Ann Arbor Tales

by Karl Edwin Harriman

Of course he was hazed.

He was persona non grata to the sophomore class as represented by the fraternity contingent and that contingent had simply done away with him temporarily. When he did return it was a wan and haggard figure that he presented. The belief gained currency that his people had known his whereabouts, but no one ever knew to a certainty. As for Cleaver himself, he would not—or perhaps could not—tell what had been done to him or who had planned and carried out the adventure of his disappearance. The faculty was nonplussed. No one else had been missed. Who, then, could have accompanied Cleaver to his dungeon, if dungeon had been his residence for two months? No one, to this day, has solved the mystery. As for Cleaver, he was given his credits and permitted to graduate in due time. And to-day whenever he speaks of a certain individual—now a lawyer in Syracuse—who was a sophomore during his own freshman days, it is with a twinkle in his eyes. But he still keeps a sacred silence.

Ann Arbor was shaken to its foundations by the incident. Shaken, too, has it been by circus riots; but it is doubted if ever within the period of the University's establishment has it been so tremendously excited, for a little period, as it became over the case of Catherwood.

In the first place Catherwood had incurred the enmity of no one. A student of fair attainments and average record who, during his three years in the University, had taken but small part in undergraduate activities, he found himself, of a sudden, standing in the blinding lime-light of an official investigation. And an official investigation at the University of Michigan is not to be considered lightly. All over this broad land are men who have the questionable privilege of looking back upon a time when they were the unwilling subjects of such investigations.

Catherwood's case, to be sure, was different in that he was the sufferer from others' depredations, but the odium of participation rested upon him nevertheless, and so delicate and shrinking was his nature that he was known to suffer miserably from the publicity of his position.

For three days he was conscious that every man's eye was upon him; that every finger pointed at him, that every tongue discussed him. An attempt was made to heroize him, but he withdrew to the seclusion of his room and would see no one. His, indeed, was a case to defy, in its solution, the most subtle reasoner, the most invincible logician on the faculty.

In detail it was as follows:

Mrs. Turner, Catherwood's landlady, a most estimable woman who had moved into town from a not-distant farm for the purpose of "putting Willie through school," was away from the house all the evening of February ninth. A "social" at the Congregational Church—socials were her chief, indeed, her only, diversion—on the arrangement committee of which she was most active, delayed her return until nearly midnight. Willie accompanied her to the church and at nine o'clock was put to bed in a pew up-stairs. Therefore Mrs. Turner could not know what had transpired in one of her second-floor rooms between the hours of seven-thirty and twelve on that momentous night. Moreover, as Mrs. Turner varied the monotony of house work with "plain sewing by the day" and was, all the morning of the tenth, at the Alpha Phi house "fitting" Miss Houston, she did not set about to "do the room work" until eleven-thirty.

At that hour, tired beyond measure,—Miss Houston had been so finicky about the hang of the skirt—she suddenly realized that if she did not make haste Mr. Catherwood would return from college to find his room in the condition of untidiness that he, presumably, had left it on going out.

So she dragged her leaden limbs up the stairs and from force of habit knocked on the door of the second room, back. There was no reply. She had expected none. She pushed open the door.