"Of course he did," said Ernest Gray, emphatically. "No man ought to keep his hat on in that transept." "Oh, now you've done it, Hol," groaned Stoughton. "You have started the 'Only Serious.'" "We get too careless going back and forth in it every day," continued Gray. "We don't fully appreciate it, or we forget what it means." "Forget what it means! Great Scott, Ernest, have you never heard a Class Day oration or poem? What would our inspired youths do without the poor, hard-worked old transept? How did they ever get inspired before it was built? Don't we have our hearts fired all up at least once a year on that subject?" "Except those of us who may have been previously fired by the Dean," put in Rattleton, with a contemplative sigh over eminent possibilities. "Well, it is a pity then that the Class Day conflagration doesn't last a little longer. I don't believe in keeping sentiment for special occasions. It would be better for all hands to preserve a little of it throughout the year, and in this place, of all others, I should think at least a little reverence for the past might be kept alive. But one might suppose that there was no such thing as reverence at Harvard nowadays." "Hooray!" "Hear, hear!" "Go it, old man!" "Good for the Only Serious!" "Pegasus in a canter!" "That's right," answered Gray warmly, to this burst of invidious encouragement. "Laugh at anything that is serious or the least approach to feeling; it is the fashion." "Brought on by over-doses of gush," remarked Stoughton, knocking the ashes contemptuously out of Mary Jane. "Of course, there is a lot of twaddle talked about such things," answered Gray, "and I acknowledge that exaggeration tends to cheapen patriotism, but the existence of a lot of tinsel in the world doesn't make gold less valuable, does it?" "Quite true," assented Hudson, "and because Dick Stoughton smokes such a pipe as Mary Jane, there is no reason why we should all give up tobacco. That is a better simile than yours." "Well, it is a good thing that Harvard men have not always been so afraid of appearing in earnest," growled Gray. "I don't believe there was so much brilliant wit wasted when men were leaving college every day to join their regiments. I wish I had been here then." "So do I," drawled Rattleton; "what a bully excuse a fellow would have had for not getting his degree." "What an excitement there must have been," went on Gray, without noticing the interruption. "Just think of being cheered out of the Yard when you left for the war, and then perhaps distinguishing yourself, and coming back to Class Day with your arm in a sling." "Just think of coming back in a pine-box," added Hudson, graphically. "Well, suppose you did? You have got to die some time, and your name would have been put on a tablet in memorial." "Yes, but you wouldn't have been tickled by seeing it there," said the irritating Stoughton. "Half your patriotism is vanity, Ernest, you shallow theatrical poser."