ered. "What if the spirit of good fellowship linked arms
with him when lessons were waiting, and led him to the pool hall? He may
have been dilatory in his college duties; he may have wasted his
allowance on billiards instead of in missionary contributions. He may
have owed money--yes, a lot of money. He may, indeed, have been a
little selfish--which one of us isn't? He may have frittered away time
for which his parents were spending the fruit of their early toil--but
youth, friends, is a golden age when life runs riot, and he is only half
a man who stops to think of petty prudence."

That was all very well to say about Rameses or Julius Caesar or some
other deceased who is pretty well seasoned, but I'll tell you it made
the college gasp, coming when it did. It sounded sacrilegious and to me
it sounded as if some one who was noted as an orator was going to get
thumped by the late Mr. Hogboom about the next day. I perspired a lot
from nervousness as Pierce rumbled on, first praising the departed and
then landing on him with both oratorical feet. When he finally sat down
and mopped his forehead the whole school gave one of those long breaths
that you let go of when you have just come up from a dive under cold
water.

Rogers followed Pierce. Rogers wasn't much of a talker, but he surpassed
even his own record that day in falling over himself. When he tried to
illustrate how thoughtful and generous Hogboom was he blundered into the
story of the time Hoggy bet all of his money on a baseball game at
Muggledorfer, and of how he walked home with his chum and carried the
latter's coat and grip all the way. That made the Faculty wriggle, I can
tell you. He illustrated the pluck of the deceased by telling how
Hogboom, as a Freshman, dug all night alone to rescue a man imprisoned
in a sewer, spurred on by his cries--though Rogers explained in his
halting way, it afterward turned out that this was only the famous
"sewer racket" which is worked on every green Freshman, and that the
cries for help came from a Sophomore who was alternately smoking a pipe
and yelling into a drain across the road. Still, Rogers said, it
illustrated Hogboom's nobility of spirit. In his blundering fashion he
went on to explain some more of Hoggy's good points, and by the time he
sat down there wasn't a shred of the latter's reputation left intact.
The whole school was grinning uncomfortably, and the Faculty was acting
as if it was sitting, individually an