This initial experience did not frighten me. I came up to the first day of college in the firm and joyous belief that here, if anywhere, that old bugbear of my past school days would be absent. I came into sight of buildings that were new to me, and oh, how stately to my freshman eyes! I came across a campus that was golden with the autumn grass, where red leaves filtered down from old elms, and where, from heights, I caught glimpses of the university's private parks, still green and soft, and of the river beyond--and of the clean flanks of white stone buildings and marble colonnades, half hidden in the trees. It was all so beautiful. It was the promised land and I was within its gates. The giddy knowledge of it buoyed me up and sent me across the campus humming to myself one of the alma mater songs which I had so religiously learned from that "Freshman Bible." I was on my way to my first class. Directly ahead of me was the broad, lofty door of the recitation building and, a little to the left, a fountain's water spilled itself singingly over into a shallow marble basin. Suddenly a trio of sophomores bounded out from behind a clump of bushes. They came about me in a whooping circle, took me by the head and feet and tossed me into the fountain. I clambered out, dripping, spluttering, but--be it said to my credit--still smiling. I had heard that this was the customary hazing which all freshmen must endure--and I knew enough to take it with as good a grace as they gave it. I started on my way to the recitation hall again, my clothes leaving a trickling line behind me on the walk. But they pulled me back and thumped me into the water again. It happened a third time before they let me go. And then one of them--a big, stocky fellow who wore a thick, rolling sweater on which the college letter was emblazoned--laughed heartily and thwacked me on the back and roared that I was a good kid, even for a Jew! The kindness of his remark was perhaps deeply meant. I've no doubt, he thought to be paying me a compliment--but I went away, wetter than ever, fast contracting a cold--and with a lump in my throat for which the cold was not at all responsible. In the class room I found a number of my new classmates in quite as damp a condition as I. I was glad to be among them, to know that I had not been singled out--and, being miserable, enjoyed their company. The instructor seemed to be making a point of paying no attention to our wetness. It made me wonder how the faculty felt about hazing. Evidently they shut their eyes to it. The class was soon over, since we were only kept for a preliminary explanation of the course and a few words of supercilious greeting on behalf of the young instructor. We came out upon the campus again, locked arm in wet arm, paradoxically proud of what we had suffered.