il, Prexy
took Miss Avery to a baseball game, somewhat against her will, solely
that she might see how his students worshiped him. On the following
Saturday, all with even-handed liberality, he took Miss Weyland to
another baseball game, with the same delightful purpose.

The spring found West stronger and more contented with his lot as
president of a jerkwater college, decidedly happier for the burning out
of the fires of hot ambition which had consumed his soul six months
earlier. He told himself that he was reconciled to a slow advance with
fighting every inch of the way. But he saw the uselessness of fighting
trustees who were doomed soon to fall, and resigned himself to a quiet,
in fact a temporarily suspended, programme of progress. And then, just
when everything seemed most comfortably serene, a new straw suddenly
appeared in the wind, which quickly multiplied into a bundle and then a
bale, and all at once the camel's back had more than it could bear.
April was hardly dead before the college world was in a turmoil, by the
side of which the Young affair was the mere buzzing of a gnat.

History is full of incidents of the kind: incidents which are trifling
beyond mention in the beginning, but which malign circumstance distorts
and magnifies till they set nations daggers-drawn at each other's
throats. Two students lured a "freshman" to their room and there invited
him to drink a marvelous compound the beginnings of which were fat pork
and olive oil; this while standing on his head. The freshman did not
feel in a position to deny their request. But his was a delicate
stomach, and the result of his accommodating spirit was that he became
violently, though not seriously, ill. Thus the matter came to the
attention of his parents, and so to the college authorities. The sick
lad stoutly declined to tell who were his persecutors, but West managed
to track one of them down and summoned him to his office. We may call
this student Brown; a pleasant-mannered youth of excellent family, whose
sister West sometimes danced with at the Thursday German. Brown said
that he had, indeed, been present during the sad affair, that he had, in
fact, to his eternal humiliation and regret, aided and abetted it; but
he delicately hinted that the prime responsibility rested on the
shoulders of the other student. Rather unwisely, perhaps, West pressed
him to disclose the name of his collaborator. (Brown afterwards, to
square himself with the st