outfits--Indians, Turks, and men
in prison garb roamed the campus. There were youngsters just a year out
of college, still looking like undergraduates, still full of college
talk. The alumni ranged all the way from these one-year men to the
fifty-year men, twelve old men who had come back to Sanford fifty years
after their graduation, and two of them had come all the way across the
continent. There had been only fifty men originally in that class; and
twelve of them were back.

What brought them back? Hugh wondered. He thought he knew, but he
couldn't have given a reason. He watched those old men wandering slowly
around the campus, one of them with his grandson who was graduating this
year, and he was awed by their age and their devotion to their alma
mater. Yes, Henley had been right. Sanford was far from perfect, far
from it--a child could see that--but there was something in the college
that gripped one's heart. What faults that old college had; but how one
loved her!

Thousands of Japanese lanterns had been strung around the campus; an
electric fountain sparkled and splashed its many-colored waters; a band
seemed to be playing every hour of the day and night from the band-stand
in front of the Union. It was a gay scene, and everybody seemed superbly
happy except, possibly, the seniors. They pretended to be happy, but all
of them were a little sad, a little frightened. College had been very
beautiful--and the "world outside," what was it? What did it have in
store for them?

There were mothers and fathers there to see their sons receive their
degrees, there were the wives and children of the alumni, there were
sisters and fiancees of the seniors. Nearly two thousand people; and at
least half of the alumni drunk most of the time. Very drunk, many of
them, and very foolish, but nobody minded. Somehow every one seemed to
realize that in a few brief days they were trying to recapture a
youthful thrill that had gone forever. Some of the drunken ones seemed
very silly, some of them seemed almost offensive; all of them were
pathetic.

They had come back to Sanford where they had once been so young and
exuberant, so tireless in pleasure, so in love with living; and they
were trying to pour all that youthful zest into themselves again out of
a bottle bought from a bootlegger. Were they having a good time? Who
knows? Probably not. A bald-headed man does not particularly enjoy
looking at a picture taken in his hirsute you