nd fifes played up and
down the city streets and in town and village squares and through the
countrysides. Faintly in all ears there was multitudinous noise like
distant, hoarse cheering... and a sound like that was what Dora Yocum
heard, one night, as she sat lonely in her room. The bugles and fifes
and drums had been heard about the streets of the college town, that
day, and she thought she must die of them, they hurt her so, and now to
be haunted by this imaginary cheering--

She started. Was it imaginary?

She went downstairs and stood upon the steps of the dormitory in the
open air. No; the cheering was real and loud. It came from the direction
of the railway station, and the night air surged and beat with it.

Below her stood the aged janitor of the building, listening. "What's the
cheering for?" she asked, remembering grimly that the janitor was one of
her acquaintances who had not yet stopped "speaking" to her. "What's the
matter?"

"It's a good matter," the old man answered. "I guess there must be a
big crowd of 'em down there. One of our students enlisted to-day, and
they're givin' him a send-off. Listen to 'em, how they _do_ cheer. He's
the first one to go."

She went back to her room, shivering, and spent the next day in bed with
an aching head. She rose in the evening, however--a handbill had been
slid under her door at five o'clock, calling a "Mass Meeting" of the
university at eight, and she felt it her duty to go; but when she got to
the great hall she found a seat in the dimmest corner, farthest from the
rostrum.

The president of the university addressed the tumultuous many hundreds
before him, for tumultuous they were until he quieted them. He talked to
them soberly of patriotism, and called upon them for "deliberation and
a little patience." There was danger of a stampede, he said, and he and
the rest of the faculty were in a measure responsible to their fathers
and mothers for them.

"You must keep your heads," he said. "God knows, I do not seek to judge
your duty in this gravest moment of your lives, nor assume to tell you
what you must or must not do. But by hurrying into service now, without
careful thought or consideration, you may impair the extent of your
possible usefulness to the very cause you are so anxious to serve.
Hundreds of you are taking technical courses which should be
completed--at least to the end of the term in June. Instructors from the
United States Army are already o