was to ask him not to.  If he had been going to stay in
-Cambridge, I should n't have let him, of course; but as he was leaving
-in a few hours and seemed anxious to read the thing, and as it really
-did n't make any difference whether he did or not, I finally let him.
-
-"I don't see why you want to, and you probably won't get beyond the
-first few pages, but you may," I said.
-
-So I left him by the fire with the diary in his hand.  I thought perhaps
-I should find a note about it when I got back this evening, but I
-didn't.
-
-
-
-
-                                 *XII*
-
-
-Poor Berri!  I felt so sorry for him. I do yet, in fact; for although
-things can't possibly turn out in the way he thinks they may, I can't
-tell him so, and he lives in a state of perpetual dread. But it won't
-last long now; Duggie's steamer must have almost reached Southampton by
-this time, and it won't take more than a week or eight days for Berri to
-hear from Duggie himself.  I came very near giving the thing away at one
-time.  It's hard not to, although I realize that Duggie was wise when he
-asked me to let matters take their course.
-
-It just happened that the next day after Berri had delivered his thesis,
-the talk at luncheon turned on cheating at exams and handing in written
-work that is n't your own. The sentiment against cheating seemed to be
-strong, partly from a sense of honor and partly from a sense of risk.
-As a matter of fact, I don't see how fellows can very well manage to
-cheat here--during an examination, that is to say--even if they want to.
-There are always a lot of proctors prowling up and down the room, ready
-to jump on anybody who has suspicious-looking bits of paper on his desk,
-or who seems to be unduly interested in his lap or the condition of his
-cuffs.  And then, besides, assuming that the instructor occasionally
-gets absorbed in a newspaper and the proctors stroll to the windows to
-watch the muckers throwing snowballs in the Yard, how could a student
-prepare himself for this rare opportunity?  It may be different in
-courses that involve the exact sciences, where certain definite formulas
-copied on a small bit of paper might be of use; but in the sort of
-things I take, one would have to conceal upon oneself the Encyclopaedia
-Britannica, Ploetz's Epitome of History, Geschmitzenmenger's Ancient
-Art, or the Dictionary of Biography, in order to accomplish any really
-effective deception.
-
-With written work it seems to be easier. If a man hands in a theme or a
-thesis in his own hand, the instructors are more or less forced to
-accept it as original, unless of course it was taken outright from a
-book and they happen to be familiar with the book.  From what the
-fellows at the table said, there must be more of this sort of thing done
-than I had imagined; although, since Berri opened my eyes, I could
-believe almost anything.  One of the fellows told about a student--a
-Junior--he had heard of who succeeded in getting himself fired two or
-three years ago in a rather complicated way.  He was engaged, and his
-lady-love sent him a poem in one of her letters, saying that she had
-written it for him.  The letter arrived while he was struggling with a
-daily theme; so he murmured to himself, "Tush!  I 'll copy Araminta's
-pretty verses and send them in as my own; as they have just gushed from
-her surcharged heart into her letter, no one will be the wiser."  A few
-days later the omnivorous Advocate asked permission to print them, and
-as they had received words of praise from the instructor, and as the
-fellow by that time had no doubt begun to believe he had written them
-himself, he allowed them to be published under his name.  Somebody sent
-a copy of the Advocate to Araminta, who replied with an indignant letter
-to her _futur_; and while he was trying to think up an explanation of
-the matter with which to pacify her, somebody else came out in the
-Crimson with a most withering communication, asking how the Advocate
-dared to print as original a poem that had been written by his
-grandfather, the late Donovan H. Dennison, whose complete poetical works
-("Dan Cupid and other Idyls") could be found in the college library at
-any time.  Whereupon the student, disgusted at his lady-love's
-dishonesty in palming off the late Donovan H. Dennison's verses as
-original, broke his engagement; and the college, disgusted with the
-student for precisely the same reason, "separated" him (to use the suave
-official phrase) from the University.
-
-There was, as I said, a great deal of talk at luncheon that day about
-cheating.  Some of the men seemed to think the presence of proctors
-during an exam was insulting; but, as Bertie Stockbridge remarked,--and
-this struck me as unanswerable,--"If you don't cheat yourself and don't
-want to, what difference does it make whether they 're there or not?
-And if you do cheat, why, of course, proctors are necessary."  In the
-matter of dishonest written work the same honorable sentiments were
-expressed.  Everybody was sincere, but I could n't help realizing a
-little that they could not have had very much temptation as yet.  If it
-had n't been for Berri, I probably should have laid down the law as
-loudly as the rest.  But he sat there eating in silence, irritated and
-oppressed by so much high-minded babbling, and I hated to hurt him by
-adding to it.  Usually he is one of the last to leave the table.  That
-day, however, he hurried through his luncheon and slipped away alone.
-
-Oh dear!  (How silly those two words look written down, and yet it was
-what was passing through my mind as I wrote them.)  I suppose that what
-I really mean is, How tiresome it is that a person's acts don't begin
-and end with himself!  There doesn't seem to be any limit to the reach
-of their influence. It would be so much more simple and easy if you knew
-just where the consequences of a mistake or an indiscretion, or whatever
-you choose to call it, began and ended.  Now, for instance, take Berri
-and the thesis.  Of course, I think it was all wrong, and was sorry he
-handed it in; but I wasn't going to let it make any difference in my
-feelings toward Berri.  As far as I am concerned, I don't think it has
-made a difference.  Yet the beastly thing cast a sort of gloom over the
-house.  For Berri after luncheon that day rather avoided the table in
-general and me in particular.  What his object was in doing this, I
-don't know.  It was probably just a feeling on his part; but it made me
-feel as if I 'd been putting myself on a moral pedestal somehow, and
-that Berri saw in me a perpetual accusation.  Our relations became
-indescribably changed and sort of formal, and I did n't see how I could
-make them different. What could I have done?  There was nothing, under
-the circumstances, for me to say. He stopped in my room that night to
-warm himself for a minute before going to bed, but I don't think he said
-anything except that it was snowing outside.
-
-The next day we had the blizzard.  People here usually assume that in
-the part of the country I come from we have nine months of winter and
-three of cold weather.  But nevertheless I had to come to the staid and
-temperate East to see the kind of a winter storm you read about in
-books,--the regular old "Wreck of the Hesperus" kind, in which the crew
-are "swept like icicles from the deck," and able-bodied men get
-hopelessly lost and are frozen to death in their own front yards.  I was
-to have dined in town that night with Hemington, who had tickets for a
-Paderewski recital.  But he did n't turn up, so I joined some fellows
-who found me in the restaurant eating alone, and afterwards went to the
-theatre with them.  It was snowing when we left the restaurant; in fact,
-great, wet cottony flakes had been falling at intervals all day.  (It
-reminded me of those marvellous paper weights I haven't seen for years
-and years,--glass globes filled with water in which a white, powdery
-sediment swirls and drifts and finally settles in the most lifelike way
-on a beautiful little tin landscape. What's become of them all, I
-wonder?)  But there was no wind, and it was n't particularly cold, so I
-don't think that anybody suspected what was going to happen before the
-show was over.
-
-It took an unusually long time to get out of the theatre that night; the
-people in the aisles hardly moved at all.  But after we had forced our
-way through the crowd, and climbed over seats, and finally reached the
-narrow corridor leading to the entrance, we saw why it was.  The ones
-who had got to the door first were afraid to leave.  Within an hour or
-two the wind had risen and risen until it screamed through the streets,
-blasting up the fallen snow in wild bewildering spirals and then
-fiercely slapping it back again in slants of hard, biting cold.  From
-the door of the theatre it was impossible to see beyond the curbstone,
-except when the half-obliterated lights of a cab lurched by over the
-drifts. The rumor went through the crowd that the wires were down and
-that all the cars had stopped.  No one seemed to know quite what to do.
-Just as the people nearest the door would make up their minds to start
-bravely out, a thick hurricane would strike erratically in at them,
-causing the ladies to shrink back with little exclamations of dismay.
-Nobody's carriage had arrived, and the few cabs that appeared ploughed
-laboriously past us.  Our crowd waited a few moments,--more to share the
-excitement of the others than for anything else; then we turned up our
-collars and plunged out.
-
-Standing at the door of the theatre, the world outside had seemed to me
-to be in a sort of insane uproar; but as soon as we got away from the
-human babble, and I lifted my head and opened my eyes and deliberately
-relaxed my ears, so to speak, I found the city almost solemnly silent.
-Every now and then, when we came to a cross street or turned a corner,
-there was, it is true, a sudden shriek and a sort of rattle of fine
-stinging ice particles; but as long as I could keep myself from being
-confused inside of me, while we were floundering over drifts and
-burrowing with our heads through the walls of wind that blocked the way
-and seemed to be falling on us, I could n't help noticing the terrible
-muffledness of everything.  It was as if the place were being swamped,
-blotted out, suffocated.
-
-When we reached the hotel where we had dined earlier in the evening, the
-other fellows went in to have something to eat, but for several reasons
-I decided not to.  In the first place, I promised papa that I would try
-to economize, and I had already unexpectedly squandered two dollars on a
-theatre ticket, owing to Hemington's failure to appear. Then I felt that
-if I did n't make a dash for Cambridge right away, I should n't get
-there at all.  (As a matter of fact, I never did reach there until nine
-the next morning, but it was n't because I did n't try hard enough. The
-other fellows put up at the hotel.)  So I just shouted that I was going
-on, and as we were all about half frozen, no one stopped to persuade me
-not to.
-
-Well, I found a string of cars about a mile long that were rapidly
-turning into Esquimau huts, and was told by one of the conductors that
-something had broken down ahead, and that, as the snow-plough could n't
-get by, they probably would n't move again until morning. He thought,
-however, that the other line was running; and I started to grope my way
-to Bowdoin Square.
-
-I would n't go through that experience again for gold and precious
-stones; and I can't imagine now why I did it in the first place, except
-that I had acquired by that time a kind of pig-headed determination to
-reach Cambridge, and did n't know what I was in for. It was n't so bad
-while I was staggering along by the side of the blocked cars; they were
-lighted, and I knew that if I changed my mind about going on, I could
-pop into one of them and be safe.  But when I passed the last one and
-found myself after a while among back streets choked with drifts, and
-could n't see my way, and fell down twice, and got snow up my sleeves,
-and my face and hands and feet pained so with cold that I could n't help
-crying (actually), and I realized at last that I did n't in the least
-know where I was, I began to be panic-stricken.  I 'm not the huskiest
-person in the world, and all at once the wind blew me smash against an
-iron railing and almost into a basement of some kind. I think I should
-have hunted for a door-bell and tried to get into a house if I hadn't a
-moment later collided with a policeman (fell down again), who helped me
-up and led me to a sheltered place behind a wall, where I managed to
-collect myself and tell him what I was looking for.  He too was on his
-way to Bowdoin Square; so after that I just hung on to his coat most of
-the time, and tried to keep my legs in motion without really knowing
-much where he was leading me or whether we were making any progress.
-Once there was a rip-tearing crash over our heads.  The policeman jumped
-aside, and then stopped to exclaim, "Well, I never seen the likes o'
-that."  I think a sign had blown off a building through a plate-glass
-window.  Farther on a dangling wire romped in the wind.  It spat
-dazzling blue and purple at us until we retreated and went around
-another way, muttering strange Hibernian mutters.  When I opened my eyes
-again, we were in front of the hotel in Bowdoin Square and the policeman
-was advising me through his frozen mustache not to go to Cambridge.  He
-said the cars had stopped long ago.  So I said good-by to him and was
-just stumbling into the cafe, when who should come out but Berri and a
-cabman?  They had gone in to get warm before starting across the bridge.
-
-"I 'm not sure that we can make it," Berri said, "but the man says he's
-willing to try. I 'll tell you why I don't want to stay at the hotel
-when we get inside.  Look out--look out!" he cried to me, as I opened
-the cab door and was about to jump in.  I drew back, expecting at least
-to be decapitated or electrocuted, and then Berri explained that he was
-afraid I might "sit on the pigeons."  He entered the cab first, and
-removed some indistinguishable objects from the back seat to the narrow
-seat that lifts up in front.  "That's why I can't very well stay at the
-hotel," he went on.  "As soon as these poor exhausted little darlings
-begin to thaw, they 'll fly around and make a dreadful fuss.  I 'd
-rather have them in my own room."  He had picked up four half frozen
-pigeons in the street on his way to the Square, and had carried
-them--two in his pockets and two in the bosom of his overcoat--until he
-came across the cab. After we got started, he lighted matches every now
-and then to see how they were getting along, and we took turns at
-blowing on their pink feet, all shrivelled with cold.  One of them, to
-Berri's grief, was dead, but by the time the cab stopped suddenly and
-for the last time in the middle of the bridge (it had been going slower
-and slower and tipping more perilously over mounds of snow as we
-proceeded), the other three looked scared and intelligent and began to
-feel warm under their wings.
-
-The driver opened the door and said he could n't go on, as a fallen wire
-was sagging across the street in front of the horse's nose. We jumped
-out, and Berri was just about to seize the thing and try to lift it over
-the horse's head, when I remembered the murderous ecstasy of the other
-one and jerked him back.  Ahead of us there was a drift almost as high
-as the cab itself, and the man said that even without the wire we never
-could drive over or through it.  So, after a short consultation, he
-decided to blanket his nag and spend the rest of the night in the cab;
-the horse was "dead beat," he said, and he very much doubted if it could
-pull back to town against the wind even after turning around, which was
-a more or less impossible undertaking in itself.  Berri and I packed up
-the pigeons--the dead one included, as Berri remembered having read in
-the paper that morning of a case of "suspended animation" somewhere in
-Texas--and pushed on to the waiting-station at the other end of the
-bridge.
-
-That was a queer night.  I was simply played out when I got inside the
-waiting-room, and I had n't been there more than a few minutes when I
-discovered that my ear was frozen.  A kind, officious woman all but
-broke it off rubbing snow on it; but though it pained excruciatingly
-during the night and is still sensitive and has a tendency to stick out
-at right angles from my head, I think it will recover.  There must have
-been fifteen or twenty people cooped up in the waiting-room and the
-cigar-stand (with hot soda-water and candy facilities) next door.  Some
-of them were cross and unhappy, and some of them were facetious.  One of
-them had a small dog.  Berri's pigeons created a sensation.  The
-cigar-man gave us a box to put them under, and Berri bought them popcorn
-for fear they might be hungry during the night.  The warmth of the room
-revived them completely, all but the dead one.
-
-We talked for a while; but as Berri remembered, now that the excitement
-was over, to be formal and impersonal once more, it was rather dreary.
-We could have slept, I think,--in fact we were asleep, when one of the
-facetious refugees woke us up to ask if we did n't want to join him "and
-some other gentlemen in a game of euchre."  Disappointed at his
-unsuccessful efforts to interest people in this diversion, he chased the
-little dog about the room, declaring that he intended to tie a glass of
-chocolate around its neck and send it out in the storm to look for
-travellers who had lost their way.  It was impossible after that to get
-to sleep again.
-
-We had been sitting with our heads against the wall for almost an hour,
-waiting for daylight, when Berri, who hadn't said anything for ever so
-long, suddenly came out with,--
-
-"Oh, Granny, I 'm so sorry I did it!"  I knew what he meant at once,
-although the thesis had n't been in my mind at all, and I was just about
-to advise him to have a talk with Fleetwood and tell him everything,
-when he added that he would have to stand by himself now, as it was too
-late to draw back.
