n the front porch of the
Eta Bita Pie house. That was the least expensive thing we could do. We
had been discussing girls and baseball and spring suits, and the
comparative excellence of the wheat cakes at the Union Lunch Counter and
Jim's place. But whatever we talked about ran into money in the end and
we had to change the subject. There's mighty little a poor man can talk
about in spring in college, I can tell you. We discussed around for an
hour or two, bumping into the dollar mark in every direction, and
finally got so depressed that we shut up and sat around with our heads
in our hands. That seemed to be about the only thing to do that didn't
require money.

"We'll have to do something desperate to get to that game," said Hogboom
at last. Hogboom was a Senior. He ranked "sublime" in football,
"excellent" in baseball, "good" in mandolin, "fair" in dancing, and from
there down in Greek, Latin and Mathematics.

"Intelligent boy," said Bunk Bailey pleasantly; "tell us what it must
be. Desperate things done to order, day or night, with care and
thoroughness. Trot out your desperate thing and get me an axe. I'll do
it."

"Well," said Hogboom, "I don't know, but it seems to me that if one of
us was to die maybe the Faculty would take a day off and we could go
over to Hambletonian without getting cuts."

"Fine scheme; get me a gun, Hogboom." "Do you prefer drowning or
lynching?" "Kill him quick, somebody." "Look pleasant, please, while the
operator is working." "What do you charge for dying?" Oh, we guyed him
good and plenty, which is a way they have at old Harvard and middle-aged
Siwash and Infant South Dakota University and wherever two students are
gathered together anywhere in the U. S. A.

Hogboom only grinned. "Prattle away all you please," he said, "but I
mean it. I've got magnificent facilities for dying just now. I'll
consider a proposition to die for the benefit of the cause if you
fellows will agree to keep me in cigarettes and pie while I'm dead."

"Done," says I, "and in embalming fluid, too. But just demonstrate this
theorem, Hoggy, old boy. How extensively are you going to die?"

"Just enough to get a holiday," said Hogboom. "You see, I happen to have
a chum in the telegraph office in Weeping Water, where I live. Now if I
were to go home to spend Sunday and you fellows were to receive a
telegram that I had been kicked to death by an automobile, would you
have sense enough to show it to Prexy?"

"W