Where now he realized only his own
inconsequence, effort would make him aware of his own impotency and
insufficiency.

The college dreamed on--awake. He felt a nervous excitement that might
have been the very throb of its slow heart. It was a stream where he was
to throw a stone whose faint ripple would be vanishing almost as it left
his hand. As yet he had given nothing, he had taken nothing.

A belated freshman, his oilskin slicker rasping loudly, slushed along
the soft path. A voice from somewhere called the inevitable formula,
"Stick out your head!" below an unseen window. A hundred little sounds
of the current drifting on under the fog pressed in finally on his
consciousness.

"Oh, God!" he cried suddenly, and started at the sound of his voice
in the stillness. The rain dripped on. A minute longer he lay without
moving, his hands clinched. Then he sprang to his feet and gave his
clothes a tentative pat.

"I'm very damn wet!" he said aloud to the sun-dial.

*****

HISTORICAL

The war began in the summer following his freshman year. Beyond a
sporting interest in the German dash for Paris the whole affair failed
either to thrill or interest him. With the attitude he might have held
toward an amusing melodrama he hoped it would be long and bloody. If it
had not continued he would have felt like an irate ticket-holder at a
prize-fight where the principals refused to mix it up.

That was his total reaction.

*****

"HA-HA HORTENSE!"

"All right, ponies!"

"Shake it up!"

"Hey, ponies--how about easing up on that crap game and shaking a mean
hip?"

"Hey, _ponies!_"

The coach fumed helplessly, the Triangle Club president, glowering
with anxiety, varied between furious bursts of authority and fits of
temperamental lassitude, when he sat spiritless and wondered how the
devil the show was ever going on tour by Christmas.

"All right. We'll take the pirate song."

The ponies took last drags at their cigarettes and slumped into place;
the leading lady rushed into the foreground, setting his hands and feet
in an atmospheric mince; and as the coach clapped and stamped and tumped
and da-da'd, they hashed out a dance.

A great, seething ant-hill was the Triangle Club. It gave a musical
comedy every year, travelling with cast, chorus, orchestra, and scenery
all through Christmas vacation. The play and music were the work
of undergraduates, and the club itself was the most influential o