had
nothing but hard words out of him all my college course, and if he can't
think up something nice to say on an occasion like this I'm going to
give him up."

Hogboom called up Prexy and in a shaking voice read him the telegram. We
sat around, choking each other to preserve the peace, and listened to
the following cross section of a dialogue--telephone talk is so
interesting when you just get one hemisphere of it.

"Hello! That you, Doctor? This is the Eta Bita Pie House. I've some very
sad news to tell you. Hogboom was drowned to-day in the Weeping Water
River. We've just had a telegram--Yes, quite dead--No chance of a
mistake, I'm afraid--Yes, they recovered him--We're all broken up--Oh,
yes, he was a fine fellow--We loved him deeply--I'm glad you thought so
much of him--He was always so frank in his admiration of you--Yes, he
was honorable--Yes, and brilliant, too--Of course, we valued him for
his good fellowship, but, as you say, he was also an earnest boy--It's
awful--Yes, a fine athlete--I wish he could hear you say that,
Doctor--No, I'm afraid we can't fill his place--Yes, it is a loss to the
college--I guess you just address telegram to his folks at Weeping
Water--That's how we're sending ours--Good-night--Yes, a fine
fellow--Good-night."

Hogboom hung up the 'phone and went upstairs, where he lay for an hour
or two with his face full of pillows. The rest of us weren't so gay. We
could see the humor of the thing all right, but the awful fact that we
were murderers was beginning to hang over our heads. It was easy enough
to kill Hogboom, but now that he was dead the future looked tolerably
complicated. Suppose something happened? Suppose he didn't stay dead?
There's no peace for a murderer, anyway. We didn't sleep much that
night.

The next day it was worse. We sat around and entertained callers all
day. Half a hundred students called and brought enough woe to fit out a
Democratic headquarters on Presidential election night. They all had
something nice to say of Hoggy. We sat around and mourned and gloomed
and agreed with them until we were ready to yell with disgust.

Hogboom was the most disgracefully lively corpse I ever saw. He insisted
on sitting at the head of the stairs where he could hear every good word
that was said of him, and the things he demanded of us during the day
would have driven a stone saint to crime. Four times we went downtown
for pie; three times for cigarettes; once for all the S