ed him in something less than
fifteen minutes by the clock. And then his troubles began. Keg's father
had come down the week before school and had selected a quiet place
about three miles from the college--out beyond the cemetery in a nice
lonely neighborhood, where there was just about enough company to keep
the telephone poles from getting despondent. Moreover, he hadn't given
Keg any spending money.

"Education is the cheapest thing in the world," he roared. "You don't
have to keep your pockets full of dollars to live in the times of Homer
and Horace. I've told them to let you have what you need at the
bookstore. For the rest, the college library should be your haunt and
the debating society your recreation." If ever any one was getting
knowledge put down his throat with a hydraulic ram, it certainly was Keg
Rearick.

It isn't hard to imagine the result. Keg toiled away three miles from
anything interesting and got bluer and gloomier and more anarchistic
every day. Wouldn't have been so bad if nobody had loved him. Lots of
fellows go through college with no particular friends and emerge in good
health and spirits. But we had courted Keg and had tried to make it
impossible for him to live without us. We liked him and we hankered for
his company. We wanted to parade him around the campus and confer him
upon the prettiest co-ed in his boarding hall, and teach him to sing a
great variety of interesting songs, with no particular sense to them,
and snatch off two or three important offices around school. Instead of
that he only got to say "howdy" to us between classes, and the rest of
his time he spent Edward Payson Westoning back and forth from his
suburban lair, without a cent in his pockets and the street-car
motor-men giving him the bell to get off of the track into the mud every
other block.

We very soon found this wasn't going to do. Keg's spirits were down
about two notches below the absolute zero. If this was college life, he
said, would somebody kindly take a pair of forceps and remove it. It
ached. The upshot was we made Keg steward of the frat-house table, which
paid his board and room and moved him into the chapter house. He
objected at first, because of what his father would say when he heard of
it. But he finally concluded that anything he might say would be
pleasanter than going all day without hearing anything, so he
surrendered and came along.

The first night at dinner, when we pushed back our chair