T

TWELVE-MINUTE DEBATE, CLASS OF 1918. _Subject, Resolved:_ That Germany
is both legally and morally justified in her invasion of Belgium.

(Debaters are notified that each will be held strictly to the following
schedule: Affirmative, 4 min., first. Negative, 4 min., first. Affirm, 2
min., second. Neg., 2 min., second.)

Affirmative Negative R. MILHOLLAND, '18 D. YOCUM, '18

Concluding his reading, which was oral, the volatile Mitchell made use
of his voice in a manner of heathenish boisterousness, and presently
reclined upon a lounge to laugh the better. His stricken comrade,
meanwhile, recovered so far as to pace the floor. "I'm goin' to pack up
and light out for home!" he declared, over and over. And even oftener
he read and reread the card to make sure of the actuality of that fatal
coincidence, "D. Yocum, '18."

Chapter XI

"If I _could_ do it," he vociferated, "if I _could_ stand up there and
debate one o' their darn ole debates in the first place--if I had the
gall to even try it, why, my gosh! you don't suppose I'm goin' to get
up there and argue with _that girl_, do you? That's a hot way to get
an education: stand up there and argue with a girl before a couple o'
hundred people! My _gosh!_"

"You got to!" his prostrate companion cackled, weakly. "You can't get
out of it. You're a goner, ole Buddy!"

"I'll be sick. I'll be sick as a dog! I'll be sick as the sickest dog
that ever--"

"No use, ole man. The frat seniors'll be on the job. They'll know
whether you're sick or not, and they'll have you there, right on the
spot to the minute!"

The prediction was accurate. The too fatherly "frat seniors" did all
that Fred said they would, and more. For the honour of the "frat," they
coached the desperate Ramsey in the technic of Lumen debate, told him
many more things to say than could be said in six minutes, and produced
him, despairing, ghastly, and bedewed, in the large hall of the Lumen
Society at eight o'clock on Friday evening.

Four other "twelve-minute debates" preceded his and the sound of these,
in Ramsey's ears, was the sound of Gabriel practising on his horn in
the early morning of Judgment Day. The members of the society sat, three
rows deep, along the walls of the room, leaving a clear oblong of green
carpet in the centre, where were two small desks, twenty feet apart, the
rostrums of the debaters. Upon a platform at the head of the room sat
dreadful seniors, the officers of the so