You must be the type who trusts your friends by doing (while blindfolded) anything that he swears on his honor he has done before you, but if it is proven that that friend has deliberately gone back on you, you must show that you resent it. For example, my anger at Ned was pardoned; but a son of one of the generals in the Civil War went through all the requirements until he refused to put on some article of clothing which seemed to him filthy (his eyes being bandaged), in spite of the fact that all of the others swore they had gone through the same experience without harm. He never became a member of the Hasty Pudding Club. One of the requirements is an essay which is taken very seriously by the patient neophyte, but is really of no importance. Mine, on the subject of “Public Insane Asylums vs. Private Mad Houses,” was never read, for the reason that it was stolen by a ring within the club who called themselves “Owls of the Night” and thought it very funny to reduce the size of the new man’s head by destroying his work whenever possible. I was sure I had hidden my essay where no one would find it—in the bottom of the spittoon, covered with layers of newspapers, then melted candle grease, and lastly, the remaining space filled with water and cigar butts. But my roommate told; and I had to lie, when asked for it, so as not to go back on the gang. One of the most interesting possessions of the club was the Crocodile Book, or the record kept by the secretary since the beginning. At the end of one of the chapters was a charming drawing by Washington Allston, of a fat boy gobbling mush from a pot. I used to stare at this and wonder about the man who did it. Alas! when I went back, some twenty years later, there was no trace of the drawing and no one could be found who had ever heard of it. These acts of vandalism are found more often among the educated classes than otherwise. I often think of the clergyman who was found with a hammer in his hand, having just knocked a piece off a tomb in Westminster Abbey, which dated back to the days of Edward the Confessor—the only one that had never been cracked or harmed! The judge very wisely did not punish him, but left him to the tender mercies of the newspaper reporters. He is still running. We have not the right to destroy the labor of some one else. The beautiful things of Greece, the wisdom of Rome, music of Germany, and the Cathedrals of France and Italy have been inherited from the past, and if we deface them we are defacing our own property.