CHAPTER III
THE GREAT SOPHOMORE-FRESHMAN RUSH
Freshman Young had an experience on the second night of his college course that he was never to forget. And few of those who shared it with him forgot it, and not many of the hundreds of other men that have been in college before and since have forgotten similar experiences of their own on the second or third night of college existence. Not one of them would care to miss it if he had it to do over again.
He was in his room going over for the fifth time the Latin passages in Livy, Book I. The recitation came the first thing in the morning. That meant at half-past eight, immediately after chapel.
His room was on the third story, back, of a queer, old-fashioned house in a still queerer, old, crooked street called Canal Street, because, he supposed, it led down to the canal. The little room seemed quite bare and cheerless, but he did not mind that. He had got down to work as a "college man."
That day, for the first time, he had met his professors in the classroom along with the other Freshmen of his division. He was the last man of the last division, because his last name began with Y. Later on in the term, when they were to be divided according to rank, he would not be in the last division; he had made up his mind to that. So he was going over the Livy lesson for the fifth time, although he had worked it all out during the afternoon.
Perhaps there was another reason for keeping his mind so busy. The old white farmhouse with the well-trimmed lawn and the evergreen trees in front and the tall, straight wind-pump to the west, and beyond that the long, level sweeps of rich prairie acres, all seemed very far away to-night. "I'm not homesick—of course not," he told himself, but all the same he thought he could study better if he could hear the old wind-pump go "kitty-chunk, kitty-chunk," as when he was studying his High School lessons on windy winter nights, long ago; so long that it all seemed like a different existence.
It was because he was thinking very hard about that previous existence that he started so when he suddenly heard a sound—away off in the distance. It was in the direction of the campus. It was someone singing. It was nothing to get excited over; men in the upper classes were all the time going around in groups lazily singing, laughing and talking, and looking as if they never thought of their studies. So he turned over the leaves of his book again. But after awhile this singing came nearer and nearer.
There were many voices, all singing in concert, if not all in tune, but Young did not notice that fault, for just then the singing stopped—the quick, short college cheer cut through the air, and on the end of the cheer the Freshman class numerals—his class numerals. He waited a moment to make sure. Then it came again:
"Ray! Ray! Ray! Tiger! Siss-boom-ah! Ninety-blank!"