-
-The worst of the storm was over, the cabman had come in to get warm and
-tell us that his horse had frozen to death, and the windows of the
-waiting-room had begun to look pale instead of black, by the time I
-convinced Berri that it wasn't too late, and that as soon as we got to
-Cambridge he ought to go to The Holly Tree and wait until Fleetwood came
-in for his breakfast.  When he finally made up his mind to do this, I
-never saw any one in such a state of impatience.  He could n't sit
-still, and kept running to the door every other minute to see if the
-snow-plough was coming over the bridge.  Once he suggested that we
-should walk; but although the morning was clear and beautiful, I had had
-enough of struggling through mountains of snow the night before, and
-refused.  The plough appeared at last, preceded by a whirling cloud and
-followed by a car.  We set the pigeons free (Berri told them all to
-return with olive branches as quickly as possible) and watched them fly
-to the nearest telegraph-pole and proceed to make their toilets for the
-day.
-
-It must have been about half an hour after I parted with Berri (he went
-on to The Holly Tree and I came to my room) that he bounded up the
-stairs, pale with excitement.  He had met Fleetwood, and after a few
-preliminary remarks about the blizzard (the whole place was submerged)
-he had blurted out,--
-
-"Mr. Fleetwood, I want to tell you something about my thesis; I did n't
-write it."  To which the instructor replied almost indifferently,--
-
-"Yes, I noticed that.  What was the trouble?"  Berri just looked at him
-in amazement.
-
-"I said I did n't write it," he faltered.
-
-"Well, I know that," Fleetwood replied a trifle sharply.  He was
-inclined to be "peevish," Berri said, because the morning papers had n't
-been delivered.
-
-"But I want to tell you how sorry I am," Berri added; the situation was
-much worse, Berri says, than it would have been if Fleetwood had seemed
-more impressed by his dishonesty.  As a matter of fact, Fleetwood merely
-smiled.
-
-"Oh, I never had the vaguest idea that you _would_ write it," he
-remarked airily.  "But if you don't care, I don't.  It's much easier for
-me to give you an E for having failed to hand it in, than it is to read
-fifty or sixty pages of your impossible writing."
-
-At this Berri said he almost reeled from his chair.
-
-"Did n't I hand it in?" he asked, while his heart thumped painfully.
-Fleetwood glanced up from his oatmeal only long enough to say,--
-
-"I wish you would go some place else to eat; you bother me."  But Berri
-insisted.
-
-"Dear Mr. Fleetwood," he pleaded eagerly, "please answer me just that
-one thing.  Did n't you find my thesis pushed through your door?"  At
-this Fleetwood put his hands to his head, as he always does when he 's
-pretending that we 're trying to drive him mad, and moaned,--
-
-"First you tell me you have n't written your thesis and then you ask me
-if I 've picked it up on my floor.  Oh, go away, go away!  I shall never
-be able to finish my breakfast and get back through all that ghastly
-snow to my ten-o'clock lecture."  Then Berri dashed out, forgetting to
-pay for his breakfast, and came to find me.
-
-Fleetwood must think that Berri isn't quite right; for he followed the
-instructor around all day more or less, waiting for him at the doors of
-lecture halls, intercepting him in front of the Colonial Club at
-lunch-time, running after him in the Square, and calling on him twice at
-his room, to ask if the thesis had turned up yet.  But of course it
-never had. At that time neither of us could account for its
-disappearance, and Berri can't yet.  He is existing in a state of
-nervous dread for fear it "may have fallen behind something" in the dark
-vestibule and will eventually turn up.  Well, it will turn up, but not
-in Fleetwood's room.
-
-Berri spent most of the time in which he wasn't dogging Fleetwood's
-footsteps discussing the thing with me.  But I could n't help him much
-beyond hoping that the thesis--like the love-letter or the lost will in
-dramas at the Bowdoin Square Theatre--wouldn't be found until the fifth
-act, after an elapse of twenty years.
-
-I had to leave him alone part of the afternoon.  Duncan Duncan sent me
-word that he was sick and that the Advocate was in dire need.  So I
-floundered through the alley to the printing-office, and learned from
-the proof-reader that they had to have six inches of poetry immediately
-or the paper would be very much delayed.  I did n't know what to do, as
-we had n't any poems of that length in stock, so to speak.  While I was
-sitting there in despair, one of the printers gave me a piece of paper
-and a pencil, and said,--
-
-"Here, hurry up and write a couple of sticks of po'try; I want to go
-home."  He was quite serious; so I got to work, and in about fifteen
-minutes had written twenty lines about the pigeons in the blizzard; only
-I referred to them, for various technical reasons, as doves.  There was
-a heavenly smell of printer's ink in the place which made it easier to
-write somehow.
-
-No letters came that day from any direction on account of the storm.
-The next afternoon I met the postman on the steps.  He stopped to chat,
-and I thought I should grab the letters from his hand before he
-finished, as I caught sight of one in Duggie's handwriting addressed to
-me.  I thought of course that he had postponed his trip and had written
-to tell me why.  The postman talked on and on, but he told me one tale
-that interested me in spite of myself.
-
-One Sunday morning old Professor Pallas (my ally in the hieroglyphics
-course) went over to the post-office for his letters.  He must have been
-thinking very deeply about recent discoveries or cuneiform inscriptions
-or some such thing, because when he went up to the window he could n't
-remember whose letters he had come for.  So he said to the clerk,--
-
-"Young man, do you know who I am?"
-
-The clerk unfortunately was a new one, and had to confess, with regret,
-that he did n't. So Professor Pallas, after a moment or two of
-reflection, looked up and murmured through the window,--
-
-"I ask you this because I am equally at a loss myself; but perhaps if I
-take a little walk it may come to me."  Then he strolled away, and in
-about ten minutes returned, very much pleased, with a slip of paper in
-his hand.
-
-"I remembered it all by myself," he exclaimed, "and wrote it down."
-
-I got Duggie's letter at last, and ran upstairs to read it.  This is
-what it said:--
-
-
-DEAR GRANNY,--We are steaming slowly out of the harbor, and I am sitting
-in a sheltered corner of the deck writing you this note for the pilot to
-take back with him.  My fingers are stiff with cold, but as the air down
-below is thick with what Mrs. Chester calls "floral tributes."  I 'd
-rather stay here and say good-by to you and the Goddess of Liberty at
-the same time.
-
-What I wish particularly to do, however, is to thank you for letting me
-read your diary last night (I have some things to say about it--the
-parts where I come in, I mean--but that can wait) and to make a
-confession.  When I got to the last page, where the ink was scarcely
-dry, I dashed over to Fleetwood's room, although I had lingered so long
-in your room I did n't have any too much time in which to catch my
-train. Fortunately there was a light in Fleetwood's window. While I was
-talking to him I saw out of the corner of my eye the great pile of--is
-the plural "theses" or "thesises"?--on his desk, and when he went into
-his bedroom for a minute to get a book for me to read going over, I
-sniped Berri's performance from the top of the pile and stuck it in my
-pocket.  I did it on the impulse of the moment, and I may have been all
-wrong--I don't know; the whole thing worries me.  But don't say anything
-to Berri about it.  I should n't care to get you and the diary into
-trouble.  When I reach Southampton I 'll send the thing back to him with
-a letter.  Good-by, Granny.  Take care of yourself and write often.
-
-
-DUGGIE.
-
-
-
-
-                                 *XIII*
-
-
-Some day I 'm going to write a book about Boston, because it's the most
-wonderful place in the world.  I suppose I really mean by this that it
-is so different from Perugia.  Berri, of course, would have to help
-me,--that is, he would unless I lived here fifty or sixty years for the
-purpose of gathering notes.  It would take about that long to understand
-everything and be able to write intelligently and sympathetically.
-Anybody, of course, may sojourn for a time among the Bostonians--just as
-he may among the Chinese or the strange races of the Pacific
-islands--and record his impressions of them.  But I don't think his
-remarks would be more valuable than the ordinary travel book that tells
-you merely the things you could tell yourself if you were on the spot
-with a pencil and a strong right arm.  Really to know the place you have
-to be born and brought up here; which in itself amounts to saying that
-Boston will never, never be understood.  For the people who were born
-and brought up here know and won't tell,--"know and can't tell," Berri
-declares.  "It would take a genius to do the thing properly," he says,
-"and Boston went out of the genius business some thirty or forty years
-ago."
-
-Now, Berri was born in Paris ("Paa-is, France--or Paa-is, Kentucky?" as
-a Southern girl once asked him), and I don't suppose he's a genius,
-actually.  But as he has, on his mother's side, more cousins and aunts
-and things in Boston than anybody I 'm ever likely to know so very
-intimately, and as he seems more like a genius than anybody I 've ever
-seen before, what he tells me always sounds somehow as if it were the
-real thing.  He laughed, though, the other day--we were taking a long
-walk--when I said this to him, and answered that it was very evident I
-did n't know what the real thing was.
-
-"_I'm_ not," he added, "if for no other reason than that I am able,
-quite seriously at times, to consider going some place else to live
-after I finish with all this."  And he fluttered his hand in the
-direction of Cambridge.
-
-"Does n't anybody else?" I asked.
-
-"Mercy, no--how you talk!" he exclaimed.  "Why should they?"
-
-"I suppose I was thinking of papa," I replied meekly.  "He believes it's
-better for most young men to get away from home and start life for
-themselves as soon as they grow up; they 're always boys to somebody
-unless they do, he says.  Then, besides, he has great faith in perfectly
-new places.  He 's often told me that even Perugia was too old and
-crowded for a young man.  Perugia was fifty-three years old last
-spring."  Berri laughed.
-
-"That's important, if true," he answered, "but what has it to do with
-Boston?"
-
-"Why, I merely imagined that some one in this part of the world might
-have the same idea," I suggested.  "Now, take Duggie, for instance.
-Don't you think that Duggie wants to get out and try to do something?"
-
-"Oh, Duggie!" said Berri, with a shrug. "He thinks he does now, but he
-really doesn't. Of course Duggie is simply slopping over with
-strenuousness and that sort of thing.  But he gets most of it out of
-books,--Fleetwood's books at that.  And after all, as I say, he slops
-over; it 'll just run into the sand without making even a silly little
-hole.  After a while, when he gets tired of reading, and thinking how
-unworthy everybody else is, it won't do even that.  Duggie in college is
-stunning and a leader of men; but Duggie at forty will be leading
-nothing but a beautiful purple life down there at his
-country-place,--unless, of course, he gets fat; if he gets fat, he 'll
-be a stockbroker."
-
-"Say, Berri, how old are you, anyhow?" I asked.  I know he is older than
-I am, but he never will tell me how much,--he didn't this time,--he just
-laughs, and says his early education was grossly neglected over there in
-Europe, or he would have been classes and classes ahead of me.  I did
-n't like what he said about Duggie, and told him so.  He answered that I
-'d brought it on myself, and I suppose I had.
-
-"Maybe we'd better talk about Bertie Stockbridge," he added.  "He's my
-third cousin, you know--but, dear me, if people begin to be loyal to
-third cousins, Boston would turn into a sort of gigantic asylum for deaf
-mutes.  I don't mind _what_ you say about Bertie.  Besides, he 's a more
-perfect specimen than Duggie, because Duggie is passing through a phase.
-Even Bostonians sometimes pass through phases when they 're very young.
-It doesn't happen often, though. The truth is, Duggie can't decide
-whether to be a Greek god or a college settlement. He'd really rather be
-a Greek god, only it's so immoral.  He 'll probably end, you know, by
-coming out of his trance some June morning and finding himself married.
-Then it will be too late to be either one or the other. But what was it
-we were talking about?  Oh, yes--Bertie.  Now, Bertie isn't passing
-through a phase.  Not on your life.  Bertie just rose Venus-like in a
-state of hopeless completion from the crystal waters of the Back Bay.
-He never disappoints."
-
-"But I like Bertie," I protested; "not as much as I do Duggie, of
-course.  But I do like him; he's so--so--sensible."
-
-"Sensible!" Berri screamed.  "Why, child, the Stockbridge family is
-_all_ sense. With trousers bagging at the knee and Adam's apples rising
-and falling above their abashed collars, Bertie's ancestors came into a
-lovely foolish world and _created_ sense.  That's all they ever do
-now,--just create one another and sense.  So, the next time you hear
-some old thing groaning about the scarcity of common-sense, you 'll know
-that it's because the Stockbridges have it all,--they and a few friends
-who live in the same street during the winter and share several thousand
-front feet of the Atlantic Ocean from May to November.  But you mustn't
-think I don't like Bertie and his family,--perhaps I should simply say
-'Bertie,' for Bertie is his family,--because I do, you know.  I admire
-him very much," Berri added after a moment. "He radiates a sort of
-atmosphere of modest infallibility that makes me feel exactly as I
-should feel if I suddenly went into Appleton Chapel and found the Pope
-there reading the Boston Transcript.  Calmly and without the slightest
-tinge of bitterness, I admit that Bertie is always right.
-
-"You heard what he said to Bobbie Colburn, didn't you?  It was after the
-hour exam in English 68, and we were all in Bobbie's room comparing
-notes.  Now, Bertie had passed, of course, because he 'll always pass in
-everything, whether he has any talent for it or not; but he had n't
-passed particularly well.  It takes a person of some imagination to get
-a good mark in that course. Bobbie Colburn, on the other hand, who
-apparently hadn't studied at all and who'd been having a fierce time the
-night before the exam, just sailed into the examination-room with a
-dress-suit on under his overcoat, and got through brilliantly, which
-worried Bertie to death.  We 'd all made some comment on the matter, and
-finally Colburn, as if to end it, said in his breezy way, 'Well, you
-know the old proverb,--He laughs best who drinks most!'  Whereupon
-Bertie fixed him with his fine gray eyes and remarked, 'That is n't the
-way it goes, Colburn; you 've got it mixed.'  Then he repeated the words
-correctly,--not with triumph exactly, but with the cold joy of one whose
-life is spent in righting unimportant wrongs.
-
-"And yet I can't help confessing," Berri mused, "that I 'm exceedingly
-glad to acknowledge my relationship to Bertie and his tribe.  They
-madden me at times; they have such clear, narrow, unelastic, admirable
-intellects.  Their attitude toward all questions, public or private, is
-so definite and uncompromising; they 're so dog-gonned _right_. Why,
-American history is just one glad, sweet testimonial to the fact that
-they 're never wrong.  They 're not always on the popular side, or the
-successful; they 're merely right. Any other human beings would keep on
-trying to make use of such a splendid faculty. Years and years ago they
-did make use of it; but nowadays it's enough just to know that they have
-it, and pretty much all to themselves.
-
-"But, as I was saying, I 'm secretly darned glad that Bertie and I
-belong to each other, so to speak.  Is n't it funny--I'm not a bit loyal
-to Bertie, but he 's perfectly loyal to me. He does n't in the least
-understand me.  I don't think he even likes me, although that disturbing
-thought probably has n't occurred to him yet; but there's no getting
-around the fact that I 'm one of his relatives, and he accepts
-me,--accepts me in a way he never will accept _you_, no matter how well
-he gets to know you and like you.  There's something rather fine in
-that, don't you think? Of course, it might be a good deal of a bore if
-he took a fancy to me; but as he won't, it's really a great comfort.
-The fact that that plain, but healthy-looking, silent person in the very
-badly made dark gray suit accepts me and will always accept me, is
-equivalent to an illuminated address of welcome and the freedom of the
-city.
-
-"You really can't imagine how it simplifies things," Berri continued.
