-given him by his mother,--and
stuffed with snow to keep the bottles cold. Sometimes Granite Face,
adorned in a sky-blue 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 spie