The giddy knowledge of it buoyed me up and sent me across the campus humming to myself one of the alma mater songs which I had so religiously learned from that "Freshman Bible." I was on my way to my first class. Directly ahead of me was the broad, lofty door of the recitation building and, a little to the left, a fountain's water spilled itself singingly over into a shallow marble basin.
Suddenly a trio of sophomores bounded out from behind a clump of bushes. They came about me in a whooping circle, took me by the head and feet and tossed me into the fountain.
I clambered out, dripping, spluttering, but—be it said to my credit—still smiling. I had heard that this was the customary hazing which all freshmen must endure—and I knew enough to take it with as good a grace as they gave it.
I started on my way to the recitation hall again, my clothes leaving a trickling line behind me on the walk. But they pulled me back and thumped me into the water again. It happened a third time before they let me go. And then one of them—a big, stocky fellow who wore a thick, rolling sweater on which the college letter was emblazoned—laughed heartily and thwacked me on the back and roared that I was a good kid, even for a Jew!
The kindness of his remark was perhaps deeply meant. I've no doubt, he thought to be paying me a compliment—but I went away, wetter than ever, fast contracting a cold—and with a lump in my throat for which the cold was not at all responsible.
In the class room I found a number of my new classmates in quite as damp a condition as I. I was glad to be among them, to know that I had not been singled out—and, being miserable, enjoyed their company. The instructor seemed to be making a point of paying no attention to our wetness. It made me wonder how the faculty felt about hazing. Evidently they shut their eyes to it.
The class was soon over, since we were only kept for a preliminary explanation of the course and a few words of supercilious greeting on behalf of the young instructor. We came out upon the campus again, locked arm in wet arm, paradoxically proud of what we had suffered.
But some more sophomores were waiting for us. We had to go into the fountain over and over again. My own personal score was nine times. Nor did my good nature—kept at what a cost!—serve to bring me any leniency.
In fact it was only when I showed a trace of anger that the sophomores finally released me and took me over to the gymnasium to give me a sweater and a pair of old pants, much too big for me, to wear until my other suit was dry.
I went home from that first day jubilant, excited, sure of my coming four years. I had proven to myself and to all these others that I was ready to take a joke, to share it and enjoy it even when it was "on me." I had come out of it all with a tame but conclusive triumph of patience and good nature.