f
institutions, over three hundred men competing for it every year.

Amory, after an easy victory in the first sophomore Princetonian
competition, stepped into a vacancy of the cast as Boiling Oil, a Pirate
Lieutenant. Every night for the last week they had rehearsed "Ha-Ha
Hortense!" in the Casino, from two in the afternoon until eight in the
morning, sustained by dark and powerful coffee, and sleeping in
lectures through the interim. A rare scene, the Casino. A big, barnlike
auditorium, dotted with boys as girls, boys as pirates, boys as babies;
the scenery in course of being violently set up; the spotlight man
rehearsing by throwing weird shafts into angry eyes; over all the
constant tuning of the orchestra or the cheerful tumpty-tump of a
Triangle tune. The boy who writes the lyrics stands in the corner,
biting a pencil, with twenty minutes to think of an encore; the business
manager argues with the secretary as to how much money can be spent
on "those damn milkmaid costumes"; the old graduate, president in
ninety-eight, perches on a box and thinks how much simpler it was in his
day.

How a Triangle show ever got off was a mystery, but it was a riotous
mystery, anyway, whether or not one did enough service to wear a little
gold Triangle on his watch-chain. "Ha-Ha Hortense!" was written over
six times and had the names of nine collaborators on the programme. All
Triangle shows started by being "something different--not just a regular
musical comedy," but when the several authors, the president, the coach
and the faculty committee finished with it, there remained just the old
reliable Triangle show with the old reliable jokes and the star comedian
who got expelled or sick or something just before the trip, and the
dark-whiskered man in the pony-ballet, who "absolutely won't shave twice
a day, doggone it!"

There was one brilliant place in "Ha-Ha Hortense!" It is a Princeton
tradition that whenever a Yale man who is a member of the widely
advertised "Skull and Bones" hears the sacred name mentioned, he must
leave the room. It is also a tradition that the members are invariably
successful in later life, amassing fortunes or votes or coupons or
whatever they choose to amass. Therefore, at each performance of "Ha-Ha
Hortense!" half-a-dozen seats were kept from sale and occupied by six
of the worst-looking vagabonds that could be hired from the streets,
further touched up by the Triangle make-up man. At the moment in th