om were subsidized by
fraternities or alumni. Most of the students had to learn their own
lessons; so they often banded together in small groups to make the task
less arduous, finding some relief in sociability.

The study groups, quite properly called seminars, would have shocked
many a worthy professor had he been able to attend one; but they were
truly educative, and to many students inspiring. The professor had
planted the seed of wisdom with them; it was at the seminars that they
tried honestly, if somewhat hysterically and irreverently, to make it
grow.

Hugh did most of his studying alone, fearing that the seminars would
degenerate into bull sessions, as many of them did; but Carl insisted
that he join one group that was going "to wipe up that goddamned
English course to-night."

There were only five men at the seminar, which met in Surrey 19, because
Pudge Jamieson, who was "rating" an A in the course and was therefore an
authority, said that he wouldn't come if there were any more. Pudge, as
his nickname suggests, was plump. He was a round-faced, jovial youngster
who learned everything with consummate ease, wrote with great fluency
and sometimes real beauty, peered through his horn-rimmed spectacles
amusedly at the world, and read every "smut" book that he could lay his
hands on. His library of erotica was already famous throughout the
college, his volumes of Balzac's "Droll Stories," Rabelais complete,
"Mlle. de Maupin," Burton's "Arabian Nights," and the "Decameron" being
in constant demand. He could tell literally hundreds of dirty stories,
always having a new one on tap, always looking when he told it like a
complacent cherub.

There were two other men in the seminar. Freddy Dickson, an earnest,
anemic youth, seemed to be always striving for greater acceleration and
never gaining it; or as Pudge put it, "The trouble with Freddy is that
he's always shifting gears." Larry Stillwell, the last man, was a dark,
handsome youth with exceedingly regular features, pomaded hair parted in
the center and shining sleekly, fine teeth, and rich coloring: a
"smooth" boy who prided himself on his conquests and the fact that he
never got a grade above a C in his courses. There was no man in the
freshman class with a finer mind, but he declined to study, declaring
firmly that he could not waste his time acquiring impractical tastes for
useless arts.

"Now everybody shut up," said Pudge, seating himself in a big chair an