The midyear examinations have an unpleasant habit of disturbing the even academic tenor early in February, as their name suggests. They announce themselves, in various prominent places, at first, like clouds no bigger than a man’s hand. The wary and the wise repair to their caves, and remain there, off and on, for days and days and days. When they finally emerge, care-worn but preserved after the deluge, they find that many loved ones are missing. John was among the first to retire to high and inaccessible altitudes. He pinned the “Crimson’s” supplementary schedule of examinations and dates to his door. After deliberating long as to where a similar reminder would most often meet the eyes of his room-mate, he carefully marked the impending tortures with ominous crosses and tacked the list to the frame of Billy’s mirror. He might with just as much effect--to say nothing of the economy of anguish--have thrown the thing into the fire. “What the devil does this fly-paper think it’s doing on my looking-glass?” Billy had remarked on finding the evidence of John’s thoughtfulness. “Do you realise that you have utterly obliterated Sarah Bernhardt and Della Fox? I think you must be crazy.” He ripped off the paper, and let it flutter to the floor. John’s patience was inexhaustible, but his ingenuity had well defined limits; he was aware, with something like panic, that he had reached them. For weeks, he had exercised what art he had at command, in trying to seduce Billy into opening a book. He had learned that a declaration of his personal ideas in regard to the examinations--or any work he undertook--was worse than ineffectual as far as his room-mate went. It not only failed to quicken in Billy the sense--prevalent at the midyears--of approaching catastrophe, but drove him away to somebody else’s room, or perhaps to town. So, much to his own distaste, John had essayed the rôle of the serio-comic. He made a pretence--with reservations--of adopting Billy’s point of view; the reservations were meant to bring about the desired end. He would chat with Billy of the more serious aspects of college--the courses and instructors and examinations--in an attempt at something like the same breezy tone in which the boy himself touched on these subjects. When Billy, for instance, would sit up in bed in the morning and yawn and shrug and announce that he simply couldn’t go all the way over to Sever Hall to sit through Professor So-and-so’s lecture--that the man was ninety-five years old if he was a day, and slobbered, John would laugh and say,-- “Yes, isn’t he deadly? I hardly ever listen to him. Lots of people live too long. But I suppose we must go and endure it; we’re in the course, and we’ll have to worry through it somehow.”