He told the driver to stop, paid him well, as agreed, and then sprang down and opened the door for the others to get out.
Diamond, Rattleton and Griswold sprang out hastily, and then Browning passed out the captive, being himself the last to step to the ground.
“Shall I wait for you, young gentlemen?” asked the driver, with great politeness, as he was feeling in a softened mood since receiving his money.
“No,” answered Frank. “We shall not want you again.”
Although he was ready to wait if wanted, it seemed to afford the driver some relief to be able to depart at once.
“Them chaps may be initiatin’ the chap they’ve caught to some secret order, or they may be hazin’ him,” muttered the driver, when he was on his way from the vicinity. “Either thing is bad enough, and I don’t want to be mixed in it. Nobody can tell what’ll happen.”
It is true that a few accidents have happened to students in New Haven. Sometimes those students were being hazed, sometimes they were being initiated into a secret order. In the old days of the freshmen societies, Sigma Ep, Gamma Nu and Delta Kappa, there were far more accidents than happen now that the faculty stand by the decree that abolished everything in the form of a recognized society for freshmen.
The “old grad.” mourns the death of the old customs and tells with pride of the “hot times” that took place in the “good old days.” He insists that Yale society is degenerating and becoming insipid. In his time there were a hundred pitched battles where now there is one mild skirmish. In those days freshmen fought freshmen for the possession of a new arrival, and when the “candidate” was captured he was run through a wild and horrible initiation ceremony that left his nerves in a shattered condition and his entire system in a state of collapse. Sometimes the reckless freshmen carried this too far, with the result that the candidate received an injury of more or less seriousness. One or two injured victims “peached” on the whole business, and the outside world was shocked and horrified. It seemed to the ignorant that a state of semi-barbarism existed there at Yale, and the effect of this belief was felt by those who had the best interest of the college at heart.
Then the freshmen societies were abolished. There even has been talk of abolishing the sophomore societies, but it is not at all probable that this will happen.
Of the leading junior and senior societies little is actually known, save that they exist and have quaint, curious and handsome society houses. A member never talks about the society to which he belongs. The pin which he wears in its proper place tells that he is a member, and no more than that can he reveal to an outsider. This badge is supposed never to leave his person, even during a bath, at which time he must hold it in his mouth. If you ask him questions, he will receive them in absolute silence.