-"It's such a relief, such an absolution!  It leaves me, as some one
-says, 'with nothing on my mind but my hair and my hat;' and even they
-don't have to be brushed as long as people consider me a Stockbridge at
-heart.  Why, if I didn't feel like it, I shouldn't have to be even
-polite.  Of course I am polite.  But it's a mere habit with me; I dare
-say I 'll get out of it.  You've noticed, haven't you, how brusque and
-sort of primitive Bertie's manner is as a rule?  Well, they 're all more
-or less like that.  People who like them say it arises from shyness and
-simplicity, and people who don't like them declare that it's just common
-or domestic rudeness; but it really is n't one or the other, and I think
-I ought to know.  The family manner comes from a curious conviction that
-politeness, grace, tact--the practice of making oneself agreeable free
-of charge, so to speak--has to do with the emotions; which is perfectly
-absurd.  The habit of politeness is about as emotional as the habit of
-brushing one's teeth. But Bertie's tribe does n't think so; and emotion
-with them is simply another word for effeminacy.  You see, they 're so
-sure of coming up to the scratch in the big things that they let the
-little ones slide.  I think they always vaguely associate politeness
-with French waiters and Neapolitan cripples. So, in a way, they 'll
-rather expect it of you; they like all foreigners to seem foreign."
-
-Bertie gabbled about no end of things that afternoon.  He had what he
-calls a "dry jag," and hardly ever stopped talking from the time we left
-our house just after luncheon until we came down Brattle Street on the
-way back and went into Mrs. Brown's for dinner. Once he and a lot of
-kids coming out of a schoolhouse away across the river somewhere, pasted
-one another with snowballs (I joined them) until a policeman made us
-stop, and for a few minutes the torrent of talk was interrupted.  But he
-made up for it by yelling every time he hit any one or got hit himself.
-He told me all sorts of tales, and I could n't help thinking how
-different everything was from Perugia.
-
-It had never occurred to me before that Perugia was so happy-go-lucky
-and uncivilized. Why, out there we just seem to grow up like those great
-round weeds on the prairie that suddenly let go for no particular reason
-and then bound along in the breeze through the wide flat streets until
-they run against a fence or a house and, for a while, stick there. It
-does n't seem to me that anything much is decided for us in advance.  I
-did n't know even that I was coming to college until about a year and a
-half beforehand,--which made it simply awful, as I had to study
-everything at once and did n't learn much of anything. Now, Berri says
-that, with the exception of himself, who was "grossly neglected" and
-never studied anything but French and German, his entire family for
-generations has lived by a sort of educational and social calendar from
-which they never deviate except in the event of a civil war.  He says he
-should n't be a bit surprised to learn that there were certain definite,
-unalterable dates at which the little boys began and left off tin
-soldiers and the breeding of guinea-pigs, and the little girls began and
-left off paper-dolls and "dressing up."  He declares that, providing the
-laws of nature are reasonably consistent, they all know exactly what
-they 'll be doing at any period of their lives; that even matrimony has
-ceased to be a lottery with them, as they go in for marrying, not
-individuals, but types.  Isn't it perfectly wonderful?
-
-"Now, take Bertie," he said.  "Bertie knew who his classmates in college
-were going to be, at the age of five.  They 're the same chaps he's been
-going to school with, and to the kid dancing-classes, you know, the
-Saturday Mornings and Thursday Afternoons or whatever they are, all
-these years.  They go to the Friday Evenings this year, and next year
-they 'll go to the Saturday Evenings, and at all these morns and noons
-and dewy eves they dance with the same girls that two years from now
-they 'll meet in society and subsequently marry, just because it's part
-of the routine.  After they get out of college they 'll all go abroad
-for a few months in groups of three and four, and when they get back
-they 'll be taken into the same club (their names will have been on the
-waiting list some twenty-odd years), and they 'll join a lunch club down
-town in order not to miss seeing one another every day at noon for the
-rest of their lives."
-
-Then Berri told me about the girls.  Really my heart bleeds for the
-girls, because apparently, unless they are terribly pretty or terribly
-clever or terribly rich, they must have a devil of a time.  Berri says
-that although they all "come out," they don't all stay out; that after
-about a year or so a good many of them sort of slink in again by
-unanimous consent. (Imagine such a thing in Perugia!  Why, every girl
-has a good time there for just as long as she wants to.)  The pretty
-ones, however, never go in again; because, if you once get a reputation
-for beauty here, Berri says it never leaves you (the reputation, I
-mean), and that 's why an evening party in Boston often strikes a
-stranger as being so largely a matter of physical traditions.  At a
-dance the rich plain girls, he says, have a good time too, but only for
-the first part of the evening.  The men speak of them as "pills" (a
-quaint, chivalrous custom, is it not?), and try to dance with them as
-early in the evening as possible, because everybody else is trying to do
-the same thing and there isn't so great a chance of getting stuck for an
-hour or so.  But later on they ask only the ones they really want to
-dance with, and the plain rich girl finds herself spending a cozy
-eternity with some one who is inwardly moaning because he delayed until
-the rush was over.
-
-The girls too are born into a sort of rut, Berri says.  It takes the
-form of sewing-circles. Berri can discourse for hours at a time on these
-institutions.  His aunt Josephine has been going to the same one every
-week for fifty years.  He said that once when he was a little child he
-heard an Englishman who had lived in India telling about the mysterious
-rapidity with which a piece of news spread among the natives of that
-country. Within half a day, this man declared, a rumor would sort of
-leap through the air from Calcutta to the most obscure villages on the
-Afghan frontier, and no one could explain how it was done.  Berri used
-to fall asleep at night worrying over it.  But now, even in India
-romance is dead, Berri says; he 's convinced that the whole thing was
-nothing but just sewing-circles.
-
-"Why, Granny, if I were to lock myself up in my room in Cambridge and
-draw the curtains and stuff the keyhole and then murmur in a low voice
-that--well, for instance, that you and Sarah Bernhardt had been quietly
-married at the First Baptist Church in Somerville that afternoon, and
-then dash in to my aunt Josephine's as fast as a car could take me, she
-would greet me in the library with: 'My dear, _have_ you heard!  I 've
-just come from the sewing-circle, and they say--of course I don't
-believe it'--and so on.  And this is n't any idle jest, either; it's a
-fact."
-
-He was just beginning to tell me something else about them--I forget
-what--when we both realized that it was rather late, and that if we
-expected to get back in time for dinner we should have to find a shorter
-way or take the car.  We neither of us knew where we were, although
-Berri said the place looked as if it might be called
-"Upper-West-Newtonville-Centre Corners."  So we stopped a little girl
-who was trudging along with a pitcher of milk in her hand.
-
-"Little girl, can you tell me where we are?" Berri asked her solemnly.
-She stared at us for a moment with great round eyes (Berri admitted
-afterwards that the question was a stupid one), and finally answered in
-a high, scornful little voice,--
-
-"Main Street."
-
-Berri refused to ask again after that, and we strolled about for a time
-until we caught sight of the tower of Memorial,--it suddenly appeared
-against the sky in quite the wrong direction,--and then of course
-getting home was easy enough.
-
-We were rather confidential on the way back, and talked about the
-"Dickey," which we had never discussed before.  The Dickey is the great
-Sophomore secret society.  I don't remember just how the subject came
-up, but something reminded Berri of one night earlier in the year,--one
-of the nights on which the society takes on ten new members.  They
-choose them from the Sophomore class always except late in the spring,
-just before college closes, when ten--the "First Ten"--are elected from
-among the Freshmen.  However, by that time the Freshmen are almost
-Sophomores, so it amounts to about the same thing.  When a ten is taken
-on, the whole club marches through the streets at about eleven o'clock
-at night, singing a song that has no words but "Tra la la la, la la, la
-la."  It's a wonderful little tune; it's very short and simple, and
-after you 've heard it once it sticks in your head, you can't forget it.
-Unlike other catchy airs, though, you somehow don't get tired of it.  I
-'ve heard it over and over again since I 've been here,--on pianos as I
-passed under the windows of upper classmen, whistled by muckers in the
-Yard, and sung by the club at night,--and it always gives me a thrill; I
-suppose it 's because it means such a lot, and because you realize that
-no one (except the muckers) would play it or sing it or whistle it who
-was n't entitled to.
-
-On the night that Berri referred to, the club must have been half a mile
-away when we first heard it.  Berri was in my room reading, and I was
-writing a letter.  My back was toward him, and we neither of us said
-anything when the vague musical "tra la la las" floated up from away
-down by the river somewhere. They were very faint, and after a minute or
-two stopped entirely.  Then, just as I had forgotten about it, the song
-began again,--a little louder and more distinct this time and getting
-louder every second.  Then it suddenly broke off once more.  But I
-didn't forget it, for I knew that the club had stopped to take some one
-out of his room--some one who had just been elected--and march him along
-with the others, and I waited kind of nervously for the refrain to begin
-again; it never gets started quite evenly,--only a few voices at first,
-the rest joining in as the crowd turns away from the door of the
-"neophyte's" house and starts along the street.  They came nearer and
-nearer,--the song grew louder and louder.  Some of the fellows were
-singing a clear tenor that made the last few notes of every verse die
-away in a kind of high, sad wail.  It seemed ridiculous for me to be
-sitting there pretending to write a letter, with Berri reading in such
-elaborate unconsciousness by the fire, when the ears of both of us were
-strained to catch every note, and the hoarse, fierce shouts that
-suddenly broke through the song as the Dickey turned into our street;
-but neither of us knew what to say exactly.  At last, however, I could
-n't stand it any longer, and jumped up and blew out both the lamps.
-With the room dark we could stand at the window and not be seen.
-Freshmen are n't expected to show any particular interest in the
-proceedings of the Dickey; it's considered fresh.  They were just
-tramping past our house when we leaned out,--a singing, shouting,
-irresistible mob,--and Berri and I looked down at them in silence.  We
-were both excited, and I felt chilly all over--but that may have been on
-account of the open window.  The crowd did not pass on, as we thought it
-would, but stopped at a house across the street a few doors down.  Once
-more the song ceased; men formed in a double line that reached from the
-piazza to the street, and there were hoarse cries of "Pull him out--pull
-him out!"  Then the front door burst open, and a fellow--he seemed to be
-half dressed--came hurtling through the air between the double row
-waiting for him.  There was a moment of confusion and savage yells,
-during which it looked as if the whole crowd was trying to get its hands
-on him.  We lost sight of him in the shuffle, and in another instant the
-song began, louder than before, and the Dickey swayed away into the
-darkness.  We stood at the window until the clearness and energy of the
-"Tra la la la, la la, la la," faded to a thin, dim, uncertain rhythm,--a
-suggestion of tenor that all but lost itself in the pearly fog rolling
-up from the marshes.
-
-I fumbled for a match when we turned at last to the room.  But before I
-found one, Berri said, "I think I 'll go to bed, Granny," and by the
-time I got the lamp lighted he had slipped away.  I don't know why
-exactly, but I was rather glad he hadn't waited.  After that I tried to
-finish my letter, but I could n't make myself end the sentence I had
-been writing the way I had meant to end it in the first place.  So I put
-the thing in the fire and sat there awhile, thinking, and then went to
-bed myself.
-
-
-
-
-                                 *XIV*
-
-
-Well, as I said, something reminded Berri of that night, and as we were
-on a deserted road far from Cambridge, he referred to it,--indirectly at
-first, and afterwards right out in so many words.  But he didn't talk in
-the same free and airy strain he had been talking in before, and
-although I wanted to hear what he said and ask questions and say a few
-things myself, I had a feeling all the time that perhaps we ought to
-change the subject; it made me uncomfortable.  Then I thought of the way
-I had talked to Duggie the first evening, away back in September, and
-positively blushed when I remembered that I had asked him, outright, how
-one ought to go about getting on clubs.  Why, that was enough to sewer
-me with almost anybody in the world but Duggie.  Imagine my doing such a
-thing now!  No one ever thinks of mentioning the clubs in general
-conversation. Of course once in a while some fresh kid who happens to
-live next door to one of them comes out with an allusion of some kind,
-and embarrasses everybody to death; and I 've had one or two upper
-classmen--Juniors or Seniors--who hadn't made the Dickey and didn't
-belong to a club talk to me quite freely about the whole matter in a
-tone that implied that such things were all very well, no doubt, but did
-n't interest them particularly.  You can get a good deal of information
-from upper classmen of this kind,--fellows who are n't on clubs and have
-given up expecting to be; they don't think you fresh.  But it would
-never do to ask for any from a Dickey man; that would be awful. Why, you
-'d never be taken on if you did that.
-
-Even Berri does n't seem to know much about the Dickey, or, if he does,
-he did n't tell me anything very definite.  He said, though, that if you
-didn't make it, you might just as well pack up and go home; that Dickey
-men kind of flocked together and did n't go outside much for their
-friends, and that the fellows you wanted to know usually were on the
-Dickey.  Then, too, he said that if a man did n't make the Dickey, he
-wasn't likely to be taken into a club.  Berri seemed to know a lot about
-the clubs.  I knew hardly anything at all; in fact, I thought the Dickey
-was a club, but he says it isn't,--that it's a society.  The clubs, he
-says, are great.  His uncle took him to one for breakfast once before
-he--Berri--got into college. (Of course he couldn't be taken to one
-now.)  He said he did n't notice anything particularly secret about it;
-it was just like one of the good clubs in town.  I found out the names
-of most of them from him--they seem to have Greek names, yet are called
-by queer nicknames as a rule--and where they are. This last, however, I
-knew pretty well before, but I did n't know which was which, and could
-n't ask exactly.  I had often seen fellows going in and out of certain
-houses along Mount Auburn Street that did n't look like residences
-somehow, although they might have been, and wondered just what they
-were.  At night, even with the shades down, they were always lighted
-from top to bottom.  No matter how late it was, the lights were there,
-cheerful and inviting,--which in itself seemed remarkable when I
-considered how early Cambridge (the town, I mean) goes to bed. But one
-morning when I was hurrying to a lecture, two fellows came out of
-Claverly Hall, and one of them said to the other, "Hold up a minute; I
-left my note-book at the club," and dashed across the street. Then it
-suddenly dawned on me.  Of course I never look curiously at them any
-more, but just walk right on with my eyes fixed on something in the
-distance as if they were ordinary houses.  I can't help wondering,
-sometimes, whether anybody ever noticed me staring at them and at the
-fellows going in and out--before I knew.  I hope not.
-
-When I asked Duggie about getting into clubs that time, I remember he
-evaded the subject (which was darned good of him, it seems to me now) by
-saying something about being polite to everybody.
-
-"That's all very well," Berri answered, when I laughed a little and told
-him about it, "but there's such a thing as being too polite. You see,
-there are fellows right now in our class--you know who they are and I do
-too--who are, even as early as this, being considered for the First Ten.
-If you suddenly turned in and tried to make yourself nice to them, why,
-everybody would say you were 'swiping;' and so you would be.  The First
-Ten elects the Second Ten, you know."
-
-"Duggie did n't mean that you ought to be polite only to the fellows you
-think are going to help you along," I answered.  "It was exactly the
-reverse of that.  What he meant was that you ought to be the same to
-everybody."
-
-"I wonder if _he_ was," Berri mused.  "It's so easy, after you 've once
-got to the top yourself, to think you did it all with the help of the
-Scriptures.  It's like these old vultures who 've stolen everything in
-sight ever since they were born, beginning their magazine articles on
-'How to Get Rich' with: 'Honesty and Industry must be the motto of him
-who would attain wealth!'"
