here is no occasion to argue it, there is no logic to
support it; I just simply want it!"

Huntington regarded him with a satisfaction too deep for outward
exuberance. "I knew the spirit was too strong to accept limitations!" he
exclaimed quietly but with an exultant ring in his voice. "I knew that
no man could once place himself within the influence of college ideals
and not recognize their existence. You have tested my convictions,
Hamlen, but my faith has remained 'calm rising through change and
through storm.'"

The strength of Huntington's emotion impressed Hamlen deeply. His own
dawning was so recent that at first he could not believe it possible for
his friend to be so affected by the subject under discussion.

"Do other Harvard men feel as strongly as you do?" he demanded
questioningly.

"Of course," Huntington replied; "but it isn't a question of Harvard any
more than of other colleges. We shout for our Alma Mater, but no more
lustily than the Yale or the Princeton man or the men of the smaller
colleges shout for theirs. It is merely the expression of the spirit of
loyalty and the sense of obligation, Hamlen. Not to express it is
unnatural, not to feel gratified when another laurel wreath is placed
upon the brow of our Dear Mother is a lack of filial devotion which I
refuse to believe exists."

They elected to see the race from the observation-train, that they
might watch the positions of the crews from beginning to end rather than
at any fixed point. There was no novelty in the experience for
Huntington or Cosden except the ever-present uncertainty of the outcome,
but to Hamlen even the crowds which he had previously avoided added to
his excitement by imparting to him the thrill of their repressed
expectancy. He resented the calmness of his companions as they perused
their morning papers on the train. He tried to follow their example, but
found himself mechanically reading over and over again the statistics of
the two crews. Harvard was the favorite, but that he took as a bad omen
for he still remembered the Harvard teams which had gone into their
contests with the odds on their side, and had failed to win the expected
victories. Harvard overconfidence was a byword when he was in college,
and it was overconfidence which he feared now.

They took their places on the improvised seats of the platform
freight-cars, ready to be hauled to the point of vantage at the start,
but the train seemed frightfully del