If a freshman reported for duty one minute late, he was paddled; if he reported one minute early, he was paddled. There was no end to the paddling. "Assume the angle," an upper-classman would roar. The unfortunate freshman then humbly bent forward, gripped his ankles with his hands--and waited. The worst always happened. The upper-classman brought the paddle down with a resounding whack on the seat of the freshman's trousers. "Does it hurt?" "Yes, sir." Another resounding whack. "_What?_" "No--no, sir." "Oh, well, if it doesn't hurt, I might as well give you another one." And he gave him another one. A freshman was paddled if he forgot to say "sir" to an upper-classman; he was paddled if he neglected to touch the floor with his fingers every time he passed through a door in the fraternity house; he was paddled if he laughed when an upper-classman told a joke, and he was paddled if he didn't laugh; he was paddled if he failed to return from an errand in an inconceivably short time: he was paddled for every and no reason, but mainly because the upper-classmen, the sophomores particularly, got boundless delight out of doing the paddling. Every night a freshman stood on the roof of the Nu Delta house and announced the time every fifteen seconds. "One minute and fifteen seconds after nine, and all's well in the halls of Nu Delta; one minute and thirty seconds after nine, and all's well in the halls of Nu Delta; one minute and forty-five seconds after nine, and all's well in the halls of Nu Delta," and so on for an hour. Then he was relieved by another freshman, who took up the chant. Nightly the freshmen had to entertain the upper-classmen, and if the entertainment wasn't satisfactory, as it never was, the entertainers were paddled. They had to run races, shoving pennies across the floor with their noses. The winner was paddled for going too fast--"Didn't he have any sense of sportsmanship?"--and the loser was paddled for going too slow. Most of the freshmen lost skin off their noses and foreheads; all of them shivered at the sight of a paddle. By the end of the first week they were whispering to each other how many blisters they had on their buttocks. It was a bitterly cold night in late February when the Nu Deltas took the freshmen for their "walk." They drove in automobiles fifteen miles into the country and then left the freshmen to walk back. It was four o'clock in the morning when the miserable freshmen reached the campus, half frozen, unutterably weary, but thankful that the end of the initiation was at hand.