-
-I refused to see any connection between Duggie and the old vultures, and
-tried to get back to the clubs.  However, we did n't say much more about
-them, and squabbled most of the way home over the subject of popularity.
-It does seem queer that some fellows have so many friends, while others
-who start with about the same opportunities and even greater natural
-advantages now and then have so few.  I suggested that when a fellow was
-tremendously popular and "in" everything--and I could n't see why it was
-exactly--he probably had very interesting or fascinating qualities that
-I had n't perhaps discovered.  Berri, however, maintained that
-popularity was often nothing but an idiotic fashion, and mentioned
-several popular fellows he did n't like, to prove it.
-
-"Now look at Tucker Ludlow," he burst out.  "What is he?  A dissipated
-little beast; you know he is, everybody knows he is. Not that I should
-mind his being dissipated and a beast, if he were ever anything else;
-but he isn't.  He's stupid, and he 's ignorant, and he is n't even
-good-looking, yet he moves in a crowd,--a nice crowd too; and when he
-moves, the crowd moves with him.  That's nothing but fashion.  It is n't
-possible that anybody can really like the creature.  But it amounts to
-the same thing; I 've already heard it kind of whispered around that he
-'ll be on the First Ten."
-
-What Berri said interested me very much, for Ludlow and I had agreed, a
-few days before, to grind together on a course for the mid-year exams.
-I had intended to remind him of it, but now that Berri said he was
-spoken of for the First Ten I don't like to; people might think I was
-swiping.  I don't care much for Ludlow myself; but he doesn't irritate
-me the way he does Berri, and I do think there must be something to him.
-
-After the freaks of fashion, Berri seemed to think that the most popular
-men--in one's Freshman year anyhow--were the fellows whose opportunities
-for making friends were good to begin with, and who were n't in any way
-particularly startling,--athletics, of course, always excepted; athletes
-never lack a following.  But it does n't do, he says, to be different,
-or to excel at first in much of anything else.  You may with perfect
-safety have the reputation for knowing things or being clever, but that
-'s very different from really knowing or being.  The man who actually
-knows or is, is doomed.
-
-"What about Reggie Howard, then?" I asked.  Everybody likes Howard, and
-yet he knows a fearful amount and is as clever as any one could be.  I
-knew Berri thought so, and wondered how he would get out of it.
-
-"Yes, Reggie's wise,--very wise," he admitted, "but with the exception
-of you and me, almost no one suspects it.  He does n't object to my
-knowing, because he feels sure I don't mind; and you 're safe because
-you 're so kind.  But he takes care that people generally don't get on
-to it.  That's part of his wisdom."
-
-One thing I 've learned here that surprised me a good deal, and that
-is--popularity has nothing to do with money.  I always had an idea that
-people with money to throw to the birds could n't help being liked; but
-that evidently is n't the case.  And Berri did n't have to tell me; I
-found it out for myself.  Of course it's nice to be able to live in
-comfortable rooms and have plenty to eat and wear decent clothes.  No
-one objects to that, and no one objects, apparently, to a fellow's doing
-more than that,--to spending, indeed, a good deal of money if he has it
-to spend.  But the mere fact of a man's having a record-breaking
-allowance does n't seem to interest people in the least, and if some
-frightfully rich fellow comes to college with a flourish of trumpets in
-the Sunday papers about his father's income, and how many horses he
-intends to keep, and how much the furnishing of his rooms will probably
-cost, it 's decidedly against him.  I was thinking, I suppose, of Tony
-Earle in our class.  His father makes millions and millions out of
-safety-matches--I believe it is.  Anyhow, everybody speaks of Tony as
-"His Matchesty," and has very little to do with him.  The fellows are
-simply prejudiced against him because the papers said he had so much
-money.  And he 's really a perfectly harmless, rather quiet sort of
-person who plays well on the piano.  Berri and I spent an evening with
-him once.  We were dining in town, and Earle was all alone across the
-room.  He looked so dreary that Berri finally exclaimed,--
-
-"For heaven's sake, why doesn't some one take pity on that poor wretched
-millionaire? It's positively pathetic!"
-
-I suggested asking him to come over and have his dinner with us.  But
-Berri, like every one else, objected.
-
-"He 'd probably order nightingales or peacocks or some such thing, and
-then insist on paying for us," he said.
-
-"Well, let's ask him and see," I urged. "We'll make that the test.  If
-he tries to pay the whole bill, he won't do."  So Berri went over and
-asked him to join us, and he turned out just as I said,--quiet and not
-especially interesting, but a good deal nicer than a lot of fellows who
-won't know him. When it came to paying the waiter, Berri kicked me under
-the table and spent an indecently long time in looking over the check. I
-think he was actually disappointed when Earle glanced across the table
-and merely said,--
-
-"By the way, what's my share?"
-
-When we got to Cambridge he asked us over to his rooms.  They certainly
-are dreams; even Berri could n't find anything wrong with them.  He
-bangs the box like a wizard.
-
-"I was afraid he was going to say he was lonely, or something
-melodramatic like that, when we got up to leave and he asked us to come
-again," Berri remarked on the way home.  "Of course he is horribly
-lonely, and it was very considerate of him not to spoil everything by
-saying so.  I think we 'll have to go back.  To-morrow at luncheon we
-can start a society for the prevention of cruelty to millionaires."
-
-Well, if I 'm ever ostracized it won't be because people are scared at
-my allowance. Papa and I have been having an exceedingly brisk
-correspondence lately.  Just after the family got back to Perugia,
-Mildred wrote me that papa had won an important lawsuit and was going to
-get an unusually large fee. So I bought some clothes and a few things I
-really needed on the strength of it and had the bill sent home, as he
-made me promise to let him know just what I spent.  He replied at some
-length, declaring, among other things, that I reminded him of what
-Charles Lamb says of a poor relation; Lamb's remark being, "A poor
-relation is a preposterous shadow lengthening in the noontide of your
-prosperity."  I expostulated, and told him about Willie Jackson.
-Willie's elder brother passed through Boston not long ago, and when
-Willie went in to see him he asked for money with which to buy a
-dress-suit case and some shoes he needed badly.  No one knows exactly
-how it happened,--some think that Willie had been brooding over the Fine
-Arts course he is taking and the instructor's plea for more beauty in
-one's every-day environment. Anyhow, when Willie stepped off the car in
-Cambridge, he had--not the shoes and the dress-suit case, but a palm and
-a canary-bird.
-
-To this papa replied that he didn't see why I had taken the trouble to
-record for his benefit the exploits of Willie Jackson, as he never for a
-moment had doubted that there were as many fools in college as
-elsewhere.  That is where the matter rests at present.
-
-As there is nothing doing now that you can watch in the afternoon as you
-can the football practice in the autumn and the baseball and crews in
-the spring, some of us at the table have become athletes on our own
-account. We go to the gym every day at about five, and work with
-chest-weights and dumbbells, and are put through all sorts of agonizing
-performances in a large class of hard students who never take any other
-kind of exercise. Then we run up North Avenue as far as the
-railway-station and back to our rooms.  I don't know how far it is, but
-the return trip at first seemed to be about a hundred miles; it's a
-little shorter now, and gets shorter every day.  After a hot shower-bath
-and then a cold one you feel eight or ten feet high, and walk through
-the Square to dinner, sticking out your chest.  It's queer you don't
-catch cold, running in the icy wind with literally nothing on but a pair
-of tennis shoes, loose short cotton drawers, and a thin sleeveless
-undershirt; but you never seem to.  The gym made me stiff all over for a
-day or two, but I feel fine now, and wonder why we never thought of it
-before. The muckers on the Avenue bother us a good deal with snowballs
-when we run.  Hemington very foolishly chased one of them not long ago
-and washed his face with snow.  The paternal mucker has since sued Hemi
-for assault and battery.  Hemi is in a great state about it, and we are
-all looking forward to cutting a morningful of lectures and testifying
-in court.
-
-The mid-years are almost here, and I feel as if it were only about the
-day before yesterday that I was failing in the hour exams.  I simply
-must do well in the mid-years, for if I don't they will probably change
-my probation to "special probation" (as it is called), which is the
-limit, my adviser says, of everything obnoxious.  I should have to
-report--to him most likely--every morning at half-past eight, just to
-show that I was up bright and early and "in sympathy with the work," so
-to speak.  Then at ten or eleven in the evening I should have to drop in
-again, which of course would make it impossible to go to the theatre
-without permission.  An extra-sharp lookout would be kept on my work,
-and altogether special probation is easily a consummation devoutly to be
-avoided.  I suppose I 'll have to grind and grind night and day in order
-to get everything down cold.  I wish now that I had kept on studying an
-hour or two every day, as I did for about a week after my encounter with
-the exams in October.  I should n't be well prepared even then, but it
-would n't all seem so perfectly hopeless as it does now. It's so hard,
-though, to do anything regularly when the front door is unlocked most of
-the time, as ours is.  And there 's no use in locking the door of my
-room, as the fellows don't knock once and go away, but pound and rattle
-and shout insulting remarks through the keyhole.  All of which makes me
-feel disagreeable and rather affected,--locking myself up when other
-people get along so well without that sort of thing.  I have n't done it
-more than once or twice.
-
-Anyhow I 'll probably get a good mark in my English Composition.  The
-instructor seems to like my themes and reads a good many of them in
-class.  Lately, however, he has developed the unnecessary trick of
-pronouncing the words, when he is reading, exactly as they are spelled,
-which is extremely trying for me and not fair to the theme.  It has made
-several really good ones sound ridiculous.  Spelling is n't my strong
-point, I know; but I draw the line at Berri's guying me about
-it,--Berri, whose spelling, unless he digs every other word out of the
-dictionary, looks like some kind of absurd French dialect. He has
-recently taken to getting off a rigmarole (it's supposed to be about me)
-that begins something like this,--
-
-"'Berri, how do you spell "parallel"?'
-
-"'Why, p-a-r-a-l-l-e-l, of course.'
-
-"'Thank you; that's the way I have it.'  (Then nothing was heard but the
-scratching of a penknife.)"
-
-I think they 're rather fussy about details here.  On the back of my
-last theme the instructor wrote: "By the way, dotting one's _i_'s and
-crossing one's _t_'s are charming literary habits when once acquired."
-
-However, I think I shall get a good mark in this course,
-notwithstanding.  But life isn't all English Composition, and I have a
-terrible amount of work to do in the other things. Berri and I began, in
-a way, to prepare for the ordeal by going to the theatre for the last
-time until the mid-year period is at an end.  We made an occasion of it,
-and ended by doing something that I had never dreamed we were going to
-do when we started out.  It was foolish, I suppose, and I don't know
-exactly what mamma would think about it.  I should like to tell her and
-find out, but I 'm afraid papa might get hold of it, and my idea of his
-opinion on the subject is somewhat less vague. What we did was to invite
-one of the girls in the show to supper.
-
-Berri proposed it.  We were sitting in the front row away to one side,
-and when the second act was about half over, he exclaimed to me,--
-
-"There, she 's done it again; that's the third time."  I asked him what
-he meant, and he replied that one of the girls on our side of the stage
-had winked at us.  The attention, he explained, must have been meant for
-us.  And for a variety of reasons it did n't seem as if it could have
-been intended for any one else.  In the first place our seats were the
-last in the row.  Behind us were some ladies, and on the other side of
-Berri was a very old man who sat half turned away from the stage,
-holding a great black tin trumpet to his ear, as if he were expecting
-the actors to lean over the footlights and pour something into it.
-
-"I don't want to appear vain," Berri went on, "but as a mere matter of
-geographical position I think that we 're It."  The comedian was singing
-a song in the middle of the stage, and on either side of him was a row
-of girls--convent girls they were supposed to be--who joined in the
-chorus at the end of every verse and shook their fingers at him
-reprovingly. They were all dressed in tights.  This was n't the convent
-uniform (they had appeared in that during the first act), and was
-explained by the fact that they had been rehearsing for private
-theatricals when the comedian fell in through the window.  The comedian
-was a burglar, and _his_ tights were merely a clever disguise.  He was
-making the girls believe that he was a professional actor hired by the
-mother superior to teach them how to sing and dance.  This was the plot,
-and it was really rather complicated, for when they all decided to leave
-the convent with the burglar and spend the evening at a roof-garden,
-they rushed in dressed as policemen, pretending that they had come to
-arrest the burglar.  The mother superior did n't recognize them, of
-course, and was naturally glad to have the burglar taken away.  Then, at
-the roof-garden--in the third act--they appeared as waiters; all of
-which made it hard for me to keep track of them very well. But Berri
-could spot our girl every time, and by carefully examining the program
-and comparing the names of the chorus with the various changes of
-costume she went through, he managed in some way, by the end of the
-second act, to discover her name.  It was Miss Mae Ysobelle.  To tell
-the truth, I did n't think her particularly pretty.  She was tall and
-not a bit graceful, and when she danced she looked as if it were hard
-work to move her arms and legs the right number of times and finish with
-the others.  She smiled a great deal, but the moment she stopped dancing
-her mouth sort of snapped back to place as if it were made of stiff red
-rubber. I found, after watching her for a long time, that my own mouth
-got very tired.  I told Berri this; also that her clothes looked as if
-they had been made for some one else.  But Berri somehow seemed to think
-she might be unusually agreeable if one knew her.
-
-"Very often, you know, really pretty people don't make up well at all;
-and as for her clothes looking as if they did n't belong to her, why,
-she can't help that, poor thing! they probably don't.  She is a little
-knock-kneed, but you would n't notice that if she had a skirt on."
-
-"Well, there doesn't seem to be any immediate danger of our seeing her
-with a skirt," I answered, for some of the convent girls--Mae Ysobelle
-among them--had suddenly changed their minds about being waiters and had
-decided to give the interrupted private theatricals right there on the
-roof-garden stage.  They came prancing in dressed as jockeys, while the
-man in the orchestra who, as Berri says, supplies music with local
-color, slapped two thin boards together to imitate the crack of a whip.
-
-"Oh, I don't know," Berri mused; "we might manage to meet her after the
-show,--ask her to supper or something.  She seems friendly enough," he
-added; for, as he was speaking, the jockeys drew up at the edge of the
-stage, touched their caps, then leaned over, and _all_ winked.  Miss
-Ysobelle was unmistakably looking at us as she did it.
-
-I did n't believe she would go with us even if we asked her, but Berri
-said we 'd rush out after the third act and buy her some flowers and
-send an usher behind the scenes with them. We ended by doing this--we
-got her a big box of roses--and writing a note asking her to meet us at
-the stage door when the performance was ended.  Berri signed it "Front
-row--extreme left."
-
-We did n't get an answer to it, at least not in words; but when the
-curtain went up again on a scene in the convent garden, Miss Ysobelle
-had one of our roses in her hair and another at her belt, and I began to
-feel excited at the prospect of meeting her.  In fact, the whole last
-act had a personal interest for us that the others had not.  It was
-almost like being on the stage and enjoying everything from the inside.
-I even felt rather sorry for the rest of the audience who were sitting
-there perfectly oblivious to the intrigue going on in the blaze of the
-footlights, before their unsuspecting eyes.  One thing struck us both as
-rather odd at first.  Miss Ysobelle, except for the roses, scrupulously
-ignored us through the entire act.  She not only never winked at us, she
-never even looked at us.  In fact, she gave us both the impression that
-she had become absorbed in something at the other side of the house.  I
-could n't understand this, and neither could Berri, although he said
-there was probably some theatrical etiquette connected with her averted
-gaze, or perhaps the stage-manager had told her to be more dignified.
