We attended to the dusting and care of our own rooms with more or less thoroughness. Some of my friends chose to sleep and study amidst dust and disorder rather than to endure the strain and toil of a sweeper, a beater, and a duster for a Saturday morning. When we went to a city prayer-meeting or a lecture, we would usually dangle our greasy kerosene cans as far as the corner grocery and leave them to be filled. In fact, so inextricably interwoven with our intellectual concerns were our domestic habits, that I had not been in the dormitory very long before I caught myself entering my Greek class holding fast to a coal-hod, which I had taken the trouble to carry along the walk and into the recitation building, while I had unconsciously propped my Greek Testament very snugly behind the lower banister, under the impression that it had been the coal-hod. One Saturday morning, Providence or Fate--whatever it would be at a theological seminary--arranged a _mise en scène_ which called attention, in an effective way, to the inconvenience of permitting the students the use of coal-hods and wash bowls. The President was entertaining a gentleman who had been the first donor to our new and splendid gymnasium. He had escorted the benefactor through the bathrooms, the bowling-alleys, over the running-track, and had taken him among the equipment, with evidences of great pleasure. I had occasion to be leaving the gymnasium in their wake. I saw the President throw open the door which led into the lower hall of the dormitory and heard him say, “This is our dormitory--” or something to that effect, and he stepped back to allow the seminary benefactor to precede him into the dignified precincts of our domicile. Then he followed, and one may imagine how he must have felt, as he gazed upon a chaos of coal, of wood, of water, and of broken crockery, which lay like the trail of a sloven over the hall and over the first flight of steps; echoes from the preceding night, when the top floor had engaged the lower floors in a counter demonstration of noise, smash, and confusion. _Chapter XXIII. A Plot Which had for its End the Raising up of a Discouraged Young Preacher_