We organized a club, which we called the Cock and Spur, and had a rat-pit and cock-fights in the cellar, on which occasions we invited out young actors from the Boston Museum and Howard Athenaeum stock companies. These in turn pressed us with invitations to similar festivities of their own, and we thus became acquainted with the half-world of the modern Athens, which was much worse for us, I trow, than would have been the most desperate society of our college contemporaries. There was a club of young actors that we used to frequent, where light comedy sketches and scenes from famous plays were given by the members, and in due time several of us were admitted to membership. Of these I was one and learned to do a turn very acceptably. On one occasion I took a small part upon the Boston Museum stage to fill the place made vacant by the illness of a regular member of the cast--an illness due in part to a carousal at the Cock and Spur the night before, in which he had come out second best. We were a clever crew, however, and never gave the faculty reason to complain of any failure on our part to keep up in our studies. When examination time came we hired an impecunious coach and, retiring from the world, acquired in five days knowledge that our fellows had taken eight months to imbibe. It is true that the college at large viewed us with some disgust, but we chose to regard this as mere envy. That we were really objectionable must, however, be admitted, for we smoked cigars in the Yard, wore sky-blue pantaloons and green waistcoats, and cultivated little side whiskers of the mutton-chop variety; while our gigs and trotters were constantly to be seen standing in Harvard Square, waiting for the owners to claim them and take the road. On Sundays, when the decorous youths of Boston had retired to Beacon Street for their midday family feast of roast beef and baked beans, the members of the Cock and Spur might be observed in their white beaver hats driving countryward in chaises from the local livery stables, seated beside various fair ladies from the Boston stage or the less distinguished purlieus of the Cambridge chop-houses. At noon these parties would foregather at some country tavern and spend long afternoons singing, drinking, and playing draw poker and other games of chance; and occasionally we would fight a main of cocks in some convenient pig-pen.