ested,
there were never any thirty-day complications or anything of the sort.
Two classes would meet on the main street and muss each other up. The
police would arrest nine or ten of the ringleaders. The next morning the
prisoners would appear before Squire Jennings, who climbed up on the old
college building with his class flag in '54 and kept a rival class away
by tearing down the chimney and throwing the bricks at them. Naturally,
nothing very deadly happened. The good old fellow would lecture the
crowd and let them off with a stern warning. Maybe two or three Seniors
would come home late at night from their frat hall and take a wooden
Indian cigar sign along with them just for company. One of those Indians
is such a steady sort of a chap to have along late at night. Of course,
they would be arrested by old Hank Anderson on the courthouse beat, but
it wasn't anything serious. They would telephone Frank Hinckley, who was
editor of the city daily, and just convalescing from four years of
college life himself, and he would come down and bail them out, and
Squire Jennings would kick them out of court next morning. Frank was the
patron saint of the students for years when it came to bail. He used to
say he had all the fun of being a doctor and getting called out nights
without having to try to collect any fees. Frank was no Croesus those
days and I've seen him go bail for fifteen students at one hundred
dollars apiece, when his total assets amounted to a dress suit, three
hundred and forty-five photographs and his next week's salary.

By the time I had come to college, getting arrested had gotten to be a
regular formality. A Freshman would go up Main Street at night, trying
to hide a nine-foot board sign under his spring overcoat. Halvor
Skoogerson, a pale-eyed guardian of the peace, who was studying up to be
a naturalized, would arrest him for theft, riot, disorderly conduct,
suspicious appearance and intoxication, not understanding why any sober
man would want to carry a young lumber-yard home under his coat at
night. The prisoner would telephone for Hinckley, who would crawl out of
bed, come downtown cussing, and bail away in sleepy tones. The next
morning the freshie would go up before Squire Jennings, who would ask
him in awful accents if he realized that the state penitentiary was only
four hours away by fast train, and that many a man was boarding there
who would blush to be seen in the company of a man who had stol