-We decided to ask her about it at supper.  Well, we never got a chance
-to ask her, but we found out soon enough for ourselves.
-
-As we had the last seats on the left side of the front row, we were
-naturally the last to get into the middle aisle on the way out, or,
-rather, we and the people who had the corresponding seats on the other
-side of the house were the last.  We met them when we reached the end of
-our row, and had to stop a moment as they stood there putting on their
-overcoats and blocking the way.  One of them I noticed particularly,--a
-great, big thug of a creature who had shiny black hair slicked up in
-front with a barbery flourish, and a very fancy waistcoat and cravat.
-They kept just ahead of us on the way out, and laughed a good deal.
-Berri and I were unusually silent.
-
-We did n't go quite to the stage door, as the electric light fizzing
-right over it made everything in the little alley as bright as day.
-Neither of us was very keen to join the group loitering near by, so we
-stood a little back in the shadow and waited.  Finally some men with
-their collars turned up came out; then two women with thick veils on.
-They seemed to be in a great hurry, and for a few seconds we were afraid
-that one of them might be Miss Ysobelle; but we remembered how tall she
-was and did n't run after them.  Then more men came, and more
-girls,--some of whom were joined by men waiting at the door. It seemed
-at last as if the whole company must have come out, and Berri and I were
-beginning to think that Miss Mae Ysobelle must have left before we
-arrived, when the door opened once more and she appeared with our box of
-flowers in her arms.  For a moment she stood on the step and looked
-around expectantly.
-
-"I think we ought to go up," Berri murmured nervously; but I thought it
-would be better to wait and join her as she passed by.
-
-Then a queer thing happened.  Just as she decided to leave the step, who
-should go up to her but the big thug with the shiny hair and loud
-waistcoat?  He lifted his hat and shook hands with her very cordially,
-then took the box of flowers--our flowers--and strolled away with her
-out of the alley to the street. As they passed by, we heard her exclaim,
-"Say, it was awful nice of you to send those Jacques.  When Myrtle seen
-me open the box--"  The rest of the sentence was lost in the rattle of a
-cab.
-
-Berri and I waited a moment before coming out of the shadow.  Then we
-looked at each other, and Berri shrieked with laughter. We laughed all
-the way back to Cambridge. The people in the car must have thought--I
-don't know what they could have thought. For a long time we could n't
-imagine why things had turned out as they had until Berri remembered
-that he had signed the note "Front row--extreme left."  He had meant our
-left, but Miss Ysobelle no doubt thought that it referred to her
-left,--which was quite another matter.
-
-
-
-
-                                  *XV*
-
-
-I've been dead to the world for more than a month; it seems about a
-year. Yet when I came to look at the situation squarely, there wasn't
-anything else to do exactly.  It was a case of getting the drop on my
-exams or letting them get the drop on me.  Of course, I could have sort
-of fooled with them and thought I was learning something about them and
-then perhaps have scraped through in one or two and failed in the
-others.  And this, as a matter of fact, was the way in which Tucker
-Ludlow and I did go at them at first.  Tucker came up to my room two or
-three times, armed with some type-written notes on Greek architecture
-that he had bought at one of the book stores in the Square.  The first
-time he came was rather late in the afternoon.  He examined everything
-in my room, and we talked a good deal; he had been out West once, and
-seemed to know much more about that part of the country than I did.
-However, we finally got to work and had read about two pages of the
-notes when Hemington came in.  He saw that we were grinding, and said he
-would n't sit down and interrupt us, especially as he ought to be in his
-own room, grinding himself. He did n't actually sit down, but leaned
-against the mantelpiece and smoked for a while, and then compromised by
-half sitting on the arm of a chair in a temporary way and swinging his
-leg.  When at last he got up to leave, it was so near dinner that Ludlow
-went with him, and said he would continue some other time.  He left the
-notes with me, and at first I thought I should study them alone, but as
-Ludlow and I had agreed to grind the course up together, there did n't
-seem to be any point in getting ahead of him; so in a few minutes I went
-to dinner myself.
-
-The next time Ludlow came to study was in the evening.  He proposed that
-I should read the notes aloud, as he found the architectural terms so
-hard to pronounce; we were to stop and talk over anything we did n't
-understand.  I made myself comfortable in a chair near the lamp, and
-Ludlow drew up to the fire.  After droning along for about ten minutes
-about triglyphs and epistyles and entablatures and all that sort of
-thing, I suddenly had a jealous feeling that he was getting more good
-from the performance than I was, for he had n't asked a question, while
-I had n't understood a single sentence.  Finally, without looking up, I
-said,--
-
-"Tucker, if you really know what 'pseudo-peripteral' means, I wish you
-would tell me."  Tucker didn't answer, and I thought he was probably
-trying to get at a definition simple enough for me to grasp.  But when I
-glanced over toward the fireplace, I saw that he was asleep with his
-mouth open.  Well, I felt rather angry at first,--it all seemed such a
-waste of time; but it struck me, too, as being funny, so I did n't wake
-him.  He must have slept for at least ten minutes longer (of course I
-did n't bother about reading aloud any more), and then he came to,
-exclaiming,--
-
-"Read that about the ground plan once more; I don't think I quite got
-that."  As the ground plan was almost the first topic mentioned, I
-suppose he had dozed off almost immediately.  After that I made him do
-the reading, but he had n't stumbled through many pages before he put
-down the notes and said,--
-
-"Granny, don't you think that if we tackled this beastly drivel in the
-daytime, our heads would be clearer?"
-
-That was the end of our grinding together. He came to my room once more,
-but I was out.  It was after this experience that I thought the matter
-over and decided I should have to do the thing differently, and for the
-most part alone.  My most brilliant stroke was getting the key of
-Duggie's room from Mrs. Chester; I could lock myself up there and be
-perfectly safe.  When fellows saw my own door wide open and no one at
-home, they went away at once without making a row. Of course I had to
-let Berri into the game; but as he began to be scared about some of his
-own exams, he was grateful for the refuge and did n't give it away.
-
-I went to work at the whole business scientifically, determined not to
-leave a single thing, however unimportant, to chance.  And I 'm
-convinced now that if I have the nerve always to do this, I can get
-through any examination I 'm ever likely to have,--not brilliantly,
-perhaps, but very respectably.  First of all, I spent a day in the
-library and got hold of a lot of books that gave my various courses in
-their simplest, clearest form.  For the Fine Arts course I found that a
-copy of the notes that Ludlow had was better than anything. They stated
-facts in a condensed way that made it possible to keep in your head a
-bird's-eye view of the entire course, as far as we had gone.  Then I
-made a list of the number of pages of general reading we had to
-accomplish in every course, and split them up so as to be able to get
-through them all--taking notes as I read--by reading a certain number of
-pages a day.  I left a margin at the end for review and in case of
-accidents.  And finally, after I had made these preparations and
-collected as many of the necessary books as I could (I had to do some of
-my reading in the library), I locked Duggie's door one morning after
-breakfast, and sat down at his desk, and stayed there until luncheon;
-and after luncheon I went back and stayed until it was time to go to the
-gym and take a run; and after dinner I went back and stayed until
-bedtime.  And I did this every day with very few interruptions until I
-could pick up any of the text-books, turn to the alphabetical index, and
-plough right through it, describing in detail every darned thing it
-mentioned; and an alphabetical index mentions a good deal.  If I slipped
-up on anything, I would mark it with a pencil, go back and learn it.
-Oh, it was perfectly awful!  I got so tired and discouraged and maudlin
-at times that I would have to lean back and close my eyes and let my
-bursting mind become a throbbing blank for a few minutes, in order to
-keep from screaming.  But after the gym and the run and the shower-bath,
-I felt all right again,--just as if nothing had happened.
-
-Two courses--the physics and philosophy--I had to tutor in for a while.
-There was no use pegging away at them by myself, for I simply did n't
-understand some of the experiments, and logic I could n't make head or
-tail of.  A Senior who lived in College House explained them to me in
-simple golden words (three dollars an hour were his terms), and when I
-once saw through it all and had it down on paper in my own language, I
-could let it soak in at home.  The other things--the ones I did
-understand, like History and Fine Arts--were merely a matter of
-incessant repetition and memory.
-
-The night before the Fine Arts exam I went to what is called a "Seminar"
-in that subject.  I could have got along very well without it after my
-days and days of slavery, but about every one I knew was going, and I
-wanted to see what it was like.  There are several men here who make a
-business of boiling popular courses down to their most painlessly
-swallowable dimensions, and then giving the thing the evening before the
-examination in a kind of lecture, for which they charge an admittance
-fee of three or four dollars.  This performance is a seminar,--a kind of
-royal road, if not to learning at least to passing examinations.  They
-say that fellows who never look at a book or take a note in class often
-go to a seminar and, providing they have good memories, are able to
-answer enough questions on the exam paper the next morning to get
-through with colors flying.  A certain number of questions on almost
-every paper simply have to deal with cold, isolated facts rather than
-with the generalities, comparisons, and discussions that necessitate a
-real knowledge of the subject, and it is with these facts--pounded in at
-a seminar--that one puts up a successful bluff.  The authorities
-naturally object to all this.  As Berri remarked about the seminar we
-went to,--
-
-"After a professor has earnestly expounded a subject for half a year, it
-must make him rather sore to have a cheeky parrot get up and do the
-whole thing much better in four hours."
-
-The Fine Arts seminar was held in a huge room, almost a hall, in a kind
-of office building near the Square.  It was advertised to begin at
-half-past seven, and pretty much every one was there on time,--all the
-sports of the Freshman and Sophomore classes, some Juniors, and even a
-few Seniors.  It was what the society reporter refers to as "a large and
-fashionable gathering."  It certainly was a mighty nice-looking crowd of
-fellows; clean, well dressed, and (to quote Berri) "much more
-intelligent in appearance than we actually are, or we should n't be here
-at all."  As every man came in, he was given a large sheet of stiff
-paper on which was printed a synopsis of the course, with all the
-subjects that had been touched on methodically arranged, and a list of
-definitions, simple and easily remembered, but adequate.  It was Greek
-art in a nutshell,--a perfect marvel of clearness and condensation.  The
-little folding chairs had been neatly arranged in a semicircle at first,
-but by the time the fellows had taken possession of them, they looked as
-if they had been thrown in at random.  A good many men who were
-evidently old hands at the business arranged themselves comfortably in
-two chairs, leaning back in one with their legs stretched across
-another, as if prepared to spend the night.  A lot of them took off
-their coats and waistcoats--the crowd and the gas made the already
-overheated room unbearably warm--and I 've never seen so many pretty
-shirts in my life as I did that evening.
-
-After every one was settled, the man who was giving the seminar took a
-chair on a little platform in front of us, and began--not to talk
-exactly, but to drone.  He had a harsh monotonous voice--une voix
-trainante, Berri called it--and spoke with painful slowness, as if
-trying not to emphasize any one topic to the exclusion of the
-others,--which had the effect of making his entire discourse, from
-beginning to end, horribly important.  Except for this crawling sound,
-the room was absolutely silent; for once nobody seemed conscious of
-himself or of any one else.  Even when the man on the platform
-pronounced Greek words in a novel fashion that was all his own, there
-was n't a smile.  I don't think we realized the intense strain of
-attention we were undergoing until, at the end of an hour and three
-quarters, Tucker Ludlow, who had gone to sleep, fell off his chair.  The
-second or two of relaxation that followed the crash was exquisite.  We
-stretched our arms and swabbed our foreheads with our handkerchiefs, and
-then sank back again for another hour and fifteen minutes, until the
-bell in the tower of Memorial boomed out ten o'clock.  This seemed to be
-the signal for a short vacation; for the fact-machine on the platform
-finished the sentence he had begun and then stood up.
-
-There was a general shuffling of chairs and a babbling of voices, and
-the crowd divided into chattering groups.  Some of the fellows did n't
-seem to know anybody, and they either went out and strolled up and down
-the corridor or sat studying the synopsis.  The host of the evening had
-provided beer and ginger ale and cheese and crackers with which to
-sustain life until the ordeal was over.  He could well afford it, as
-there were at least seventy-five men in the room, every one of whom
-would deposit three dollars and a half before he left.
-
-While Berri and I and most of our table were talking in a corner, a
-fellow named Smith, a Sophomore, sauntered over to us.  Berri and I were
-the only ones who knew him, so of course he must have come just to speak
-to us.  I don't remember what he said exactly, as the conversation of
-the others sort of faded away when he approached, and Berri and I were
-fearfully rattled.  He 's very prominent and belongs to everything.
-After we had stood there for a minute or two, Hemington and Bertie
-Stockbridge and the others drifted off, leaving us three together, and
-in a moment more Berri said, "I 'm going over to get another cracker,"
-and also left us.  I happened to notice that he did n't go near the
-crackers, and furthermore he never came back. This seemed so queer and
-unlike Berri that I spoke to him about it on the way home and asked him
-why he had done it.  He answered by saying,--
-
-"You don't have to be much of a fox to know when you 're wanted and when
-you 're not; and that happened to be one of the times when I wasn't."
-This struck me as absurd, and does still.  Berri knew Smith every bit as
-well as I did, for the only other time he had ever spoken to us we
-happened to be together just as we were the night of the seminar.  I
-reminded Berri of this; but he only laughed a little and replied,--
-
-"Well, as Fleetwood says, 'I 'm an old man and I know my place.'"  Since
-then Smith has joined me twice when I was walking through the Yard and
-seemed very friendly in a distant kind of way.  I mean that his joining
-me at all was friendly; he is n't much of a talker, and I never know
-quite what to say to him.  Of course it's very nice in him to do it, but
-it makes me rather uncomfortable; for both times we stopped a moment on
-the steps of Sever--the bell had n't rung yet--and although there were a
-lot of fellows I knew waiting to go in, they merely nodded to me and
-then looked away.
-
-But I 'm forgetting about the seminar.  We went back to our chairs
-again, and once more tuned our ears to the monotonous voice of the
-lecturer, that dragged on and on till midnight.  It became harder and
-harder to take in everything he said.  The air was heavy with the smoke
-of Egyptian cigarettes, and I counted nine men who were sound asleep. I
-suppose that, even though asleep, they were more likely to acquire a
-fact or two than if they hadn't been there at all.  Just at the end--I
-can hear him now--the man on the platform leaned back wearily with
-closed eyes and chanted in the same hopeless tone,--
-
-"Let me once more urge upon you the importance of expressing in your
-examination papers sympathy with the Greek life, the Greek art, and the
-Greek ideals of the best period.  A page or two of sincere regret that
-we moderns do not possess the innate sense of beauty, the joy of life,
-civic pride, harmony, and all the other things that the Greeks went in
-for will help you to get a passing mark. Remember what I told you about
-[Greek: sophrosune]. Refer to [Greek: sophrosune] constantly.  John
-Addington Symonds calls it 'that truly Greek virtue; the correlative in
-morals to the passion for beauty.'  S-y-m-o-n-d-s, and there are two
-_d_s in Addington.  If you get stuck, make use of the quotation I gave
-you from Goethe--G-o-e-t-h-e--it comes in well almost anywhere.
-Good-night and good luck."  He stood at the door as we passed out,
-holding a box in his hand, into which every one dropped three Plunks and
-a half.  I was tired when we got home and went right to bed.  But Berri
-sat up almost until morning, studying the synopsis and going over his
-notes.
