Ramsey Milholland.............................................................................................................................................1

Booth Tarkington .....................................................................................................................................1

The old man and the little boy, his grandson, sat together in the shade of the big walnut tree in the front yard,

watching the "Decoration Day Parade," as it passed up the long street; and when the last of the veterans was

out of sight the grandfather murmured the words of the tune that came drifting back from the now distant

"Yes, we'll all feel gay when Johnnie comes marching home again," he finished, with a musing chuckle.

"It didn't get home all at once, precisely," the grandfather explained. "When the war was over I suppose we

"Well, weren't you ever scared yourself, Grandpa? I mean when you were in a battle."

"'Course not! Grandpa, why don't you march in the Decoration Day Parade? Wouldn't they let you?"

"I'm not able to march any more. Too short of breath and too shaky in the legs and too blind."

"I wouldn't care," said the boy. "I'd be in the parade anyway, if I was you. They had some sittin' in carriages,

'way at the tail end; but I wouldn't like that. If I'd been in your place, Grandpa, and they'd let me be in that

parade, I'd been right up by the band. Look, Grandpa! Watch me, Grandpa! This is the way I'd be, Grandpa."

He rose from the garden bench where they sat, and gave a complex imitation of what had most appealed to

him as the grandeurs of the procession, his prancing legs simulating those of the horse of the grand marshal,

while his upper parts rendered the drums and bugles of the band, as well as the officers and privates of the

militia company which had been a feature of the parade. The only thing he left out was the detachment of

"Puttyboom! Puttyboom! Puttyboomboomboom!" he vociferated, as the drumsand then as the

bugles: "Ta, ta, ra, tara!" He addressed his restive legs: "~Whoa~, there, you Whitey! Gee! Haw! Git up!"

Then, waving an imaginary sword: "Collumn right! Farwud ~March!~ Halt! Carry ~harms!~ He "carried

"That'd be me, Grandpa. That's the way I'd do." And as the grandfather nodded, seeming to agree, a thought

recently dismissed returned to the mind of the composite procession and he asked:

"Well, ~why~ weren't you ever afraid the Rebels would whip the Unions, Grandpa?"

"I guess so." The little boy laughed disdainfully, thinking his question satisfactorily asnwered. "I guess those

ole Rebels couldn't whipped a flea! They didn't know how to fight any at all, did they, Grandpa?"

"What?" The boy was astounded. "Weren't they all just reg'lar ole cowards, Grandpa?"

"They were? Well, they ran away whenever you began shootin' at 'em, didn't they?"

"Sometimes they did, but most times they didn't. Sometimes they fought like wildcatsand sometimes we

The boy's forehead, customarily vacant, showed some little vertical shadows, produced by a struggle to think.

"Listen! Well, you saidyou said you never got scared the ole Rebels were goin' to win."

"They did win pretty often," said the grandfather. "They won a good many battles."

"Well, but if they were good men and fought like wildcats, Grandpa, and kep' winning battles and everything,

The grandfather's feeble eyes twinkled brightly. "Why, we ~knew~ they couldn't, Ramsey."

At this, the little vertical shadows on Ramsey's forehead became more pronounced, for he had succeeded in

thinking. "Well, ~they~ didn't know they couldn't, did they?" he argued. "They thought they were goin' to

"Yes, I guess they did. Up till toward the last, I suppose they probably did. But you see they were wrong."

"Well, but" Ramsey struggled. "Listen! Listen here, Grandpa! Well, anyway, if they never got scared

But Ramsey found himself unable to continue his concentration; he slumped down upon the small of his

back, and his brow relaxed to its more comfortable placidity, while his eyes wandered with a new butterfly

fluttering over the irises that bordered the iron picket fence at the south side of the yard. "Oh, nothin' much,"

"I see." And his grandfather laughed again. "You mean: If the Rebels felt just as sure of winning the war as

we did, and kept winning battles why shouldn't we ever have had any doubts that we were going to win?

"I see," said Ramsey. "The Rebels knew they were on the side of the Devil." But at this, the grandfather's

laugh was louder than it had been before, and Ramsey looked hurt. "Well, you can laugh if you want to!" he

objected in an aggrieved voice. "Anyway, the Sunday school sup'intendent told us when people knew they

"I dare say, I dare say," the old man interrupted, a little impatiently. "But in this world mighty few people

think they're on the Devil's side, Ramsey. There was a Frenchman once, in olden times; he said people were

crazy because, though they couldn't even make worms, they believed they could make gods. And so

whenever countries or parts of a country get into a war, each side makes a god and a devil, and says: "God's

on our side and the Devil's on the other." The South thought the Devil was on our side, you see."

"Yes, it seems so; but Abraham Lincoln wasn't mixed up about it. When some people told him that God was

on our side, he said the important thing was to find out if we were on God's side. That was the whole

question, you see; because either side could make up a god, the kind of a god they liked and wanted; and then

they'd believe in him, too, and fight for himbut if he was only a madeup god they'd lose. President

Lincoln didn't want to have a madeup god on his side; he wanted to find God Himself and find out what he

"No?" Then suppose you look at it this way: The South was fighting for what it believed to be its rights, but

we weren't fighting for our rights; we were fighting for the right. The South was fighting for what it believed

to be its right to split the Union and be a country by itself; but we were fighting for 'Liberty and Union, now

and forever, one and inseparable.' It wasn't only the Union we fought for; it was Freedom. The South wanted

freedom to leave the Union; but the reason the South wanted that freedom to separate from us was because

~we~ wanted the Freedom of Man. ~There's~ the reason we had the certain knowledge that we were going to

Ramsey didn't think so. He had begun to feel bored by the conversation, and to undergo the oppression he

usually suffered in school; yet he took a little interest in the inexplicable increase of fervour with which his

grandfather spoke, and in a shoot of sunshine which somehow got through the foliage of the walnut tree and

made a bedazzlement of glinting fine lines in one spot, about the size of a saucer, upon the old man's head of

thick white hair. Half closing his eyes, drowsily, Ramsey played that this sunshine spot was a white

bird'snext and, and he had a momentary half dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue

soldier cap on its head. The earnest old voice of the veteran was only a sound in the boy's ears.

"Yes, it's simple and plain enough now, though then we didn't often think of it in exactly this way, but just

went on fighting and never doubted. We knew the struggle and suffering of our fathers and grandfathers to

make a great country here for Freedom, and we knew that all this wasn't just the whim of a foolish god,

willing to waste such great thingswe knew that such a country couldn't have been building up just to be

wasted. But, more than that, we knew that armies fighting for the Freedom of Man ~had~ to win, in the long

"We didn't set out to free the slaves, so far as we knew. Yet our being against slavery was what made the war,

and we had the consciousness that we were on the side of God's plan, because His plan is clearly the Freedom

of Man. Long ago we began to see the hints of His plana little like the way you can see what's coming in

August from what happens in April. but man has to win his freedom from himselfmen in the light have to

fight against men in the dark of their own shadow. That light is the answer; we had the light that made us

"Boom" The veterans had begun to fire their cannon on the crest of the low hill, out at the cemetery; and

from a little way down the street came the ratatat of a toy drum and sounds of a fife played execrably. A

file of children in cocked hats made of newspapers came marching importantly up the sidewalk under the

maple shade trees; and in advance, upon a velocipede, rode a tinsworded personage, shrieking incessant

commands but not concerning himself with whether or not any military obedience was thereby obtained.

Here was a revivifying effect upon young Ramsey; his sluggard eyelids opened electrically; he leaped to his

feet and, abandoning his grandfather without preface or apology, sped across the lawn and out of the gate,

"You get off that 'locipede, Wesley Bender!" he bellowed. "You gimme that sword! What rights you got to go

bein' captain o' my army, I'd like to know! Who got up this army, in the first place, I'd like to know! I did,

myself yesterd'y afternoon, and you get back in line or I won't let you b'long to it at all!"

The pretender succumbed; he instantly dismounted, being outshouted and overawed. On foot he took his

place in the ranks, while Ramsey became sternly vociferous. "Intention, company! Farwud ~march~!

The Army went trudging away under the continuous but unheed fire of orders, and presently disappeared

round a corner, leaving the veteran chuckling feebly under his walnut tree and alone with the empty street.

All trace of what he had said seemed to have been wiped from the grandson's mind; but memory has curious

ways. Ramsey had understood not a fifth nor a tenth of his grandfather's talk, and already he had "forgotten"

all of ityet not only were there many, many times in the boy's later life when, without ascertainable cause,

he would remember the sunlight falling upon the old man's white head, to make that semblance of a glittering

bird'snest there, but with the picture came recollections of words and sentences spoken by the grandfather,

though the listener, halfdrowsily, had heard but the sound of an old, earnest voiceand even the veteran's

meaning finally took on a greater definiteness till it became, in the grandson's thoughts, something clear and

bright and beautiful that he knew without being just sure where or how he had learned it.

Ramsey Milholland sat miserably in school, his conscious being consisting principally of a dull hate. Torpor

was a little dispersed during a fifteenminute interval of "Music," when he and all the other pupils in the

large room of the "Five B. Grade" sang repeated fractions of what they enunciated as "The Star

Spanguhhulled Banner"; but afterward he relapsed into the low spirits and animosity natural to anybody

during enforced confinement under instruction. No alleviation was accomplished by an invader's temporary

usurpation of the teacher's platform, a brisk and unsympathetically cheerful young woman mounting thereon

For a long time mathematics and German had been about equally repulsive to Ramsey, who found himself

daily in the compulsory presence of both; but he was gradually coming to regard German with the greater

horror, because, after months of patient mental resistance, he at last began to comprehend that the German

language has sixteen special and particular ways of using the German article corresponding to that flexible bit

of a word so easily managed English~the~. What in the world was the use of having sixteen ways of doing

a thing that could just as well be done in one? If the Germans had contented themselves with insisting upon

sixteen useless variations for infrequent words, such as ~hippopotamus~, for instance, Ramsey might have

thought the affair unreasonable but not necessarily viciousit would be easy enough to avoid talking about a

hippopotamus if he ever had to go to Germany. But the fact that the Germans picked out ~a~ and ~the~ and

many other little words in use all the time, and gave every one of them sixteen forms, and expected Ramsey

Milholland to learn this dizzying uselessness down to the last crotchety detail, with "When to employ Which"

as a nausea to prepare for the final convulsion when one ~didn't~ use Which, because it was an

"Exception"there was a fashion of making easy matters hard that was merely hellish.

The teacher was strict but enthusiastic; she told the children, over and over, that German was a beautiful

language, and her face always had a glow when she said this. At such times the children looked patient; they

supposed it must be so, because she was an adult and their teacher; and they believed her with the same

manner of believing which those of them who went to Sundayschool used there when the Sundayschool

teachers were pushed into explanations of various matters set forth in the Old Testament, or gave reckless

descriptions of heaven. That is to say, the children did not challenge or deny; already they had been driven

into habits of resignation and were passing out of the age when childhood is able to reject adult nonsense.

Thus, to Ramsey Milholland, the German language seemed to be a collection of perverse inventions for

undeserved torment; it was full of revolting surprises in the way of genders; vocally it often necessitated the

employment of noises suggestive of an incompletely mastered knowledge of etiquette; and far inside him

there was something faintly but constantly antagonistic to ityet, when the teacher declared that German

was incomparably the most beautiful language in the world, one of the many facets of his mind submissively

absorbed the statement as light to be passed inward; it was part of the lesson to be learned. He did not know

whether the English language was beautiful or not; he never thought about that, and no one ever said anything

to him about it. Moreover, though his deeper inward hated "German," he liked his German teacher, and it was

Sometimes, too, there were moments of relaxation in her class, when she would stop the lesson and tell the

children about Germany: what a beautiful, good country it was, so trim and orderly, with such pleasant

customs, and all the people sensible and energetic and healthy. There was "Music" again in the German class,

which was another alleviation; though it was the same old "Star Spangled Banner" over again. Ramsey was

tired of the song and tired of "My Country 'Tis of Thee"; they were bores, but it was amusing to sing them in

German. In German they sounded "sort o' funny," so he didn't mind this bit of the day's work.

Half an hour later there arrived his supreme trial of this particular morning. Arithmetic then being the order of

business before the house, he was sent alone to the blackboard, supposedly to make lucid the proper reply to a

fatal conundrum in decimals, and under the glare and focus of the whole room he breathed heavily and itched

everywhere; his brain at once became sheer hash. He consumed as much time as possible in getting the terms

of the problem stated in chalk; then, affecting to be critical of his own handiwork, erased what he had done

and carefully wrote it again. After that, he erased half of it, slowly retraced the figures, and stepped back as if

to see whether perspective improved their appearance. Again he lifted the eraser.

Sharply bidden to get forward with his task, he explained in a feeble voice that he had first to tie a shoe string

and stooped to do so, but was not permitted. Miss Ridgely tried to stimulate him with hints and suggestion;

found him, so far as decimals went, mere protoplasm, and, wondering how so helpless a thing could live,

summoned to the board little Dora Yocum, the star of the class, whereupon Ramsey moved toward his seat.

"Stand still, Ramsey! You stay right where you are and try to learn something from the way Dora does it."

The class giggled, and Ramsey stood, but learned nothing. His conspicuousness was unendurable, because all

of his schoolmates naturally found more entertainment in watching him than in following the performance of

the capable Dora. He put his hands in and out of his pockets; was bidden to hold them still, also not to shuffle

his feet; and when in a false assumption of ease he would have scratched his head Miss Ridgely's severity

Instructed to watch every figure chalked up by the mathematical wonder, his eyes, grown sodden, were

unable to remove themselves from the part in her hair at the back of her head, where two little braids began

their separate careers to end in a couple of blueandred checked bits of ribbon, one upon each of her thin

shoulder blades. He was conscious that the part in Dora's shining brown hair was odious, but he was

unconscious of anything arithmetical. His sensations clogged his intellect; he suffered from unsought

notoriety, and hated Dora Yocum; most of all he hated her busy little shoulder blades.

He had to be "kept in" after school; and when he was allowed to go home he averted his eyes as he went by

the house where Dora lived. She was out in the yard, eating a doughnut, and he knew it; but he had passed the

age when it is just as permissible to throw a rock at a girl as at a boy; and stifling his normal inclinations, he

walked sturdily on, though he indulged himself so far as to engage in a murmured conversation with one of

the familiar spirits dwelling somewhere within him. "Pfa!" said Ramsey to himselfor himself to Ramsey,

since it is difficult to say which was which. "Pfa! Thinks she's smart, don't she?"... "Well, I guess she does,

but she ain't!" ... "I hate her, don't you?"... "You bet your life I hate her!"... "Teacher's Pet, that's what ~I~ call

her!"... "Well, that's what ~I~ call her, too, don't I?" "Well, ~I~ do; that's all she is, anyway dirty ole

He had not forgiven her four years later when he entered high school in her company, for somehow Ramsey

managed to shovel his way through examinations and stayed with the class. By this time he had a long

accumulation of reasons for hating her: Dora's persistent and increasing competency was not short of

flamboyant, and teachers naturally got the habit of flinging their quickest pupil in the face of their slowest

and "dumbest." Nevertheless, Ramsey was unable to deny that she had become less awful lookin' than she

used to be. At least, he was honest enough to make a partial retraction when his friend and classmate, Fred

Mitchell, insisted that an amelioration of Dora's appearance could be actually proven.

"Well, I'll take it back. I don't claim she's every last bit as awful lookin' as she always has been," said

Ramsey, toward the conclusion of the argument. "I'll say this for her, she's awful lookin', but she may not be

as awful lookin' as she was. She don't come to school with the edge of some of her underclo'es showin' below

her dress any more, about every other day, and her eyewinkers have got to stickin' out some, and she may not

be so abbasa~loot~ly skinny, but she'll haf to wait a mighty long while before ~I~ want to look at her without

The implication that Miss Yocum cared to have Ramsey look at her, either with or without gettin' sick, was

mere rhetoric, and recognized as such by the producer of it; she had never given the slightest evidence of any

desire that his gaze be bent upon her. What truth lay underneath his flourish rested upon the fact that he could

not look at her without some symptoms of the sort he had tersely sketched to his friend; and yet, so pungent is

the fascination of selfinflicted misery, he did look at her, during periods of study, often for three or four

minutes at a stretch. His expression at such times indeed resembled that of one who has dined unwisely; but

Dora Yocum was always too eagerly busy to notice it. He was almost never in her eye, but she was

continually in his; moreover, as the banner pupil she was with hourly frequency an exhibit before the whole

Ramsey found her worst of all when her turn came in "Declamation," on Friday afternoons. When she

ascended the platform, bobbed a little preliminary bow and began, "Listen, my children, and you shall hear,"

Ramsey included Paul Revere and the Old North Church and the whole Revolutionary War in his antipathy,

since they somehow appeared to be the property of the Teacher's Pet. For Dora held this post in

"Declamation" as well as in everything else; here, as elsewhere, the hateful child's prowess surpassed that of

all others; and the teacher always entrusted her with the rendition of the "patriotic selections": Dora seemed

"The fate of a nation was riding that night; And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight, Kindled the

Ramsey himself was in the same section of declaimers, and performed nexta ghastly contrast. He gave a

"selection from Shakespeare," assigned by the teacher; and he began this continuous misfortune by stumbling

violently as he ascended the platform, which stimulated a general giggle already in being at the mere calling

of his name. All of the class were bright with happy anticipation, for the miserable Ramsey seldom failed

their hopes, particularly in "Declamation." He faced them, his complexion wan, his expression both baleful

and horrified; and he began in a loud, hurried voice, from which every hint of intelligence was excluded:

The teacher tapped sharply on her desk, and stopped him. "You've forgotten to bow," she said. "And don't say

"Most pottent potent grav and revenerd signers my very nobe and approve good masters that I have tan away

this sole man's dutter it is mose true true I have marry dur the very headman frun tuv my fending hath this

extent no more rude am I in speechin speechrude am I in speechin speechin speechin

He had stalled. Perhaps the fatal truth of that phrase, and some sense of its applicability to the occasion had

interfered with the mechanism which he had set in operation to get rid of the "recitation" for him. At all

events, the machine had to run off its job all at once, or it wouldn't run at all. Stopped, it stayed stopped, and

backing off granted no new impetus, though he tried, again and again. "Hath this extent no more rude am I in

speech" He gulped audibly. "Rude rude rude am Irude am I in speechin speechin speech. Rude am

"Yes," the irritated teacher said, as Ramsey's failing voice continued huskily to insist upon this point. "I think

you are!" And her nerves were a little soothed by the shout of laughter from the schoolit was never

difficult for teachers to be witty. "Go sit down, Ramsey, and do it after school."

His ears roaring, the unfortunate went to his seat, and, among all the hilarious faces, one stood outDora

Yocum's. Her laughter was precocious; it was that of a confirmed superior, insufferably adult she was

laughing at him as a grown person laughs at a child. Conspicuously and unmistakably, there was something

indulgent in her amusement. He choked. Here was a little squirt of a highschool girl who would trot up to

George Washington himself and show off around him, given the opportunity; and George Washington would

probably pat her on the head, or give her a medalor something. Well, let him! Ramsey didn't care. He

didn't care for George Washington, or Paul Revere, or Shakespeare, or any of 'em. They could all go to the

dickens with Dora Yocum. They were all a lot of smarties anyway and he hated the whole stew of 'em!

There was one, however, whom he somehow couldn't manage to hate, even though this one officially seemed

to be as intimately associated with Dora Yocum and superiority as the others were. Ramsey couldn't hate

Abraham Lincoln, even when Dora was chosen to deliver the "Gettysburg Address" on the twelfth of

February. Vaguely, yet reassuringly, Ramsey felt that Lincoln had resisted adoption by the intellectuals.

Lincoln had said "Government of the people, by the people, for the people," and that didn't mean government

by the teacher and the Teacher's Pet and Paul Revere and Shakespeare and suchlike; it meant government by

everybody, and therefore Ramsey had as much to do with it as anybody else had. This was friendly; and he

believed that if Abraham Lincoln could have walked into the schoolroom, Lincoln would have been as

friendly with him as with Dora and the teacher herself. Beyond a doubt, Dora and the teacher ~thought~

Lincoln belonged to them and their crowd of exclusives; they seemed to think they owned the whole United

He felt that it was just like this little Yocum snippet to assume such a thing, and it made him sicker than ever

Then, one day, he noticed that her eyewinkers were stickin' out farther and farther.

His discovery irritated him the more. Next thing, this ole Teacher's Pet would do she'd get to thinkin' she was

pretty! If ~that~ happened, well, nobody ~could~ stand her! The long lashes made her eyes shadowy, and it

was a fact that her shoulder blades ceased to insist upon notoriety; you couldn't tell where they were at all,

any more. Her back seemed to be just a regular back, not made up of a lot of implements like shoulder blades

A contemptible thing happened. Wesley Bender was well known to be the most untidy boy in the class and

had never shown any remorse for his reputation or made the slightest effort either to improve or to dispute it.

