nly seven years older than
Mr. John H. Stover. There was Napoleon, who had married a woman older
than he was--Napoleon and hosts of others.

With the sudden fear of being dropped a year he began to study with
such assiduity that, as is the way with newly-sprouted virtue in a
cynical world, his motives were suspected by the masters, who, of
course, could know nothing of the divine transformation, and by his
classmates, who secretly credited him with some new method of
cribbing.

Meanwhile, as the year neared its close, the inventive minds of Dennis
de Brian de Boru Finnegan and the Tennessee Shad conceived the idea of
a monster mass meeting and illustrative parade, which should down the
hereditary foe--the steam laundry.

Up to this time the columns of _The Lawrence_ had been flooded with
communications couched in the style of the oration against Catiline,
demanding to know how long the supine Lawrenceville boy would bear in
silence the return of his shirt with added entrances and exits, and
collars that enclosed the neck with a cheval-de-frise.

This verbal, annual outbreak was succeeded, as usual, by House to
House mutinies on the occasion of the arrival of the weekly boxes,
without the protest taking further head or front. But at the opening
of the last week of the school year, whether a machine had suddenly
jumped its fences or whether the ladies of the washtubs desired to
open the way for the new summer styles; however it may have been, the
laundry returned like the battle flags of the republic to the outraged
school. Windows were flung open and indignant boys appeared, with
white shreds in hand, and vociferously appealed to the heavens above
and the green lands below for justice and indemnification.

A meeting of determined spirits was speedily held under the leadership
of the Tennessee Shad and Doc Macnooder, and it was decided that a
demonstration should take place instanter, the Houses to form and
march with complete exhibits to the Upper House, where the
fifth-formers should likewise display their grievances and join them
in a mammoth protest.

Dink, at the first sounds of martial organization, pricked up his ears
and summoned the Tennessee Shad and Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan
to explain why he had been left out of such an important enterprise.

"Why have we left you out?" said the Tennessee Shad indignantly.
"What's happened to you these last three weeks? You've had a fighting
grouch--no one dare