-
-It must have been some time before this that Berri's thesis arrived from
-England one morning with a long letter from Duggie.  I have kept a sort
-of lookout for it right along, but that morning Berri saw the postman
-from my window and ran downstairs to meet him. As he was coming up, he
-exclaimed in a surprised voice, "What on earth do you suppose--" and
-then broke off abruptly.  He passed quickly through my room, dropping a
-bill on my desk as he went, and after that the house for about half an
-hour was very silent. I had so often wondered what Berri would do, what
-he would say, how he would take Duggie's letter when it came, that I
-instinctively knew it had at last arrived, and asked no questions.
-
-He surprised me by neither saying nor doing anything; and for two days I
-had no reason to suppose that the thesis had wandered back to Cambridge
-at all beyond the feeling in my bones that it had.  On the third day,
-however, Berri, who was just starting off to spend Sunday at his aunt's,
-stopped in my room with a letter in his hand.  He looked at it
-doubtfully for a moment, as if making up his mind about something, and
-then tossed it into my lap.
-
-"I got that from Sherwin the other day," he said; and then added, as he
-made for the door and I drew the letter from its envelope,--
-
-"Well, it may be all for the best."
-
-I don't think anybody could read Duggie's letter and not feel that it
-was for the best. Berri has n't said anything more about it, and neither
-have I.  There really is n't anything to say.
-
-I passed all my exams.  My marks are n't anything to be stuck up about,
-but they let me through decently, and in three courses were even a
-little better than they actually had to be,--which is a comfort in a
-way. For my adviser says he thinks that in a few weeks it would n't do
-any harm to petition the administrative board (or whatever it is that
-has charge of such things) to let me off probation. He says he can't
-promise anything, of course, but that stranger things have happened; all
-of which seems to me rather to explode Berri's conviction that every
-adviser in college spends all his odd moments in devising fiendish
-schemes for the destruction of his Freshmen charges.  But then Berri was
-unfortunate in his adviser.  He is n't young and does n't try to be
-sympathetic like mine, and he annoys Berri extremely by glaring at him
-over a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles and exclaiming _a propos_ of
-nothing,--
-
-"You can't fool me--you can't fool me!"
-
-My adviser has had me to dinner twice at the professors' club.  He
-invites his Freshmen, four or five at a time, to dinner, in order, I
-suppose, to get to know them better.  Of course, he never really does
-get to know us better by having these stiff little parties, but it's
-awfully kind of him to ask us, and he thinks he does; so it's all right.
-I dreaded the first one, but my dread was n't a patch on the dread with
-which I dreaded the second, because I 'd been to the first.  Naturally I
-did n't dare refuse to go to either of them. Nobody does.  The dinner
-itself is good, and my adviser not only lays himself out to be just as
-nice as possible,--he succeeds.  Yet the fellows don't feel altogether
-at their ease somehow and are n't themselves.  They want to be and try
-to be, and once in a while they put up a pretty good bluff at it, but
-they never quite are.  I don't know how to explain it exactly, but when
-you can't help feeling that your host is sizing you up and talking only
-about the things he thinks you like to talk about--even if you do like
-to talk about them, why, you just can't.  (I've read that sentence over
-six times and it means a little less every time.)  After dinner he takes
-the fellows up to his room and asks them to smoke, and they never know
-which would be the better swipe,--to accept or to refuse. Some decide
-one way and some the other; but whether they want to smoke or not has
-very little to do with the decision.  The best part of the evening comes
-when somebody gets up enough nerve to murmur that he is very sorry he
-has to say good-night, as he has a lot of studying to do.  This usually
-makes the others laugh, and it always breaks up the party.  Then the
-fellows get together in somebody's room--if they know one another well
-enough--and talk the thing over.
-
-Oh, I wish spring would come!  This seems to be the time of year when
-nothing much happens.  As long as we were all grinding most of the day
-for the mid-years, I didn't think much about the weather, except that
-when it was bad there wasn't so much temptation to idle out of doors.
-Now, however, everybody wants the weather to be good, and it's vile.  It
-always manages to do four or five different things in the course of a
-day, and the walking is unspeakable. To a certain extent, though, this
-is the fault of the town itself.  Most of the residence streets have
-dirt sidewalks and curbstones that might be very picturesque in Egypt or
-some place where it did n't rain and snow and freeze and melt all in the
-course of a few hours; but here they turn into troughs full of mud and
-slush, and the curbstones keep the mixture from running into the gutter.
-I know I ought n't to criticise such a fine old town.  So many great
-people have, all their lives, floundered uncomplainingly through
-Cambridge mud that I suppose it's cheeky of me to notice it.  But in wet
-weather the sidewalks are really not nice.  In front of a few houses the
-owners put down temporary wooden walks,--three boards wide, running
-lengthwise,--but you invariably meet a lady in the middle of them and
-have to jump gracefully into the nearest puddle, looking as if you
-considered this the dearest privilege of your young life.
-
-The candidates for the track team are crazy to get out of doors and
-begin regular practice on the Soldiers' Field cinder track, but it 's
-too soft yet to be raked and rolled, and they have to keep working in
-the gym and on the tiresome old board track behind it.  Dick Smith was
-talking about this not long ago when he joined me in the Yard.  He says
-it's great on a warm spring morning to go across the river and sit on
-the bleachers and watch the fellows practise starting and short sprints.
-
-Well, there's nothing like that now.  I hardly know how the days go by.
-
-
-
-
-                                 *XVI*
-
-
-I notice that when I last wrote in my diary I was wishing for spring,
-and here it is almost the end of June!  Where did all those slow days I
-complained of go to so quickly, I wonder?  How did I spend them, and why
-haven't I tried to tell about them?  I don't know unless it was because
-they were so slow and did go so quickly. Nothing ever happened, really,
-until just at the end; but to-day with Cambridge sizzling hot (I can
-smell the asphalt on the main street even here in my room) and perfectly
-deserted, except for its inhabitants (who don't count) and the kids who
-have come to take their entrance exams, the last three months and a half
-seem like a dream. The spring is scarcely over, and yet I 've already
-begun to look forward to it again next year.
-
-I liked it so much, I suppose, because in Perugia we don't, as a rule,
-have any.  Out there it's very much like what you read about Russia: for
-a long time it's winter, and then you wake up some morning feeling as if
-you had spent the night in a Turkish bath, and know that it is summer;
-you know that the soda-fountains are hissing, that a watering-cart is
-jolting past, leaving behind it a damp, earthy sensation (something
-between an odor and a faint breeze), that an Italian is leaning over the
-fence languidly calling out, "Bananos--bananos," that a scissors-grinder
-is ding-donging in the distance, and that, of course, a lawn-mower is
-whirring sharply back and forth under your windows.
-
-Here warm weather comes slowly and shyly, as if it could n't quite make
-up its mind to come at all.  There are many days that from the other
-side of a pane of glass look all blue and white and gold, and tempt you
-to snatch up a cap and run out.  You do this, and stand undecidedly on
-the sidewalk for a moment; then you go in again and put on your overcoat
-and gloves.
-
-Somehow the leaves don't seem to burst out all at once, as they do with
-us.  You notice first, on Brattle Street and in the Yard, that the trees
-have undergone a change.  That is, you think they have; the change is so
-slight you aren't sure, and may have only imagined it, after all.  But
-in a few days--I can't now remember how many--you know that you were
-right; the branches and twigs that have stood out so hard and definite
-against all the winter sunsets have blurred a little,--they are no
-longer altogether in focus.  They blur more and more as the days go by,
-until--shall I ever forget it?--you cease to think of them as trees, and
-only know that over and beyond you there is a faint, uncertain mist of
-tenderest green,--so faint, so uncertain that you almost glance up to
-see whether it has drifted away on a slow, pungent gust from the
-marshes.  But instead of doing that, it grows denser and greener against
-the rain-washed blue, until it is no longer a mist, but a cloud.  Then
-at last there is a delicious crinkling, and the leaves have come.  In
-May and June bleak, shabby Cambridge covers all its angles and corners.
-They are softened and filled with billows and jets and sprays and
-garlands,--green, gold, silver, mauve, and--what is the color of apple
-blossoms?  They are such a tremor of white and pink that I never really
-know.  The wind loses its bite, and then its chill.  The air is moist
-and warm, and as you walk slowly through the quiet leafy streets at
-night, the damp, fresh lilacs stretch out to dabble against your face,
-and something--it may be the stillness and sweetness of it all, or it
-may be just the penetrating smell of the box hedges--something makes you
-very sad and very happy at the same time.
-
-During the day, between lectures, we loafed a good deal,--on Brattle
-Street chiefly; and often in the afternoon, when we were beginning to
-think of thinking of grinding for the finals, Berri and I and
-occasionally Hemington used to take a book or some notes and go up to
-the vacant lot across the street from the Longfellow house.  At the
-further end of this open space--a meadow during the poet's lifetime, but
-now, unfortunately, a rather ugly little park--there is a stone terrace
-with a short flight of steps and two broad stone seats against the wall
-below.  Passionate pilgrims come there for a moment, once in a while,
-but as a rule it is deserted.  We pretended to study here; but dates and
-formulas and Geschmitzenmenger's reflections on the building materials
-of ancient Rome always got mixed up in Hemington's tobacco smoke, or we
-forgot about them in watching the sun sparkle on the pools left by the
-falling tide. Berri said that even Italy had very little more to offer
-one than a stone bench soaked in sunlight and the delusion that one was
-accomplishing something.  Now and then we strolled in Longfellow's
-garden.  The family were out of town, and Berri inherits the privilege
-of doing this from his aunt.
-
-I can't get away from the idea that although the days were getting
-longer and slower as Class Day drew near, they went ever so much more
-quickly than they had at first; notwithstanding, also, the fact that I
-got up earlier. I happened to do this the first time by accident.
-Bertie Stockbridge was the only person at breakfast, and when I asked
-him not to leave me alone, he said he had to or he would be late for
-Chapel.  I had n't known before that he went to Chapel, but he told me
-he never missed a morning.  I had n't been there myself at all, but that
-morning I went with him.  It was very nice.  The President was there,
-and the Dean, and several of the professors, and a good many
-students--some of whom I would n't have suspected of even knowing where
-the Chapel was.  The music was fine; the little boys in the choir sang
-like angels,--the same little boys who used to paste us with snowballs
-during the winter. After that I went to Chapel almost every morning
-until college closed.  It was a good way to begin the day, somehow.
-Berri began to go too after a while, but he said he did it to give him
-luck in his exams.
-
-On Saturday afternoons and Sundays we bicycled a great deal when the
-roads began to get into shape.  The whole table would start off and
-explore the park system, and once we made a historical tour of Lexington
-and Concord, which Berri wrote up for the Lampoon. I think Berri will
-make the Lampoon next year if he keeps on.  His way of going about it is
-killing.  He writes things, and then comes into my room with a solemn,
-anxious face, and says,--
-
-"Do you think this is funny?  Glance through it carelessly and tell me
-just how it strikes you.  I think it's perfectly side-splitting
-myself,--I do really; but it mightn't strike anybody else that way."
-
-Then there was Riverside, where the Charles all but loses itself between
-steep, cool, shady banks, under trees that peer over the edges all
-through the long, drowsy summer, or flows brimming across a meadow where
-a man ploughs a rich black border and talks to his horses and sings.  It
-takes just the amount of effort you like to make, to follow in a canoe
-the course of this lazy stream. Riverside is another place to which you
-like to take all the essentials for study except the power of will.
-
-As the board decided to let me off probation late in the spring, I could
-cut lectures once more without anything very terrible happening, and it
-was great on a warm morning to walk into town for luncheon and keep our
-hats off while we were on the bridge.  There 's almost always a
-sea-breeze on the bridge.
-
-I hardly know how to write of the surprising and wonderful thing that
-happened to me at the end of May.  It came so unexpectedly that even now
-I sometimes stop to wonder if it ever happened at all, and if I can be
-really I.  But when I think it all over carefully, remembering a few of
-the situations that led up to it,--trifling incidents that were
-inexplicable at the time and worried me very much,--I see now that I
-wasn't very intelligent in not suspecting a little what they meant.  I
-never did, though, not in the least.
-
-The thing that happened--how little the simple statement would mean to
-papa, for instance, and how much it really does mean!--the thing that
-happened was, that I made the First Ten of the Dickey.
-
-As long ago as April, the First Ten began to be--well, it began to be
-very much on people's minds, although, of course, hardly anything was
-said about it.  Berri and I used to talk about it a little; Hemington
-and I mentioned it once in a while; I suppose there are about four men
-in our class that I knew well enough to discuss it with.  But naturally
-we spoke of it only when we were absolutely alone.  If any one else came
-into the room, we began to talk about something else.  Yet, although the
-subject could n't come up in general conversation, I often knew that it
-was there--in everybody's thoughts--in the atmosphere.  Every day some
-little thing would happen that almost made you jump, as it suddenly
-brought the question into your mind, "Who is going to make the First
-Ten?" things, for instance, like seeing some one in our class walking
-through the Square with a Dickey man who was in the Sophomore class.
-That always looked as if it meant something, because--well, because it
-very often _did_ mean something.  One night Berri told me (in the
-strictest confidence, of course) that Phil Blackwood--an upper
-classman--had met a girl cousin of his in town at a tea, and had said to
-her that he liked Berri, and thought he was great fun to talk to.  She
-had told this to Berri's aunt, who had repeated the remark to Berri, who
-was in a great state about it, and wondered how much importance he ought
-to attach to it.  It really did sound to me as if something might come
-of it.
-
-We made lists of names and bet on them, and then locked them up in our
-desks.  I put Berri's name on my list; but whether or not he put mine on
-his, I don't know, for after the crash came, we forgot to compare notes.
-
-As the time grew near, not only Berri, but a good many fellows I knew
-well began to treat me in a way I did n't understand and did n't like.
-I don't know just how to describe the gradual change in their manner
-toward me, because it was the sort of thing you feel without being able
-to put your finger on the cause, or even on the change itself, without
-seeming morbid and exaggerated.  But I could n't help realizing that
-they treated me rather coolly.  They stopped coming to my room as often
-as they had been in the habit of coming, they left me out of all sorts
-of little things I had always been in before as a matter of course, and
-more than once, as I took my seat at the table or went into somebody's
-room, I could see that my appearance made the fellows uncomfortable for
-a moment, or at least gave the talk a different turn.  All this hurt my
-feelings terribly, and I tried to think what I could have done to make
-the fellows I liked best and considered my friends treat me this way.
-But I could n't think of a thing.  I supposed I must have done something
-without appreciating what the consequences would be.  It made me feel
-pretty badly, I can tell you, and several times I was on the point of
-demanding an explanation; but they were all so polite and distant and
-reserved that I never could bring myself to.
-
-Of course, now I understand exactly why it was, and see how hopelessly
-stupid I must have been not to have suspected anything.  The whole
-situation arose from the fact that there was a rumor in the class to the
-effect that I was being considered for the First Ten,--a rumor that was
-apparently given foundation by my being seen several times with Dick
-Smith.  This made the fellows instinctively avoid me a little, from a
-feeling that I and the class generally might imagine that they were
-trying to swipe if they went around much with me.  It seems to me now
-particularly dense on my part not to have had a glimmer of this, because
-it was just the way I felt myself toward Tucker Ludlow, who had gone to
-the theatre one night with Phil Blackwood, and two or three other men
-who were spoken of for the First Ten.  Yet I never dreamed that any one
-could look at me in this way.