He was content: it failed to lower his standing with his fellows or to impress them unfavourably. In fact, he

was treated as one who has attained a slight distinction. At least, he owned one superlative, no matter what its

quality, and it lifted him out of the commonplace. It helped him to become better known, and boys liked to be

seen with him. But one day, there was a rearrangement of the seating in the schoolroom: Wesley Bender was

given a desk next in front of Dora Yocum's; and within a week the whole room knew that Wesley had begun

This was at the bottom of the fight between Ramsey Milholland and Wesley Bender, and the diplomatic

exchanges immediately preceding hostilities were charmingly frank and unhyprocitical, although quite as

mixedup and offtheissue as if they had been prepared by professional foreign office men. Ramsey and

Fred Mitchell and four other boys waylaid young Bender on the street after school, intending jocosities rather

than violence, but the victim proved sensitive. "You take your ole hands off o' me!" he said fiercely, as they

"Ole dirty Wes!" they hoarsely bellowed and squawked, in their changing voices. "Washes his ears!"...

"Washes his ~neck!~"... "Dora Yocum told his mama to turn the hose on him~"... "Yayho! Ole dirty Wes

Wesley broke from them and backed away, swinging his strapped books in a dangerous circle. "You keep

off!" he warned them. "I got as much right to my pers'nal appearance as anybody!"

This richly fed their humour, and they rioted round him, keeping outside the swinging books at the end of the

strap. "Pers'nal appearance!"... "Who went and bought it for you, Wes?"... "Nobody bought it for him. Dora

"You leave ladies' names alone!" cried the chivalrous Wesley. "You ought to know better, on the public

Here was a serious affront, at least to Ramsey Milholland's way of thinking; for Ramsey, also, now proved

sensitive. He quoted his friends"Shut up!"and advanced toward Wesley. "You look here! Who you

"Everybody!" Wesley hotly returned. "Everybody that hasn't got any more decency than to go around

mentioning ladies' names on the public streets. Everybody that goes around mentioning ladies' names on the

"They are, are they?" Ramsey as hotly demanded. "Well, you just look here a minute; my own father

mentions my mother's name on the public streets whenever he wants to, and you just try callin' my father a

"I'll put a new head on you," said Ramsey. "That's what I'll do, because anybody that calls my father or

"Oh, shut up! I wasn't talking about your ole father and mother. I said everybody that mentioned Dora

Yocum's name on the public streets was a pup, and I mean it! Everybody that mentions Dora Yocum's name

"Dora Yocum!" said Ramsey. "I got a perfect right to say it anywhere I want to. Dora Yocum, Dora Yocum,

Ramsey charged upon him and received a suffocating blow full in the face, not from Mr. Bender's fist but

from the solid bundle of books at the end of the strap. Ramsey saw eight or ten objectives instantly: there

were Wesley Benders standing full length in the air on top of other Wesley Benders, and more Wesley

Benders zigzagged out sideways from still other Wesley Benders; nevertheless, he found one of these and it

proved to be flesh. He engaged it wildly at fisticuffs; pounded it upon the countenance and drove it away.

Then he sat down upon the curbstone, and, with his dizzy eyes shut, leaned forward for the better

Wesley had retreated to the other side of the street holding a grimy handkerchief to the midmost parts of his

pallid face. "There, you ole damn pup!" he shouted, in a voice which threatened to sob. "I guess ~that'll~

teach you to be careful how you mention Dora Yocum's name on the public streets!"

At this, Ramsey made a motion as if to rise and pursue, whereupon Wesley fled, wailing back over his

shoulder as he ran, "You wait till I ketch you out alone on the public streets and I'll"

His voice was lost in an outburst of hooting from his former friends, who sympathetically surrounded the

wounded Ramsey. But in a measure, at least, the chivalrous fugitive had won his point. He was routed and

outdone, yet what survived the day was a rumour, which became a sort of tenuous legend among those

interested. There had been a fight over Dora Yocum, it appeared, and Ramsey Milholland had attempted to

maintain something derogatory to the lady, while Wesley defended her as a knightly youth should. The

something derogatory was left vague; nobody attempted to say just what it was, and the effects of the legend

The boys, unmindful of proper gallantry, supported Ramsey on account of the way he had persisted in lickin'

the stuffin' out of Wesley Bender after receiving that preliminary wallop from Wesley's blackjack bundle of

books. The girls petted and championed Wesley; they talked outrageously of his conqueror, fiercely declaring

that he ought to be arrested; and for weeks they maintained a new manner toward him. They kept their facial

expressions hostile, but perhaps this was more for one another's benefit than for Ramsey's; and several of

them went so far out of their way to find even private opportunities for reproving him that an alert observer

might have suspected them to have been less indignant than they seemedbut not Ramsey. He thought they

Dora was a nonpartisan. The little prig was so diligent at her books she gave never the slightest sign of

comprehending that there had been a fight about her. Having no real cognizance of Messrs. Bender and

Milholland except as impediments to the advance of learning, she did not even look demure.

With Wesley Bender, Ramsey was again upon fair terms before the winter had run its course; the two were

neighbours and, moreover, were drawn together by a community of interests which made their reconciliation

All ill feeling between them died with the first duet of spring, yet the twinkling they made had no charm to

soothe the savage breast of Ramsey whenever the Teacher's Pet came into his thoughts. He daydreamed a

thousand ways of putting her in her place, but was unable to carry out any of them, and had but a cobwebby

satisfaction in imagining discomfitures for her which remained imaginary. With a yearning so poignant that it

hurt, he yearned and yearned to show her what she really was. "Just once!" he said to Fred Mitchell. "That's

all I ask, just once. Just gimme one chance to show that girl what she really is. I guess if I ever get the chance

she'll find out what's the matter with her, for ~once~ in her life, anyway!" Thus it came to be talked about and

understood and expected in Ramsey's circle, all male, that Dora Yocum's day was coming. The nature of the

disaster was left vague, but there was no doubt in the world that retribution merely awaited its ideal

opportunity. "You'll see!" said Ramsey. "The time'll come when that ole girl'll wish she'd moved o' this town

They waited, but conditions appeared to remain unfavourable indefinitely. Perhaps the great opportunity

might have arrived if Ramsey had been able to acheive a startling importance in any of the "various divergent

yet parallel lines of school endeavour"one of the phrases by means of which teachers and principal

clogged the minds of their unarmed auditors. But though he was far from being the dumb driven beast of

misfortune that he seemed in the schoolroom, and, in fact, lived a double life, exhibiting in his outofschool

hours a remarkable example of "secondary personality"a creature fearing nothing and capable of laughter;

blueeyed, fairly robust, and anything but dumbhe was nevertheless without endowment or attainment

He "tried for" the highschool eleven, and "tried for" the nine, but the experts were not long in elminiating

him from either of these competitions, and he had to content himself with cheering instead of getting cheered.

He was by no manner of means athlete enough, or enough of anything else, to put Dora Yocum in her place,

and so he and the great opportunity were still waiting in May, at the end of the second year of high school,

when the class, now the "10 A," reverted to an old fashion and decided to entertain itself with a woodland

They gathered upon the sandy banks of a creek, in the blue shade of big, patchybarked sycamores, with a

dancing sky on top of everything and gold dust atwinkle over the water. Hither the napkincovered baskets

were brought from the wagons and assembled in the shade, where they appeared as an attractive little

meadow of white napery, and gave both surprise and pleasure to communities of ants and to other original

From this nucleus or headquarters of the picnic, various expeditions set forth up and down the creek and

through the woods that bordered it. Camera work was constant; spring wild flowers were accumulated by

groups of girls who trooped through the woods with eager eyes searching the thickets; two envied boy

fishermen established themselves upon a bank upstream, with hooks and lines thoughtfully brought with

them, and poles which they fashioned from young saplings. They took mussels from the shallows, for bait,

and having gone to all this trouble, declined to share with friends less energetic and provident the perquisites

Albert Paxton was another person who proved his enterprise. Having visited the spot some days before, he

had hired for his exclusive use throughout the duration of the picnic an old rowboat belonging to a shanty

squatter; it was the only rowboat within a mile or two and Albert had his own uses for it. Albert was the class

lover and, after first taking the three chaperon teachers "out for a row," an excursion concluded in about ten

minutes, he disembarked them; Sadie Clews stepped into the boat, a pocket camera in one hand, a tennis

racket in the other; and the two spent the rest of the day, except for the luncheon interval, solemnly drifting

along the banks or grounded on a shoal. Now and then Albert would row a few strokes, and at almost any

time when the populated shore glanced toward them, Sadie would be seen photographing Albert, or Albert

would be seen photographing Sadie, but the tennis racket remained an enigma. Oarsman and passenger

appeared to have no conversation whatevernot once was either seen or heard to address a remark to the

other; and they looked as placid as their own upsidedown reflections in one of the still pools they slowly

On the borders of the little meadow of baskets there had been deposited two black shapes, which remained

undisturbed throughout the day, a closed guitar case and a closed mandolin case, no doubt containing each its

proper instrument. So far as any use of these went they seemed to be of the same leisure class to which

Sadie's tennis racket belonged, for when one of the teachers suggested music, the musicians proved shy.

Wesley Bender said they hadn't learned to play anything much and, besides, he had a couple o' broken strings

he didn't know as he could fix up; and Ramsey said he guessed it seemed kind o' too hot to play much.

Joining friends, they organized a contest in marksmanship, the target being a floating can which they assailed

with pebbles; and after that they "skipped" flat stones upon the surface of the water, then went to join a group

No fish had been caught, a lack of luck crossly attributed by the fishermen to the noise made by constant

advice on the part of their attendant gallery. Messrs. Milholland, Bender, and the other rock throwers came up

"For heaven's sakes," Heinie Krusemeyer demanded, "can't you shut up? Here we just first got the girls to

keep their mouths shut a minute and I almost had a big pickerel or something on my hook, and here you got

to up and yell so he chases himself away! Why can't nobody show a little sense sometimes when they ought

"I should say so!" his comrade exclaimed. "If people would only just take and think of all the trouble we been

to, it seems funny somebody couldn't let us have half a chance to get a few good fish. What chance they got

to bite with a lot o' ~girls~ gabbin' away, and then, just as we get 'em quieted down, all you men got to come

bustin' up here yellin' your heads off. A fish isn't goin' to bite when he can't even hear himself think!

But the new arrivals hooted. ~"Fish!"~ Ramsey vociferated. "I'll bet a hundred dollars there hasn't been even

"There is, too!" said Heinie, bitterly. "But I wouldn't be supprised there wouldn't be no longer if you got to

keep up this noise. If you'd shut up just a minute you could see yourself there's fish here."

In whispers several of the tamed girls at once heartily corroborated this statement, whereupon the newcomers

ceased to gibe and consented to silence. Ramsey leaned forth over the edge of the overhanging bank, a dirt

precipice five feet above the water, and peered into the indeterminable depths below. The pool had been

stirred, partly by the inexpert pokings of the fishermen and partly by small clods and bits of dirt dislodged

from above by the feet of the audience. The water, consequently, was but brownly translucent and revealed

its secrets reluctantly; nevertheless certain dim little shapes had been observed to move within it, and were

"Look!" whispered the girl who stood nearest to Ramsey. She pointed. "There's one. Right down there by

The girl came closer to him, and, the better to show him, leaned out over the edge of the bank, and, for safety

in maintaining her balance, rested her left hand upon his shoulder while she pointed with her right. Thereupon

something happened to Ramsey. The touch upon his shoulder was almost nothing, and he had never taken the

slightest interest in Milla Rust (to whom that small warm hand belonged), though she was the class beauty,

and long established in the office. Now, all at once, a peculiar and heretofore entirely unfamiliar sensation

suddenly became important in the upper part of his chest. For a moment he held his breath, an involuntary

"Don't you see it, Ramsey?" Milla whispered. "It's a great big one. Why, it must be as long asas your shoe!

Ramsey saw nothing but the thick round curl on Milla's shoulder. Milla had a group of curls on each of her

shoulders, for she got her modes at the Movies and had that sort of prettiness: large, gentle, calculating eyes,

and a full, softly modelled face, implacably sweet. Ramsey was accustomed to all this charm, and Milla had

never before been of more importance to him than an equal weight of school furniturebut all at once some

magic had enveloped her. That curl upon the shoulder nearest him was shot with dazzling fibres of sunshine.

"I don't see it," he murmured, huskily, afraid that she might remove her hand. "I can't see any fish, Milla."

She leaned farther out over the bank. "Why, there, goosie!" she whispered. "Right there."

At this moment she removed her hand from his shoulder, though unwillingly. She clutched at him, in fact, but

A loud shriek was uttered by throats abler to vocalize, just then, than Milla's, for in her great surprise she said

nothing whatever the shriek came from the other girls as Milla left the crest of the overhanging bank and

almost horizontally disappeared into the brown water. There was a tumultuous splash, and then of Milla Rust

and her wellknown beautifulness there was nothing visible in the superficial world, nor upon the surface of

Several girls afterward admitted having used this expression, and little Miss Floy Williams, the youngest and

smallest member of the class, was unable to deny that she had said, "Oh, God!" Nothing could have been

more natural, and the matter need not have been brought before her with such insistence and frequency,

Ramsey was one of those who heard this exclamation, later so famous, and perhaps it was what roused him to

heroism. He dived from the bank, headlong, and the strange thought in his mind was "I guess ~this~'ll show

Dora Yocum!" He should have been thinking of Milla, of course, at such a time, particularly after the little

enchantment just laid upon him by Milla's touch and Milla's curls; and he knew well enough that Miss

Yocum was not among the spectators. She was half a mile away, as it happened, gathering "botanical

specimens" with one of the teacherswhich was her idea of what to do at a picnic!

Ramsey struck the water hard, and in the same instant struck something harder. Wesley Bender's bundle of

books had given him no such shock as he received now, and if the creek bottom had not been of mud, just

there, the top of his young head might have declined the strain. Half stunned, choking, spluttering he

somehow floundered to his feet; and when he could get his eyes a little cleared of water he found himself

wavering face to face with a blurred vision of Milla Rust. She had risen up out of the pod and stood knee

Upon the bank above them, Willis Parker was jumping up and down, gesticulating and shouting fiercely.

"Now I guess you're satisfied our fishin' ~is~ spoilt! Whyn't you listen me? I ~told~ you it wasn't more'n

three feet deep! I and Heinie waded all over this creek gettin' our bait. You're a pretty sight!"

Of Milla he spoke unwittingly the literal truth. Even with her hair thus wild and sodden, Milla rose from

immersion blushing and prettier than ever; and she was prettiest of all when she stretched out her hand

helplessly to Ramsey and he led her up out of the waters. They had plenty of assistance to scramble to the top

of the bank, and there Milla was surrounded and borne away with a great clacketing and tumult. Ramsey gave

his coat into the hands of friends, who twisted the water out of it for him, while he sat upon the grass in the

sun, rubbed his head, and experimented with his neck to see if it would "work." The sunshine was strong and

hot; in half an hour he and his clothes were dryor at least "dry enough," as he said, and except for some

soreness of head and neck, and the general crumpledness of his apparel, he seemed to be in all ways much as

usual when shouts and whistlings summoned all the party to luncheon at the rendezvous. The change that

The change in Ramsey was invisible, and yet something must have been seen, for everyone appeared to take

it for granted that he was to sit next to Milla at the pastoral meal. She herself understood it, evidently, for she

drew in her puckered skirts and without any words make a place for him beside her as he driftingly

approached her, affecting to whistle and keeping his eyes on the foliage overhead. He still looked upward,

"Up there on a branch." He accepted a plate from her (she had provided herself with an extra one), but he did

not look at it or her. "I'm not just exactly sure it's a squirrel," he said. "Kind of hard to make out exactly what

it is." He continued to keep his eyes aloft, because he imagined that all of the class were looking at him and

Milla, and he felt unable to meet such publicity. It was to him as if the whole United States had been

scandalized to attention by this act of his in going to sit beside Milla; he gazed upward so long that his

eyeballs became sensitive under the strain. He began to blink. "I can't make out whether it's a squirrel or just

some leaves that kind o' got fixed like one," he said. "I can't make out yet which it is, but I guess when there's

a breeze, if it's a squirrel he'll prob'ly hop around some then, if he's alive or anything."

It had begun to seem that his eyes must remain fixed in that upward stare forever; he wanted to bring them

down, but could not face the glare of the world. So the fugitive ostrich is said to bury his head in the sand; he

does it, not believing himself thereby hidden but trying to banish from his own cognizance terrible facts

which his unsheltered eyes have seemed to reveal. So, too, do nervous children seek to bury their eyes under

pillows, and nervous statesmen theirs under oratory. Ramsey's ostrichings can happen to anybody. But finally

the brightness of the sky between the leaves settled matters for him; he sneezed, wept, and for a little moment

again faced his fellowmen. No one was looking at him; everybody except Milla had other things to do.

Having sneezed involuntarily, he added a spell of coughing for which there was no necessity. "I guess I must

"About it bein' a squirrel." With infinite timidity he turned his head and encountered a gaze so soft, so

hallowed, that it disconcerted him, and he dropped a "drumstick" of fried chicken, well dotted with ants, from

his plate. Scarlet he picked it up, but did not eat it. For the first time in his life he felt that eating fried chicken

held in the fingers was not to be thought of. He replaced the "drumstick" upon his plate and allowed it to

Having looked down, he now found difficulty in looking up, but gazed steadily at his plate, and into this

limited circle of vision came Milla's delicate and rosy fingers, bearing a gift. "There," she said in a motherly

little voice. "It's a tomato mayonnaise sandwich and I made it myself. I want you to eat it, Ramsey."

His own fingers approached tremulousness as he accepted the thick sandwich from her and conveyed it to his

mouth. A moment later his soul filled with horror, for a spurt of mayonnaise dressing had caused a

catastrophe the scene of which occupied no inconsiderable area of his right cheek; which was the cheek

toward Milla. He groped wretchedly for his handkerchief but could not find it; he had lost it. Sudden death

would have been relief; he was sure that after such grotesquerie Milla could never bear to have anything more

In his anguish he felt a paper napkin pressed gently into his hand; a soft voice said in his ear, "Wipe it off

So this incredibly charitable creature was still able to be his friend, even after seeing him mayonnaised!

Humbly marvelling, he did as she told him, but avoided all further risks. He ate nothing more.

He sighed his first sigh of inexpressibleness, had a chill or so along the spine, and at intervals his brow was

Within his averted eyes there dwelt not the Milla Rust who sat beside him, but an iridescent, fragile creature

He spent the rest of the day dawdling helplessly about her; wherever she went he was near, as near as

possible, but of no deliberate volition of his own. Something seemed to tie him to her, and Milla was nothing

loth. He seldom looked at her directly, or for longer than an instant, and more rarely still did he speak to her

except as a reply. What few remarks he ventured upon his own initiative nearly all concerned the landscape,

which he commended repeatedly in a weak voice, as "kind of pretty," though once he said he guessed there

might be bugs in the bark of a log on which they sat; and he became so immoderately personal as to declare

that if the bugs had to get on anybody he'd rather they got on him than on Milla. She said that was "just

perfectly lovely" of him, asked where he got his sweet nature, and in other ways encouraged him to continue

the revelation, but Ramsey was unable to get forward with it, though he opened and closed his mouth a great

At five o'clock everybody was summoned again to the rendezvous for a ceremony preliminary to departure:

the class found itself in a large circle, standing, and sang "The Star Spangled Banner." Ordinarily, on such an

openair and outofschool occasion, Ramsey would have joined the chorus uproariously with the utmost

blatancy of which his vocal apparatus was capable; and most of the other boys expressed their humour by

drowning out the serious efforts of the girls; but he sang feebly, not much more than humming through his

teeth. Standing beside Milla, he was incapable of his former inelegancies and his voice was in a

Opposite him, across the circle, Dora Yocum stood a little in advance of those near her, for of course she led

the singing. Her clear and earnest voice was distinguishable from all others, and though she did not glance

toward Ramsey he had a queer feeling that she was assuming more superiority than ever, and that she was

icily scornful of him and Milla. The old resentment rosehe'd "show" that girl yet, some day!

When the song was over, cheers were given for the class, "the good ole class of Nineteen Fourteen," the

school, the teachers, and for the picnic, thus officially concluded; and then the picnickers, carrying their

baskets and faded wild flowers and other souvenirs and burdens, moved toward the big "express wagons"

which were to take them back into the town. Ramsey got his guitar case, and turned to Milla.

