"Oh, they come over all right," sighed Pellams from the piano. "I had a report to make one day. I didn't have it done, and I bribed Ted to go down and tell Engbee I was sick in bed. I was playing cards in here when Sniffles rushed in and told me the old boy was coming up the street. I smelt danger and tumbled into bed like a six-day bicyclist, and fixed my face up with some grease paint and magnesia. Sure enough, he came in, darkly suspicious, thought he had me all right, but he found a wreck that melted him. His wife sent me a bunch of violets next morning. For my part I don't like the Faculty for intimate friends," and Pellams played "Comrades" with the soft pedal down.
"It's not the same thing, though, really," persisted Shirlock. "They may come over here to dinner or perhaps to a smoker, but it's always Professor So-and-So; his chair is a little higher than any of yours, and he never forgets the family waiting for him in the Row; in those first days the family was in most cases beyond the Rockies, or as yet a dream, and it wasn't always easy to pick out the professor from the jumble of story-tellers on the bed.
"Of course, it was all too good to last," the alumnus went on thoughtfully, "and it wasn't natural it should. We weren't so many then. When the number increased, I suppose the relations had to change and the different cliques must separate. I'll admit that there is more in the life now, it's more complex, there are more institutions and more ways of having joy; but those were good old days, those first days in Encina when the crowd was one.
"I can see them now, can't you, Harry? out on the veranda and the steps of the Hall after dinner, with the fellows playing ball on the lawn, and other men sitting up on their window-ledges. The night I started to tell you about, when we went to serenade Mr. and Mrs. Stanford, we got the mandolin fellows, the beginning of your present club, and fell in behind them and started off down the road, past the mausoleum and through the vineyard—never broke ranks there, either, we were on our good behavior, besides, it was Spring—and so on over to the house, where we drew up, and the mandolins played their piece, then we gave the yell—it was only a few months old, that yell, but it had been loud enough to knock out a twenty-five-year-old one we met up in town not long before, and we were proud of it.
"During the pause that followed, the front door opened and the Senator stepped out on the porch; a lamp shone on his gray head and on us fellows in a big black crowd on the gravel below, looking up at him and cheering. When we stopped he said, very much as though a friend had driven up, "Gentlemen, will you come in?" and the whole two hundred of us piled over the piazza, getting a grasp of his hand as we came into the hall, and a word from Mrs. Stanford, who stood beside him. They took us into the library; we formed a hollow square, two rows deep on the sides, and the Founders came into the square and talked to us. I remember that Mrs. Stanford said, 'We were very glad, young gentlemen, to hear of your success in baseball,' and what a chill it gave us, just convalescing from the football fever; but we forgave the mistake when she asked, a minute later, 'Which is Mr. Clemans?' That blushing hero with the other ten we forced into the center to be congratulated, and we sang the new song, 'Rush the Ball Along,' until the bric-à-brac trembled.
"When we were quiet again, the Senator talked to us informally, as though we were in reality his children as he had said we were to be. It was an earnest talk, about his ideals of what the University was yet to be, and his hope for their fulfillment; of economy and judicious living; and of endeavor to be of use to the world. It was a privilege to stand there listening. He appealed to each one of us individually. We could not know then how few more such opportunities we were to have. When he had finished, the dining-room doors slid back—it was a put-up job, that serenade—and it was Mrs. Stanford's turn. After the supper, we gathered for a little personal talk with both of them, then we had some more mandolin music, and Baker sang 'Suwanee River' to Capron's accompaniment.
"That evening brought the Founders pretty close to the crowd. It was a good thing to have happen, it began things right. Then, you know, he died suddenly, in vacation. I was in Yosemite. When term opened, it was hard to get used to seeing her driving around the campus alone. I don't think any of the people who came after those early days can ever be so loyal to the Founders, to the person of one and the memory of the other, as we are. I'm sure none of us who went over serenading that night will ever forget it. It's one of the Pioneer memories."
Both graduates were looking into the fire. Freshman Haviland snored softly in the window seat. The eyes of the rest of the chapter were fastened on the chafing-dish. Shirlock's story had seemed pretty long and the rarebit sent out a tantalizing odor.
Duncan called out, "Supper's ready, children," and the heated plates came clattering up from the hearth, bringing the visitors back from the far echoes of their own beginnings to the noisy unconcern of a Freshman year that knew a kind, white-bearded face from pictures only, and never could understand.