-
-Well, things went on, getting more whispery and panicky and
-uncomfortable, until finally one night at the end of last month the
-crash came.  Just how anybody really knew that the Dickey was having its
-great spring meeting for the purpose of electing the First Ten it would
-be impossible to say, for I can't believe that it was breathed in so
-many words, but we did know it, and we knew that it lasted for three
-days and three nights before the decision was reached.  Then----
-
-In the afternoon Dick Smith overtook me in the street, and after walking
-along for half a block, said abruptly,--
-
-"By the way, Wood, stay in your room to-night," and then disappeared in
-a doorway.
-
-I think my heart stopped beating.  I did n't dare let myself dwell on
-the meaning of his words, but stumbled to my lecture and sat there,
-simply dazed.  At the end of the hour I ran back to my room.  When I
-heard Berri come in, I grabbed a book and stared at it blindly, without
-seeing a word; but Berri passed along the hall to his own study without
-so much as stopping at my open door.  I did n't go to our table for
-luncheon; I slipped into The Holly Tree later instead.  But I could n't
-eat anything; I was so excited and nervous and full of doubt and fright
-that I don't remember just how I got through the afternoon.  I know I
-tried to sit in my room, but gave it up and buried myself for a while in
-one of the alcoves of the library.  Later I walked in back streets, and
-then ran all the way home, when the light began to fade, fearing that
-something--I could n't bring myself to think just what--might happen in
-my absence.  By that time I was painfully hungry, and managed to swallow
-a cup of tea and a piece of toast at The Holly Tree.
-
-The evening was endless.  I tried to read, but by the time I reached the
-end of a sentence I had forgotten the beginning of it. Then I tried to
-write a letter to mamma, but my hand trembled so that the writing
-scarcely looked like mine at all, and anyhow I couldn't think of enough
-to fill the first page.  It was as if I were two distinct persons,--one
-trying to write a calm letter to mamma, and the other in an agony of
-apprehension and uncertainty.  I don't know which was worse,--the
-feeling that the Dickey was coming for me, or the feeling that perhaps
-it wasn't. Could Dick Smith have merely meant that he might drop in to
-see me that evening?  He had never been in my room, and it seemed
-unlikely that he should come in that way. His manner, too, of telling me
-to stay at home had been so odd, his leave-taking so abrupt. I turned
-these things over in my mind interminably; then I would glance at the
-clock and find the hands glued to the same old place.
-
-To make things worse, Berri had come home almost as soon as I had, and
-was in his room with the door shut.  I longed to go in, but the feeling
-that I wouldn't have anything to say if I did, kept me back.  He made me
-even more nervous than I really was by walking up and down, up and down,
-and occasionally moving a chair as if he had run into it in his restless
-promenade and were pushing it viciously out of the way.  If his manner
-hadn't been so strained and queer, I think I should have gone in anyhow
-and relieved my mind.  I did n't intend to do quite this, but at the end
-of about two hours I could n't endure the lonely suspense any longer,
-and decided at least to knock on his door and borrow something--I did
-n't know what when I started.  Mrs. Chester had forgotten to light the
-lamp in the hall, and as I was feeling my way through the darkness and
-deciding that a match would be the most plausible excuse for going in
-and then going out again almost immediately, I bumped into somebody
-coming the other way.  We both jumped back, and I thought for a second
-that I was about to collapse at the knees.
-
-"Oh, it's you!" Berri exclaimed in a voice that I just recognized as
-his.  "Heavens! but you scared me.  I was on my way to your room to
-borrow your--your--your--to borrow--  Oh, Granny!"  He broke off with a
-kind of gulp, and threw his arms around me. "Isn't this ghastly!"  Then
-I knew that he had been told to stay in his room too, and had been
-suffering the same horrors.  Ever since dinner he had been pacing the
-floor unable, just as I had been, to make up his mind as to the exact
-significance of the advice to be at home that evening.  He could n't
-help feeling that it might have been a mistake, that something would go
-wrong; and that again, if nothing _did_ go wrong, there was the hideous
-conjecture as to what would happen to you to look forward to.
-
-We sat down in my study,--Berri on the edge of a chair, his hands folded
-with desperate calmness on his lap; I at my desk, where I found, after a
-minute or two of strained silence, that I had dug a great hole in my
-blotter and ruined a stylographic pen.
-
-"If they do come," Berri at last whispered, "how do you think we ought
-to be found?  I don't know that it would be altogether the thing to be
-so--so dressed and apparently waiting."  Our extreme preparedness did
-seem rather assuming, now that he spoke of it; I was far from wanting to
-appear cock-sure of my election or of anything else to a fiendish mob
-such as we had watched from my window that night in the autumn.
-
-"And yet," I answered, "if we took off very much, I don't suppose they
-would wait for us to dress; in fact, I don't think I _could_ dress, and
-when I came in, it seemed to be getting cool outsi--"
-
-"Ssssshh!  I thought I heard something," Berri broke in.  He leaned
-toward the window, and as the lamplight fell on his face, I saw for the
-first time how pale he was.  We listened. The clock ticked with a queer
-little hum on two notes that I had never known it to make before; the
-student-lamp grumbled twice, and each time the flame rose and fell; I
-had never noticed this, either.
-
-"I was perfectly sure," Berri whispered. His whisper was several times
-louder than his ordinary tone.
-
-"How do you think it would do to take off our coats and neckties?" I
-suggested.  "That would look as if we had begun to get ready for bed
-without any suspicion of--of--It; and at the same time we would have
-pretty much everything on."
-
-"You talk now as if you had made up your mind that they were coming,"
-Berri said nervously.  "Do you think they are?"  The fact of his asking
-me this dropped me back once more into all the sickening doubt from
-which for a minute or two I had been unconsciously lifted.
-
-"I don't know," I faltered.  "What do you think?"  But instead of
-telling me Berri exclaimed,--
-
-"Oh, this is awful!" and began to walk up and down the room.  As he
-walked he took off his coat and threw it in a corner; then he gave the
-end of his necktie a jerk that not only undid the knot but ripped his
-shirt open from his neck to his shoulders, for he had forgotten that on
-one side the thing was pinned.  I don't think he realized what he was
-doing, as he went on pulling and pulling until he had torn out a narrow
-strip of linen at least a foot and a half long.  Berri, pacing the floor
-and tearing himself to pieces in a nervous frenzy as he paced, struck me
-all at once as the funniest thing I had ever seen, and I began, first to
-giggle, and then to laugh with the kind of laughter that takes
-possession of you all over and leaves you helpless.
-
-I was leaning back in my chair, weak and hysterical, when Berri stopped
-as abruptly as if he had been shot, and stood petrified in the middle of
-the room.  Away in the distance the chanting cry of the Dickey had begun
-to rise and fall, die with a tenor wail and begin again; my laughter
-died with it, and as I lay there, hypnotized by the sound, I think I
-must have forgotten to close my mouth, for when Berri spoke again, my
-throat was parched and rough.  Perhaps he did n't speak--I think he just
-made a feeble motion with his hand that I interpreted as a sign to take
-off my coat and necktie.  But I couldn't act on it; I could n't do
-anything but lean back with my eyes fixed, and listen to the approaching
-song.  It grew louder and louder, clearer and clearer, fiercer and
-fiercer, until it broke all at once into a great roar, and I knew that
-they had turned the corner and were coming down our little street.  Then
-I felt Berri's hand in mine,--it was cold and wet,--and he was saying
-incoherently,--
-
-"Good by, Granny--I mustn't be found in your room--good-by--I must be
-found in my own room--reading a book--yes--reading a book--good-by."
-Then the exultant song and the heavy rhythm of feet under my window
-suddenly stopped; there was a moment almost of silence, followed by a
-hoarse yell from what seemed like a thousand savage throats.  In the
-pandemonium my ears distinguished here and there the sound of my own
-name shouted and shrieked in various tones of impatient, unbridled,
-vindictive eagerness, and for a second my thoughts flashed back to the
-night Berri and I had seen some one else pulled out.  That had thrilled
-me, but this reduced me to a quaking pulp.
-
-The door downstairs crashed back--there was a deafening scramble on the
-tin steps--my own door burst open--the room was full of greedy hands and
-vengeful faces.  I was lifted--hurled through the air out into the hall
-and down the stairs in two thuds--across the piazza, down the steps,
-along the walk, out of the gate between a double line of executioners
-into the hungry mob that dragged me this way and that, tore at my hair
-and clothes, rolled me in the dirt, and finally jerked me upright,
-linked my arms in those of some other neophytes (I could n't see who
-they were), and started me down the street with a kick.  We swayed
-off--a million devils behind us--roaring the Dickey song, as we had been
-commanded to, at the top of our lungs.
-
-
-
-
-                               *XVII[#]*
-
-
-[#] For obvious reasons, certain parts of Granny Wood's diary have not
-been printed.  Of the passages that refer to the Dickey, only those
-describing the society's public practices have been retained.--The
-Editor.
-
-
-Most of the time I was on my knees.  There were only two moments of
-relief in the painful march; they came when the crowd stopped to pull
-out two other unfortunates and hurl them, as I had been hurled, from
-their respective front doors.  For the time being (it was a very short
-time, however) the rest of us were neglected; but as soon as the arms of
-our fellow neophyte were linked in ours, the irresistible impetus from
-behind began once more and we continued our perilous way.
-
-At last all ten of us were shoved--a dazed and gasping semicircle--up
-the steps of Claverly Hall, and our names were cheered in the order of
-our election.  With the exception of Berri, I had n't known before who
-the others were.  In the darkness and excitement it had been impossible
-to see.  There was something ominous and depressing in the cheers they
-gave us.  Berri said, in talking about it the week afterward, that it
-was as if the cannibal band should cheer the missionary.  Then the crowd
-melted away with vague threats as to what was to come, and I was taken
-back to my room, weary and stupid, by Dick Smith.  He was to be my guide
-and only friend during the week that was to follow. Before he left me,
-he told me the conditions of my servitude.
-
-              *      *      *      *      *      *      *
-
-That week was the longest and most absolutely wretched of my life, I
-think; although now that it is over, I would n't give up the memory of
-it for almost anything.  Even in the midst of it the idea of chucking
-the whole thing, as I suppose I might have done, never occurred to me.
-I could at times conceive of my giving out, but never of my giving up.
-The first day of my "running," as it is called, from six in the morning
-until ten o'clock at night, was one long embarrassment, mortification,
-and mental agony to me.  I set my teeth and forced myself through it
-doggedly.  The days that followed were just as bad,--even worse,
-perhaps,--but I did n't have to compel myself to do things.  I went
-through them mechanically; where almost everything was a hideous
-nightmare, no one incident, after a time, had the power to overwhelm me
-as at first.  I was too tired and dirty and unshaven and cowed to care
-particularly what they made me do, or to have a feeling of any kind,
-other than one of hopeless submission.  In the morning after an early
-breakfast at The Holly Tree * * * * * * * * * * *
-
-Then some one, usually three or four, would get hold of me and make me
-do perfectly awful things in the College Yard or on the streets.  I had
-to perform so many crazy acts that I can't remember them all, or on what
-days they came, and, as I said, I grew perfectly indifferent to what I
-had to do or who saw me do it.
-
-One warm afternoon they made me put on three soft, thick sweaters and
-then took me to a drug-store in the Square, where they poured over me
-half the contents of a long line of perfumery bottles on the
-counter,--white-rose, heliotrope, patchouly, musk, ylangylang, violet,
-bay-rum, and several kinds of cologne,--all the deadly scents that one
-investigates while waiting for a prescription to be put up.  Then we got
-on an electric car,--the fellows who were running me at one end, and I
-at the other.  They of course (after instructing me to snuggle up to my
-fellow passengers,--refined old ladies and peevish middle-aged gentlemen
-in particular) pretended to ignore me.  But the other passengers did
-n't.  Everybody I sat next to would turn, after about three seconds,
-look at me with a slight contraction of the nostrils, and then move
-away; in less than ten seconds more they would be on the other side of
-the car.  It was not long before I had one side of the car all to
-myself.  Then--this also I had been ordered to do--when we reached the
-edge of the bridge, I jumped up and, as a sort of climax, "threw a fit."
-Passengers in street cars always find this very trying, especially if
-you fall down in the aisle foaming at the mouth and clutch at their
-feet.  Before my five days of running were over, I grew exceedingly
-expert at throwing fits.  I certainly had enough practice at it.  Well,
-when we got across the bridge I was hustled out of the car into a
-drug-store, where I recovered in time to catch the next car back--and do
-the whole thing over again.
-
-It was on the evening of that day, I think, that they took me to the
-theatre--or, I should say, the theatres, as we visited several.  (They
-had in the mean time taken off the perfume-soaked garments, not through
-consideration for my feelings, but for their own.)  One might think
-that, under the circumstances, going to the theatre would have been a
-delightful rest.  But it wasn't.  I had a seat all to myself down in
-front, and the fellows who took me sat ten or twelve rows back. Beyond
-the fact that the first play we went to was a nice, staid performance
-that had attracted a large and very "dressy" audience, I have no
-recollection of it; for my thoughts were all centred on the dreadful
-thing that was going to happen at the end of the first act.
-
-The curtain went down; there was a polite flutter of applause, and then,
-while the orchestra was getting ready and the house was perfectly quiet
-except for a murmur of talk, I stood up, facing everybody, and exclaimed
-in a loud, distinct voice,--
-
-"This show is bum, and I want my money back."
-
-The effect was electrical.  All conversation stopped instantly, and I
-could actually hear the craning of necks from one end of the theatre to
-the other.
-
-"This show is bum, and I want my money back," I declared again, louder
-than before. Some men near me began to laugh; the ladies looked scared
-to death, and from the gallery came a wild clapping of hands and yells
-of, "That's no lie," and "He's all right."  Whereupon (as per
-instructions) I began to yell the thing over and over again at the top
-of my voice, and kept it up until four ushers skated down the aisle and
-threw me out, still yelling.  I had visions, as I flew along toward the
-exit, of white-faced women indulging in hysterics.  I did this at two
-other shows, and the fellows regretted very much that there didn't
-happen to be any five-act plays in town, for they said my technique got
-better and better as the evening went on.
-
-Then I spent whole afternoons in creeping up behind the sparrows in the
-Square and endeavoring to put salt on their tails; in going from shop to
-shop trying to get the clerks to change a cent; in holding up baby
-carriages, kissing the occupants and then remarking that I was
-"passionately fond of animals."  (I kissed fifty-six babies on
-Commonwealth Avenue in one afternoon.)  I stalked Indians with a little
-bow and arrow in the Yard one morning between lectures (cutting lectures
-is n't allowed), craftily creeping from tree to tree, hiding a moment,
-peeping out warily, and finally exclaiming as I shot an arrow and dashed
-into the open,--
-
-"Bang--and another red-skin bit the dust."
-
-This was one of the few times (except in the evening) that I saw Berri
-during the entire week.  He was walking up and down the stone parapet of
-Matthews with a silly little false red fringe of beard around his neck,
-proclaiming to all the passers-by,--
-
-"Listen to me; I am a Berrisford of Salem."
-
-In a pair of green tights and on horseback, I distributed armfuls of the
-"smuggled" cigars from Santa Bawthawthawthoth to the inhabitants of
-Cambridgeport, and when a great crowd had collected around me, delivered
-a lecture on the evils of smoking.  I intercepted at various times many
-respectable old ladies on their way across the streets, for the purpose
-of confidentially whispering,--
-
-"Madam, I regret to inform you that you are holding your skirts just a
-leetle too high."
