dergraduates according to the sentiment of their moods.
Now, far down the shadowy line of University Place a white-clad phalanx
broke the gloom, and marching figures, white-shirted, white-trousered,
swung rhythmically up the street, with linked arms and heads thrown
back:
"Going back--going back,
Going--back--to--Nas-sau--Hall,
Going back--going back--
To the--Best--Old--Place--of--All.
Going back--going back,
From all--this--earth-ly--ball,
We'll--clear--the--track--as--we--go--back--
Going--back--to--Nas-sau--Hall!"
Amory closed his eyes as the ghostly procession drew near. The song
soared so high that all dropped out except the tenors, who bore the
melody triumphantly past the danger-point and relinquished it to the
fantastic chorus. Then Amory opened his eyes, half afraid that sight
would spoil the rich illusion of harmony.
He sighed eagerly. There at the head of the white platoon marched
Allenby, the football captain, slim and defiant, as if aware that this
year the hopes of the college rested on him, that his hundred-and-sixty
pounds were expected to dodge to victory through the heavy blue and
crimson lines.
Fascinated, Amory watched each rank of linked arms as it came abreast,
the faces indistinct above the polo shirts, the voices blent in a paean
of triumph--and then the procession passed through shadowy Campbell
Arch, and the voices grew fainter as it wound eastward over the campus.
The minutes passed and Amory sat there very quietly. He regretted the
rule that would forbid freshmen to be outdoors after curfew, for he
wanted to ramble through the shadowy scented lanes, where Witherspoon
brooded like a dark mother over Whig and Clio, her Attic children, where
the black Gothic snake of Little curled down to Cuyler and Patton, these
in turn flinging the mystery out over the placid slope rolling to the
lake.
*****
Princeton of the daytime filtered slowly into his consciousness--West
and Reunion, redolent of the sixties, Seventy-nine Hall, brick-red and
arrogant, Upper and Lower Pyne, aristocratic Elizabethan ladies not
quite content to live among shopkeepers, and, topping all, climbing with
clear blue aspiration, the great dreaming spires of Holder and Cleveland
towers.
From the first he loved Princeton--its lazy beauty, its half-grasped
significance, the wild moonlight revel of the rushes, the handsome,
prosperous big-game crowds, and under it all th
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