A sound of confused cheering reached me the moment I got outside, and when I passed through the gate I could see down the long quadrangle what seemed to be a battle of will-o’-the-wisps—a swaying, shifting, meeting, parting, revolving myriad of flickering lights and lurid faces. I ran until I reached the edge of the crowd, and stood for a minute or two staring and listening. The fellows were surging wildly up and down and across the Yard with torches in their hands, cheering and singing. Whenever enough men got together, they would lower their torches and charge the whole length of the Yard—amid a howl of resentment—like a company of lancers. Then by the time they had turned to plough back again, another group would have formed, which usually met the first one half-way with a terrible roar and a clash of tin torches,—a drench of kerosene and a burst of flame. Two German bands that never stopped playing the "Blue Danube" and the "Washington Post" were huddled at either end of the Yard. Now and then a sort of tidal wave of lights and faces and frantic hands would swell rapidly toward them, lap them up, engulf them, and then go swirling back again to the middle. But they never stopped playing,—even when they became hopelessly scattered and horribly reunited. I saw two policemen fluttering distractedly on the brink—pictures of conscious inefficiency—and felt sorry for the poor things. As I was standing there wondering where I could get a torch, a slim middle-aged man with an iron-gray beard bustled up to them, and the three held a sort of hurried consultation. It ended by the iron-gray man’s (he was a professor) suddenly leaving them and mounting the steps of University Hall. His expression as he turned to face the crowd was the kind that tries its best to be persuasive and popular and tremendously resolute all at once, but only succeeds in being wan and furtive. He filled his lungs and began to talk, I suppose, as loud as he could; yet all I heard was an occasional despairing "Now, fellows ... It seems to me, fellows ... Don’t you think it would be better..."