you have
come up to College since then, and are sufficiently posted to know that
there have been other annuals before this one just issued by your
friends the Juniors, you have found his picture or his name on every
other page of the earlier editions. Harry Rice, who came with him, was
not half so well known, save to the Faculty and the circle of the
chapter. He was doing very well in business, people said, better than
Shirlock, probably. Rice was a keen fellow, the new men could see that
at a glance; but they did not put an arm about him instinctively in the
after-dinner stroll, as they did about Shirlock.

The two alumni had spent Sunday calling upon the Faculty in Palo Alto
and the Row, and in post-mortems with some of the football men in
Encina. After dinner, the fellows sat out on the porch, strumming
mandolins and singing. Shirlock had been a star on the Glee Club two
years before, and he sang again the songs the college hummed after him
in those days, while the upper-classmen looked at the Freshmen with a
"now-you-see-what-you've-joined" expression, or nudged each other
reminiscently, until the live-oaks in the pasture almost blended with
the long shadows under them, and hoarse-throated frogs were tuning up in
the irrigating ditches. Then they formed four abreast and went down for
the mail, humming a march song and lifting their hats in concert to
Professor Stillwell and his wife, smiling from their porch. At the
post-office the lines broke and the entire body, except the alumni,
struggled into the over-crowded room ("the daily press" Pellams called
it). This was hardly necessary, since one man could have opened the
fraternity box and distributed the letters; but this is a distinct charm
of Sunday evening at the post-office. Moreover, you never know who may
be standing inside, and if you have forgotten to arrange things ahead it
is sometimes well to be first.

The pleasant uncertainty of the evening mail being over, the fellows
mixed a while with the sundry groups about the low red building, then
joined forces again, and marched once around the Quad, arm in arm, a
line of sixteen, while Bob Duncan, who had been prepped at a military
school, shouted, "Change step, march," and "Left wheel, march," then
home together, all but two or three, who were called the "Incurables,"
and who had plunged back into the shadow of the Quad for Chapel,
perhaps, or some other form of Sabbath evening devotion. This breach of
hospit