s just on the edge of college, others (like
myself) engaged in professional studies, and still others making a debut
in business as clerks. We sang mostly the innocent old songs, American
or English, of an earlier day, and sometimes the decorous numbers from
the self-respecting operetta recently established in London. No
contributions from a new and dubious foreign element had yet come to
cheapen our taste, to disturb our nervous systems, or to throw upon the
negro, the Hawaiian, or the Argentine the onus of a crass passion that
one was more desirous of expressing than of acknowledging. No; there was
assuredly no excess of emotional life--whether good or bad--in the body
of music we favored. Perhaps what our little circle really desired was
simply good-fellowship and a high degree of harmonious clamor. Certainly
all our doings, whether on Friday evening, or on the other forenoons,
afternoons, and evenings of the week, were quite devoid of an
embarrassing sex-consciousness. We "trained together," as the expression
went--all the fellows and all the Gertrudes and Adeles--with no sense of
_malaise_, and postponing, or setting aside, in the miraculous American
fashion, all sexual considerations whatsoever.

I hardly know just why I should have thought that Johnny McComas could
be introduced successfully into this circle. Johnny, as he had told us
in his suburb, had cut loose from his parents. He was now living on his
own, in a neighborhood not far from ours--from his, as it had once been.
One evening I ventured to bring him round. He developed an obstreperous
baritone--it was the same voice, now more specifically in action, that I
had first heard on the devastated prairie; and he made himself rather
preponderant, whether he happened to know the song or not.

"Why, you're quite an addition!" commented one of the girls, in
surprise--almost in consternation.

"He is, indeed,--if he doesn't drown us all out!" muttered one of the
fellows, behind his back.

Yes, Johnny was vociferous--so long as the singing went on. But he
developed, besides an obstreperous voice, an obstreperous interest in
one of our Adeles--a piercing soprano who was our mainstay; and he
showed some tendency to defeat the occasion by segregating her in a bay
window. Segregation was the last of our aims, and Johnny did not quite
please. Furthermore, Johnny seemed to feel himself among a lot of boys
who were yet to make their "start," overlooking the fact that