George on one of the campus malls.
It was occasionally whispered about that Randall's influence on these
young men was not of the very best, and that he used to have a
never-empty bottle of remarkably smooth whiskey in his closet, along
with old letter-files and brief-books; and it is undoubtedly true that
Perry Tomson and I used to consider George's friends as models in the
manner of smoking a pipe, or ordering whiskey-and-soda at Bertrand's to
give us an appetite for our mutton-chops or our _bifteck aux
pommes_, and in the delightful self-sufficiency with which in the
pleasant spring days they would cut recitations and loll on the grass
smoking cigarettes right under the nose, almost, of the professor. But
they are both married now, and settled down to respectable conventional
success; and Billy Wylde, as I happen to know, has repaid the money
which George lent him wherewith to finish his education in Germany. The
estimable matrons of Lincoln who made so much ado over George's ruining
these young men,--who had such bright intellects and might have been
expected to do something but for that dreadfully well read lawyer's
awful influence,--these women do not consider it worth their while now,
in the face of the facts as they have turned out, to remember their
predictions, but confine themselves to making their dismal prophecies
anew in regard to the three young fellows whom George has of late taken
up. But then I remember how they went on about Perry Tomson and me in
the early part of our Junior year, when we began to enjoy the favor of
George's friendship; and if their miserable croaking never does any
good, I fancy it will never work any very great harm: so one might as
well let them croak in peace. In fact, one would more easily dam the
waters of Niagara than stop them, and George, I know, doesn't care the
cork of an empty beer-bottle what they say of him.

I have never tried to analyze the influence for good George had over us,
or account for it in any way, nor do I care to. I have always considered
his friendship for me as one of the pleasantest and most profitable
experiences of my life in Lincoln. Perry and I were always more close
and loving friends, and cared for George with a silent but abiding sense
of gratitude in addition to the other sources of our affection for him,
after he showed us the boyish foolishness of our quarrel about Lucretia
Knowles. Of course I ought not to have grown angry at Perry's
good-na