He was directed to a large but decomposing house conducted by the widow of a college janitor, and advised to take a room at $1.75 a week for his share of the rent. That implied taking with the room a large, solemn room-mate, fresh from teaching country school, a heavy, slow-spoken, serious man of thirty-one, named Albert Smith, registered as A. Smith, and usually known as "Plain Smith." Plain Smith sat studying in his cotton socks, and never emptied the wash-basin. He remarked, during the first hour of their discourse in the groves of Academe: "I hope you ain't going to bother me by singing and skylarking around. I'm here to work, bub." Smith then returned to the large books which he was diligently scanning that he might find wisdom, while Carl sniffed at the brown-blotched wall-paper, the faded grass matting, the shallow, standing wardrobe.... He liked the house, however. It had a real bath-room! He could, for the first time in his life, splash in a tub. Perhaps it would not be regarded as modern to-day; perhaps effete souls would disdain its honest tin tub, smeared with a paint that peeled instantly; but it was elegance and the Hesperides compared with the sponge and two lard-pails of hot water from the Ericson kitchen reservoir, which had for years been his conception of luxurious means of bathing. Also, there were choicer spirits in the house. One man, who pressed clothes for a living and carried a large line of cigarettes in his room, was second vice-president of the sophomore class. As smoking was dourly forbidden to all Platonians, the sophomore's room was a refuge. The sophomore encouraged Carl in his natural talent for cheerful noises, while Plain Smith objected even to singing while one dressed. Like four of his classmates, Carl became a waiter at Mrs. Henkel's student boarding-house, for his board and two dollars a week. The two dollars constituted his pin-money--a really considerable sum for Plato, where the young men were pure and smoked not, neither did they drink; where evening clothes were snobbish and sweaters thought rather well of; where the only theatrical attractions were week-stand melodramas playing such attractions as "Poor but True," or the Rev. Sam J. Pitkins's celebrated lecture on "The Father of Lies," annually delivered at the I.O.O.F. Hall.