How dry I am.
Nobody knows how dry I am,
And nobody cares a damn.
After this service of song, brief, bright and brotherly, we moved slowly Eastward, and in Kensington Gardens I learned something about college yells. For suddenly, without warning, one of the party bent forward, with arms outstretched, and yelled the following at a pensive sheep:—
"Alle ge reu, ge reu, ge reu. War-who-bar-za. Hi ix, hi ip; hi capica, doma nica. Hong pong. Lita pica. Halleka, balakah, ba."
At first I conjectured that the Bronx was running its course, but when he had spoken his piece the rest of the gang let themselves go, and I then understood that we were having a round of college yells. Respectable strangers might have mistaken the performance for the war march of the priests, or the entry of the gladiators, or the battle-song of the hairy Ainus; for such monstrous perversions of sense and sound surely have never before disturbed the serenity of the Gardens.
I understand that the essential of a good college yell is that it be utterly meaningless, barbaric and larynx-racking. It should seem to be the work of some philologist who had suddenly gone mad under the strain of his studies and had attempted to converse with an aborigine. I think Augustana's yell pretty well fills that condition:—
"Rocky-eye, rocky-eye. Zip, zum, zie. Shingerata, shingerata, bim, bum, bie. Zip-zum, zip-zum, rah, rah, rah. Karaborra, karaborra, Augus-tana."
At the conclusion of this choral service we caught a bus to Piccadilly Circus and I left them at the Tube entrance singing "Bob up serenely," and went home to dream of the ball game and of millions of fans screaming abstruse advice into my deaf ear.
Oh, attaboy!