net or the solar system? Why, at
Siwash, I remember the biggest man in the world was Ole Skjarsen. Next
to him was Coach Bost, then Rogers, captain of the football team, and
then Jensen, the quarter. After him came Frankling, of the Alfalfa
Delts, whose father picked up bargains in railroads instead of gloves;
then came Prexy, and after him the President of the United States and a
few scattered celebrities, tailing down to the Mayor of Jonesville and
its leading citizens--mere nobodies.

That's how important the outside world seemed to us. Is it any wonder
that when we wanted to go downtown in pajamas and plug hats we paddled
right along? Or that when we wanted to steal a couple of actors and tie
them in a barn, while two of us took their places, we did not hesitate
to do so? We felt perfectly free to do just what we pleased. The college
understood us, and what the world thought never entered our heads.

Those were certainly nightmarish times for the Faculty of a small but
husky college filled with live wires who specialized in applied
mischief. It beats all what peculiar things college students can do and
not think anything of it at all; and it's funny how closely wisdom and
blame foolishness seem to be related. I remember after I had spent two
hours putting my Polykon down on a concrete foundation so that I could
recite John Stuart Mill by the ream, it seemed as if I couldn't live
half an hour longer without a certain kind of pie that was kept in
captivity a mile away downtown at a lunch-counter. And, moreover, I
couldn't eat that pie alone. A college student doesn't know how to
masticate without an assistant or two. When I think of the hours and
hours I have spent traveling around at midnight and battering on the
doors of perfectly respectable houses, trying to drag some student out
and take him a mile or two away downtown after pie, I am struck with
awe. When I came to this town I walked two days for a job and then sat
around with my feet on a sofa cushion for three days. I'll bet I've
walked twice as far hunting up some devoted friend to help me go
downtown and eat a piece of pie. And that pie seemed three times as
important as the easy lessons for beginners in running the earth that I
had been absorbing all the evening.

You needn't grin, Bill. You were just as bad. I remember you were the
biggest math. shark in college. You could do calculus problems that took
all the English letters from A to Z and then sloppe