several of the more important functions. From
the gallery of Memorial Hall Vandover and his father saw some of the
great dinners; they went up to New London for the boat-race; they gained
admittance to the historic Yard on Class-day, and saw the strange
football rush for flowers around the "Tree." They heard the seniors sing
"Fair Harvard" for the last time, and later saw them receive their
diplomas at Sander's Theatre.

The great ceremonies of the place, the picturesqueness of the elm-shaded
Yard, the old red dormitories covered with ivy, the associations and
traditions of the buildings, the venerable pump, Longfellow's room, the
lecture hall where the minute-men had barracked, all of these things, in
the end, appealed strongly to Vandover's imagination. Instead of passing
the summer months in an ocean voyage and a continental journey, he at
last became content to settle down to work under a tutor, "boning up"
for the examinations. His father returned to San Francisco in July.

Vandover matriculated the September of the same year; on the first of
October he signed the college rolls and became a Harvard freshman. At
that time he was eighteen years old.

Chapter Two

There was little of the stubborn or unyielding about Vandover, his
personality was not strong, his nature pliable and he rearranged himself
to suit his new environment at Harvard very rapidly. Before the end of
the first semester he had become to all outward appearances a typical
Harvardian. He wore corduroy vests and a gray felt hat, the brim turned
down over his eyes. He smoked a pipe and bought himself a brindled
bull-terrier. He cut his lectures as often as he dared, "ragged" signs
and barber-poles, and was in continual evidence about Foster's and among
Leavitt and Pierce's billiard-tables. When the great football games came
off he worked himself into a frenzy of excitement over them and even
tried to make several of his class teams, though without success.

He chummed with Charlie Geary and with young Dolliver Haight, the two
San Francisco boys. The three were continually together. They took the
same courses, dined at the same table in Memorial Hall and would have
shared the same room if it had been possible. Vandover and Charlie Geary
were fortunate enough to get a room in Matthew's on the lower floor
looking out upon the Yard; young Haight was obliged to put up with an
outside room in a boarding house.

Vandover had grown up with these f