“But ‘setting up’ is a very mild form of hazing compared with what I had to go through when I first came here,” said Jones, after a little pause. “Three years ago the members of the yearling class who were not lucky enough to obtain chevrons, used to treat a fellow rather roughly. They formed themselves into a committee of the whole, whose business it was to see that a plebe’s life was made miserable. Why, it wasn’t safe for a fourth class boy to go into the wash-room alone. I did it once, and the first thing the yearlings did was to give me a glimpse of Niagara Falls.”
“How did they do that?” inquired Morris.
“They stood me on my head, and let two streams of cold water from the hydrants run up the legs of my trowsers. Then they showed me how to climb Zion’s hill, which is simply trying to walk up the wall to any tune the plebe happens to know. He must sing his own accompaniment. Then they ordered me to recite the alphabet forward and backward with appropriate gestures; in short, they did any and every thing they could think of that would make one appear ridiculous.”
“I would have seen them happy before I would make such a fool of myself,” said Dale, angrily.
“You would, eh? Then you would have got the neatest kind of a thrashing.”
“Very well. I would have reported the last one of them as soon as I could have found my way to the superintendent’s office.”
“And been sent to Coventry for it?” exclaimed Jones.
“Coventry! I don’t know what you mean.”
“Why, he means that if you were to run to the teachers with a little thing like that, or with any thing, in fact, that savored of tale-bearing, all the boys would go back on you as soon as they heard of it. They wouldn’t speak to you, or even look at you,” said Enoch. “You would be as much alone in this big school as ever Robinson Crusoe was on his island.”
“Then what is a plebe to do when the yearlings, as you call them, take a notion to show him Niagara Falls, or teach him to climb Zion’s hill?” demanded Dale.