"Why, no," said Milla. "Anyways not yet. You can go back in the same wagon with me. It's going to stop at

the school and let us out there, and then you could walk home with me if you felt like it. You could come all

the way to our gate with me, I expect, unless you'd be late home for your supper."

"Wellwell, I'd be perfectly willing," Ramsey said. "Only I heard we all had to go back in whatever wagon

Milla laughed and leaned toward him a little. "I already 'tended to that," she said confidentially. "I asked

Johnnie Fiske, that came out in my wagon, to go back in yours, so that makes room for you."

"Wellthen I guess I could do it." He moved toward the wagon with her. "I expect it don't make much

"And you can carry my basket if you want to," she said, adding solicitously, "Unless it's too heavy when you

This thoughtfulness of hers almost overcame him; she seemed divine. He gulped, and emotion made him

"II'll be glad to carry the basket, too," he faltered. "Itit don't weigh anything much."

Then, as she manoeuvred him through the little crowd about the wagon, with a soft push this way and a

gentle pull that, and hurried him up the improvised steps and found a place where there was room for them to

sit, Ramsey had another breathless sensation heretofore unknown to him. He found himself taken under a

dovelike protectorship; a wonderful, inexpressible Being seemed to have become his proprietor.

He swallowed, but found no words, for he had no thoughts; he was only an incoherent tumult. This was his

"Isn't it, Ramsey?" she urged. The cozy voice had just the hint of a reproach. "Don't you think it's just

The next morning Ramsey came into his father's room while Mr. Milholland was shaving, an hour before

church time, and it became apparent that the son had someting on his mind, though for a while he said

Mr. Milholland chuckled. "I hardly supposed so, seriously! Shaving is a great nuisance and the longer you

keep away from it, the better. And when you do, you let my razors alone, young feller!"

"Yes, sir." (Mr. Milholland's rzaors were safe, Ramsey had already achieved one of his own, but he practised

the art in secret.) He passed his hand thoughtfully over his cheeks, and traces of white powder were left upon

his fingers, whereupon he wiped his hand surreptitiously, and stood irresolutely waiting.

Mr. Milholland turned from his mirror and looked over the edge of a towel at his son. In the boy's eyes there

"Why, what is it, Ramsey? Have you" He paused, frowning and wondering. "You haven't been getting into

His tone was meek, but a mute distress lurked within it, bringing to the father's mind disturbing suspicions,

and foreshadowings of indignation and of pity. "See here, Ramsey," he said, "if there's anything you want to

ask me, or to tell me, you'd better out with it and get it over. Now, what is it?"

Ramsey's eyes fell before the severe and piercing gaze of his father. "Yes, sir."

Mr. Milholland shook his head doubtfully; then, as his son walked slowly out of the room, he turned to

complete his toilet in a somewhat uneasy frame of mind. Ramsey had undoubtedly wanted to say something

to him and the boy's expression had shown that the matter in question was serious, distressing, and, it might

In fact it wasto Ramsey. Having begun within only the last few hours to regard haberdashery as of vital

importance, and believing his father to be possessed of the experience and authority lacking in himself,

Ramsey had come to get him to settle a question which had been upsetting him badly, in his own room, since

breakfast. What he want to know was: Whether it was right to wear an extra handkerchief showing out of the

coat breast pocket or not, and, if it was right ought the handkerchief to have a coloured border or to be

plain white? But he had never before brought any such perplexities to his father, and found himself too

However, when he left the house, a few minutes later, he boldly showed an inch of purple border above the

pocket; then, as he was himself about to encounter several old lady pedestrians, he blushed and thrust the

handkerchief down into deep concealment. Having gone a block farther, he pulled it up again; and so

continued to operate this badge of fashion, or unfashion, throughout the morning; and suffered a great deal

Meantime, his father, rather relieved that Ramsey had not told his secret, whatever it was, dismissed the

episode from his mind and joined Mrs. Milholland at the front door, ready for church.

"He's gone ahead," she answered, buttoning her gloves as they went along. "I heard the door quite a little

while ago. Perhaps he went over to walk down with Charlotte and Vance. Did you notice how neat he looks

"I never saw anything like it before," said Mrs. Milholland. "He went down in the cellar and polished his own

"For about an hour, I think," she said, as one remaining calm before a miracle. "And he only has three

neckties, but I saw him several times in each of them. He must have kept changing and changing. I

"I'm glad he's begun to take a little care of his appearance at last. Business men think a good deal about that,

these days, when he comes to make his start in the world. I'll have to take a look at him and give him a word

But Ramsey wasn't in the pew; and Charlotte, his sister, and her husband, who were there, said they hadn't

seen anything of him. It was not until the members of the family were on their way home after the services

They were passing a church a little distance from their own; here the congregation was just emerging to the

open, and among the sedate throng descending the broad stone steps appeared an accompanied Ramseyand

a red, red Ramsey he was when he beheld his father and mother and sister and brotherinlaw staring up at

him from the pavement below. They were kind enough not to come to an absolute halt, but passed slowly on,

so that he was just able to avoid parading up the street in front of them. The expressions of his father, mother,

and sister were of a dumfoundedness painful to bear, while such lurking jocosity as that apparent all over his

brother inlaw no dignified man should either exhibit or be called upon to ignore.

In hoarse whispers, Mrs. Milholland chided her husband for an exclamation he had uttered. "John! On

"I couldn't help it," he exclaimed. "Who on earth is his clinging vine? Why, she's got ~lavender~ tops on her

"Well, what's he doing at a Baptist church? What's he fidgeting at his handkerchief about? Why can't he walk

like people? Does he think it's obligatory to walk home from church anchored arminarm like Swedes on a

"Never fear!" said her husband, having disobeyed. "They've turned off; they're crossing over to Bullard

"I think her name's Rust," Mrs. Milholland informed him. "I don't know what her father does. She's one of the

"Well, that's just like a boy; pick out some puttyfaced flirt to take to church!"

"Oh, she's quite prettyin that way!" said his wife, deprecatingly. "Of course that's the danger with public

schools. It would be pleasanter if he'd taken a fancy to someone whose family belongs to our own circle."

"'Taken a fancy'!" he echoed, hooting. "Why, he's terrible! He looked like a redgilled goldfish that's flopped

"I ~say~ I wish if he felt that he had to take girls anywhere," said Mrs. Milholland, with the primmest air of

speaking to the point"if this sort of thing ~must~ begin, I wish he might have selected some nice girl

Upon the spot she began to undergo the mortification of a mother who has expected her son, just out of

infancy, to look about him with the eye of a critical matron of fortyfive. Moreover, she was indiscreet

enough to express her views to Ramsey, a week later, producing thus a scene of useless great fury and no

"I do think it's in ~very~ poor tast to see so much of any one girl, Ramsey," she said, and, not heeding his

protest that he only walked home from school with Milla, "about every other day," and that it didn't seem any

crime to him just to go to church with her a couple o' times, Mrs. Milholland went on: "But if you think you

really ~must~ be dangling around somebody quite this muchthough what in the world you find to ~talk~

about with this funny little Milla Rust you poor father says he really cannot seeand of course it seems very

queer to us that you'd be willing to waste so much time just now when your mind ought to be entirely on your

"No, you must listen, Ramsey, and let me speak now. What I meant was that we shouldn't be ~quite~ so

much distressed by your being seen with a girl who dressed in better taste and seemed to have some notion of

refinement, though of course it's only natural she ~wouldn't~, with a father who is just a sort of ward

politician, I understand, and a mother we don't know, and of course shouldn't care to. But, oh, Ramsey! if you

~had~ to make yourself so conspicuous why couldn't you be a little ~bit~ more fastidious? Your father

wouldn't have minded nearly so much if it had been a selfrespecting, intellectual girl. We both say that if

you ~must~ be so ridiculous at your age as to persist in seeing more of one girl than another, why, oh why,

Ramsey was already dangerously distended, as an effect of the earlier part of her discourse, and the word

"fastidious" almost exploded him; but upon the climax, "Dora Yocum," he blew up with a shattering report

and, leaving fragments of incoherence ricochetting behind him, fled shuddering from the house.

For the rest of the school term he walked home with Milla every afternoon and on sundays appeared to have

become a resolute Baptist. It was supposed (by the interested members of the highschool class) that Ramsey

and Milla were "engaged." Ramsey sometimes rather supposed they were himself, and the dim idea gave him

Vacation, in spite of increased leisure, may bring inconvenience to people in Ramsey's strange but not

uncommon condition. At home his constant air was that of a badgered captive plaintively silent under

injustice; and he found it difficult to reply calmly when asked where he was goingan inquiry addressed to

The amount of evening walking he did must also have been a trial to his nerves, on account of fatigue, though

the ground covered was not vast. Milla's mother and father were friendly people but saw no reason to "move

out of house and home," as Mr. Rust said, when Milla had "callers"; and on account of the intimate plan of

their small dwelling a visitor's only alternative to spending the evening with Mr. and Mrs. Rust as well as

Evening after evening they walked and walked and walked, usually in companyat perhaps the distance of

half a blockwith Albert Paxton and Sadie Clews, though Ramsey now and then felt disgraced by having

fallen into this class; for sometimes it was apparent that Albert casually had his arm about Sadie's waist. This

allured Ramsey somewhat, but terrified him more. He didn't know how such matters were managed.

Usually the quartet had no destination; they just went "out walking" until ten o'clock, when both girls had to

be homeand the boys did, too, but never admitted it. On Friday evenings there was a "public openair

concert" by a brass band in a small park, and the four were always there. A political speechmaker occupied

the bandstand one night, and they stood for an hour in the midst of the crowd, listening vaguely.

The orator saddled his politics upon patriotism. "Do you intend to let this glorious country go to wrack and

ruin, oh, my good friends," he demanded, "or do you intend to save her? Look forth upon this country of ours,

I bid you, oh, my countrymen, and tell me what you see. You see a fair domain of forest, mountain, plain, and

fertile valleys, sweeping from ocean to ocean. Look from the sturdy rocks of old New England, pledged to

posterity by the stern religious hardihood of the Pilgrim Fathers, across the cornbearing midland country,

that land of milk and honey, won for us by the pluck and endurance of the indomitable pioneers, to where in

sunshine roll the smiling Sierras of golden California, given to our heritage by the unconquerable energy of

those brave men and women who braved the tomahawk on the Great Plains, the tempest, of Cape Horn, and

the fevers of Panama, to make American soil of El Dorado! America! Oh, my America, how glorious you

stand! Country of Washington and Valley Forge, out of what martyrdoms hast thou arisen! Country of

Lincoln in his box at Ford's theatre, his lifeblood staining to a brighter, holier red the red, white, and blue of

the Old Flag! Always and always I see the Old Flag fluttering the more sacredly encrimsoned in the breeze

Milla gave Ramsey's arm, within her own, a little tug. "Come on," she said. "Sade says she don't want to hang

He consented, placidly. The oration meant nothing to him and stirred no one in the audience. The orator was

impassioned; he shouted himself into coughing fits, gesticulated, grew purple; he was so hot that his collar

caved in and finally swooned upon his neck in soggy exhaustion, prostrate round his thunderings. Meanwhile,

the people listened with an air of patience, yawning here and there, and gradually growing fewer. It was the

old, old usual thing, made up of phrases that Ramsey had heard dinning away on a thousand such occasions,

and other kinds of occasions, until they meant to him no more than so much sound. He was bored, and glad to

"Kind o' funny," he said, as they sagged along the street at their usual tortoise gait.

"Seems kind o' funny they never have anything to say any one can take any interest in. Always the same ole

whoopetywhoop about George Washington and Pilgrim Fathers and so on. I bet five dollars before long

we'd of heard him goin' on about our martyred Presidents, William McKinley and James A. Garfield and

Benjamin Harrison and all so on, and then some more about the ole Red, White, and Blue. Don't you wish

"Well, I could ~stand~ 'em," Ramsey said, more generously, "if they'd ever give anybody a little to think

about. What's the use always draggin' in George Warshington and the Ole Flag? And who wants to hear any

more ole truck about 'from ole rocky New England to golden California,' and how big and fine the United

States is and how it's the land of the Free and all that? Why don't they ever say anything new? That's what I'd

Milla laughed, and when he asked why, she told him she'd never heard him talk so much "at one stretch." "I

guess that speech got you kind of wound up," she said. "Let's talk about something different."

"I just soon," he agreed. And so they walked on in silence, which seemed to suit Milla. She hung weightily

upon his arm, and they dawdled, drifting from one side of the pavement to the other as they slowly advanced.

Ablert and Sadie, ahead of them, called "goodnight" from a corner, before turning down the side street

where Sadie lived; and then, presently, Ramsey and Milla were at the latter's gate. He went in with her,

"Well, g'night, Milla," he said. "Want to go out walking tomorrow night? Albert and Sadie are."

"I can't tomorrow night," she told him with obvious regret. "Isn't it the worst luck! I got an aunt comin' to

visit from Chicago, and she's crazy about playing 'Five Hundred,' and Mama and Papa said I haf to stay in to

make four to play it. She's liable to be here three or four days, and I guess I got to be around home pretty

He was doleful, but ventured to be literary. "Well, what can't be helped must be endured. I'll come around

He moved as if to depart, but she still retained his arm and did not prepare to relinquish it.

She glanced up at the dark front of the house. "I guess the family's gone to bed," she said, absently.

"Well, goodnight, Ramsey." She said this but still did not release his arm, and suddenly, in a fluster, he felt

that the time he dreaded had come. Somehow, without knowing where, except that it was somewhere upon

what seemed to be a blurred face too full of obstructing features, he kissed her.

She turned instantly away in the darkness, her hands over her cheeks; and in a panic Ramsey wondered if he

"S'cuse me!" he said, stumbling toward the gate. "Well, I guess I got to be gettin' along back home."

He woke in the morning to a great selfloathing: he had kissed a girl. Mingled with the loathing was a

curious pride in the very fact that caused the loathing, but the pride did not last long. He came downstairs

morbid to breakfast, and continued this mood afterward. At noon Albert Paxton brought him a note which

Dearie: I am just wondering if you thought as much about something so sweet that happened last night as I

did you know what. I think it was the sweetest thing. I send you one with this note and I hope you will think

it is a sweet one. I would give you a real one if you were here now and I hope you would think it was sweeter

still than the one I put in this note. It is the sweetest thing now you are mine and I am yours forever kiddo. If

you come around about friday eve it will be all right. aunt Jess will be gone back home by then so come early

and we will get Sade and Alb and go to the band Concert. Don't forget what I said about my putting

something sweet in this note, and I hope you will think it is a sweet one but not as sweet as the ~real~ sweet

At this point Ramsey impulsively tore the note into small pieces. He turned cold as his imagination projected

a sketch of his mother in the act of reading this missive, and of her expression as she read the sentence: "It is

the sweetest thing now you are mine and I am yours forever kiddo." He wished that Milla hadn't written

"kiddo." She called him that, sometimes, but in her warm little voice the word seemed not at all what it did in

Moisture broke out heavily upon him; he felt a definite sickness, and, wishing for death, went forth upon the

streets to walk and walk. He cared not whither, so that his feet took him in any direction away from Milla,

since they were unable to take him away from himselfof whom he had as great a horror. Her loving face

was continually before him, and its sweetness made his flesh creep. Milla had been too sweet.

When he met or passed people, it seemed to him that perhaps they were able to recognize upon him

somewhere the marks of his low quality. "Softy! Ole sloppy fool!" he muttered, addressing himself. "Slushy

ole mush!... ~Spooner!~" And he added, "Yours forever, kiddo!" Convulsions seemed about to seize him.

Turning a corner with his head down, he almost charged into Dora Yocum. She was homeward bound from a

piano lesson, and carried a rolled leather case of sheet musicsomething he couldn't imagine Milla

carryingand in her young girl's dress, which attempted to be nothing else, she looked as wholesome as cold

spring water. Ramsey had always felt that she despised him and now, all at once, he thought that she was

justified. Leper that he had become, he was unworthy to be even touching his cap to her! And as she nodded

and went briskly on, he would have given anything to turn and walk a little way with her, for it seemed to

him that this might fumigate his morals. But he lacked the courage, and, besides, he considered himself unfit

He had a long aftgernoon of anguishes, these becoming most violent when he tried to face the problem of his

future course toward Milla. He did not face it at all, in fact, but merely writhed, and had evolved nothing

when Friday evening was upon him and Milla waiting for him to take her to the "band concert" with "Alb and

Sade." In his thoughts, by that time, this harmless young pair shared the contamination of his own crime, and

he regarded them with aversion; however, he made shift to seek a short interview with Albert, just before

"I got a pretty rotten headache, and my stomach's upset, too," he said, drooping upon the Paxton's fence. "I

been gettin' worse every minute. You and Sadie go by Milla's, Albert, and tell her if I'm not there by

"How do you mean 'wait'?" Albert inquired. "You don't expect her to come pokin' along with Sadie and me,

do you? She'll keep on sittin' there at home just the same, because she wouldn't have anything else to do, if

you don't come like she expects you to. She hasn't got any way to ~stop~ waitin'!"

At this, Ramsey moaned, without affectation. "I don't expect I ~can~, Albert," he said. "I'd like to if I could,

but the way it looks now, you tell her I wouldn't be much surprised maybe I was startin' in with typhoid fever

or pretty near anything at all. You tell her I'm pretty near as disappointed as she's goin' to be herself, and I'd

come if I couldand I ~will~ come if I get a good deal better, or anythingbut the way it's gettin' to look

now, I kind o' feel as if I might be breaking out with something any minute." He moved away, concluding,

feebly: "I guess I better crawl on home, Albert, while I'm still able to walk some. You tell her the way it looks

And the next morning he woke to the chafings of remorse, picturing a Milla somewhat restored in charm

waiting hopefully at the gate, even after halfpast seven, and then, as time passed and the sound of the distant

horns came faintly through the darkness, going sadly to her roomperhaps weeping there. It was a picture to

wring him with shame and pity, but was followed by another which electrified him, for out of school he did

not lack imagination. What if Albert had reported his illness too vividly to Milla? Milla was so fond! What if,

in her alarm, she should come here to the house to inquire of his mother about him? What if she told Mrs.

Milholland they were "engaged"? The next moment Ramsey was projecting a conversation between his

mother and Milla in which the latter stated that she and Ramsey were soon to be married; that she regarded

In a panic he fled from the house before breakfast, going out by way of a side door, and he crossed back

yeards and climbed back fences to reach Albert Paxton the more swiftly. This creature, a ladies' man almost

professionaly, was found exercising with an electric iron and a pair of flannel trousers in a basement laundry,

"See here, Albert," his friend said breathlessly. "I got a favour. I want you to go over to Milla's"

"I'm goin' to finish pressin' these trousers," Albert interrupted. "Then I've got my breakfast to eat."

"Well, you could do this first," said Ramsey, hurriedly. "It wouldn't hurt you to do me this little favour first.

You just slip over and see Milla for me, if she's up yet, and if she isn't, you better wait around there till she is,

because I want you to tell her I'm a whole lot better this morning. Tell her I'm pretty near practick'ly all right

again, Albert, and I'll prob'ly write her a note or something right soonor in a week or so, anyhow. You tell

"Well, you act pretty funny!" Albert exclaimed, fumbling in the pockets of his coat. "Why can't you go on

"I would," said Ramsey. "I'd be perfectly willing to go only I got to get back home to breakfast."

Albert stared. "Well, I got to go upstairs and eat my own breakfast in about a minute, haven't I? But just as it

"Milla ain't there," said Albert, still searching the pockets of his coat. "When we went by her house last night

to tell her about your headache and stomach and all, why, her mother told us Milla'd gone up to Chicago

yesterday afternoon with her aunt, and said she left a note for you, and she said if you were sick I better take

it and give it to you. I was goin' to bring it over to your house after breakfast." He found it. "Here!"

Ramsey thanked him feebly, and departed in a state of partial stupefaction, brought on by a glimpse of the

instabilities of life. He had also, not relief, but a sense of vacancy and loss; for Milla, out of his reach, once

Dearie: Thought I ought to call you up but over the 'phone is just nix for explations as Mama and Aunt Jess

would hear everything and thought I might seem cold to you not saying anything sweet on account of them

listening and you would wonder why I was so cold when telling you goodby for a wile maybe weeks. It is

this way Uncle Purv wired Aunt Jess he has just taken in a big touring car on a debt and his vacation starts

tomorrow so if they were going to take a trip they better start right way so Aunt Jess invited me. It is going

to be a big trip up around the lakes and I have always wanted to go touring more than anything in the world

stopping at hotels and all and Mama said I ought to it would be so splend for my health as she thinks I am

failing some lately. Now dearie I have to pack and write this in a hury so you will not be disappointed when

you come by for the B. C. tonight. Do not go get some other girl and take her for I would hate her and

nothing in this world make me false for one second to my kiddo boy. I do not know just when home again as

the folks think I better stay up there for a visit at Aunt Jess and Uncle Purvs home in Chicago after the trip is

over. But I will think of you all the time and you must think of me every minute and believe your own dearie

she will never no not for one second be false. So tell Sade and Alb goodby for me and do not be false to me

any more than I would be to you and it will not be long till nothing more will interupt our sweet friendship.

