Out of our poverty and desire for a good time grew some interesting things. A crowd of us who cared for cheap vaudeville went in weekly, on Mondays, to the Howard Athenæum, incidentally the smuttiest and most improper show I have ever seen anywhere—and this in Boston! We pledged ourselves to spend only fifty cents on the evening’s entertainment, and this sum was generally divided as follows——ten cents for car fare, thirty-five cents for a standee ticket, and five cents for a beer, making it necessary to walk back if we failed to beat our way on the street car. Whenever anyone had what we called a “find”—earned something or had a check outside his allowance—we allowed him to treat, never otherwise. The feed generally consisted of a barrel of beer and several dozen oysters which we put in the coals of the fireplace, and, as they popped open, threw in salt and pepper, and then squeezed their noses together when they were ready to serve. From this we began dining together once a month, and somehow came to be known as “The Ring.” There were James Duane Lowell (nephew of the poet), Ned Higginson, Ned Walker, Frank Childs Faulkner, Waldo Reed, and others I can’t recall; but although many sought to join us, we never increased our number, and I think therein lay our success. We met each time in a different member’s room, the host of the occasion providing two roast chickens and bread and butter. The others contributed something strictly limited to a dollar in price, which usually turned out to be a bottle of whisky. Each one of us could bring in his chum as a guest, and as we sat around the table, our bellies full and the alcohol sending a glow over our beings, the songs and stories that passed around that board would have been epoch making, could we have preserved them. Indeed, a desire to keep some of them did crop up, and it was here, at one of these dinners, that the Harvard _Crimson_ was born. We called it the _Magenta_ then, as the Civil War was too recent for cochineal to be cheap, and crimson was not to be had. The _Advocate_ was the college paper of those days, and we decided it was much too stuffy and needed a rival. I was entirely too crazy to be allowed an editorship, so had to be content with sundry contributions. I remember being received at home with freezing looks after publishing my first—and last—“poetry,” a translation of one of the Odes of Anacreon. The family objected to: When I drink wine, etc. In my _curving arm_ I hold a maiden. No one at home referred to it. The art of it had no appeal to them whatsoever, and they were ashamed of me. If I had had any Swinburnean tendency, or like Keats, who gave out eighteen-year-old slush of appalling indecency, I would have been squelched.