wrapper, would suddenly appear in the doorway to
declare that we were a disgrace to her respectable house: the university
authorities should be informed, etc., etc. Poor woman, we were
outrageously inconsiderate of her.... One evening as we came through the
hall we caught a glimpse in the dimly lighted parlour of a young man
holding a shy and pale little girl on his lap, Annie, Mrs. Bolton's
daughter: on the face of our landlady was an expression I had never seen
there, like a light. I should scarcely have known her. Tom and I paused
at the foot of the stairs. He clutched my arm.

"Darned if it wasn't our friend Krebs!" he whispered.

While I was by no means so popular as Tom, I got along fairly well. I had
escaped from provincialism, from the obscure purgatory of the wholesale
grocery business; new vistas, exciting and stimulating, had been opened
up; nor did I offend the sensibilities and prejudices of the new friends
I made, but gave a hearty consent to a code I found congenial. I
recognized in the social system of undergraduate life at Harvard a
reflection of that of a greater world where I hoped some day to shine;
yet my ambition did not prey upon me. Mere conformity, however, would not
have taken me very far in a sphere from which I, in common with many
others, desired not to be excluded.... One day, in an idle but inspired
moment, I paraphrased a song from "Pinafore," applying it to a college
embroglio, and the brief and lively vogue it enjoyed was sufficient to
indicate a future usefulness. I had "found myself." This was in the last
part of the freshman year, and later on I became a sort of amateur, class
poet-laureate. Many were the skits I composed, and Tom sang them....

During that freshman year we often encountered Hermann Krebs, whistling
merrily, on the stairs.

"Got your themes done?" he would inquire cheerfully.

And Tom would always mutter, when he was out of earshot: "He has got a
crust!"

When I thought about Krebs at all,--and this was seldom indeed,--his
manifest happiness puzzled me. Our cool politeness did not seem to bother
him in the least; on the contrary, I got the impression that it amused
him. He seemed to have made no friends. And after that first evening,
memorable for its homesickness, he never ventured to repeat his visit to
us.

One windy November day I spied his somewhat ludicrous figure striding
ahead of me, his trousers above his ankles. I was bundled up in a new
ulster,--o