As a measure of domestic prudence, Ramsey tore the note into irreparable fragments, but he did this slowly,

and without experiencing any of the revulsion created by Milla's former missive.

He never saw her again. She sent him a "picture postal" from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, which his father

disengaged from the family mail, one morning at breakfast, and considerately handed to him without audible

Just before school opened, in the autumn, Sadie Clews made some revelations. "Milla did like you," said

Sadie. "After that time you jumped in the creek to save her she liked you better than any boy in town, and I

guess if it wasn't for her cousin Milt up in Chicago she would of liked you the best anywhere. I guess she did,

"Well, that afternoon she went away I was over there and took in everything that was goin' on, only she made

me promise on my word of honour I wouldn't even tell Albert. They didn't get any wire from her uncle about

the touring car; it was her cousin Milt that jumped on the train and came down and fixed it all up for Milla to

go on the trip, and everything. You see, Ramsey, she was turned back a couple of times in school before she

came in our class and I don't exactly know how old she is and she don't ~look~ old yet, but I'm pretty sure

she's at least eighteen, and she might be over. Her mother kept tellin' her all the time you were just a kid, and

didn't have anything to support her on, and lots of things like that. I didn't think such a great deal of this Milt's

looks, myself, but he's anyway twentyone years old, and got a good position, and all their family seem to

think he's just fine! It wasn't his father that took in the touring car on debt, like she said she was writing to

you; it was Milt himself. He started out in business when he was only fifteen years old, and this trip he was

gettin' up for his father and mother and Milla was the first vacation he ever took. Well, of course she wouldn't

like my tellin' you, but I can't see the harm of it, now everything's all over."

"She already is," said Sadie. "They got married at her Aunt Jess and Uncle Purv's house, up in Chicago, last

Thursday. Yes, sir; that quiet little Milla's a regular old married woman by this time, I expect, Ramsey!"

When he got over the shock, which was not until the next day, one predominating feeling remained: it was a

gloomy pridea pride in his proven maturity. He was old enough, it appeared, to have been the same thing

as engaged to a person who was now a Married Woman. His manner thenceforth showed an added trace of

Having recovered his equipoise and something more, he entirely forgot that moment of humble admiration he

had felt for Dora Yocum on the day of his flattest prostration. When he saw her sitting in the classroom,

smiling brightly up at the teacher, the morning of the school's opening in the autumn, all his humility had

long since vanished and she appeared to him not otherwise than as the scholar whose complete proficiency

Now and then, as the days and seasons passed, and Dora's serene progress continued, never checked or even

flawed, there stirred within some lingerings of the old determination to "show" her; and he would conjure up

a daydream of Dora in loud lamentation, while he led the laughter of the spectators. But gradually his

feelings about her came to be merely a dull oppression. He was tired of having to look at her (as he stated it)

and he thanked the Lord that the time wouldn't be so long now until he'd be out of that ole school, and then

all he'd have to do he'd just take care never to walk by her house; it was easy enough to use some other street

"The good ole class of NineteenFourteen is about gone," he said to Fred Mitchell, who was still his most

intimate friend when they reached the senior year. "Yes, sir; it's held together a good many years, Fred, but

after June it'll be busted plum up, and I hope nobody starts a move to have any reunions. There's a good many

members of the ole class that I can stand and there's some I can't, but there's one I just won't! If we ever did

call a reunion, that ole Yocum girl would start in right away and run the whole shebang, and that's where I'd

resign! You know, Fred, the thing ~I~ think is the one biggest benefit of graduating from this ole school? It's

This was again his theme as he sat by the same friend's side, in the rear row of the class at Commencement,

listening to the delivery of the Valedictory. "Thinks she's just sooblime, don't she!" he whispered morosely.

"She wouldn't trade with the President of the United States right now. She prob'ly thinks bein' Valedictorian

is more important than Captain of the State University Eleven. Never mind!" And here his tone became

huskily jubilant. "Never mind! Just about a halfanhour more and that's the last o' ~you~, ole girl! Yes, sir,

Fred; one thing we can feel pretty good over: this is where we get through with Dora Yocum!"

Ramsey and Fred had arranged to room together at Greenfield, the seat of the state university, and they made

the short journey in company the following September. They arrived hilarious, anticipating pleasurable

excitements in the way of "fraternity" pledgings and initiations, encounters with sophomores, class meetings,

and elections; and, also, they were not absolutely without interest in the matter of Girls, for the state

university was coeducational, and it was but natural to expect in so broad a field, all new to them, a possible

vision of something rather thrilling. They whispered cheerfully of all these things during the process of

matriculation, and signed the registrar's book on a fresh page; but when Fred had written his name under

Ramsey's, and blotted it, he took the liberty of turning over the leaf to examine some of the autographs of

their future classmates, written on the other side. Then he uttered an exclamation, more droll than dolorous,

though it affected to be wholly the latter; for the shock to Fred was by no means so painful as it was to his

...When they got back to their pleasant quarters at Mrs. Meig's, facing the campus, Ramsey was still unable to

talk of anything except the lamentable discovery; nor were his companion's burlesquing efforts to console

him of great avail, though Fred did become serious enough to point out that a university was different from a

"It's not like havin' to use one big room as a headquarters, you know, Ramsey. Everything's all split up, and

"You don't know my luck!" the afflicted boy protested. "I wish I'd gone to Harvard, the way my father

wanted me to. Why, this is just the worst nuisance I ever struck! You'll see! She'll be in everything there is,

He appeared to be corroborated by the events of the next day, when they attended the first meeting to

organize the new class. The masculine element predominated, but Dora Yocum was elected vicepresident.

But after that she ceased for a time to intrude upon his life, and he admitted that his harassment was less

grave than he had anticipated. There were about five hundred students in the freshman class; he seldom saw

her, and when he did it was not more than a distant glimpse of her on one of the campus paths, her thoughtful

head bent over a book as she hurried to a classroom. This was bearable; and in the flattering agitations of

being sought, and even hunted, by several "fraternities" simultaneously desirous of his becoming a sworn

Brother, he almost forgot her. After a hazardous month the roommates fell into the arms of the last "frat" to

seek them, and having undergone an evening of outrage which concluded with touching rhetoric and an oath

taken at midnight, they proudly wore jewelled symbols on their breasts and were free to turn part of their

However, they were instructed by the older brethren of their Order, whose duty it was to assist in the proper

manoeuvring of their young careers, that, although support of the 'varsity teams was important, they must

neglect neither the spiritual nor the intellectual byproducts of undergraduate doings. Therefore they became

According to the charter which it had granted itself, the "Lumen Society" was an "Organization of male and

female students"so "advanced" was this university"for the development of the powers of debate and

oratory, intellectual and sociological progress, and the discussion of all matters relating to philosophy,

metaphysics, literature, art, and current events." A statement so formidable was not without a hushing effect

upon Messrs. Milholland and Mitchell; they went to their first "Lumen" meeting in a state of fear and came

"I couldn't get up there," Ramsey declared, "I couldn't stand up there before all that crowd and make a speech,

or debate in a debate, to save my soul and gizzard! Why, I'd just keel right over and haf to be carried out."

"Well, the way I understand it," said Fred, "we can't get out of it. The seniors in the 'frat' said we had to join,

and they said we couldn't resign, either, after we had joined. They said we just had to go through it, and after

"~I~ will!" Ramsey insisted. "I couldn't any more stand up there on my feet and get to spoutin' about

sociology and the radical metempsychorus of the metaphysical bazoozum than I could fly a flyin' machine.

"Oh, that wasn't anything," Fred interrupted. "The only one that talked like that, he was that Blickens; he's a

tutor, or something, and really a member of the faculty. Most o' the others just kind of blahblahhed around,

and what any of 'em tried to get off their chests hardly amounted to terribly much."

"Well, the way it looks to me," Fred observed, "we simply ~got~ to! From what they tell me, the freshmen

got to do more than anybody. Every other Friday night, it's all freshmen and nothin' else. You get a postal

card on Monday morning in your mail, and it says 'Assignment' on it, and then it's got written underneath

what you haf to do the next Friday nightoration or debate, or maybe just read from some old book or

"All right," said Ramsey. "If they want me to commit suicide they can send me one o' their ole 'Assignments.'

I won't need to commit suicide, though, I guess. All I'll do, I'll just fall over in a fit, and stay in it."

And, in truth, when he received his first "Assignment," one Monday morning, a month later, he seemed in a

fair way to fulfil his prophecy. The attention of his roommate, who sat at a window of their study, was

Fred took the card and examined it with an amazement gradually merging into a pleasure altogether too

TWELVEMINUTE DEBATE, CLASS OF 1918. ~Subject, Resolved:~ That Germany is both legally and

(Debaters are notified that each will be held strictly to the following schedule: Affirmative, 4 min., first.

Concluding his reading, which was oral, the volatile Mitchell made use of his voice in a manner of heathenish

boisterousness, and presently reclined upon a lounge to laugh the better. His stricken comrade, meanwhile,

recovered so far as to pace the floor. "I'm goin' to pack up and light out for home!" he declared, over and

over. And even oftener he read and reread the card to make sure of the actuality of that fatal coincidence, "D.

"If I ~could~ do it," he vociferated, "if I ~could~ stand up there and debate one o' their darn ole debates in the

first placeif I had the gall to even try it, why, my gosh! you don't suppose I'm goin' to get up there and

argue with ~that girl~, do you? That's a hot way to get an education: stand up there and argue with a girl

"You got to!" his prostrate companion cackled, weakly. "You can't get out of it. You're a goner, ole Buddy!"

"I'll be sick. I'll be sick as a dog! I'll be sick as the sickest dog that ever"

"No use, ole man. The frat seniors'll be on the job. They'll know whether you're sick or not, and they'll have

The prediction was accurate. The too fatherly "frat seniors" did all that Fred said they would, and more. For

the honour of the "frat," they coached the desperate Ramsey in the technic of Lumen debate, told him many

more things to say than could be said in six minutes, and produced him, despairing, ghastly, and bedewed, in

Four other "twelveminute debates" preceded his and the sound of these, in Ramsey's ears, was the sound of

Gabriel practising on his horn in the early morning of Judgment Day. The members of the society sat, three

rows deep, along the walls of the room, leaving a clear oblong of green carpet in the centre, where were two

small desks, twenty feet apart, the rostrums of the debaters. Upon a platform at the head of the room sat

dreadful seniors, the officers of the society, and, upon benches near the platform, the debaters of the evening

were aligned. One of the fraternal seniors sat with sweltering Ramsey; and the latter, as his time relentlessly

"Yes, I do!" Ramsey whispered, passionately. "Honest, I do. Honest, Brother Colburn, I got to get a drink of

Ramsey grunted feebly, and cast his dilating eyes along the rows of faces. Most of them were but as blurs,

swimming, yet he was aware (he thought) of a formidable and horrible impassive scrutiny of himself, a glare

seeming to pierce through him to the back of the belt round his waist, so that he began to have fearful doubts

about that belt, about every fastening and adjustment of his garments, about the expression of his

countenance, and about many other things jumbling together in his consciousness. Over and over he

whispered gaspingly to himself the opening words of the sentence with which Colburn had advised him to

begin his argument. And as the moment of supreme agony drew close, this whispering became continuous:

"In making my first appearance before this honor'ble membership I feel constrained to say in making my first

appearance before this honor'ble membership I feel constrained to say in making my first appearance before

...It had come. The chairman announced the subject of the fourth freshman twelveminute debate; and Dora

Yocum, hitherto unperceived by Ramsey, rose and went forward to one of the small desks in the open space,

where she stood composedly, a slim, pretty figure in white. Members in Ramsey's neighbourhood were aware

of a brief and hushed commotion, and of Colburn's fierce whisper, "You can't! You get up there!" And the

He stood before the silent populace of that morgue, and it seemed to him that his features had forgotten that

he was supposed to be their owner and in control of them; he felt that they were slipping all over his face,

regardless of his wishes. His head, as a whole, was subject to an agitation not before known by him; it desired

to move rustily in eccentric ways of its own devising; his legs alternately limbered and straightened under no

direction but their own; and his hands clutched each other fiercely behind his back; he was not one cohesive

person, evidently, but an assembled collection of parts which had relapsed each into its own indivuality. In

spite of them, he somehow contrived the semblance of a bow toward the chairman and the semblance of

another toward Dora, of whom he was but hazily conscious. Then he opened his mouth, and, not knowing

"In making my first appearance before this honor'ble membership I feel restrained to say" He stopped

short, and thenceforward shook visibly. After a long pause, he managed to repeat his opening, stopped again,

swallowed many times, produced a handkerchief and wiped his face, an act of necessitythen had an

"The subject assigned to me," he said, "is resolved that Germany is mor'ly and legally justified in

BelgiansBelgiums! This subject was assigned to me to be the subject of this debate." He interrupted

himself to gasp piteously; found breathing difficult, but faltered again: "This subject is the subject. It is the

subject that was assigned to me on a postal card." Then, for a moment or so, he had a miraculous spurt of

confidence, and continued rather rapidly: "I feel constrained to say that the country of BelgianBelgium, I

mean this country has been constrained by theinvaded I meaninvaded by the imperial German Impire

and my subject in this debate is whether it ought to or not, my being the infernativeaffirmative, I

meanthat I got to prove that Germany is mor'ly and legally justified. I wish to state that"

He paused again, lengthily, then struggled on. "I have been requested to state that the German

ImpEmpirethat it certainly isn't right for those DutchGermans, I meanthey haven't got any more

business in Belgium than I have myself, but II feel constrained to say that I had to accept whatever side of

this debate I got on the postal card, and so I am constrained to take the side of the Dutch. I mean the

Germans. The Dutch are sometimes calledI mean the Germans are sometimes called the Dutch in this

country, but they aren't Dutch, though sometimes called Dutch in this country. Well, and soso, well, the

war began last August or about then, anyway, and the German army invaded the Belgian army. After they got

there, the invasion began. First, they came around there and then they commenced invading. Well, what I feel

He came to the longest of all his pauses here, and the awful gravity of the audience almost suffocated him.

"Four minutes!" the chairman announced, for Ramsey's pauses had worn away a great deal more of this

terrible interval than had his eloquence. "Opening statement for the negative: Miss D. Yocum. Four minutes."

As Dora began to speak, Ramsey experienced a little relief, but only a littleabout the same amount of relief

as that felt by a bridegroom when it is the bride's turn to "respond," not really relief at all, but merely the

slight relaxation of a continuing strain. The audience now looked at Ramsey no more than people look at a

bridegroom, but he failed to perceive any substantial mitigation of his frightful conspicuousness. He had not

the remotest idea of what he had said in setting forth his case for Germany, and he knew that it was his duty

to listen closely to Dora, in order to be able to refute her argument when his twominute closing speech fell

due but he was conscious of little more than his own condition. His legs had now gone wild beyond all

devilry, and he had to keep shifting his weight from one to the other in order even to hope that their frenzy

He realized that Dora was speaking rapidly and confidently, and that somewhere in his illassembled parts

lurked a familiar bit of him that ojbected to her even more than usual; but she had used half of her time, at

least, before he was able to gather any coherent meaning from what she was saying. Even then he caught only

a fragment, here and there, and for the restso far as Ramsey was concernedshe might as well have been

In spite of the rather startling feebleness of her opponent's statement, Dora went at her task as earnestly as if

it were to confute some monster of casuistry. "Thus, having demonstrated that ~all~ war is wrong," she said,

approaching her conclusion, "it is scarcely necessary to point out that whatever the actual circumstances of

the invasion, and whatever the status of the case in international law, or by reason of treaty, or the German

oath to respect the neutrality of Belgium, which of course was grossly and dishonorably violatedall this, I

say, ladies and gentlemen of the Lumen Society, all this is beside the point of morals. Since, as I have shown,

~all~ war is wrong, the case may be simplified as follows: All war is morally wrong. ~Quod erat

demonstrandum~. Germany invaded Belgium. Invasion is war. Germany, therefore, did moral wrong. Upon

the legal side, as I began by pointing out, Germany confessed in the Reichstag the violation of law.

Therefore, Germany was justified in the invasion neither morally nor legally; but was both morally and

legally wrong and evil. Ladies and gentlemen of the Lumen Society, I await the refutation of my opponent!"

Her opponent appeared to be having enough trouble with his legs, without taking any added cares upon

himself in the way of refutations. But the marvellous Dora had calculated the length of her statement with

such nicety that the chairman announced "Four minutes," almost upon the instant of her final syllable; and all

faces turned once more to the upholder of the affirmative. "Refutation and conclusion by the affirmative,"

Therewith, Ramsey coughed as long as he could cough, and when he felt that no more should be done in this

"Gentlemen and ladies, or ladies and gentlemen, in making the refutation of my opponent, I feel thatI feel

He paused, looked helplessly at his uncontrollable legs, and resumed: "I am supposed to make the

reputathe refutation of my opponent, and I feel that I ought to say quite a good deal more. In the first place,

I feel that the invasion has taken place. I am supposed anyhow I got a postal card that I am supposed to be

here tonight. Well, in talking over this matter with a couple of seniors, they told me I was supposed to claim

this invasion was mor'ly and legally all right. Well" Here, by some chance, the recollection of a word of

Dora's flickered into his chaotic mind, and he had a brighter moment. "My opponent said she proved all war

is wrongor something like that, anyhow. She said she proved it was wrong to fight, no matter what. Well,

if she wasn't a girl, anybody that wanted to get her into a fight could prob'ly do it." He did not add that he

would like to be the person to make the experiment (if Dora weren't a girl), nor did the thought enter his mind

until an hour or so later. "Well," he added, "I suppose there is little more to be said."

He was so right, in regard to his own performance, at least, that, thereupon drying up utterly, he proceeded to

stand, a speechless figure in the midst of a multitudinous silence, for an eternity lasting fortyfive seconds.

He made a racking effort, and at the end of this epoch found words again. "In making my argument in this

"Two minutes!" said the chairman. "Refutation by the negative. Miss D. Yocum. Two minutes."

"I waive them," said Dora, primly. "I submit that the affirmative has not refuted the argument of the

"Very well." With his gavel the chairman sharply tapped the desk before him, "The question is now before

the house. 'Resolved, that Germany is both morally and legally justified in her invasion of Belgium.' All those

But here there was an interruption of a kind never before witnessed during any proceedings of the Lumen

Society. It came from neither of the debaters, who still remained standing at their desks until the vote settling

their comparative merits in argument should be taken. The interruption was from the rear row of seats along

the wall, where sat new members of the society, freshmen not upon the program for the evening. A loud

voice was heard from this quarter, a loud but nasal voice, shrill as well as nasal, and full of a strange hot

passion. "Mr. Chairman!" it cried. "Lookahere, Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman, I demand to be heard! You

gotta gimme my say, Mr. Chairman! I'm agunna have my ~say~! You lookahere, Mr. Chairman!"

Shocked by such a breach of order, and by the unseemly violence of the speaker, not only the chairman but

everyone else looked there. A short, strong figure was on its feet, gesticulating fiercely; and the head

belonging to it was a large one with too much curly black hair, a flat, swarthy face, shiny and not

immaculately shaven; there was an impression of illchosen clothes, too much fat red lip, too much tooth, too

much eyeball. Fred Mitchell, halfsorrowing, yet struggling to conceal tears of choked mirth over his

roommate's late exhibition, recognized this violent interrupter as one Linski, a fellow freshman who sat next

to him in one of his classes. "What's ~that~ cuss up to?" Fred wondered, and so did others. Linski showed

He pressed forward, shoving himself through the two rows in front of him till he emerged upon the green

"You don't put no such stuff as this over, I tell you!" he shouted in his hot, nasal voice. "This here's a free

country, and you call yourself a debating society, do you? Lemme tell you ~I~ belong to a debating society in

Chicago, where I come from, and them fellas up there, they'd think they'd oughta be shot fer a fake like what

you people are tryin' to put over, here, tonight. I come down here to git some more education, and pay fer it,

too, in good hard money I've made sweatin' in a machine shop up there in Chicago; but if ~this~ is the kind of

education I'm agunna git, I better go on back there. You call this a square debate, do you?"

