“Look here, Jason,” I cried, “you might get me to give up wearing a watch-chain and a tie-pin, but you aren’t going to stop me from joining one of these societies. I want social life and I’m going to have it, jokes or no jokes. I’m not so good as you on logic or Bible, but you aren’t going to stand between me and a few pleasures. Don’t some of the faculty belong to the Blepoes and the Boulomaies? If they can join without scruples--and they are Christian men and women--I can join. So it’s no use arguing the matter with me, Jason. I think I’ll send in my name to the Blepoes for the next meeting.” And I did join myself to the Blepoes and partook of their suppers, their programs, and even went so far one night as to appear on the platform myself, before a blackboard on which I drew sketches to illustrate a temperance address, and at the conclusion of which I recited with great fervor and many gestures, Kipling’s “Recessional.” That winter, too, though far outside of love, and even the thoughts of love, in the seriousness of my tasks, I looked on little epics and little lyrics of love between man and woman. Thropper himself had Cupid’s dart in his heart and his rhapsodies concerning his “luck” and his “happiness” and “her wonderful sweet spirit” were only a few of many indications of the depth to which he had fallen in love. Those of us who were not enamored of love had to be diplomatic in making engagements to walk or exercise with the boys, for there were times and seasons when Thropper and his fellow-lovers devoted themselves exclusively to their fiancées. For instance, there was lecture night in Pubbets Junction, six miles away, and on that evening, under chaperonage, the couples would seat themselves in carriages and not be back till midnight, returning to tell the bachelors and maidens the next morning the expressive points of the lecture and any exciting episodes of the trip, like the adventure of the wheels up to the axles in mud and a plunging horse pulled out by a nearby farmer, the adventure which befell Thropper and his love when they were on their way to hear Sam Small lecture. Those among us, like myself, who were not concerned with sentiment, held various speculative conferences, on Sunday evenings, as to how this and that student would mate. We had precedent to argue from, for we had seen Donald Bryce, a laughing-eyed Evangelist-to-be, pick out Clara Trine, an athletic and extremely conscientious Missionary-to-be. We had seen one of the “Clamorous Eight,” a light-haired, flush-cheeked banker-to-be, sort out and become deeply attached to the female member of the “Eight,” the blondish hobbledehoy, whom we judged, like grocery store sages, would at least fit herself to spend quickly enough what money he should chance to make as a banker.