The college atmosphere which I found at Columbia at that time gave me a new sensation. I did not understand it at first and misinterpreted many things. The few days preceding the opening of the college sessions I spent chasing around for a boarding-house, while my classmates were hanging around the college buildings, making arrangements to join this or that fraternity, and also solidifying the line of defense of the freshmen against the hostile sophomores. There was a lively process of organization going on under the leadership of groups of boys who came from the same preparatory schools. These groups led and the others were expected to follow without a murmur. Insubordination or even indifference was condemned as lack of college spirit. This spirit was necessary among the freshmen particularly, because, as I was informed later, there was a great common danger--the sophomores! I saw some of this feverish activity going on, but did not understand its meaning and hence remained outside of it, as if I were a stranger and not a member of the freshman class, which I heard described, by the freshmen themselves, as the best freshman class in the history of Columbia. The sophomores denied this in a most provoking manner; hence the hostility. Nobody paid any attention to me; nobody knew me, because I did not come from any of the preparatory schools which prepared boys for Columbia. One day I saw on the campus two huge waves of lively youngsters beating against each other just like inrolling waves of the sea lifting on their backs the returning waves which had been reflected from the cliffs of the shore. The freshmen were defending a cane against fierce attacks of the sophomores. It was the historic Columbia cane rush, I was told by Michael, the college janitor, who stood alongside of me as I looked on. It was not a real fight resulting in broken noses or blackened eyes, but just a most vigorous push-and-pull contest, the sophomores trying to take possession of a cane which a strong freshman, surrounded by a stalwart body-guard of freshmen, was holding and guarding just as a guard of fanatic monks would defend the sacred relics of a great saint. This freshmen group was the centre of the scrimmage and it stood there like a high rock in the midst of an angry sea. Coats and shirts were torn off the backs of the brave fighters, some attacking and others defending the central group, but not a single ugly swear-word was heard nor did I see a single sign of intentional bloodshed. Members of the junior and senior classes watched as umpires. Michael, the janitor, who knew everybody on the college campus as a shepherd knows his sheep, was not quite certain about my identity. He asked me whether I was a freshman, and when I said “yes,” he asked me why in the world I was not in the rush, defending the freshmen body-guard. He looked so anxious and worried that I felt sure of being guilty of some serious offense against old Columbia traditions.