He advanced toward the chairman's platform, shaking a frantic fist. "Well, if you do, you got another think

comin', my capitalis' frien'! you went and give out the question whether it's right fer Choimuny to go through

Belgium; and what do you do fer the Choimun side? You pick out this here big stiff"he waved his

passionate hand at the paralyzed Ramsey"you pick out a boob like that for the Choimun side, a poor fish

that gits stagefright so bad he don't know whether he's talkin' or dead; or else he fakes it; because he's a

speaker so bum it looks more to me like he was faking. You get this big stiff to fake the Choimun side, and

then you go and stick up a goil agains' him that's got brains and makes a pacifis' argument that wins the case

agains' the Choimuns like cuttin' through hog lard! But you ain't agunna git away with it, mister! Lemme tell

you right here and now, I may be a mix blood, but I got some Choimun in me with the rest what I got, and

before you vote on this here question you gotta hear a few woids from somebody that can ~talk!~ This whole

war is a capitalis' war, Belgium as much as Choimuny, and the United States is sellin' its soul to the capitalis'

right now, I tell you, takin' sides agains' Choimuny. Orders fer explosives and ammanition and guns and Red

Cross supplies is comin' into this country by the millions, and the capitalis' United States is fat already on the

blood of the workers of Europe! Yes, it is, and I'll have my ~say,~ you boorjaw faker, and you can hammer

He had begun to shriek; moisture fell from his brow and his mouth; the scandalized society was on its feet,

nervously into groups. Evidently the meeting was about to disintegrate. "I'll have my ~say~!" the frenzied

Linski screamed. "You try to put up this capitalis' trick and work a fake to carry over this debate agains'

The outraged chairman was wholly at a loss how to deal with the "unprecedented situation"so he defined

it, quite truthfully; and he continued to pound upon the desk, while other clamours began to rival Linski's;

shouts of "Put him out!" "Order!" "Shut up, Freshman!" "Turn him over to the sophomores!"

"This meeting is ~adjourned!~" bellowed the chairman, and there was a thronging toward the doors, while the

frothing Linski asseverated: "I'm agunna git my say, I tell you! I'll have my say! I'll have my ~say!~"

He had more than that, before the hour was over. A moment after he emerged from the building and came

out, still hot, upon the cool, dark campus, he found himself the centre of a group of his own classmates whom

...As this group broke up, a few minutes later, a youth running to join it, scenting somewhat of interest,

"Oh, nothing. We just talked to that Linski. Nobody else touched him, but Ramsey Milholland gave him a

Ramsey was laconic in response to inquiries upon this subject. When someone remarked: "You served him

right for calling you a boob and a poor fish and so on before all the society, girls and all," Ramsey only said:

The way I look at it, Ramsey," Fred Mitchell said, when they reached their apartment, whither the benevolent

Colburn accompanied them, "the way I look at it, this Linski kind of paid you a compliment, after all, when

he called you a fake. He must have thought you anyway ~looked~ as if you could make a better speech than

And as Ramsey groaned, the jovial Mitchell gave himself up to the divan and the mirth. "Oh, oh, oh,

"Never you mind, Brother Milholland," Colburn said gently. "The Lumen is used to nervous beginners. I've

seen dozens in my time, just like you; and some of 'em got to be first rate before they quit. Besides, this crazy

Linski is all that anybody'll ever remember about tonight's meeting, anyhow. There never was any such

outbreak as that in ~my~ time, and I guess there nver was in the whole history of the society. We'll probably

suspend him until he apologizes to the societyI'm on the board, and I'm in favour of it. Who is the bird,

"I never saw him before," Ramsey responded from the deep chair, where he had moodily thrown himself;

"Well," said the senior, "you'll know him when you see him again. You put your mark on him where you can

see it, all right!" He chuckled. "I suppose I really ought to have interfered in that, but I decided to do a little

astronomical observation, about fifty feet away, for a few minutes. I'm 'way behind in my astronomy,

"I've talked to him a couple o' times on the campus," said Fred. "He's in one of my classes. He's about the

oldest in our class, I guessa lot older than us, anyhow. He's kind of an anarchist or something; can't talk

more'n five minutes any time without gettin off some bug stuff about 'capitalism.' He said the course in

"Yes; I'd heard that myself, and I told Linski, and he said he had an uncle workin' in a steel mill got twice that

much; but it didn't make any difference, ole Craig was bought by Wall Street. He said 'capitalism' better look

out; he and the foreignborn workmen were goin' to ~take~ this country some day, and that was one of the

reasons he was after an education. He talked pretty strong pro German, tooabout the war in Europebut

I sort of thought that was more because he'd be proanything that he thought would help upset the United

"Yes," said Colburn, "that's how he sounded tonight. I guess there's plenty more like him in the cities, too.

That reminds me, I'd better arrange a debate on immigration for the Lumen. We'll put Brother Milholland for

But the senior reassured him. "Just wanted to see you jump," he explained. "Don't fear; you've done your

"Yes, you won't be called on again this term. By the way," said Colburn, thoughtfully, "that was a clever girl

you had against you tonight. I don't believe in pacificism much, myself, but she used it very niftily for her

"Well, she's a clever young thing," said the senior, still thoughtful. And he added: "Graceful girl, she is."

At this, the roommates looked at him with startled attention. Ramsey was so roused as to forget his troubles

This exclamation was a simultaneous one; the astounded pair stared at him in blank incredulity.

"Why, don't you think so?" Colburn mildly inquired. "She seems to me very unusual looking."

"Extraordinary eyes," continued Colburn. "Lovely figure, too; altogether a strikingly pretty girl. Handsome, I

should say, perhaps. Yes, 'handsome' rather than 'pretty'." He looked up from a brief reverie. "You fellows

"She made a splendid impression on the Lumen," Colburn went on. "I don't remember that I ever saw a first

appearance there that quite equalled it. She'll probably have a brilliant career in the society, and in the

university, too. She must be a very fine sort of person." He deliberated within himself a few moments longer,

then, realizing that his hosts and Brethren did not respond with any heartinessor with anything at allto

the theme, he changed it, and asked them what they thought about the war in Europe.

They talked of the war rather drowsily for a while; it was an interesting but not an exciting topic: the thing

they spoke of was so far away. It was in foreign countries where they had never been and had no

acquaintances; and both the cause and the issue seemed to be in confusion, though evidently Germany had

"started" the trouble. Only one thing emerged as absolutely clear and proved: there could be no disagreement

about Germany's "dirty work," as Fred defined it, in violating Belgium. And this stirred Ramsey to declare

with justice that "dirty work" had likewise been done upon himself by the official person, whoever he or she

was, who had given him the German side of the evening's debate. After this moment of fervour, the

"Well, I'm glad you gave that Linski a fine little punch, Brother Milholland," he said, at the door. "It won't do

you any harm in the 'frat,' or with the Lumen either. And don't be discouraged about your debating. You'll

learn. Anybody might have got rattled by having to argue against as clever and goodlooking a girl as that!"

The roommates gave each other a look of serious puzzlement as the door closed. "Well, Brother Colburn is a

Ramsey assented, and then, as the two prepared for bed, they entered into a further discussion of their senior

friend. They liked him "all right," they said, but he certainly must be kind of queer, and they couldn't just see

how he had "ever managed to get where he was" in the "frat" and the Lumen and the university.

Ramsey passed the slightly disfigured Linski on the campus next day without betraying any embarrassment

or making a sign of recognition. Fred Mitchell told his roommate, chuckling, that Linski had sworn to "get"

him, and, not knowing Fred's affiliations, had made him the confidant of his oath. Fred had given his

blessing, he said, upon the enterprise, and advised Linski to use a brick. "He'll hit you on the head with it,"

said the lighthearted Fred, falling back upon this old joke. "Then you can catch it as it bounces off and

However, Linski proved to be merely an episode, not only so far as Ramsey was concerned but in the Lumen

and in the university as well. His suspension from the Lumen was for a year, and so cruel a punishment it

proved for this born debater that he noisily declared he would found a debating society himself, and had a

poster printed and distributed announcing the first meeting of "The Free Speech and Masses' Rights Council."

Several town loafers attended the meeting, but the only person connected with the university who came was

an oriental student, a Chinese youth of almost intrusive amiability. Linski made a fiery address, the

townsmen loudly appluading his advocacy of an embargo on munitions and the distribution of everybody's

"property," but the Chinaman, accustomed to see students so madly in earnest only when they were

burlesquing, took the whole affair to be intended humour, and tittered politely without cessationexcept at

such times as he thought it proper to appear quite wrung with laughter. Then he would rock himself, clasp his

mouth with both hands and splutter through his fingers. Linski accused him of being in the pay of "capital."

Next day the orator was unable to show himself upon the campus without causing demonstrations; whenever

he was seen a file of quickly gathering students marched behind him chanting repeatedly and deafeningly in

chorus: "Down with Wall Street! Hoch der Kaiser! Who loves Linski? Who, who, who? Hoo Lun! Who loves

"Well, here it isn't midyear Exams yet, and the good ole class of NineteenEighteen's already lost a

"I guess so," Ramsey assented. "That Linski might just as well stayed here, though."

"He couldn't do any harm here. He'll prob'ly get more people to listen to him in cities where there's so many

"Oh, well," said Fred. "What do ~we~ care what happens to Chicago! Come on, let's behave real wild, and go

After the strain of the "midyear Exams" in February, they lived a freehearted life. They had settled into the

ways of their world; they had grown used to it, and it had grown used to them; there was no longer any

ignominy in being a freshman. They romped upon the campus and sometimes rioted harmlessly about the

streets of the town. In the evenings they visited their fellows and Brethren and were visited in turn, and

sometimes they looked so far ahead as to talk vaguely of their plans for professions or businessthough to a

freshman this concerned an almost unthinkably distant prospect. "I guess I'll go in with my father, in the

wholesale drug business," said Fred. "My married brother already is in the firm, and I suppose they'll give me

a showsend me out on the road a year or two first, maybe, to try me. Then I'm going to marry some little

cutie and settle down. What you goin' to do, Ramsey? Go to Law School, and then come back and go in your

It was always Fred who did most of the talking; Ramsey was quiet. Fred told the "frat seniors" that Ramsey

was "developing a whole lot these days"; and he told Ramsey himself that he could see a "big change" in him,

adding that the improvement was probably due to Ramsey's having passed through "terrible trials like that

Ramsey kept to their rooms more than his comrade did, one reason for this domesticity being that he "had to

study longer than Fred did, to keep up"; and another reason may have been a greater shyness than Fred

possessedif, indeed, Fred possessed any shyness at all. For Fred was a cheery spirit difficult to abash, and

by the coming of spring knew all of the bestlooking girl students in the placeknew them well enough, it

appeared, to speak of them not merely by their first names but by abbreviations of these. He had become

fashion's sprig, a "fusser" and butterfly, and he reproached his roommate for shunning the ladies.

"Well, the truth is, Fred," said Ramsey one day, responding darkly; "well, you see the truth is, Fred, I've

Fred said no more; and it was comprehended between them that the past need never be definitely referred to

again, but that it stood between Ramsey and any entertainment to be obtained of the gentler but less

trustworthy sex. And when other Brethren of the "frat" would have pressed Ramsey to join them in various

frivolous enterprises concerning "coeds," or to be shared by "coeds," Fred thought it better to explain to

them privately (all being sacred among Brethren) how Ramsey's life, so far as Girls went, had been toyed

This created a great deal of respect for Ramsey. It became understood everywhere that he was a

That early spring of 1915 the two boys and their friends and Brethren talked more of the war than they had in

the autumn, though the subject was not an all at absorbing one; for the trenches in Flanders and France were

still of the immense, remote distance. By no stretch of imagination could these wet trenches be thought

greatly to concern the "frat," the Lumen, or the university. Really important matters were the doings of the

"Track Team," now training in the "Gym" and on the 'Varsity Field, and, more vital still, the prospects of the

The ~Lusitania~ brought to every American a revelation of what had lain so deep in his own heart that often

he had not realized it was there. When the Germans hid in the sea and sent down the great merchant ship,

with American babies and their mothers, and gallantly dying American gentlemen, there came a change even

to girls and boys and professors, until then so preoccupied with their own little aloof world thousands of

Fred Mitchell, ever volatile and generous, was one of those who went quite wild. No orator, he nevertheless

made a frantic speech at the week's "frat meetings," cursing the Germans in the simple old English words that

their performance had demonstrated to be applicable, and going on to demand that the fraternity prepare for

its own share in the action of the country. "I don't care ~how~ insignificant we few fellows here tonight may

seem," he cried; "we can do our little, and if everybody in this country's ready to do their own little, why,

that'll be plenty! Brothers, don't you realize that all ~over~ the United States tonight the people are feeling

just the way we are here? Millions and millions and millions of them! Wherever there's an American he's

~with~ usand you bet your bottom dollar there are just a few more Americans in this country of ours than

there are bigmouthed lobsters like that fellow Linski! I tell you, if Congress only gives the word, there could

be an army of five million men in this country tomorrow, and those dirty babykillin' dachshunds would

hear a word or two from your Uncle Samuel! Brothers, I demand that something be done right here and now,

and by us! I move we telegraph the Secretary of War tonight and offer him a regiment from this university

The motion was hotly seconded and instantly carried. Then followed a much flustered discussion of the form

and phrasing of the proposed telegram, but, after everything seemed to have been settled, someone

ascertained by telephone that the telegraph company would not accept messages containing words

customarily defined as profane; so the telegram had to be rewritten. This led to further amendment, and it was

finally decided to address the senators from that state, instead of the Secretary of War, and thus in a

Next day, news of what the "frat" had done made a great stir in the university; other "frats" sent telegrams, so

did the "Barbarians," haters of the "frats" but joining them in this; while a small band of "GermanAmerican"

students found it their duty to go before the faculty and report these "breaches of neutrality." They protested

heavily, demanding the expulsion of the "breachers" as disloyal citizens, therefore unfit students, but suffered

a disappointment; for the faculty itself had been sending telegrams of similar spirit, addressing not only the

senators and congressmen of the state but the President of the United States. Flabbergasted, the "German

Americans" retired; they were confused and disgusted by this higherup outbreak of unneutralityit

overwhelmed them that citizens of the United States should not remain neutral in the dispute between the

At twilight, Ramsey was walking meditatively on his way to dinner at the "frat house," across the campus

from his apartment at Mrs. Meig's. Everybody was quiet now, both town and gown; the students were at their

dinners and so were the burghers. Ramsey was late but did not quicken his thoughtful steps, which were those

of one lost in reverie. He had forgotten that springtime was all about him, and, with his head down, walked

unregardful of the new gayeties flung forth upon the air by great clusters of flowering shrubs, just come into

He was unconscious that somebody behind him, going the same way, came hastening to overtake him and

called his name, "Ramsey! Ramsey Milholland!" Not until he had been called three times did he realize that

he was being hailedand in a girl's voice! By that time, the girl herself was beside him, and Ramsey halted,

She was pale, a little breathless, and her eyes were bright and severe. "I want to speak to you," she said,

quickly. "I want to ask you about something. Mr. Colburn and Fred Mitchell are the only people I know in

your 'frat' except you, and I haven't seen either of them today, or I'd have asked one of them."

Most uncomfortably astonished, Ramsey took his hands out of his pockets, picked a leaf from a lilac bush

beside the path, and put the stem of the leaf seriously into a corner of his mouth, before finding anything to

say. "Wellwell, all right," he finally responded. "I'll tell youif it's anything I know about."

"You know about it," said Dora. "That is, you certainly do if you were at your 'frat' meeting last night. Were

"Yes, I was there," Ramsey answered, wondering what in the world she wanted to know, though he supposed

vaguely that it must be something about Colburn, whom he had several times seen walking with her. "Of

course I couldn't tell you much," he added, with an afterthought. "You see, a good deal that goes on at a 'frat'

"Yes," she said, smiling faintly, though with a satire that missed him. "I've been a member of a sorority since

September, and I think I have an idea of what could be told or not told. Suppose we walk on, if you don't

Nevertheless, as they slowly went on together, Ramsey was embarrassed. He felt "queer." They had known

each other so long; in a way had shared so much, sitting daily for years near each other and undergoing the

same outward experiences; they had almost "grown up together," yet this was the first time they had ever

"Well" he said. "If you want to ask anything it's all right for me to tell youwell, I just as soon, I guess."

"It has nothing to do with the secret proceedings of your 'frat'," said Dora, primly. "What I want to ask about

has been talked of all over the place today. Everyone has been saying it was ~your~ 'frat' that sent the first

telegram to members of the Government offering support in case of war with Germany. They say you didn't

even wait until today, but sent off a message last night. What I wanted to ask you was whether this story is

She uttered an exclamation, a sound of grief and of suspicion confirmed. "Ah! I was afraid so!"

"'Afraid so'? What's the matter?" he asked, and because she seemed excited and troubled, he found himself

not quite so embarrassed as he had been at first; for some reason her agitation made him feel easier. "What

"Oh, it's all so shocking and wicked and mistaken!" she cried. "Even the faculty has been doing it, and half

"Yes, we did," he said, throughly puzzled. "We're the oldest 'frat' here, and of course"he chuckled

modestly"of course we think we're the best. Do you mean you believe we ought to've sat back and let

"Oh, ~no~!" she answered, vehemently. "Nobody ought to have started it! That's the trouble; don't you see? If

nobody had started it none of it might have happened. The rest mightn't have caught it. It mightn't have got

into their heads. A war thought is the most contagious thought in the world; but if it can be kept from starting,

it can be kept from being contagious. It's just when people have got into an emotional state, or a state of

smouldering rage, that everybody ought to be so terribly careful not to think war thoughts or make war

speechesor send war telegrams! I thoughtoh, I was so sure I'd convinced Mr. Colburn of all this, the last

time we talked of it! He seemed to understand, and I was sure he agreed with me." She bit her lip. "He was

"I guess he must 'a' been," said Ramsey, with admirable simplicity. "He didn't talk about anything like that

Ramsey made bold to look at her out of the side of his eye, and as she was gazing tensely forward he

continued his observation for some time. She was obviously controlling agitation, almost controlling tears,

which seemed to threaten her very wideopen eyes; for those now fully grown and noticeable eyewinkers of

hers were subject to fluctuations indicating such a threat. She looked "hurt," and Ramsey was touched; there

was something human about her, then, after all. And if he had put his feeling into words at the moment, he

would have said that he guessed maybe he could stand this ole girl, for a few minutes sometimes, better than

"Well," he said, "Colburn prob'ly wouldn't want to hurt your feelings or anything. Colburn"

"Oh!" said Ramsey. "Well, excuse me; I thought prob'ly you were sore because he'd jollied you about this

"No!" she said, sharply. "I'm not thinking of his having agreed with ~me~ and fooling ~me~ about it. He just

wanted to make a pleasant impression on a girl, and said anything he thought would please her. I don't care

whether he does things like that or not. What I care about is that the ~principle~ didn't reach him and that he

Fraternal loyalty could not quite brook this. "Brother Colburn is a perfectly honor'ble man," said Ramsey,

"Of course! she cried. "Oh, can't I make you understand that I'm not condemning him for a little flattery to

me? I don't care two straws for his showing that ~I~ didn't influence him. He doesn't interest me, please

Ramsey was altogether perplexed. "Well, I don't see what makes you go for him so hard, then."

"I don't ~condemn~ him for it," she insisted, despairingly. "Don't you see the difference? I'm not condemning

"My golly!" Ramsey exclaimed. "You don't think those Dutchmen were right to drown babies and"

"No! I think they were ghastly murderers! I think they were detestable and fiendish and monstrous and"

"I want Christianity!" she cried. "I can't think of the Germans without hating them, and so today, when all

the world is hating them, I keep myself from thinking of them as much as I can. Already half the world is full

of war; you want to go to war to make things right, but it won't; it will only make more war!"

"Don't you see what you've done, you boys?" she said. "Don't you see what you've done with your absurd

telegram? That started the rest; they thought they ~all~ had to send telegrams like that."

"Even they mightn't have thought of it if it hadn't been for the first one. Vengeance is the most terrible

thought; once you put it into people's minds that they ought to have it, it runs away with them"

"Well, it isn't mostly vengeance we're after, at all. There's a lot more to it than just getting even with"

She did not heed him. "You're all blind! You don't see what you're doing; you don't even see what you've

done to this peaceful place here. You've filled it full of thoughts of fury and killing and massacre"

"Why, no," said Ramsey. "It was those Dutch did that to us; and, besides, there's more to it than you"

"No, there isn't," she interrupted. "It's just the old brutal spirit that nations inherit from the time they were

only tribes; it's the tribe spirit, and an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It's those things and the love of

fightingmen have always loved to fight. Civilization hasn't taken it out of them; men still have the brute in

"I don't think so," said Ramsey. "Americans don't love to fight; I don't know about other countries, but we

don't. Of course, here and there, there's some fellow that likes to hunt around for scrapes, but I never saw

more than three or four in my life that acted that way. Of course a football team often has a scrapper or two

Ramsey was roused to become argumentative. "I don't see where you get the idea. Colburn isn't that way, and

"What's the matter?" he said, stopping, too. Something he said had startled her, evidently.

