perhaps one exception, when,
through the cracks in the floor from the room of a frugal freshman who
boarded himself, came the overwhelming stench of cooking onions, and a
wag brother who was quoting scripture to the Lord in prayer, suddenly
opened his eyes, and sniffing the unctuous odors, shouted: "Brethren,
let us now sing 'From whence doth this onion (union) arise?'" and
roars of laughter would put an end to the solemn farce.

Within the dismal college dormitories were herded a few hundred
youths, entirely free from all moral and social restraints, abandoned
to all orgies into which many characters in the formative state are
most likely to drift. I frequently saw a professing Christian teacher
torture with biting sarcasm his brother church-member, who had done
his best, though he failed to grasp some intricate mathematical
problem, until the poor fellow abandoned the college in despair.

Is it strange that I and many others lost all faith in a religion that
brought forth such bitter fruit? When I strayed from the lifeless
dulness of the college church into the light and warmth of the
"liberal sanctuary," where the old man eloquently discoursed of
the ascent instead of the descent of man, and pictured the sublime
development of the race by heroic endeavor from the animal to the
archangel; when this good man welcomed us warmly as brothers to his
hearth and home and loaned me his silken surplice to cover my seedy
clothes when I delivered my orations at the class exhibitions, is
it strange that I embrace his Darwinian theory instead of the
mythological story of the fall of man tempted by a snake in the garden
of Eden?

I usually preached on Sundays, during my four years' course, in
the pulpits of the surrounding towns, but it was not of the total
depravity nor flaming brimstone; far grander themes engrossed my
thoughts and speech; the true heroism of keeping ourselves unspotted
from the world, the sublime possibilities of our natures if we would
walk in the footsteps of the only perfect One ever seen on earth.

By trimming the midnight lamp and ruining my eyes, I won a scholarship
which paid my tuition fees and room rent, so that I was released from
the necessity of drawing on the hard-earned savings of my father. The
usual college pranks were played, tubs of water were poured from
upper windows upon the heads of freshmen who insisted upon wearing
stove-pipe hats and the forbidden canes; we tore each others' clothes