ter all, there is no question at college more serious than the Pa
question, anyway, Bill. It was always butting into our youthful
ambitions and tying pig iron to our coat-tails when we wanted to soar.
It's simply marvelous how hard it is to educate a Pa a hundred miles or
more away into the supreme importance of certain college necessities. It
isn't because they forget, either. It's because they don't realize that
the world is roaring along.

I can see it all since this morning. Take my father, for instance.
There was no more generous or liberal a Pa up to a certain point. He
wanted me to have a comfortable room and vast quantities of good food,
and he was glad to pay literary society dues, and he would stand for
frat dues; but when it came to paying cab hire, you could jam an
appropriation for a post-office in an enemy's district past Joe Cannon
in Congress more easily than you could put a carriage bill through him.
He just said "no" in nine languages; said that when he went to
Siwash--"and it turned out good men then, too, young fellow"--the girls
were glad to walk to entertainments through the mud; and when it was
unusually muddy they weren't averse to being carried a short distance. I
believe I would have had to lead disgusted co-eds to parties on foot
through my whole college course if I hadn't happened across an old
college picture of father in a two-gallon plug hat. That gave me an
idea. I put in a bill for a plug hat twice a year and he paid it without
a murmur. Then I paid my carriage bills with the money. Plug hats had
been the peculiar form of insanity prevalent at Siwash in his day and he
thought they were still part of the course of study.

I got along much easier than many of the boys, too. Allie Bangs' Pa made
him buy all his clothes at home, for fear he'd get to looking like some
of the cartoons he'd seen in the funny papers. "Prince" Hogboom was a
wonder of a fullback, and his favorite amusement was to get out at night
and try to pull gas lamps up by the roots. He was a natural born holy
terror, but his father thought he was fitted by nature to be a
missionary, and so Hoggie had to harness himself up in meek and
long-suffering clothes and attend Bible-study class twice a week. The
crimes he committed by way of relieving himself after each class were
shocking. Then there was Petey Simmons, who was a perpetual sunbeam and
greatly beloved because it was so easy to catch happiness from him. And
yet Petey w