"Nothing like one. We were just guyin' him aboutabout gettin' slicked up, kind of, because he at in front of

you; and he hit me with his book strap and I chased him off. Gracious, no; ~that~ wasn't a fight!"

Ramsey chuckled again. "That wasn't even as much like a fight as the one with Wesley. I just told this Linski

I was goin' to give him a punch in the sn I just told him to look out because I was goin' to hit him, and then

I did it, and waited to see if he wanted to do anything about it, and he didn't. That's all there was to it, and it

They had begun to walk on again, and Ramsey was aware that they had passed the "frat house," where his

dinner was probably growing cold. He was aware of this, but not sharply or insistently. Curiously enough, he

did not think about it. He had begun to find something pleasant in the odd interview, and in walking beside a

girl, even though the girl was Dora Yocum. He made no attempt to account to himself for anything so

For a while they went slowly together, not speaking, and without destination, though Ramsey vaguely took it

for granted that Dora was going somewhere. But she wasn't. They emerged from the part of the small town

closely built about the university and came out upon a bit of parked land overlooking the river; and here

"I think I'll stay here a while," she said; and as he made no response, she asked, "Hadn't you better be going

back to your 'frat house' for your dinner? I didn't mean for you to come out of your way with me; I only

He stood irresolute, not sure that he wanted his dinner just then. It would have amazed him to face the fact

deliberately that perhaps he preferred being with Dora Yocum to eating. However, he faced no such fact, nor

"I guess I can get my dinner pretty near any time. I don't" He had a thought. "Did you"

"I don't think people have very much appetite today and yesterday," she said, with the hint of a sad laugh,

"It's too terrible!" she said. "I can't sit and eat when I think of the ~Lusitania~of all those poor, poor people

"And of what it's going to bring, if we let it," she went on. "As if this killing weren't enough, we want to add

~our~ killing! Oh, that's the most terrible thing of allthe thing it makes within us! Don't you understand?"

She turned to him appealingly, and he felt queerer than ever. Dusk had fallen. Where they stood, under the

youngleaved maple tree, there was but a faint lingering of afterglow, and in this mystery her face glimmered

wan and sweet; so that Ramsey, just then, was like one who discovers an old pan, used in the kitchen, to be

"Well, I don't feel much like dinner right now," he said. "Wewe could sit here awhile on this bench,

Ramsey kept very few things from Fred Mitchell, and usually his confidences were immediate upon the

occasion of them; but allowed several weeks to elapse before sketching for his roommate the outlines of this

"One thing that was kind o' funny about it, Fred," he said, "I didn't know what to call her."

Mr. Mitchell, stretched upon the window seat in their "study," and looking out over the town street below and

the campus beyond the street, had already thought it tactful to ambush his profound amusement by turning

upon his side, so that his face was toward the window and away from his companion. "What did you want to

"No. You know what I mean. I mean I had to just keep callin' her 'you'; and that gets kind of freaky when

you're talkin' to anybody a good while like that. When she'd be lookin' away from me, and I'd want to start

sayin' something to her, you know, why, I wouldn't know how to get started exactly, without callin' her

something. A person doesn't want to be always startin' off with 'See here,' or things like that."

"I don't see why you let it trouble you," said Fred. "From how you've always talked about her, you had a

"Get out! What I mean is, she called me 'Ramsey' without any bother; it seems funny I got stumped every

time I started to say 'Dora.' Someway I couldn't land it, and it certainly would 'a' sounded crazy to call her

'Miss Yocum' after sittin' in the same room with her every day from the baby class clear on up through the

"Just nothin' at all. I started to call her something or other a hundred times, I guess, and then I'd balk. I'd get

"She may have thought you had a cold," said Fred, still keeping his back turned.

"I expect maybe she didthough I don't know; most of the time she didn't seem to notice me much, kind of."

"But if it hadn't been for that," Fred suggested, "you mean she'd have certainly paid more attention to who

"Get out! You know how it was. Everybody those few days thought we were goin' to have war, and she was

just sure of it, and it upset her. Of course most people were a lot more upset by what those Dutchmen did to

the ~Lusitania~ than by the idea of war; and she seemed to feel as broken up as anybody could be about the

~Lusitania~, but what got her the worst was the notion of her country wantin' to fight, she said. She really

was upset, too, Fred; there wasn't any puttin' on about it. I guess that ole girl certainly must have a good deal

of feeling, because, doggoned, after we'd been sittin' there a while if she didn't have to get out her

handkerchief! She kept her face turned away from mejust the same as you're doin' now to keep from

laughin'but honestly, she cried like somebody at a funeral. I felt like the darndest fool!"

"I'm not laughing," said Fred, but he did not prove it by turning so that his face could be seen. "What did she

"Oh, she didn't say such an awful lot. She said one kind o' funny thing though: she said she was sorry she

couldn't quite control herself, but if anybody had to see her cry she minded it less because it was an old

schoolmate. What struck me so kind o' funny about that iswhy, it looks as if she never knew the way I

"Well, sir, it ~isn't~, kind of," Ramsey agreed, musingly. "It certainly isn't when you look at it that way."

"Nothin'. I started to, but I sort of balked again. Well, we kept on sitting there, and afterwhile she began to

talk again and got kind of excited about how no war could do anything or anybody any good, and all war was

wicked, no matter what it was about, and nothin' could be good that was founded on fear and hate, and every

war that ever was fought was always founded on fear and hate. She said if the Germans wanted to fight us we

"Nothin'. I kind o' started tobut what's the use? She's got that in her head. Besides, how are you goin' to

argue about a thing with a person that's crying about it? I tell you, Fred, I guess we got to admit, after all, that

ole girl certainly must have a lost of heart about her, anyway. There may not be much ~fun~ to herthough

of course I wouldn't know hardly any way to tell about thatbut there couldn't be hardly any doubt she's got

a lot of feeling. Well, and then she went on and said old men made wars, but didn't fight; they left the fighting

"Yes!" Fred exclaimed, and upon that he turned free of mirth for the moment. "That's the woman of it, I

guess. Send the old men to do the fighting! For the matter of that, I guess my father'd about a thousand times

go himself than see me and my brothers go; but Father's so fat he can't stoop! You got to be able to stoop to

dig a trench, I guess! Well, suppose we sent our old men up against those Dutchmen; the Dutchmen would

just kill the old men, and then come after the boys anyway, and the boys wouldn't be ready, and they'd get

killed, too; and then there wouldn't be anybody but the Dutchmen left, and that'd be one fine world, wouldn't

"Nothin'. I couldn't get started anyway, but, besides, what was the use? But she didn't want the old men to go;

"Just what it has been doin', I suppose. Just let things simmer down, and poke along, and let them do what

"I guess so!" said Fred. "Then, afterwhile, when they get some free time on their hands, they'll come over and

make it ~really~ interesting for us, because they know we won't do anything but talk. Yes, I guess the way

"No. She said she thought it prob'ly wouldn't come right away, but now it was almost sure to come sometime.

She said our telegrams and all the talk and so much feeling and everything showed her that the war thought

that was always ~in~ people somewhere had been stirred up so it would go on and on. She said she knew

from the way she felt herself about the ~Lusitania~ that a feeling like that in her would never be absolutely

wiped out as long as she lived. But she said her other feeling about the horribleness of war taught her to keep

the first feeling from breaking out, but with other people it wouldn't; and even if war didn't break out right

then, it would always be ready to, all over the country, and sometime it would, though she was goin' to do her

share to fight it, herself, as long as she could stand. She asked me wouldn't I be one of the ones to help her."

Again Fred thought it tactful to turn and look out the window, while the agitation of his shoulders betrayed

"Go on and laugh! Well, so we stayed there quite a while, but before we left she got kind of more like

everyday, you know, the way people do. It was halfpast nine when we walked back in town, and I was

commencin' to feel kind of hungry, so I asked her if she wasn't, and she sort of laughed and seemed to be

ashamed of it, as if it were a disgrace or something, but she said she guessed she was; so I left her by that

hedge of lilacs near the observatory and went on over to the 'Teria and the fruit store, and got some stuffed

eggs and olives and halfadozen peanut butter sandwiches and a box o' strawberries kind of girlfood,

you knowand went on back there, and we ate the stuff up. So then she said she was afraid she'd taken me

away from my dinner and made me a lot of trouble, and so on, and she was sorry, and she told me

"I haven't seen her next," said Ramsey. "I haven't seen her at all not to speak to. I saw her on Main Street

twice since then, but both times she was with some other girls, and they were across the street, and I couldn't

tell if she was lookin' at meI kind of thought notso I thought it might look sort o' nutty to bow to her if

"And you didn't tell her you wouldn't be one of the ones to help her with her pacifism and antiwar stuff and

Fred sat up, giggling. "So she thinks you ~will~ help her. You didn't say anything at all, and she must think

"Well, ~I~ wouldn't argue with her," said Ramsey. Then, after a silence, he seemed to be in need of

sympathetic comprehension. "It ~was~ kind o' funny, though, wasn't it?" he said, appealingly.

"Oh, get out! Her stoppin' me, and me goin' pokin' along with her, and herwell, her crying and everything,

and me being around with her while she felt so upset, I mean. It seemswell, it does seem kind o' funny to

"Why does it?" Fred inquired, preserving his gravity. "Why should it seem funny to you?"

"I don't mean funny like something's funny you laugh at," Ramsey explained laboriously. "I mean funny like

something that's out of the way, and you wonder how it ever happened to happen. I mean it seems funny I'd

ever be sittin' there on a bench with that ole girl I never spoke to in my life or had anything to do with, and

talkin' about the United States goin' to war. What we were talkin' about, why, that seems just as funny as the

rest of it. Lookin' back to our class picnic, f'r instance, second year of high school, that day I jumped in the

creek after Well, you know, it was when I started makin' a fool of myself over a girl. Thank goodness, I

got ~that~ out o' my system; it makes me just sick to look back on those days and think of the fool things I

did, and all I thought about that girl. Why, she Well, I've got old enough to see now she was just about as

ordinary a girl as there ever was, and if I saw her now I wouldn't even think she was pretty; I'd prob'ly think

she was sort of loudlookin'. Well, what's passed is past, and it isn't either here nor there. What I started to

say was this: that the way it begins to look to me, it looks as if nobody can tell in this life a darn thing about

what's goin' to happen, and the things that do happen are the very ones you'd swear were the last that could. I

meanyou look back to that day of the picnicmy! but I was a rube thenwell, I mean you look back to

that day, and what do you suppose I'd have thought then if somebody'd told me the time would ever come

when I'd be 'way off here at college sittin' on a bench with Dora Yocumwith ~Dora Yocum~, in the first

placeand her crying, and both of us talking about the United States goin' to war with Germany! Don't it

"You say 'and both us talking' and so on. As near as I can make out, ~you~ didn't say anything at all."

"Well, I didn'tmuch," Ramsey admitted, and returned to his point with almost pathetic persistence. "But

"Yes," said Fred cruelly. "I've noticed you said so, but it don't look any funnier than you do when you say it."

Suddenly he sent forth a startling shout. "~Wow!~ You're as red as a blushing beet."

"Y'are!" shouted Fred. "Wow! The ole womanhater's got the flushes! Oh, look at the pretty posy!"

And, jumping down from the window seat, he began to dance round his much perturbed comrade, bellowing.

Ramsey bore with him for a moment, then sprang upon him; they wrestled vigorously, broke a chair, and

went to the floor with a crash that gave the chandelier in Mrs. Meig's parlour, below, an atack of jingles.

"All right. I give my solemn oath," said Fred; and they rose, arranging their tousled attire.

"I beg!" Fred cried, retreating. "I mean, aside from all that, why, I just thought maybe after such an evening

"No, I mean it; you ought to," Fred insisted, earnestly, and as his roommate glared at him with complete

suspicion, he added, in explanation. "You ought to go next Caller's Night, and send in your card, and say you

felt you ought to ask if she'd suffered any from the night air. Even if you couldn't manage to say that, you

ought to start to say it, anyhow, because you Keep off o' me! I'm only tryin' to do you a good turn, ain't I?"

"You save your good turns for yourself," Ramsey growled, still advancing upon him.

But the insidious Mitchell, evading him, fled to the other end of the room, picked up his cap, and changed his

manner. "Come on, ole bag o' beans, let's be on our way to the 'frat house'; it's time. We'll call this all off."

But as they went along, Fred took Ramsey's arm confidentially, and said, "Now, honestly, Ram, ole man,

"Oh, ~no~," Fred expostulated. "I mean ~seriously~, Ramsey. Honestly, I mean seriously. Aren't you

"Well, seriously, Ramsey, there's only one Caller's Night before vacation, and so I suppose it hardly will be

worth while; but I expect you'll see quite a little of her at home this summer?"

"No, I won't. I won't see her at all. She isn't goin' to be home this summer, and I wouldn't see anything of her

Ramsey turned on him. "You look out! She didn't tell me. I just happened to see in the ~Bulletin~ she's

signed up with some other girls to go and do settlement work in Chicago. Anybody could see it. It was

printed out plain. You could have seen it just as well as I could, if you'd read the ~Bulletin~."

"I'll be careful," Fred assured him, earnestly. "I really and honestly don't mean to get you excited about all

this, Ramsey. I can see myself you haven't changed from your old opinion of Dora Yocum a bit. I was only

tryin' to get a little rise out of you for a minute, because of course, seriously, why, I can see you hate her just

"Yes," said Ramsey, disarmed and guileless in the face of diplomacy. "I only told you about all this, Fred,

Ramsey looked vaguely disturbed. "I saidwhy, I said it all seemed kind o'" He paused, then repeated

"What did?" Fred inquired, but as he glanced in seeming naivete at his companion, something he saw in the

Ramsey was not quite athlete enough for any of the 'varsity teams; neither was he an antagonist safely

encountered, whether in play or in earnest, and during the next few days he taught Fred Mitchell to be

cautious. The chaffer learned that his own agility could not save him from Ramsey, and so found it wiser to

contain an effervescence which sometimes threatened to burst him. Ramsey as a victim was a continuous

After Commencement, when the roommates had gone home, Mr. Mitchell's caution extended over the long

sunshiny months of summer vacation; he broke it but once and then in welladvised safety, for the occasion

was semipublic. The two were out for a stroll on a July Sunday afternoon; and up and down the street young

couples lolled along, young families and baby carriages straggled to and from the houses of older relatives,

and the rest of the world of that growing city was rocking and fanning itself on its front veranda.

"Here's a right pretty place, isn't it, Ramsey? don't you think?" Fred remarked innocently, as they were

passing a lawn of short clipped, bright green grass before a geniallooking house, fresh in white paint and

cool in greenandwhite awnings. A broad veranda, well populated just now, crossed the front of the house;

fine trees helped the awnings to give comfort against the sun; and Fred's remark was warranted. Nevertheless,

he fell under the suspicion of his companion, who had begun to evince some nervousness before Fred spoke.

"The Yocum place," said Mr. Mitchell. "I hear the old gentleman's mighty prosperous these days. They keep

Fred appeared to muse regretfully. "It looks kind of ~empty~ now, though," he said, "with only Mr. and Mrs.

Yocum and their three married daughters, and eight or nine children on the front porch!"

"You can't do it!" said Fred, manifesting triumph. "We'll both stop right here in plain sight of the whole

And he halted, leaning back implacably against the Yocum's iron fence. Ramsey was scandalized.

"I will, and if you go on alone I'll yell at you. You got to stand right here with all of 'em lookin' at you

Fred consented to end the moment of agony; and for the rest of the summer found it impossible to persuade

Ramsey to pass that house in his company. "I won't do it!" Ramsey told him. "Your word of honour means

nothin' to me; you're liable to do anything that comes into your head, and I'm gettin' old enough to not get a

reputation for bein' seen with people that act the idiot on the public streets. No, sir; we'll walk around the

The evening after their return to the university both were busy with their trunks and various orderings and

disorderings of their apartment, but Fred several times expressed surprise that his roommate should be

content to remain at home; and finally Ramsey comprehended the implications. Mrs. Meigs's chandelier

"You let me up!" Fred commanded thickly, his voice muffled by the pile of flannels, sweaters, underwear,

and raincoats wherein his head was being forced to burrow. "You let me up, darn you! ~I~ didn't say

anything." And upon his release he complained that the attack was unprovoked. "I didn't say anything on

earth to even hint you might want to go out and look around to see if anybody in particular had got back to

college yet. I didn't even mention the ~name~ of Dora Yo Keep off o' me! My goodness, but you are

As a matter of fact, neither of them saw Dora until the first meeting of the Lumen, whither they went as

sophomores to take their pleasure in the agony of freshmen debaters. Ramsey was now able to attend the

Lumen, not with complacence but at least without shuddering over the recollection of his own spectacular

first appearance there. He had made subsequent appearances, far from brilliant yet not disgraceful, and as a

spectator, at least, he usually felt rather at his ease in the place. It cannot be asserted, however, that he

appeared entirely at his ease this evening after he had read the "Programme" chalked upon the large easel

blackboard beside the chairman's desk. Three "Freshmen Debates" were announced, and a "Sophomore

Oration," this last being followed by the name, "D. Yocum, '18." Ramsey made immediate and conspicuous

efforts to avoid sitting next to his roommate, but was not so adroit as to be successful. However, Fred was

merciful: the fluctuations of his friend's complexion were an inspiration more to pity than to badinage.

The three debates all concerned the "Causes of the War in Europe," and honours appeared to rest with a small

and stout, stolidly "proGerman" girl debater, who had brought with her and translated at sight absaloot

proofs (so she called them), printed in German, that Germany had been attacked by Belgium at the low

instigation of the envious English. Everybody knew it wasn't true; but she made an impression and

established herself as a debater, especially as her opponent was quite confounded by her introduction of

When the debates and the verdicts were concluded, the orator appeared, and Fred's compassion extended

itself so far that he even refrained from looking inquisitively at the boy in the seat next to his; but he made

one side wager, mentallythat if Ramsey had consented to be thoroughly confidential just then, he would

Dora was charmingly dressed, and she was pale; but those notable eyelashes of hers were all the more notable

against her pallor. And as she spoke with fire, it was natural that her colour should come back quite flamingly

and that her eyes should flash in shelter of the lashes. "The Christian Spirit and Internationalism" was her

subject, yet she showed no meek sample of a Christian Spirit herself when she came to attakcing warmakers

generally, as well as all those "halfdeveloped tribesmen," and "victims of herd instinct" who believed that

war might ever be justified under any circumstances f atrocity. She was eloquent truly, and a picture of grace

and girlish dignity, even when she was most vigorous. Nothing could have been more militant than her

"She's an actual wonder," Fred said, when the two had got back to Mrs. Meigs's, afterward. "Don't you look

at me like that: I'm talkin' about her as a public character, and there's nothin' personal about it. You let me

"If any person makes a public speech," Fred protested, "I got a perfect right to discuss 'em, no matter what

"Good heavens!" Fred exclaimed. "You aren't expecting to interfere with me if I say anything about that little

fat Werder girl that argued for Germany, are you? Or any of the other speakers? I got a right to talk about 'em

just as public speakers, haven't I? Well, what I say is: Dora Yocum as an orator is just an actual perfect

"All right then." Fred settled himself upon the window seat with a pipe, and proceeded, "There's something

about her, when she stands there, she stands so straight and knows just what she's up to, and everything, why,

there's something about her makes the cold chills go down your spineI mean ~my~ spine, not yours

particularly! You sit downI mean ~anybody's~ spine, doggone it!" And as Ramsey increased the

manifestations of his suspicions, lifting a tennis racket over the prostrate figure, "Oh, murder," Fred said,

resignedly. "All right, we'll change the subject. That fat little Werder cutie made out a pretty good case for

Ramsey tossed the racket away, disposed himself in an easy chair with his feet upon the table, and presently

chuckled. "You remember the time I had the fuss with Wesley Bender, back in the ole school days?"

"All the flubdub this Werder girl got off tonight puts me in mind of the way I talked that day. I can

remember it as well as anything! Wesley kept yelpin' that whoever mentioned a lady's name in a public place

was a pup, and of course I didn't want to hit him for that; a boy's got a reg'lar instinct for tryin' to make out

he's on the right side in a scrap, and he'll always try to do something, or say something, or he'll get the other

boy to say someting to make it look as if the other boy was in the wrong and began the trouble. So I told poor

ole Wes that my father spoke my mother's name in a public place whenever he wanted to, and I dared him to

say my father was a pup. And all so on. A boy startin' up a scrap, why, half the time he'll drag his father and

mother if there's any chance to do it. He'll fix up some way so he can say, 'Well, that's just the same as if you

called my father and mother a fool,' or something like that. Then, afterward, he can claim he was scrappin'

because he had to defend his father and mother, and of course he'll more than half believe it himself.

