"Nothing, I tell you," but the Junior lays violent hands on him and after a moment's search drags forth a squawking hen! She flaps herself free from the grip of her rescuer and creates a disturbance which brings scores up to the landing on the double quick.
The hen is finally captured and carried out, squalling tremendously at the unaccustomed usage.
Other Freshmen are captured with noise-making devices, living and mechanical, and thrown out bodily or the objectionable instruments of torture taken from them. But some have slipped past even the vigilant eyes of the guards, and are ready to carry out the Freshman part of the entertainment as classes before them have done.
Inside the theater the gallery is jammed till it can hold no more. There is a babel of voices through which occasionally cuts the sharp Yale cheer, that the Freshmen now, with three months of practice, have learned to perfection. Cheers, howls and catcalls make that gallery a perfect bedlam.
Over the gallery front, looking fearfully insecure in their high perch, hang scores of boys angling for the attention of the Juniors' young ladies with a long string to which is attached a card and perhaps a pencil. One side of the card bears a fond message to the fair guest below, and the other side is blank for the answer, which the Freshman above hopes to catch in his angling. And frequently he does. The Junior takes it all in good part.
"O, lovely creature, will you be mine, will you let me hold your lily-white hand when I'm a Junior?" is the rather disconcerting message a young lady in one of the boxes pulls down after it has been dangled in front of her nose for a minute or two by Freshman hands in the top gallery. The Freshman above having established communication, waits impatiently for an answer. Presently it is written in the box below and is pulled up eagerly.
"No, I don't like the color of your hair."
"I'll dye it blue if that will help any," may be the next message. Fifty men are angling at a time and the lines sometimes get crossed. It is all great fun for the girls who enter into the spirit of the thing and are not disturbed, after the first shock, at the ardent messages that are swung in front of their faces.
Of course, every one cannot angle for love messages in the pit because, although the front of the gallery resembles a grape-hung garden wall with the clustering heads, there are several hundreds behind the first row. They content themselves with throwing confetti and paper streamers into the pit and boxes until there is a jungle of it below, through which a late-comer must literally break his way. The floor itself is covered with confetti and cards whereon are printed in prose and verse amazing praises for the class in the upper gallery, recounting what that class will do when it becomes a Junior class two years later and shall have the position of honor.