ry
impudent lion. Regardless of my claims and feelings, he sent to her,
whom I had fondly called mine own, an acrostic valentine of his own
composition, taking care that she should know from whom it came. The
result was that I was--as we Western people would term it--"flopped!"

And so another idol was smashed.

Then came a reaction. I scorned the sex and sought balm for my wounded
feelings in the worst pages of Byron.

Having by this time attained the sophomoric dignity, I discovered
that the end and aim of existence was to be _fast_,--that the divine
significance of life consisted in drinking villanous whiskey "on the
sly," and proclaiming the fact by eating cardamom seeds; in stealing
gates and the clapper of the chapel bell; in devouring half-cooked
chickens, purloined from professional coops; in hazing freshmen; in
playing euchre for "ten cents a corner;" and in parading the streets at
midnight, singing "Landlord, fill the flowing bowl," and vociferously
urging some one to "rip and slap and set 'em up ag'in, all on a
summer's day." I smoked vile Scarfalatti tobacco in a huge Dutch pipe,
wore a blue coat with brass buttons, a shocking hat, and my trousers
tucked into my boots,--which after my great disappointment befell
me I ceased to black with any degree of regularity,--and regulated
my language according to a certain slangy work called "Yale College
Scrapes."

I am inclined to look upon these youthful pranks not as unpardonable
sins, though I freely admit their utter folly, but as the vagaries of
immature _genius_,--if I may say so,--scorning to walk decorously,
because other people do, struggling to throw off the fetters of
conventionality, burning to distinguish itself in some new and
original way, striking out from the beaten paths,--to repent of it
afterward. For it does not take many years to teach one that the
beaten paths are the safest; and I have often wished that I had had a
tithe of the application and assiduity of "Old Sobriety," as we rapid
youngsters called the Nestor of the class, who plodde