I was n’t there when it started, for after the speeches I went with the crowd into the great dining-hall to be received. It would be nice, I thought, to be introduced to the distinguished men and to get to know some of my classmates. Every one was trying to move toward the further left-hand corner of the vast place, and I soon found myself hemmed in and carried—oh, so slowly—along with the tide. It was very hot, and as I am not particularly tall I would more than once have given a good deal to be out in the fresh night air; but the thought of shaking hands with the President and the gentleman who invented plane geometry (I did n’t know whether he had anything to do with solid or not; I never studied it), and another gentleman (a humorist) who wrote a book and called it The Easy Greek Reader, cheered me up. I knew, too, that mamma would be glad to hear I had talked to these men. But when, after at least half an hour of waiting and pushing, I reached the corner of the room, I discovered that it was n’t the distinguished men we had all along been gasping and struggling for; it was the ice cream. The distinguished men were lined up away across the room all alone; if it had been rumored beforehand that they were indisposed with the plague, they could n’t have been much more detached. Every now and then some young fellow—probably an upperclassman—would snatch a Freshman from the throng, say something in his ear (it looked as if he were murmuring, "They ’re all perfectly harmless—only you mustn’t prod them or throw things in the cage)", and march him up to be introduced. I watched these proceedings awhile, and then, as the ice cream in the meanwhile had given out, I left and started to walk to my room by way of the Yard.