The next day a new one was there in letters twice as big, C. C. Again the college wondered what it meant; but this time some of them did not pass on until they had asked someone else, "What's that thing for?" "What's the meaning of that?" No one could answer.
A snow-storm washed it off during the afternoon.
A fresh one was put up the next morning.
"Here's that queer poster again," said the passers-by. "What's it for, anyway?"
"Nobody seems to know."
The next morning the same letters on larger-sized paper were found not only on the bulletin-board, but tacked up on all the available trees of the campus, and in the town on all the billboards, old barrels, tumble-down sheds, and stalled wagons. On the way to recitation, or lectures, every one saw C. C. half a dozen times. They saw it on the tree-boxes along the street. When they took walks they saw it on old barns down toward Kingston.
Now at Princeton, what there is of a town is little more than a setting for the University. There are no outside distractions, such as theatres and the like, as at most large institutions of learning. The campus life is the only life, and the college students are dependent upon the college world for all their amusements and between-hour interests. Everyone keeps in touch with everything that is going on.
So when this poster with its brief legend continued to appear and reappear every day, and no one deciphered its meaning, the college began to get interested—all the more so because it was midwinter, and therefore neither football nor baseball was absorbing the undergraduate interest.
"What's going to happen?" everyone asked. "What's the meaning of this mystery?" And no one could answer.
The thing had now kept up for over a week. The Daily Princetonian commented upon it. Even the faculty began to inquire, in a dignified way, as to "the meaning of those cabalistic symbols." The undergraduates had begun to make up words to fit, and rumors floated about the campus. "C. C.—college clowns," said someone; "it's to be a horse minstrel troupe."