rty; and what with teaching them the rudiments of waltzing and giving
them pointers on lawn ties; or how to charter a good seaworthy hack in
case the girl lived on an unpaved street; and bracing up the fellows who
had drawn blanks, and going to call on the blanks we had drawn and
getting gloriously snubbed--give me a wall-flower for thorns!--well, it
was no cinch to run a class party. But they were grand affairs, just the
same, and promoted true fellowship, besides furnishing amusement for the
whole college in the off season. And, besides, I always remember them
with gratitude for what they did to Frankling.

You know there are two kinds of fussers in college. There is the chap
like Petey Simmons, for instance, whose heart was a directory of Siwash
girls; and there is the fellow who grabs one girl and stakes out claim
boards all around her for the whole four years. That was Frankling's
style. He was what we always called a married man. He and Pauline
Spencer were the closest corporation in college. They entered school in
the same class, and he called on her every Friday night at Browning Hall
and took her to every party and lecture and entertainment for the next
three and a half years--except, of course, the class parties. It was one
of our chief delights to watch Frankling grind his teeth when some
lowbrow--as he called them--drew her name. She always had rotten
luck--you never saw such luck! Once Ettleson drew her. He was a tall,
silent farmer, who wore boots and a look of gloom; and he marched her
through a mile of mud to the hall without saying a word, handed her to
the reception committee and went over to a corner, where he sat all
evening. But that wasn't so bad as the Junior she drew. His name was
Slaughter. His father had a dairy at the edge of Jonesville and
Slaughter decided that, as the night was cold and rainy, a carriage
would be appropriate. So he scrubbed up the milk wagon thoroughly, put a
lot of nice, clean straw on the floor, hung a lantern from the top for
heat and drove her down to the party in state. She was game and didn't
make a murmur, but Frankling made a pale-gray ass of himself. As I said,
I never liked Frankling. He had a nasty, sneering way of looking at the
whole school, except his own crowd. His father owned the locomotive
works and he always went to Europe for his summers. He was one of those
unnecessary individuals who are solemnly convinced that if you don't do
things just as they do som