It was the gravest outrage of my time, and had there not been so large a part of the senior class implicated in the conspiracy, directly or indirectly, there is no doubt that the doctor would have taken the most severe measures for the punishment of those concerned. No partial punishment would have been possible, and the general irritation against that particular professor was so great in the class, and his course had been so little in conformity with the usages of the college, that the doctor thought best to ignore the affair completely. The professor was completely cowed, and we had no more browbeating from him. But the practical jokes played on him were never attempted with any other member of the faculty, all of them having been trained in the doctor's own school. Except possibly the oldest of them, all were graduates at Union under him; and his system of elastic, unceasing pressure, constant and unobtrusive surveillance, and simple appeals to the students' higher interests and manly feeling were so generally potent in the government of the college that the petty tyranny of the mensuration professor, nicknamed "Geodesy," found no support in the faculty, though the same elastic system which threw the responsibility of final results on the individual left him the same freedom of action which it gave us, and he had to learn his lesson while he taught us ours. The students mostly joined one or other of a large number of secret societies, mainly social and never scholastic, which had, almost without exception, originated at Union, spreading to other universities by migration or initiation of their members. The distinction most sought for by ambitious students, the marshalship of the "commencement" ceremonies,--i.e. the conferring of degrees, speech-making, etc., of the graduating class,--was an elective office and voted for by all the members of the class, so that, for this position of a day, scholarship was only of secondary importance, the personal popularity of the candidates determining the election. The societies grouped themselves in two parties, the most popular man in each party was its candidate, and the canvassing ran more or less actively through the senior year, occupying largely the attention of the students. These societies were in general boyish imitations of the Freemasons, though the most eminent, the Phi Beta Kappa, was an old and dignified institution, having been founded in 1776, at William and Mary College, whence it soon spread to Harvard and Yale, eventually establishing itself in most of the principal colleges of the country; at Union, under the control of the faculty, it became the high literary distinction of the class, only the third of the class with the highest collective record being admitted at graduation. Each of the societies had its secrets, its secret meetings, its grip and passwords, and it always seemed to me, though I was early initiated into one which had a distinguished record and literary reputation,