en a
nine-foot sign and carried it down Main Street, interfering with
pedestrians, when there was a perfectly good alley which ought to be
used for such purposes. Then he would warn the culprit that the next
time he was caught lugging off a billboard or a wooden platform or a
corncrib he would be compelled to put it back again before he got
breakfast; after which he would tell him to go along and try studying
for a change, and the Freshman would go back to college and join the
hero brigade. It was a mighty meek man in Siwash who couldn't get
arrested those days. Even the hymn singers at the Y. M. C. A. had
criminal records. It got so, finally, that whenever we had a nightshirt
parade in honor of any little college victory the line of march would
lead right through the police station. We knew what was coming and would
save the cops the trouble of hauling us over in the hustle wagon.

Take it all in all, it was about as much fun to be regulated as it was
to run the town. But one night Squire Jennings put his other foot into
the grave and died entirely; and before any of us realized what was
happening a special election had been held and Malachi Scroggs had been
elected police magistrate.

Malachi Scroggs was a triple extract of grouch who lived on the north
side two miles away from college in a big white house with one of those
old-fashioned dog-house affairs on top of it. He was an acrimonious
quarrel all by himself. Sunlight soured when it struck him. I have seen
a fox terrier who had been lying perfectly happy on the sidewalk, get up
after Scroggs had passed him and go over and bite an automobile tire. He
lived on gloom and law-suits and the last time he smiled was 1878--that
was when a small boy fell nineteen feet out of a tree while robbing his
orchard, and the doctor said he would never be able to rob any more
orchards.

This was the kind of mental astringent Malachi was. Naturally, he loved
the gay and happy little college boys. Oh, how he loved us! He had
complained to the police regularly during each celebration for twenty
years and he had expressed the opinion, publicly, that a college boy was
a cross between a hyena and a grasshopper with a fog-horn attachment
thrown in free of charge. He wasn't a college man himself, you
see--never could find one where the students didn't use slang, probably,
and he just naturally didn't understand us at all. Of course, we didn't
mind that. It's no credit to carry an interl