"Well, you take a Governmentit's only just some ~men~, the way I see it, and if they're goin' to start some

big trouble like this war, why, of course they'll play just about the same ole boy trick, because it's instinct to

do it, just the same for a man as it is for a boyor else the principle's just the same, or something. Well,

anyhow, if you want to know who started a scrap and worked it up, you got to forget all the ~talk~ there is

about it, and all what each side ~says~, and just look at two things: Who was fixed for it first, or thought they

were, and who hit first? When you get the answer to those two questions everything's settled about all this

being 'attacked' business. Both sides, just the same as boys, they'll both claim they ~had~ to fight; but if you

want to know which one ~did~ have to, why forget all the arguing and don't take your eye off just what

~happened~. As near as I can make out, this war began with Germany and Austria startin' in to wipe out two

little countries; Austria began shootin' up Serbia, and Germany began shootin' up Belgium. I don't need to

notice any more than that, myselfall the Werder girls in the country can debate their heads off, they can't

He was silent, appearing to feel that he had concluded conclusively, and the young gentleman on the window

seat, after staring at him for several moments of genuine thoughtfulness, was gracious enough to observe,

"Well, ole Ram, you may be a little slow in class, but when you think things out with yourself you do show

signs of something pretty near like real horsesense sometimes. Why don't you ever say anything like that

"See here!" Fred exclaimed, as Ramsey seemed about to rise. "You keep sitting just where you are, and don't

look at me out of the side of your eye like thatpretendin' you're a bad horse. I'm ~really~ serious now, and

you listen to me. I don't think argufying and debating like that little Fraulein Werder's does much harm. She's

"Oh, nothing. But, as I was saying, I don't think that sort of talk does much harm: everybody knows it goes on

among the proGermans, and it's all hot air, anyhow. But I think Linski's sort of talk does do harm, prob'ly

among people that don't know much; and what's more, I think Dora Yocum's does some, too. Well, you hit

Linski in the snoot, so what are you Sit still! My lord! You don't think I'm askin' you to go and hit Dora,

do you? I mean: Aren't you ever goin' to talk to her about it and tell her what's what?"

"How could I do anything like that?" Ramsey demanded explosively. "I never see herto speak to, that is. I

prob'ly won't happen to have another talk with her, or anything, all the time we're in college."

"No," Fred admitted, "I suppose not. Of course, if you did, then you would give her quite a talkingto, just

the way you did the other time, wouldn't you?" But upon that, another resumption of physical violence put an

Throughout the term Ramsey's calculation of probabilities against the happening of another interview with

Dora seemed to be well founded, but at the beginning of the second "semester" he found her to be a fellow

member of a class in biology. More than that, this class had every week a twohour session in the botanical

laboratory, where the structure of plants was studied under microscopic dissection. The students worked in

pairs, a special family of plants being assigned to each couple; and the instructor selected the couples with an

eye to combinations of the quick with the slow. D. Yocum and R. Milholland (the latter in a strange state of

mind and complexion) were given two chairs, but only one desk and one microscope. Their conversation was

Thenceforth it became the most pressing care of Ramsey's life to prevent his roommate from learning that

there was any conversation at all, even botanical. Fortunately, Fred was not taking the biological courses,

though he appeared to be taking the sentimental ones with an astonishing thoroughness; and sometimes, to

Fred's hilarious delight, Ramsey attempted to turn the tables and rally him upon whatever last affair seemed

to be engaging his fancy. The old Victorian and preVictorian ~blague~ word "petticoat" had been revived in

Fred's vocabulary, and in others, as "skirt." The lightsome sprig was hourly to be seen, even when university

rulings forbade, dillydallying giddily along the campus paths or the town sidewalks with some new and

pretty Skirt. And when Ramsey tried to fluster him about such a matter Fred would profess his ardent love for

the new lady in shouts and impromptu song. Nothing could be done to him, and Ramsey, utterly unable to

defend his own sensibilities in like manner, had always to retire in bafflement. Sometimes he would ponder

upon the question thus suggested: Why couldn't he do this sort of thing, since Fred could? But he never

Ramsey's watchfulness was so careful (lest he make some impulsive admission in regard to the botanical

laboratory, for instance) that Mr. Mitchell's curiosity gradually became almost quiescent; but there arrived a

day in February when it was piqued into the liveliest activity. It was Sunday, and Fred, dressing with a

fastidiousness ever his daily habit, noticed that Ramsey was exhibiting an unusual perplexity about neckties.

"Keep the black one on," Fred said, volunteering the suggestion, as Ramsey muttered fiercely at a mirror. "It's

"Well, you could go to church first, couldn't you? You better; you've got a lot of church absences against

"Then one more won't hurt. No church in mine this morning, thanks! G'by, ole sox; see you at the 'frat house'

He went forth, whistling syncopations, and began a brisk trudge into the open country. There was a

professor's daughter who also was not going to church that morning; and she lived a little more than three

miles beyond the outskirts of the town. Unfortunately, as the weather was threatening, all others of her family

abandoned the idea of church that day, and Fred found her before a cozy fire, but surrounded by parents, little

brothers, and big sisters. The professor was talkative; Fred's mind might have been greatly improved, but

with a window in range he preferred a melancholy contemplation of the snow, which had begun to fall in

quantity. The professor talked until luncheon, throughout luncheon, and was well under way to fill the whole

afternoon with talk, when Fred, repenting all the errors of his life, got up to go.

Heartily urged to remain, for there was now something just under a blizzard developing, he said No; he had a

great deal of "cirriculum work" to get done before the morrow, and passed from the sound of the professor's

hospitable voice and into the storm. He had a tedious struggle against the wind and thickening snow, but

finally came in sight of the town, not long before dark. Here the road led down into a depression, and, lifting

his head as he began the slight ascent on the other side, Fred was aware of two figures outlined upon the low

ridge before him. They were dimmed by the driving snow and their backs were toward him, but he

recognized them with perfect assurance. They were Dora Yocum and Ramsey Milholland.

They were walking so slowly that their advance was almost imperceptible, but it could be seen that Dora was

talking with great animation; and she was a graceful thing, thus gesticulating, in her long, slim fur coat with

the white snow frosting her brown fur cap. Ramsey had his hands deep in his overcoat pockets and his

Fred murmured to himself, "'What did you say to her?' 'Nothin'. I started to, but'" Then he put on a burst of

speed and passed them, sweeping off his hat with operatic deference, yet hurrying by as if fearful of being

thought a killjoy if he lingered. He went to the "frat house," found no one downstairs, and established himself

in a red leather chair to smoke and ruminate merrily by a great fire in the hall.

Half an hour later Ramsey entered, stamped off the snow, hung up his hat and coat, and sat himself down

"Not at all!" Fred returned, amiably. "Fine spring weather today. Lovely to see all the flowers and the birds

"You look here!" That's the only walk I ever took with her in my life. I mean byby asking her and her

saying she would and so forth. That other time just sort of happened, and you know it. Well, the weather

wasn't just the best in the world, maybe, but she's an awful conscientious girl and once she makes an

"Why, of course," Fred finished for him, "She'd be too pious to break it just on account of a mere little

"I don't know and I don't care," said Ramsey. "You don't suppose I asked her to go ~again~, do you?"

"Well, for one thing, you don't suppose I want her to think I'm a perfect fool, do you?"

Fred mused a moment or two, looking at the fire. "What was the lecture?" he asked, mildly.

"Well, she thinks so, anyhow," said Ramsey, "and she's all broken up about it. Of course she thinks we

oughtn't to fight and she's trying to get everybody else she can to keep working against it. She isn't goin'

home again next summer, she's goin' back to that settlement work in Chicago and work there among those

people against our goin' to war; and here in college she wants to get everybody she can to talk against it,

"What did you say?" Fred asked, and himself supplied the reply: "Nothin'. I started to, but"

Ramsey got up. "Now look here! You know the 'frat' passed a rule that if we broke any more furniture in this

house with our scrappin' we'd both be fined the cost of repairs and five dollars apiece. Well, I can afford five

"I take it back!" Fred interposed, hastily. "But you just listen to me; you look outletting her think you're on

Ramsey looked dogged. "I'm not goin' around always arguin' about everything when arguin' would just hurt

people's feelings about something they're all excited about, and wouldn't do a bit o' good in the worldand

But at this moment they were interrupted. Someone slyly opened the door, and a snowball deftly thrown from

without caught Ramsey upon the back of the neck and head, where it flattened and displayed itself as an

ornamental star. Shouting fiercely, both boys sprang up, ran to the door, were caught there in a barrage of

snowballs, ducked through it in sipte of all damage, charged upon a dozen besweatered figures awaiting them

and began a mad battle in the blizzard. Some of their opponents treacherously joined them, and turned upon

In the dusk the merry conflict waged up and down the snowcovered lawn, and the combatants threw and

threw, or surged back and forth, or clenched and toppled over into snow banks, yet all coming to chant an

"Who? Who? Who?" they chanted. "Who? Who? ~Who~ says there ain't goin' to be no war?"

So everywhere over the country, that winter of 1916, there were lighthearted boys skylarkingat college,

or on the farms; and in the towns the young machinists snowballed one another as they came from the shops;

while on this Sunday of the "frat" snow fight probably several hundreds of thousands of youthful bachelors,

between the two oceans, went walking, like Ramsey, each with a girl who could forget the weather. Yet boys

of nineteen and in the twenties were not lighthearted all the time that winter and that spring and that

summer. Most of them knew long, thoughtful moments, as Ramsey did, when they seemed to be thinking not

of girls or work or playnor of anything around them, but of some more vital matter or prospect. And at

For the long strain was on the country; underneath all its outward seeming of things going on as usual there

shook a deep vibration, like the air trembling to vast organ pipes in diapasons too profound to reach the ear as

sound: one felt, not heard, thunder in the ground under one's feet. The succession of diplomatic Notes came

to an end after the torpedoing of the ~Sussex~; and at last the tricky ruling Germans in Berlin gave their word

to murder no more, and people said, "This means peace for America, and all is well for us," but everybody

They said "All is well," while that thunder in the ground never ceasedit grew deeper and heavier till all

America shook with it and it became slowly audible as the voice of the old American soil wherein lay those

who had defended it aforetime, a soil that bred those who would defend it again, for it was theirs; and the

meaning of itLife, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happinesswas theirs, and theirs to defend. And they knew

they would defend it, and that more than the glory of a Nation was at stake. The Freedom of Man was at

stake. So, gradually, the sacred thunder reached the ears of the young men and gave them those deep

moments that came to them whether they sat in the classroom or the countingroom, or walked with the

plow, or stood to the machine, or behind the ribbon counter. Thus the thunder shook them and tried them and

Hate of the Germans was not bred; but a contempt for what Germany had shown in lieu of a national heart; a

contempt as mighty and profound as the resolve that the German way and the German will should prevail in

America, nor in any country of the world that would be free. And when the German Kaiser laid his command

upon America, that no American should take his ship upon the free seas, death being the penalty for any who

disobeyed, then the German Kaiser got his answer, not only to this new law he had made for us, but to many

There was a bitter Sunday, and its bitterness went everywhere, to every place in the whole world that held

high and generous hearts. Its bitterness came to the special meeting in the "Frat hall," where there were

hearts, indeed, of that right sort, and one of them became vocal in its bitterness. This was the heart of Fred

Mitchell, who was now an authority, being president of the Junior Class, chairman of the Prom Committee,

"For me, Brothers," he said, "I'd think I'd a great deal rather have been shot through the head than heard the

news from Washington today! I tell you, I've spent the meanest afternoon I ever did in my life, and I guess

it's been pretty much the same with all of us. The worst of it is, it looks as though there isn't a thing in the

world we can do. The country's been betrayed by a few blatherskites and boneheads that had the power to do

it, and all we can do we've just got to stand it. But there's some Americans that aren't just standing it, and I

want to tell you a lot of 'em are men from the universities, just like us. They're ~over there~ right now; they

haven't said muchthey just packed up and went. They're flying for France and for England and for Canada;

they're fighting under every flag on the right side of the Western Front; and they're driving ambulances at

Verdun and ammunition trucks at the Somme. Well, there's going to be a lot more American boys on all these

jobs mighty soon, on account of what those men did in Congress today. If they won't give us a chance to do

something under our own flag, then we'll have to go and do it under some other flag; and I want to tell you

I'm one that's going to ~go!~ I'll stick it out in college up to Easter, and then if there's still no chance to go

under the Stars and Stripes I'll maybe have to go under the flag my greatgreat randfather fought against in

It was in speaking to Ramsey of this declaration that Dora said Fred was a "dangerous firebrand." They were

taking another February walk, but the February was February, 1917; and the day was dry and sunny. "It's just

"And so cold and blowy!" she added. "It seems a long time ago. I like walking with you, Ramsey. You're so

quiet and solidI've always felt I could talk to you just anyhow I pleased, and you wouldn't mind. I'll miss

"Because we've only taken four besides this: two last year, and another week before last, and another last

"Good gracious! Is that all? It seemed to me we'd gone ever so often!" She laughed. "I'm afraid you won't

think that seems much as if I'd liked going, but I really have. And, by the way, you've never called on me at

"Oh, no," Ramsey said, and scuffed his shoes on the path, presently explaining rather huskily that he "never

"Well, you must come if you ever care to," she said, with a big sister graciousness. "The Dorm chaperon sits

there, of course, but ours is a jolly one and you'd like her. You've probably met her Mrs. Hustings?when

"No," said Ramsey. "I never was much of a" He paused, fearing that he might be repeating himself, and

too hastily amended his intention. "I never liked any girl enough to go and call on her."

"Ramsey Milholland!" she cried. "Why, when we were in school half the room used to be talking about how

"No, no!" Ramsey protested, again too hurriedly. "I never called on her. We just went walking."

A moment later his colour suddenly became fiery. "I don't meanI mean" he stammered. "It was walking,

of courseI mean we did go out walking but it wasn't walking likelike this." He concluded with a fit of

Dora threw back her head and laughed delightfully. "Don't you apologize!" she said. "~I~ didn't when I said it

seemed to me that we've gone walking so often, when in reality it's only four or five times altogether. I think I

can explain, though: I thhink it came partly from a feeling I have that I can rely on youthat you're a good,

solid, reliable sort of person. I remember from the time we were little children, you always had a sort of

worried, honest look in school; and you used to make a dent in your foreheadyou meant it for a

frownwhenever I caught your eye. You hated me so honestly, and you were so honestly afraid I wouldn't

"Oh, yesyes!" she laughed, then grew serious. "My feeling about youthat you were a person to be relied

on, I meanI think it began that evening in our freshman year, after the ~Lusitania~, when I stopped you on

campus and you went with me, and I couldn't help crying, and you were so nice and quiet. I hardly realized

then that it was the first time we'd ever really talked togetherof course ~I~ did all the talking!and yet

we'd known each other so many years. I thought of it afterward. But what gave me such a different view of

you, I'd always thought you were one of that truculent sort of boys, always just bursting for a fight; but you

showed me you'd really never had a fight in your life and hated fighting, and that you sympathized with my

feeling about war." She stopped speaking to draw in her breath with a sharp sigh. "Ah, don't you remember

what I've told you all along? How it keeps coming closer and closerand now it's almost here! Isn't it

~unthinkable?~ And what can we do to stop it, we poor few who feel that we ~must~ stop it?"

"You can't do much," she said. "I know. None of us can. What can any little group do? There are so few of us

among the undergraduates and only one in the whole faculty. All the rest are for war. But we mustn't give

up; we must never feel afterward that we left anything undone; we must fight to the last breath!"

"Oh, as a figure of speech," she said, impatiently. "Our language is full of barbaric figures left over from the

dark ages. But, oh, Ramsey!"she touched his sleeve"I've heard that Fred Mitchell is saying that he's

going to Canada after Easter, to try to get into the Canadian aviation corps. If it's true, he's a dangerous

"But why do you ~let~ him talk that way?" she cried. "He's your roommate; surely you have more influence

He shook his head slowly, while upon his face the faintly indicated modellings of a grin hinted of an inner

laughter at some surreptitious thought. "Well, you know, Fred says himself sometimes, I don't seem to be

"I know. But don't you see? That sort of thing is contagious. Others will think they ought to go if he does;

The grin had disappeared, and Ramsey grew red again. He seemed to wish to speak, to heave with speech that

declined to be spoken and would not rouse up from his inwards. Finally he uttered words.

"Oh, I know," she said. "A manor a boy!always hates to be intruding his own convictions upon other

men, especially in a case like this, where he might be afraid of some idiot's thinking him unmanlike. But

Ramsey" Suddenly she broke off and looked at him attentively; his discomfort had become so obvious that

suspicion struck her. She spoke sharply. "Ramsey ~you~ aren't dreaming of doing such a thing, are you?"

"Fred hasn't influenced ~you~, has he? You aren't planning to go with him, are you?"

She sighed again, relieved. "I had a queer feeling about you just thenthat you ~were~ thinking of doing

some such thing. You looked so oddand you're always so quiet, anybody might not really know what you

They had come to the foot of the steps that led up to the entrance of her dormitory, and their walk was at an

end. As they stopped and faced each other, she looked at him earnestly; but he did not meet the scrutiny, his

"Then it's all right," she said. "That relieves me and makes me happier than I was just now, for of course if

you're my friend you wouldn't let me make any mistake about you. I believe you, and now, just before I go in

and we won't see much of each other for a week if you still want me to go with you again next Sunday"

"Yes, if you like. But I want to tell you now that I count on you in all this, even though you don't 'talk much,'

as you say; I count on you more than I do on anybody else, and I trust you when you say you're my friend,

and it makes me happy. And I think perhaps you're right about Fred Mitchell. Talk isn't everything, nobody

knows that better than I, who talk so much! and I think that, instead of talking to Fred, a steady, quiet

influence like yours would do more good than any amount of arguing. So I trust you, you see? And I'm sorry

I had that queer doubt of you." She held out her hand. "Unless I happen to see you on the campus for a

minute, in the meantime, it's goodbye until a week from today. Sowell, so, goodbye until then!"

He made a great struggle. "I'm not influencing Fred not to go," he said. "Idon't want you to trust me to do

"~Oh!~" she cried, turned even redder than he, and ran up the stone steps. But before the storm doors closed

upon her she looked down to where he stood, with his eyes still lowered, a lonelyseeming figure, upon the

"If you feel like that, you might as well go and enlist, yourself," she said, bitterly. "I can'tI couldn'tspeak

It was easy enough for him to evade Fred Mitchell's rallyings these days; the sprig's mood was truculent, not

toward his roommate but toward Congress, which was less in fiery haste than he to be definitely at war with

Germany. All through the university the change had come: athletics, in other years spotlighted at the centre of

the stage, languished suddenly, threatened with abandonment; students working for senior honours forgot

them; everything was forgotten except that growing thunder in the soil. Several weeks elapsed after Dora's

bitter dismissal of Ramsey before she was mentioned between the comrades. Then, one evening, Fred asked,

"Well, for my part, I think she ought to be locked up," Fred said, angrily. "Have you heard what she did this

"It's all over college. She got up in the class in jurisprudence and made a speech. It's a big class, you know,

over two hundred, under Dean Burney. He's a great lecturer, but he's a pacifistthe only one on the

facultyand a friend of Dora's. They say he encouraged her to make this break and led the subject around so

she could do it, and then called on her for an opinion, as the higheststand student in the clas. She got up and

claimed there wasn't any such thing as a legitimate cause for war, either legally or morally, and said it was a

"Well, it was too much for that little, spunky Joe Stansbury, and he jumped up and argued with her. He made

her admit all the Germans have done to us, the sea murders and the land murders, the blowing up of the

factories, the propaganda, the strikes, trying to turn the United States into a German settlement, trying to get

Japan and Mexico to make war on us, and all the rest. He even made her admit there was proof they mean to

conquer us when they get through with the others, and that they've set out to rule the world for their own

"She said it might be true, but since nothing at all could be a right cause for war, than all this couldn't be a

cause of war. Of course she had her regular pacifist 'logic' working; she said that since war is the worst thing

there is, why, all other evils were lesser, and a lesser evil can't be a just cause for a greater. She got terribly

excited, they say, but kept right on, anyway. She said war was murder and there couldn't be any other way to

look at it; and she'd heard there was already talk in the university of students thinking about enlisting, and

whoever did such a thing was virtualy enlisting to return murder for murder. Then Joe Stansbury asked her if

she meant that she'd feel toward any student that enlisted the way she would toward a murderer, and she said,

"Well, that broke up the class; Joe turned from her to the platform and told old Burney that he was

responsible for allowing such talk in his lectureroom, and Joe said so far as ~he~ was concerned, he

resigned from Burney's classes right there. That started it, and practically the whole class got up and walked

out with Joe. They said Burney streaked off home, and Dora was left alone in there, with her head down on

her deskand I gues she certainly deserves it. A good many have alread stopped speaking to her."

