Thus did one small girl amuse herself throughout the week, and then, when Saturday evening came and the children were left to burn cigarettes by themselves, she entertained the men with it, who came down to spend Sunday. For her nose turned up and she was good at mimicry. She won't be mentioned again.
In the glorious old days of untrammelled class activity when everyone recognized that there were certain duties owed the freshman by the sophomore class, as Hall talk was due them from the upper-classmen (another good old custom now defunct), you had only casually to drop word to a freshman on the way to recitation to wait for you when night came, back of Witherspoon—as you would bid a classmate come to a spread in your room—and he would turn up promptly and smilingly, take his little dose meekly and cheerfully, and go to bed a better boy for it and brag about it every time he dined out in Christmas holidays. But all that is changed now.
Even in the days of which this is written, which were only comparatively modern times, one had to play a very careful game to do any hazing. The freshman was beginning to hesitate about putting out his light when you yelled up at him from the street. People were putting strange notions in his head. He was beginning to think he had a personality. They were telling him he had rights. The old glory had departed along with Rushes and Midnight Cane Sprees and Horn Sprees and Fresh Fires to make room for a University spirit and linen shirts. At the present rate of retrogression—mark the prediction—it will not be many years before the freshman will be allowed to wear the orange and black and the sophomore a silk hat! When that day comes, may it be that a certain Old Grad. will have attended his last reunion.
Twice had Buckley waited near the house where Valliant ate his dinner. But it's quite light after dinner in September. He had gone to the house where he roomed, and asked the landlady if any of the gentlemen wanted to join the Y. M. C. A. But that, like the Nassau Lit. and Princetonian subscription-list-game, had been played out; the door was closed in his face. Then for three successive nights he waited in an alley near by, and on the third night the freshman came. But with him an upper-classman friend.
Buckley said things and kept in the shadow. But the freshman had good eyes and said as he took out his keys, "Oh, is that you, Mr. Buckley? Why, how do you do? Aren't you coming up to see me?" That was horribly fresh.
"Not now," Buckley growled. "Which is your room?" Excusing himself from the upper-classman, who was enjoying all this, the freshman led Buckley into the alley-way, and pointed up at the wing of the house. It was a large one and many people lived in it. "That room up there next to the one with a light in it. See?" he said in polite, friendly tones. This was decidedly fresh.
Buckley said he would come up later on in the evening, which, of course, he had no intention of doing, and saying "Good-night" good-mannerly enough, he slinked off, and the freshman took his friend up the stairs, which smelled of damp carpets.
The next night Buckley got his gang together. They blew smoke in one another's faces and decided that a little exhibition of oarsmanship in a basin of water with toothpicks would do to warm up with. Then a cross-country jaunt would be appropriate, running, walking, and crawling to the canal. Here, as the freshman was proud of his shape, he would be given an opportunity of displaying it while the moon reflected in the water. And, if he felt cold after that, he could climb a telephone pole for exercise—they didn't want to be inconsiderate of his comfort—and sing "Nearer my home to-day, to-day, than I have been before," at the top of it. Then with a few recitations and solos on the way back he could be put to bed. This would be a good night's work.
It was nearly two o'clock when they carried the ladder into the alley-way. They laid it down in silence.
For several reasons this was to be a right nervy go. A young professor and his young wife had a suite of rooms in the house. But it wasn't that which troubled them. This was. The moon shone full and strong upon the clear, blank wall of the house, and it was in plain view from a certain spot a distance of about two blocks away. Across this spot a certain owl-eyed proctor was pretty sure to pass and repass off and on all night.