But a college boy’s feelings have a long range upward and downward. Nobody can have the “blues” more intensely, and nobody can have more fun. We find several comic poems by Garfield in his paper. One of them is a parody on Tennyson’s “Light Brigade,” and served to embalm forever in the traditions of Williams a rascally student prank which the Freshmen played upon their Sophomore enemies. One stanza must suffice for these pages. It was called “The Charge of the Tight Brigade”: _Bottles to right of them, Bottles to left of them, Bottles in front of them, Fizzled and sundered_, Ent’ring with shout and yell, Boldly they drank and well, _They caught the Tartar then; Oh, what a perfect sell! Sold—the half hundred._ Grinned all the dentals bare, Swung all their caps in air, Uncorking bottles there, Watching the Freshmen while Every one wondered; Plunged in tobacco-smoke, With many a desperate stroke, Dozens of bottles broke. _Then they came back, but not, Not the half hundred._ The winter vacation of his senior year Garfield spent at Poestenkill, a little place a few miles from Troy, New York. While teaching his writing school there, he became acquainted with some members of the Christian Church and through them with the officers of the city schools in Troy. Struck by his abilities, they resolved to offer him a position in the schools at a salary of $1,500 a year. The proposition was exciting to his imagination. It meant much more money than he could hope for back in Ohio; it meant the swift discharge of his debt, a life in a busy city, where the roar of the great world was never hushed. But on the other hand, his mother and the friends among whom he had struggled through boyhood, were back in Ohio. The conflict was severe. At last his decision was made. He and a gentleman representing the Troy schools were walking on a hill called Mount Olympus, when Garfield settled the matter in the following words: “You are not Satan, and I am not Jesus, but we are upon the mountain, and you have tempted me powerfully. I think I must say, ‘Get thee behind me.’ I am poor, and the salary would soon pay my debts and place me in a position of independence; but there are two objections. I could not accomplish my resolution to complete a college course, and should be crippled intellectually for life. Then my roots are all fixed in Ohio, where people know me and I know them, and this transplanting might not succeed as well in the long run as to go back home and work for smaller pay.”