Anyone who was at Columbia ten years ago will remember Roland
Mistrial,--Roland Mistrial 3d, if you please,--and will recall the wave
of bewilderment which swept the campus when that young gentleman, on the
eve of graduation, popularity on one side and honors on the other,
suddenly, without so much as a p. p. c., left everything where it was
and betook himself to other shores. The flight was indeed erratic, and
numerous were the rumors which it excited; but Commencement was at hand,
other issues were to be considered, bewilderment subsided as
bewilderment ever does, the college dispersed, and when it assembled
again the Mistrial mystery, though unelucidated, was practically forgot.
In the neighborhood of Washington Square, however, on the northwest
corner of Tenth Street and Fifth Avenue to be exact, there were others
whose memories were more retentive. Among them was Roland's grandfather,
himself a graduate, founder of the Mistrial fellowship, and judge of the
appellate court. And there was Roland's father, a graduate too, a
gentleman widely respected, all the more so perhaps because he had run
for the governorship and lost it. And again there was Roland's aunt, a
maiden lady of whom it is recorded that each day of her life she got
down on her knees and thanked God he had made her a Mistrial. In
addition to these, there were, scattered along the Hudson, certain
maternal relatives--the Algaroths, the Baxters, and the Swifts; Bishop
Algaroth in particular, who possessed such indomitable vigor that when
at the good old age of threescore and ten he decided to depart this
life, the impression prevailed that he had died very young for him. None
of these people readily forgot. They were a proud family and an
influential one--influential not merely in the social sense, but
influential in political, legal, in church and university circles as
well; a fact which may have had weight with the Faculty when it was
called upon to deal with Roland Mistrial 3d. But be that as it may, the
cause of the young man's disappearance was never officially given. Among
the rumors which it created was one to the effect that his health was
affected; in another his mind was implicated; and in a third it was his
heart. Yet as not one of these rumors had enough evidential value behind
it to concoct an anonymous letter on, they were suffered to go their way
undetained, very much as Roland had already gone his own.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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