out their
Greek with "trots"? It was the custom for three or four lazy students to
gather together and summon up a newsy to read the trot, while they, lolling
with pipes on their Morris chairs, fumbled with the text and interlined it
against a loss of memory. Let the fair-haired goddess Juno speak! Ulysses,
as he pleases, may walk on the shore of the loud-sounding sea. Thereafter
in class one may repose safely on his interlineation and snap at flies with
a rubber band. This method of getting a lesson was all very well except
that the newsy halted at the proper name. A device was therefore hit on of
calling all the gods and heroes by the name of Smith. Homeric combat then
ran like this: _the heart of Smit was black with anger and he smote Smit
upon the brazen helmet. And the world grew dark before his eyes, and he
fell forward like a tower and bit the dust and his armor clanked about him.
But at evening, from a far-off mountain top the white-armed goddess
Smit-Smit_ (Pallas-Athena) _saw him, and she felt compash--compassion for
him._

And I suppose that students still sing upon the fence. There was a
Freshman once, in those early nights of autumn when they were still a
prey to Sophomores, who came down Library Street after his supper at
Commons. He wondered whether the nights of hazing were done and was
unresolved whether he ought to return to his room and sit close.
Presently he heard the sound of singing. It came from the Campus, from
the fence. He was greener than most Freshmen and he had never heard
men sing in four-part harmony. With him music had always been a single
tune, or at most a lost tenor fumbled uncertainly for the pitch. Any
grunt had been a bass. And so the sound ravished him. In the open air
and in the dark the harmony was unparalleled. He stole forward, still
with one eye open for Sophomores, and crouched in the shadowy angle of
North Middle. Now the song was in full chorus and the branches of the
elms swayed to it, and again a bass voice sang alone and the others
hummed a low accompaniment.

Occasionally, across the Campus, someone in passing called up to a
window, "Oh, Weary Walker, stick out your head!" And then, after a
pause, satirically, when the head was out, "Stick it in again!" On the
stones there were the sounds of feet--feet with lazy purpose--loud
feet down wooden steps, bound for pleasure. At the windows there were
lights, where dull thumbs moved down across a page. Let A equal B to
find