STOVER AT YALE By Owen Johnson _Lawrenceville Stories_ THE PRODIGIOUS HICKEY THE VARMINT THE TENNESSEE SHAD SKIPPY BEDELLE STOVER AT YALE THE WASTED GENERATION BLUE BLOOD CHILDREN OF DIVORCE [Illustration: "TOGETHER THEY WENT CHOKING THROUGH THE CROWD"--_Page 137._] STOVER AT YALE BY OWEN JOHNSON AUTHOR OF "THE VARMINT," "THE TENNESSEE SHAD," ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. R. GRUGER [Illustration: Logo] BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1931 _Copyright, 1911, by_ THE S. S. MCCLURE CO. _Copyright, 1911, 1912, by_ THE MCCLURE PUBLICATIONS, INC. _Copyright, 1912,_ BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. _All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian_ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ILLUSTRATIONS "Together they went choking through the crowd" _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE "'Hello,' said Rogers' quiet voice. 'Well, what do _you_ want?'" 20 "'I come not to stultify myself in the fumes of liquor, but to do you good'" 90 "The period of duns set in, and the house became a place of mystery and signals" 202 "Oh, father and mother pay all the bills, and we have all the fun" 230 "'Life's real to those fellows; they're fighting for something'" 254 "Regan was his one friend" 286 "'Curse the man who invented fish-house punch'" 292 STOVER AT YALE CHAPTER I Dink Stover, freshman, chose his seat in the afternoon express that would soon be rushing him to New Haven and his first glimpse of Yale University. He leisurely divested himself of his trim overcoat, folding it in exact creases and laying it gingerly across the back of his seat; stowed his traveling-bag; smoothed his hair with a masked movement of his gloved hand; pulled down a buckskin vest, opening the lower button; removed his gloves and folded them in his breast pocket, while with the same gesture a careful forefinger, unperceived, assured itself that his lilac silk necktie was in snug contact with the high collar whose points, painfully but in perfect style, attacked his chin. Then, settling, not flopping, down, he completed his preparations for the journey by raising the sharp crease of the trousers one inch over each knee--a legendary precaution which in youth is believed to prevent vulgar bagging. Each movement was executed without haste or embarrassment, but leisurely, with the deliberate _savoir-faire_ of the complete man of the world he had become at the terrific age of eighteen.