-
-I also had to stop car after car, put my foot on the step, tie my
-shoestring, and then stand back, saying to the conductor,--
-
-"Thank you, you may go on now."  This is an old game, but it's a great
-favorite.
-
-Two things happened (and only two) that I liked.  One was when I had to
-call on a girl in town--I had never seen her before--and write all my
-part of the conversation on a slate.  She was very pretty and good to
-me; for instead of being disgusted at my appearance (she had every
-reason to be) and having me put out of the house, she made me sit down
-and ordered tea (I realized, for the first time, how nice tea could be)
-and was altogether a perfect peach.  She said, among other things, that
-she had been at the theatre the night I made the row.  I wrote on the
-slate, "Which one?  The performance was given by special request at
-three different places," which made her laugh.  I stayed talking, or
-rather writing, to her for more than half an hour.  The fellows who had
-brought me to the door were very angry; for, thinking that I would be
-chased away by a husky footman at the end of a minute or two, they had
-n't told me how long to stay and were waiting outside to see what
-happened.  When at last I got up to go, the pretty girl held out her
-hand very graciously and said,--
-
-"We'll meet again someday, I'm sure," and I wrote on the slate,--
-
-"It will not be my fault if we don't. Good-by!"  She took the slate and
-the pencil, drew a line through the last word, and wrote under it,--
-
-"Au revoir."  Then I left.  I _did_ meet her again very soon afterwards,
-at the Beck spread on Class Day.  She was the prettiest girl there.  She
-'s going abroad in three days, and as papa let me engage passage for our
-trip (he and mamma and Mildred will be here to morrow), it did n't take
-me long to decide on the steamer.  When he found that I had picked out,
-for no apparent reason, one of the old Cunarders sailing from Boston, he
-was perfectly furious.  But it's too late for him to change now.
-
-The other thing I enjoyed during my running was the day that Mr.
-Fleetwood stole me away from some fellows and took me up to his room
-overlooking the Yard.  He is an old Dickey man himself, and had as much
-right to my services as any one.  I embarrassed him at first, I think.
-Strangely enough, I appreciated this a little even then, when I had no
-business to be appreciating anything beyond the fact that I was a mere
-grovelling worm.  He sat down, when we went into his room, and looked at
-me curiously, diffidently, for a moment, as if he did n't quite know how
-to begin.  Then he said with something of an effort, as if he considered
-himself a little foolish to say anything,--
-
-"What, pray, is your name?"  I gave the required answer, at which he
-smiled--rather sadly, I thought; although I did n't see what reason _he_
-had to look that way.  Then he asked me to do several things,--old, old
-things that neophytes probably had to do when the Dickey was first
-started; things that have become conventions; the kind of things you are
-always asked to do by fellows who have n't enough imagination to think
-of anything new.  He gave his commands (with him, however, they became
-requests) slowly, as if he couldn't remember just how they went. And he
-didn't always express them the way the fellows do.  I could n't help
-feeling that if Shakespeare had ever tried to torment a neophyte, he had
-done it in very much the same way.  He scarcely noticed my attempts to
-do what he asked.  He was interested, I think, not so much in
-discovering my feeble talents as in recalling the general situation. But
-he stopped doing even this in a short time, and got up and went over to
-the open window and looked out into the wilderness of elm leaves and
-down at the cool, shady stretches of grass and the yellow paths of the
-Yard.
-
-I really think he forgot all about me, for I stood there an interminable
-time waiting for him to turn around.  Just before he did turn, he yawned
-and said listlessly to himself,--
-
-"Well, I suppose it's as it should be."  He must have said this to
-himself, as he seemed surprised to find me standing patiently in the
-middle of the room where he had left me.
-
-"My dear boy, sit down, sit down," he exclaimed,--"that is, unless you
-would rather go away."  I answered that I should rather stay there if he
-did n't mind.  It was so cool and quiet and safe in his room; I knew
-that no one could ever find me, and I was very tired.
-
-"I have some themes to read," Fleetwood went on, "but you won't disturb
-me.  Do whatever you want to, and if you feel like it, talk."
-
-We did talk a little.  Then I stretched out on his divan and tried to
-read; but before I had finished half a chapter I drifted away into the
-most blissful sleep I 've ever had.  I can just remember the whispering
-sound of footsteps on the pavement under the windows, and the rustle of
-the crisp new leaves.  When I awoke the room was dark.  There was a
-sheet of paper pinned to my coat, and when I got into the lighted
-corridor I saw written on it,--
-
-"In reply to any questions as to your disappearance, you may truthfully
-explain that you did a difficult and important bit of work for W. J.
-Fleetwood."  I don't know yet what he meant.  Some day next year I think
-I 'll ask him.  I don't believe I know any one who is so very clever and
-so very kind.
-
-The next night--the last--the night of the * * * * * * * * * * * *
-
-
-
-
-                                *XVIII*
-
-
-It was only natural, I suppose, that for a week or so after we had
-become full-fledged Dickey men the First Ten should have stuck pretty
-close together. We had such a lot to talk about,--things that we could
-n't very well talk about to outsiders.  To tell the truth, the rest of
-the class for a time seemed like outsiders to me.  They had n't been
-through what we had, and I confess that I could n't help looking on our
-little crowd as something apart from the others and, taken all in all,
-rather extraordinary.  I don't know that I thought this in so many
-words, but I did feel it; and it was Berri--of all persons--who brought
-me back to earth one day with a jerk.  I forget just what I said to call
-forth his remarks, but it was something in the nature of a complaint
-that the fellows at the table did n't seem to have as much time for me,
-so to speak, as they once had.  Berri puffed at his pipe for a while and
-stared at the ceiling, and finally said,--
-
-"Of course, I see what you mean; but it's not them, you know--it's us."
-
-"I'm sure I don't think--" I began defensively.
-
-"No, I don't believe you do realize the true state of affairs," Berri
-interrupted.  "Lots of fellows would, and then pretend all the time that
-they did n't; that's what I do. But you don't.  You just have the
-big-head from pure delight, and go around swelled up like a hop-toad
-without in the least knowing it.  Your old friends know it, though, and
-it naturally makes them a dash tired.  And besides, what do you expect
-them to do, anyhow?  Run after us?  Of course they won't do that.  In
-the first place, we 've both become rather obnoxious; I don't mind it in
-myself, but with you it's scarcely in character. And in the second
-place, none of the fellows at our table are swipes, and if any advances
-are made, well, they won't make them.  So there you are!"
-
-There was nothing much to say to this, because, after a few minutes of
-resentment, I felt all over that it was perfectly true.  I did n't say
-anything, but you bet it was n't more than a day or two before the
-fellows seemed to me just the way they always had seemed.  I think I had
-a pretty close call; I might have turned into a Dick Benton.
-
-Three days before Class Day, who should blow in but Duggie?  He
-literally did blow in, come to think of it, as he crossed from Cadiz in
-a sailing-vessel and was as brown as a Spaniard.  He brought Mrs.
-Chester a black lace shawl, and told her that if she 'd drape it around
-her head and sit at her upstairs window some evening, he 'd come and
-serenade her. To which the old girl responded with one of her roguish
-little digs at Duggie's ribs, and exclaimed,--
-
-"Land sakes, Mr. Duggie, you can't sing, and never could."
-
-Duggie wanted Berri and me to dine with him that evening, but Berri's
-last examination was to come the next morning (I had finished all of
-mine) and he could n't.  I did, though, and we walked out to Cambridge
-afterwards in the moonlight.  He told me all about his trip, and when I
-let him know that we were going abroad for the summer and that Berri was
-going over with us to join his mother at Dinard, he said,--
-
-"I had a letter from Berri in answer to mine.  I don't often keep
-letters, but I 've kept his.  I suppose you know I did n't think much of
-Berri at first, but I don't mind confessing that I sized him up all
-wrong."
-
-It was such a beautiful night that when we got to our gate, it seemed
-like wasting something to go in the house.  Berri had finished his grind
-and was leaning out of my window. He said that his brain felt like a
-dead jellyfish (I think that was the pretty simile), and told us not to
-go in, as he would put on his coat and come down to us.  So we strolled,
-all three, over to the Yard, and sat on the steps in front of one of the
-Holworthy entries.  It was very late, but the finals were not yet over,
-and the yellow of many windows blurred through the trees.  The long
-quadrangle was flecked with moonlight, and little groups like our own
-were sitting in front of almost every doorway.  The Yard, except on
-great occasions, is rarely noisy, and that night it seemed particularly
-quiet,--a kind of lull before the crash of Class Day and Commencement.
-
-Duggie and Berri and I sat there talking until the air and the sky had
-changed from summer night to summer morning.  Even then a few of the
-windows were still glowing.
-
-
-
-
-                                THE END.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DIARY OF A FRESHMAN ***
-
-
-
-
-A Word from Project Gutenberg
-
-
-We will update this book if we find any errors.
-
-This book can be found under: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44888
-
-Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one
-owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and
-you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission
-and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth in the
-General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and
-distributing Project Gutenberg(tm) electronic works to protect the
-Project Gutenberg(tm) concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a
-registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks,
-unless you receive specific permission. If you do not charge anything
-for copies of this eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may
-use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative
-works, reports, performances and research. They may be modified and
-printed and given away - you may do practically _anything_ with public
-domain eBooks.  Redistribution is subject to the trademark license,
-especially commercial redistribution.
-
-
-
-The Full Project Gutenberg License
-
-
-_Please read this before you distribute or use this work._
-
-To protect the Project Gutenberg(tm) mission of promoting the free
-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or
-any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
-Gutenberg(tm) License available with this file or online at
-http://www.gutenberg.org/license.
-
-
-Section 1. General Terms of Use & Redistributing Project Gutenberg(tm)
-electronic works
-
-
-*1.A.* By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg(tm)
-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
-(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the
-terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all
-copies of Project Gutenberg(tm) electronic works in your possession. If
-you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
-Gutenberg(tm) electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
-terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
-entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
-
-*1.B.* "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things
-that you can do with most Project Gutenberg(tm) electronic works even
-without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph
-1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
-Gutenberg(tm) electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
-and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg(tm) electronic
-works. See paragraph 1.E below.
-
-*1.C.* The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the
-Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of
-Project Gutenberg(tm) electronic works. Nearly all the individual works
-in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
-individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
-located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you
-from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating
-derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project
-Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the
-Project Gutenberg(tm) mission of promoting free access to electronic
-works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg(tm) works in compliance with
-the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg(tm) name
-associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this
-agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full
-Project Gutenberg(tm) License when you share it without charge with
-others.
-
-
-*1.D.* The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
-what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
-a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
-the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
-before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
-creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
-Gutenberg(tm) work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
-the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
-States.
-
-*1.E.* Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
-
-*1.E.1.* The following sentence, with active links to, or other
-immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg(tm) License must appear
-prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg(tm) work (any work
-on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the
-phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,
-performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
-
-    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 http://www.gutenberg.org
-
-*1.E.2.* If an individual Project Gutenberg(tm) electronic work is
-derived from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating
-that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can
-be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying
-any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a
-work with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on
-the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs
-1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
-Project Gutenberg(tm) trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
-1.E.9.
-
-*1.E.3.* If an individual Project Gutenberg(tm) electronic work is
-posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and
-distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and
-any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
-will be linked to the Project Gutenberg(tm) License for all works posted
-with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of
-this work.
-
-*1.E.4.* Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project
-Gutenberg(tm) License terms from this work, or any files containing a
-part of this work or any other work associated with Project
-Gutenberg(tm).
-
-*1.E.5.* Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
-Gutenberg(tm) License.
-
-*1.E.6.* You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
-word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
-distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg(tm) work in a format other than
-"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
-posted on the official Project Gutenberg(tm) web site
-(http://www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or
-expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a
-means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original
-"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include
-the full Project Gutenberg(tm) License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
-
-*1.E.7.* Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg(tm) works
-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-*1.E.8.* You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg(tm) electronic works
-provided that
-
-  - You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
-    the use of Project Gutenberg(tm) works calculated using the method
-    you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
-    to the owner of the Project Gutenberg(tm) trademark, but he has
-    agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
-    Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
-    within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
-    legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
-    payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
-    Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
-    Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
-    Literary Archive Foundation."
-
-  - You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
-    you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
-    does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg(tm)
-    License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
-    copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
-    all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg(tm)
-    works.
-
-  - You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
-    any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
-    electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
-    receipt of the work.
-
-  - You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
-    distribution of Project Gutenberg(tm) works.
-
-
-*1.E.9.* If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
-Gutenberg(tm) electronic work or group of works on different terms than
-are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
-from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
-Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg(tm) trademark. Contact the
-Foundation as set forth in Section 3. below.
-
-*1.F.*
-
-*1.F.1.* Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
-public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg(tm) collection.
-Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg(tm) electronic works, and the
-medium on which they may be stored, may contain "Defects," such as, but
-not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription
-errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a
-defective or damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer
-codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
-
-*1.F.2.* LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
-Gutenberg(tm) trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
-Gutenberg(tm) electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees.
-YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY,
-BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN
-PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND
-ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR
-ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES
-EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
-
-*1.F.3.* LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
-written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
-your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
-the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
-refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
-providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
-receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
-is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
-opportunities to fix the problem.
-
-*1.F.4.* Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS,' WITH NO OTHER
-WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
-WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
-
-*1.F.5.* Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
-If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
-law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
-interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
-the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
-provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
-
-*1.F.6.* INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
-providing copies of Project Gutenberg(tm) electronic works in accordance
-with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
-promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg(tm) electronic works,
-harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
-that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
-or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg(tm)
-work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
-Project Gutenberg(tm) work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
-
-
-Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg(tm)
-
-
-Project Gutenberg(tm) is synonymous with the free distribution of
-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
-including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
-because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
-people in all walks of life.
-
-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
-assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg(tm)'s
-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg(tm) collection will remain
-freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and
-permanent future for Project Gutenberg(tm) and future generations. To
-learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and
-how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the
-Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org .
-
-
-Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
-Foundation
-
-
-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state
-of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue
-Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification number is
-64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
-http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf . Contributions to the
-Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the
-full extent permitted by U.S.  federal laws and your state's laws.
-
-The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr.
-S. Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
-throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809
-North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
-business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact
-information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official page
-at http://www.pglaf.org
-
-For additional contact information:
-
-    Dr. Gregory B. Newby
-    Chief Executive and Director
-    gbnewby@pglaf.org
-
-
-Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation
-
-
-Project Gutenberg(tm) depends upon and cannot survive without wide
-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
-array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
-status with the IRS.
-
-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
-States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
-with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where
-we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
-DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
-visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
-
-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
-approach us with offers to donate.
-
-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any
-statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside
-the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
-
-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
-methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways
-including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate,
-please visit: http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
-
-
-Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg(tm) electronic
-works.
-
-
-Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg(tm)
-concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
-with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
-Gutenberg(tm) eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
-
-Project Gutenberg(tm) eBooks are often created from several printed
-editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. unless
-a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks
-in compliance with any particular paper edition.
-
-Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's eBook
-number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
-compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
-
-Corrected _editions_ of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
-the old filename and etext number. The replaced older file is renamed.
-_Versions_ based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
-new filenames and etext numbers.
-
-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
-
-    http://www.gutenberg.org
-
-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg(tm),
-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.