f a
mile away and yelling for pie.

As a matter of fact, there were so many in the secret that we were dead
afraid that it would explode. We had to put the baseball team on so that
they would be prepared to go over to Hambletonian at noon. The game had
been called off, of course, and Hambletonian had been telegraphed. But I
was secretary of the Athletic Club and had done the telegraphing. So I
addressed the telegram to my aunt in New Jersey. It puzzled the dear old
lady for months, I guess, because she kept writing to me about it. We
had to tell all the fellows in the frat house and every one of the
conspirators let in a friend or two. There were about fifty students who
weren't as soggy with grief as they should have been by Monday night.

I blame Hogboom entirely for what happened. He started it when he
insisted that he be smuggled into the chapel to hear his own funeral
orations. We argued half the Monday night with him, but it was no use.
He simply demanded it. If all dead men are as disagreeable as Hogboom
was, no undertaker's job for me. He was the limit. He put on a blue
bath-robe and got as far as the door on his promenade downtown before we
gave in and promised to do anything he wanted. We had to break into the
chapel and stow him away in a little grilled alcove in the attic on the
side of the auditorium where he could hear everything. Sounds
uncomfortable, but don't imagine it was. That nervy slavedriver made us
lug over two dozen sofa pillows, a rug or two, a bottle of moisture and
three pies to while away the time with. That was where we first began to
think of revenge. We got it, too--only we got it the way Samson did when
he jerked the columns out from under the roof and furnished the material
for a general funeral, with himself in the leading role.

By the time we got Hogboom planted in his luxurious nest, about three
A. M., we were ready to do anything. Some of us were for giving the
whole snap away, but Pierce and Perkins and Rogers objected. They wanted
to deliver their speeches at the meeting. If we would leave it to them,
they said, they would see that justice was ladled out.

The whole college and most of the town were at the memorial meeting. It
was a grand and tear-spangled occasion. There were three grades of
emotion plainly visible. There was the resigned and almost pleased
expression of the students who weren't in on the deal and who saw a
vacation looming up for that afternoon; the grieved