Then, obeying an impulse, he signaled an expressman, consigned his bag, and made his way on foot, dodging in and out of the rapidly filled hacks, where upper classmen sat four on the seat, hugging one another with bearlike hugs.
"Eh, freshman, take off that hat!"
He removed his derby immediately, bowing to a hilarious crowd, who rocked ahead shouting back unintelligible gibes at him.
Others were clinging to car steps and straps.
"Hello, Dink!"
Some one had called him but he could not discover who. He swung down the crowded street to the heart of the city in the rapid dropping of the twilight. There was a dampness underfoot that sent to him long, wavering reflections from early street-lamps. The jumble of the city was in his ears, the hazy, crowded panorama in his eyes, at his side the passing contact of strangers. Everything was multiplied, complex, submerging his individuality.
But this feeling of multitude did not depress him. He had come to conquer, and zest was in his step and alertness in his glance. Out of the churning of the crowd he passed into the clear sweep of the city Common, and, looking up through the mist, for the first time beheld the battlements of the college awaiting him ahead, lost in the hazy elms.
Across the quiet reaches of the Common he went slowly, incredibly, toward these strange shapes in brick and stone. The evening mist had settled. They were things undefined and mysterious, things as real as the things of his dreams. He passed on through the portals of Phelps Hall, hearing above his head for the first time the echoes of his own footsteps against the resounding vault.
Behind him remained the city, suddenly hushed. He was on the campus, the Brick Row at his left; in the distance the crowded line of the fence, the fence where he later should sit in joyful conclave. Somewhere there in the great protecting embrace of these walls were the friends that should be his, that should pass with him through those wonderful years of happiness and good fellowship that were coming.