"Hello, old man," said Gray. "I haven't seen you since the Tree. Have you been up here by yourself all the evening?"
"Well, you see," drawled Jack. "Blathers was up here all alone, and I thought I'd sit with him a little while. I can amuse him better than I can a girl, you know."
Gray walked over to him, and for a long time the two men of opposite natures looked silently out of the window together. Below, they could see the Japanese lanterns, the white dresses, and all the gay throng—they could see them, but they didn't. They saw, above the elms, the belfry of Harvard Hall against the clear night sky. They saw the familiar outlines of the dark roofs and spires. Over all, they saw the tower of Memorial pointing to the stars. Up from the Yard floated, distinctly, the measures of the Anthem.
"Thou then wert our Mother, the nurse of our souls
We were moulded to manhood by thee,
Till freighted with treasures, life friendships and hopes,
Thou didst launch us on Destiny's sea."
HOW RIVERS' LUCK TURNED.
I.
"Well, it does concern me, because I don't want any love-sick invalids in that boat." Thus spake the practical William Bender, Esq., Captain of the H. U. Crew. He had just come into Hollis Holworthy's room and sat down for a few minutes' private conversation with that gentleman. By a simple method of his, he had come to the point of the interview in the opening question, "Look here, Hol, is Charlie Rivers in love?" Holworthy, somewhat startled, had replied that his chum's affairs were not his, and intimated that he could not see how they belonged to Bender either. Hence the above remark.
"I don't want you to think," he continued, "that I am merely inquisitive and impertinent; but you see I am responsible for the condition of the men, and if anything of that sort is going on I ought to know it. Last year I had one man in the boat who was engaged, and two who wanted to be, and I never knew anything about it until after the race. Jim Lovell, who had precious little money himself, was engaged, to a girl without a cent, and all the spring he was thinking about the price of beef when he ought to have been watching the man in front of him and improving his recover. As for Randal and Bowers they had no right to be in the boat. They were all out of condition, and I don't see now how we won. Even at New London, just before the race, those two men were moping like a pair of sick pointers. They were off their feed and so blue that they made every body else so. I was scared to death, thought they were over-trained, and laid them off several times though they needed all the practice they could get. I let them fill themselves up with Bass, nearly a pint a day. Nothing did any good, and I never knew what to make of it until last summer when the engagements of both were announced. Bah! no wonder the starboard side was weak."
"Well, I have heard you rowing men growl about almost everything," laughed Holworthy, "but this is a new complaint. So Dan Cupid played the mischief with the Harvard crew, did he? I shouldn't think the little winged god would make such a heavy passenger in the boat. Think how much harder his victims must pull when their fair ladies' eyes are upon them. Why, it is quite like wearing a silken scarf at a tournament."