literature, art, and current events." A statement so formidable was not
without a hushing effect upon Messrs. Milholland and Mitchell; they went
to their first "Lumen" meeting in a state of fear and came away little
reassured.

"I couldn't get up there," Ramsey declared, "I couldn't stand up there
before all that crowd and make a speech, or debate in a debate, to save
my soul and gizzard! Why, I'd just keel right over and haf to be carried
out."

"Well, the way I understand it," said Fred, "we can't get out of it.
The seniors in the 'frat' said we had to join, and they said we couldn't
resign, either, after we had joined. They said we just had to go through
it, and after a while we'd get used to it and not mind it much."

"_I_ will!" Ramsey insisted. "I couldn't any more stand up there on my
feet and get to spoutin' about sociology and the radical metempsychorus
of the metaphysical bazoozum than I could fly a flyin' machine. Why,
I--"

"Oh, that wasn't anything," Fred interrupted. "The only one that talked
like that, he was that Blickens; he's a tutor, or something, and really
a member of the faculty. Most o' the others just kind of blah-blahhed
around, and what any of 'em tried to get off their chests hardly
amounted to terribly much."

"I don't care. I couldn't do it at _all!_"

"Well, the way it looks to me," Fred observed, "we simply _got_ to! From
what they tell me, the freshmen got to do more than anybody. Every other
Friday night, it's all freshmen and nothin' else. You get a postal card
on Monday morning in your mail, and it says 'Assignment' on it, and
then it's got written underneath what you haf to do the next Friday
night--oration or debate, or maybe just read from some old book or
something. I guess we got to stand up there and _try_, anyway."

"All right," said Ramsey. "If they want me to commit suicide they can
send me one o' their ole 'Assignments.' I won't need to commit suicide,
though, I guess. All I'll do, I'll just fall over in a fit, and stay in
it."

And, in truth, when he received his first "Assignment," one Monday
morning, a month later, he seemed in a fair way to fulfil his prophecy.
The attention of his roommate, who sat at a window of their study, was
attracted by sounds of strangulation.

"What on earth's the matter, Ramsey?"

"Look! Look at _this!_"

Fred took the card and examined it with an amazement gradually merging
into a pleasure altogether too perceptible:

ASSIGNMEN