hmen ought to wear stove-pipe hats. Those hats
were the seed of great trouble.

'Stove-pipe hats!' I said thoughtfully.

'They're a good protection,' he assured me.

It seemed a very reasonable, not to say a necessary precaution. A man
has to be young and innocent sometime or what would become of the Devil.
I did not see that the stove-pipe hat was the red rag of insurrection
and, when I did see it' I was up to my neck in the matter.

You see the Sophs are apt to be very nasty that day,' he continued.

I acknowledged they were quite capable of it.

'And they don't care where they hit,' he went on.

I felt of my head that was still sore, from a forceful argument of the
preceding day, and admitted there was good ground for the assertion.

When I met my classmen, that afternoon, I was an advocate of the
'stove-pipe' as a means of protection. There were a number of husky
fellows, in my class, who saw its resisting power and seconded my
suggestion. We decided to leave it to the ladies of the class and they
greeted our plan with applause. So, that morning, we arrayed ourselves
in high hats, heavy canes and fine linen, marching together up College
Hill. We had hardly entered the gate before we saw the Sophs forming
in a thick rank outside the door prepared, as we took it, to resist our
entrance. They out-numbered us and were, in the main, heavier but we
had a foot or more of good stiff material between each head and harm. Of
just what befell us, when we got to the enemy, I have never felt sure.
Of the total inefficiency of the stove-pipe hat as an article of armour,
I have never had the slightest doubt since then. There was a great flash
and rattle of canes. Then the air was full of us. In the heat of it all
prudence went to the winds. We hit out right and left, on both sides,
smashing hats and bruising heads and hands. The canes went down in a
jiffy and then we closed with each other hip and thigh. Collars were
ripped off, coats were torn, shirts were gory from the blood of noses,
and in this condition the most of us were rolling and tumbling on the
ground. I had flung a man, heavily, and broke away and was tackling
another when I heard a hush in the tumult and then the voice of the
president. He stood on the high steps, his grey head bare, his right
hand lifted. It must have looked like carnage from where he stood.

'Young gentlemen!' he called. 'Cease, I command you. If we cannot get
along without this thing we wil