Ramsey fidgeted with a pen on the table by which he sat. "Well, I don't know," he said, slowly; "I don't know

"Well, it looks to me as if she was only fightin' for her principles. She believes in 'em. The more it costs a

person to stick to their principles, why, the more I believe the person must have something pretty fine about

Yes!" said the hotheaded Fred. "That may be in ordinary times, but not when a person's principles are liable

to betray their country! We won't stand that kind of principles, I tell you, and we oughtn't to. Dora Yocum's

finding that out, all right. She had the biggest position of any girl in this place, or any boy either, up to the

last few weeks, and there wasn't any student or hardly even a member of the faculty that had the influence or

was more admired and looked up to. She had the whole show! But now, since she's just the same as called

any student a murderer if he enlists to fight for his country and his flagwell, now she hasn't got anything at

He paused in his walking to and fro and came to a halt behind his friend's chair, looking down

compassionately upon the back of Ramsey's motionless head. His tone changed. "I guess it isn't just the

ticketme to be talking this way to you, is it?" he said, with a trace of huskiness.

"I can't help blowing up," Fred went on. "I want to say, though, I know I'm not very considerate to blow up

about her to you this way. I've been playing horse with you about her ever since freshman year, butwell,

you must have understood, Ram, I never meant anything that would really bother you much, and I

thoughtwell, I ~really~ thought it was a good thing, youyourwell, I mean about her, you know. I'm

Ramsey did not move, except that his right hand still fidgeted with the pen upon the table.

"It'sit's kind of tough luck!" his friend contrived to say; and he began to pace the floor again.

"See here, ole stickinthemud," Fred broke out abruptly. "After her saying what she did Well, it's none

"Well, what?" Ramsey murmured. "I don't care what you say, if you want to say anything."

"Well, I ~got~ to say it," Fred half groaned and half blurted. "After she said ~that~and she meant itwhy,

if I were in your place I'd be darned if I'd be seen out walking with her again."

"By George!" And now Fred halted in front of him, both being huskily solemn. "I think I understand a little

of what that means to you, old Ramsey; I think I do. I think I know something of what it costs you to make

that resolution for your country's sake." Impulsively he extended his hand. "It's a pretty big thing for you to

But Ramsey shook his head. "I didn't do it. I wouldn't ever have done anything just on account of her talkin'

"Well, I'm not much of a talker, you know, Fred," said Ramsey, staring at the pen he played with. "I'm not

"Well, I had to tell her I didn't feel about things the way she did. She'd thought I had, all along, I guess.

Anyway, it made her hate me or something, I guess; and she called it all off. I expect there wasn't much to

call off, so far as she was concerned, anyhow." He laughed feebly. "She told me I better go and enlist."

"Pleasant of her!" Fred muttered. "Especially as we know what she thinks enlisting means." He raised his

voice cheerfully. "Well, that's settled; and, thank God, old Mr. Bernstorff's on his way to his sweet little

vineclad cottage home! They're getting guns on the ships, and the big show's liable to commence any day.

We can hold up our heads now, and we're going to see some great times, old Ramsey boy! It's hard on the

home folksGosh! I don't like to think of that! And I guess it's going to be hard on a lot of boys that haven't

understood what it's all about, and hard on some that their family affairs, and business, and so on, have got

'em tied up so it's hard to goand of course there's plenty that just can't, and some that aren't husky

enoughbut the rest of us are going to have the big time in our lives. We got an awful lot to learn; it scares

me to think of what I don't know about being any sort of a rearrank private. Why, it's a regular

~profession~, like practising law, or selling for a drug house on the road. Golly! Do you remember how we

talked about that, 'way back in freshman year, what we were going to do when we got out of college? You

were going to be practising law, for instance, and Iwell, f'r instance, remember Colburn; he was going to

be a doctor, and he did go to some medical school for one year. Now he's in the Red Cross, somewhere in

He paused to digest this impossibility, then chattered briskly on. "Well, there's ~one~ good old boy was with

our class for a while, back in freshman year; I bet we won't see him in any good old army! Old roughneck

Linski that you put the knob on his nose for. Tommie Hopper says he saw him last summer in Chicago

soapboxin', yellin' his head off cussin' every government under the sun, but mostly ours and the Allies', you

bet, and going to run the earth by revolution and representatives of unskilled labour immigrants, nobody that

can read or write allowed to vote, except Linski. Tommie Hopper says he knows all about Linski; he never

did a day's work in his lifetoo busy trying to get the workingmen stirred up against the people that exploit

'em! Tommie says he had a big crowd to hear him, though, and took up quite a little money for a 'cause' or

something. Well, let him holler! I guess we can attend to him when we get back from over yonder. By

George, old Ram, I'm gettin' kind of floppy in the gills!" He administered a resounding slap to his comrade's

He was right. The portentous days came on apace, and each one brought a new and greater portent. The faces

of men lost a driven look besetting them in the days of badgered waiting, and instead of that heavy

apprehension one saw the look men's faces must have worn in 1776 and 1861, and the history of the old days

grew clearer in the new. The President went to the Congress, and the true indictment he made there reached

scoffing Potsdam with an unspoken prophecy somewhat chiling even to Potsdam, one guessesand then

through an April night went almost quietly the steady work: we were at war with Germany.

The bugles sounded across the continent; drums and fifes played up and down the city streets and in town and

village squares and through the countrysides. Faintly in all ears there was multitudinous noise like distant,

hoarse cheering... and a sound like that was what Dora Yocum heard, one night, as she sat lonely in her room.

The bugles and fifes and drums had been heard about the streets of the college town, that day, and she

thought she must die of them, they hurt her so, and now to be haunted by this imaginary cheering

She went downstairs and stood upon the steps of the dormitory in the open air. No; the cheering was real and

loud. It came from the direction of the railway station, and the night air surged and beat with it.

Below her stood the aged janitor of the building, listening. "What's the cheering for?" she asked,

remembering grimly that the janitor was one of her acquaintances who had not yet stopped "speaking" to her.

"It's a good matter," the old man answered. "I guess there must be a big crowd of 'em down there. One of our

students enlisted today, and they're givin' him a sendoff. Listen to 'em, how they ~do~ cheer. He's the first

She went back to her room, shivering, and spent the next day in bed with an aching head. She rose in the

evening, howevera handbill had been slid under her door at five o'clock, calling a "Mass Meeting" of the

university at eight, and she felt it her duty to go; but when she got to the great hall she found a seat in the

The president of the university addressed the tumultuous many hundreds before him, for tumultuous they

were until he quieted them. He talked to them soberly of patriotism, and called upon them for "deliberation

and a little patience." There was danger of a stampede, he said, and he and the rest of the faculty were in a

"You must keep your heads," he said. "God knows, I do not seek to judge your duty in this gravest moment of

your lives, nor assume to tell you what you must or must not do. But by hurrying into service now, without

careful thought or consideration, you may impair the extent of your possible usefulness to the very cause you

are so anxious to serve. Hundreds of you are taking technical courses which should be completedat least to

the end of the term in June. Instructors from the United States Army are already on the way here, and military

training will be begun at once for all who are physically eligible and of acceptable age. A special course will

be given in preparation for flying, and those who wish to become aviators may enroll themselves for the

"I speak to you in a crisis of the university's life, as well as that of the nation, and the warning I utter has been

made necessary by what took place yesterday and today. Yesterday morning, a student in the junior class

enlisted as a private in the United States Regular Army. Far be it from me to deplore his course in so doing;

he spoke to me about it, and in such a way that I felt I had no right to dissuade him. I told him that it would

be preferable for college men to wait until they could go as officers, and, aside from the fact of a greater

prestige, I urged that men of education could perhaps be more useful in that capacity. He replied that if he

were useful enough as a private a commission might in time come his way, and, as I say, I did not feel at

liberty to attempt dissuasion. He left to join a regiment to which he had been assigned, and many of you were

"But enthusiasm may be too contagious; even a great and inspiring motive may work for harm, and the

university must not become a desert. In the twentyfour hours since that young man went to join the army

last night, one hundred and eleven of our young men students have left our walls; eightyfour of them went

off together at three o'clock to catch an eastbound train at the junction and enlist for the Navy at Newport.

He spoke on, but Dora was not listening; she had become obsessed by the idea which seemed to be carrying

her to the border of tragedy. When the crowd poured forth from the building she went with it mechanically,

"I wanted to ask: Do you know who was the student Doctor Corvis spoke of? I mean the one that was the first

to enlist, and that they were cheering last night when he went away to be a private in the United States Army.

Fred Mitchell, crossing the campus one morning, ten days later, saw Dora standing near the entrance of her

dormitory, where he would pass her unless he altered his course; and as he drew nearer her and the details of

her face grew into distinctness, he was indignant with himself for feeling less and less indignation toward her

in proportion to the closeness of his approach. The pity that came over him was mingled with an unruly

admiration, causing him to wonder what unpatriotic stuff he could be made of. She was marked, but not

whipped; she still held herself straight under all the hammering and cutting which, to his knowledge, she had

She stopped him, "for only a moment," she said, adding with a wan profoundness: "That is, if you're not one

"No," said Fred, stiffly. "I may share their point of view, perhaps, but I don't feel called upon to obtrude it on

"Only because he's that sort," Fred returned briskly. "He may be inexplicable to people who believe that his

going out to fight for his country is the same thing as going out to commit a mur"

"I beg your pardon," Fred said at once. "I'm sorry, but I don't know just how to explain him to you."

He laughed, apologetically. "Well, you see, as I understand it, you don't think it's possible for a person to

have something within him that makes him care so much about his country that he"

"Wait!" she cried. "Don't you think I'm willing to suffer a little rather than to see my country in the wrong?

"Well, I don't want to be rude; but, of course, it seems to me that you're suffering because you think you

"The trouble is, I don't think I ~can~ tell that to anybody who needs an answer. He just went, of course. There

"I think you were mistaken," she said, decidedly. "It was a special reasonto make him act so cruelly."

"Oh, no' he'd been home," Fred corrected her. "He went home the Saturday before he enlisted, and settled it

with them. They're all broken up, of course; but when the saw he'd made up his mind, they quit opposing

him, and I think they're proud of him about it, maybe, in spite of feeling anxious. You see, his father was an

artilleryman in the war with Spain, and his grandfather was a Colonel at the end of the War of the Rebellion,

though he went into it as a private, like Ramsey. He died when Ramsey was about twelve; but Ramsey

Fred looked at her gravely. "I don't think you need worry about it," he said. "There's nothing about his going

She repeated her despairing gesture. "You don't understand. But it's no use. It doesn't help any to try to talk of

it, though I thought maybe it would, somehow." She wnet a little nearer the dormitory entrance, leaving him

"I don't know. Most probably not till we meetif we shouldin France. I don't know hwere he's stationed;

and I'm going with the aviationif it's ever ready! And he's with the regulars; he'll probably be among the

"I see." She turned sharply away, calling back over her shoulder in a choked voice. "Thankd you.

But Fred's heart had melted; gazing after her, he saw that her proud young head had lowered now, and that

her shoulders were moving convulsively; he ran after her and caught her as she bagan slowly to ascend the

She lifted a wet face. "No, no! He went in bitterness because I told him to, in my own bitterness! I've killed

him! Long ago, when he wasn't much more than a child, I heard he'd said that some day he'd 'show' me, and

Fred whistled low and long when she had disappeared. "Girls!" he murmured to himself. "Some girls,

anyhowthey will be girls! You can't tell 'em what's what, and you can't change 'em, either!"

Then, as more urgent matters again occupied his attention, he went on at an ardent and lively gait to attend

That thunder in the soil, at first too deep within it to be audible, had come to the surface now and gradually

became heard as the thunder of a million feet upon the training grounds. The bugles rang sharper; the drums

and fifes of town and village and countryside were the drums and fifes of a war that came closer and closer to

All the old symbols became symbols bright and new, as if no one had ever seen them before. "America" was

like a new word, and the song "America" was like a new song. All the dusty blatancies of orating candidates,

seeking to rouse bored auditors with "the old flag"; all the mechanical patriotics of school and church and

club; all these timeworn flaccid things leaped suddenly into living colour. The flag became brilliant and

strange to seestrange with a meaning that seemed new, a meaning long known, yet never known till now.

And so hearts that thought they knew themselves came upon ambushes of emotion and hidden indwellings of

spirit not guessed before. Dora Yocum, listening to the "Star Spangled Banner," sung by children of

immigrants to an outoftune old piano in a mission clubroom, in Chicago, found herself crying with a

soulshaking heartiness in a way different from other ways that she had cried. Among the many things she

thought of then was this: That the banner the children were singing about was in danger. The great country,

almost a continent, had always seemed so untouchable, so safe and sure; she had never been able to conceive

of a hostile power mighty enough to shake or even jar it. And since so great and fundamental a thing could

not be injured, a war for its defence had appeared to be, in her eyes, not only wicked but ridiculous. At last,

less and less vaguely, she had come to comprehend something of the colossal German threat, and the shadow

that touched this bright banner of which the immigrants' children piped so briskly in the mission clubroom.

She had begun to understand, though she could not have told just why, or how, or at what moment

understanding reached her. She began to understand that her country, threatened to the life, had flung its line

those thousands of miles across the sea to stand and hold Hindenburg and Ludendorff and all their Kaisers,

Kings, Dukes, and Crown Princes, their Krupp and Skoda monstrous engines, and their monstrous other

engines of men made into armies. Through the long haze of misted seamiles and the smoke of landmiles

she perceived that brown line of ours, and knew it stood there that Freedom, and the Nation itself, might not

And so, a week later, she went home, and came nervously to Ramsey's mother and found how to direct the

As the old phrase went, she poured out her heart. It seems to apply to her letter.

Don't misunderstand me. I felt that my bitter speech to you had driven you to take the step you did. I felt that

I had sent you to be killed, and that I ought to be killed for doing it, but I knew that you had other motives,

too. I knew, of course, that you thought of the country more than you did of me, or of any mad thing I would

saybut I thought that what I said might have been the prompting thing, the word that threw you into it so

hastily and before you were ready, perhaps. I dreaded to bear that terrible responsibility. I hope you

My great mistake has beenI thought I sas so "logical"it's been in my starting everything with a thought

I'd never proven; that war is the worst thing, and all other evils were lesser. I was wrong. I was wrong,

because war isn't the worst evil. Slavery is the worse evil, and now I want to tell you I have come to see that

you are making war on those that make slavery. Yes, you are fighting those that make both war and slavery,

and you are right, and I humbly reverence and honour all of you who are in this right war. I have come home

to work in the Red Cross here; I work there all day, and all day I keep saying to myselfbut I really mean to

~you~it's what I pray, and oh, how I pray it: "God be with you and grant you the victory!" For you must

Forgive me, oh, pleaseand if you will, could you write to me? I know you have things to do more

This letter, which she had taken care not to dampen, as she wrote, went in slow course to the "American

Expeditionary Forces in France," and finally found him whom it patiently sought. He delayed not long to

answer, and in time she held in a shaking hand the pencilled missive he had sent her.

You forget all that comic talk about me enlisting because of your telling me to. I'd written my father I was

going at the first chance a month and a half before that day when you said it. My mind was made up at the

first time there was any talk of war, and you had about as much responsibility for my going as some little

sparrow or something. Of course I don't mean I didn't pay any attention to the different things you said,

because I always did, and I used to worry over it because I was afraid some day it would get you in trouble,

and I'm mighty glad you've cut it out. That's right; you be a regular girl now. You always were one, and I

knew it all right. I'm not as scared to write to you as I was to talk to you, so I guess you know I was mighty

tickled to get your letter. It sounded blue, but I was glad to get it. You ~bet~ I'll write to you! I don't suppose

you could have any idea how glad I was to get your letter. I could sit here and write to you all day if they'd let

me, but I'm a corporal now. When you answer this, I wish you'd say how the old town looks and if the grass

in the front yards is as green as it usually is, and everything. And tell me some more about everything you

think of when you are working down at the Red Cross like you said. I guess I've read your letter five million

times, and that part ten million. I mean where you underlined that "~you~" and what you said to yourself at

the Red Cross. Oh, murder, but I was glad to read that! Don't forget about writing anything else you think of

Well, I was interrupted then and this is the next day. Of course, I can't tell you where we are, because that

darned censor will read this letter, but I guess he will let this much by. Who do you think I ran across in a

village yesterday? Two boys from the old school days, and we certainly did shake hands a few times! It was

the old foolish Dutch Krusemeyer and Albert Paxton, both of them lieutenants. I heard Fred Mitchell is still

If you had any idea how glad I was to get your letter, you wouldn't lose any time answering this one.

Anyhow, I'm going to write to you again every few days if I get the chance, because maybe you'll answer

But see here, cut out that "sent you to be killed" stuff. You've got the wrong idea altogether. We've got the

big job of our lives, we know that, but we're going to do it. There'll be mistakes and bad times, but we won't

fall down. Now you'll excuse me for saying it this way, Dora, but I don't know just how to express myself

except saying of course we know everybody isn't going to get back homebut listen, we didn't come over

Perhaps you can excuse language if I write it with a blank like that, but before we get back we're going to do

what we came for. They may not all of them be as bad as some of themit's a good thing you don't know

what we do, because some of it would make you sick. As I say, there may be quite a lot of good ones among

them; but we know what they've done to this country, and we know what they mean to do to ours. So we're

Don't forget to write pretty soon, Dora. You say in your letterI certainly was glad to get that letterwell,

you say I have things to do more important than "girls." Dora, I think you probably know without my saying

so that of course while I have got important things to do, just as every man over here has, and everybody at

home, for that matter, well, the thing that is most important in the world to me, next to helping win this war,

Don't forget how glad I'll be to get it, and don't forget you didn't have anything to do with my being over

here. That wasit was something else. And you bet, whatever happens I'm glad I came! Don't ever forget

Dora knew it was "something else." Her memory went back to her first recollection of him in school: from

that time on he had been just an ordinary, everyday boy, floundering somehow through his lessons in school

and through his sweethearting with Milla, as the millions of other boys floundered along with their own

lessons and their own Millas. She saw him swinging his books and romping homeward from the schoolhouse,

or going whistling by her father's front yard, rattling a stick on the fence as he went, carefree and masterful,

but shy as a deer if strangers looked at him, and always "not much of a talker."

She had always felt so superior to him, she shuddered as she thought of it. His quiet had been so much better

than her talk. His intelligence was proven now, when it came to the great test, to be of a stronger sort than

hers. He was wise and good and gentleand a fighting man! "We know what they've done to this country

and what they mean to do to ours. So we're going to attend to them." She read this over, and she knew that

Ramsey, wise and gentle and good, would fight like an unchained devil, and that he and his comrades would

"It wasn't you," he said. She nodded gently, agreeing, and knew what it was that sent him. Yet Ramsey had

his own secret there, and did not tell it. Sometimes there rose, faint in his memory, a whimsical picture, yet

one that had always meant much to him. He would see an old man sitting with a little boy upon a rustic bench

under a walnut tree to watch the "Decoration Day Parade" go byand Ramsey would see a shoot of sunshine

that had somehow got through the walnut tree and made a bedazzlement of glinting fine lines over a spot

about the size of a saucer, upon the old man's thick white hair. And in Ramsey's memory, the little boy,

sitting beside the veteran, would half close his eyes, drowsily, playing that this sunshine spot was a white

bird'snest, until he had a momentary dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue soldier

cap on its head. And Ramsey would bring out of his memory toughts that the old man had got into the child's

head that day. "We knew that armies fighting for the Freedom of Man ~had~ to win, in the long run.... We

were on the side of God's Plan.... Long ago we began to see hints of His Plan.... Man has to win his freedom

from himselfmen in the light have to fight against men in the dark.... That light is the answer.... We had the

A long while Dora sat with the letter in her hand before she answered it and took it upon her heart to wear.

That was the place for it, since it was already within her heart, where he would find it when he came home

again. And she beheld the revelation sent to her. This ordinary life of Ramsey's was but the outward glinting

of a high and splendid spirit, as high and splendid as earth can show. And yet it was only the life of an

everyday American boy. The streets of the town were full, now, of boys like Ramsey.

At first they were just boys in uniform; then one saw that they were boys no more.