tables. The expedition was safely stowed in the back room around the
rough table with its carved patch-work of initials, Greek letters, and
nicknames, significant or obsolete, according to a man's perspective.
Pellams assumed instant control.

"We will now turn our attention to the serious business of the evening.
Get your places. Hands on your bottles! Open--_corks_! And away we go."
The party drank in silence.

"Do you begin to improve, James? There is a trace of a smile in the
left-hand corner of the patient's mouth. Ruffle up his hair and give him
another while we have him going!"

Someone started a song, and they had another drink to punctuate the
pause between verses. A ruddier shade was creeping towards the roots of
Pellams' hair; Lyman, who smiled but seldom, was grinning across the
table at a Sophomore trying to flip cracker crumbs into his mouth.

"This is a tryout," said Pellams. "The first man that balks at his beer
will drink raspberry chasers for a month. Hey! look at 'Nosey' Marion
trying to shirk!"

Sure enough, Marion, who tried to keep up a reputation for capacity with
a naturally slim endowment, was slyly pouring his last potion into an
empty beer-case behind him. They fell upon the offender forthwith,
whipped him into the ranks again, and resumed their seats, laughing and
panting.

"And now that our erring brother is punished and forgiven--that's as
good a phrase as I ever saw--punished and forgiven--stick that in the
Sequoia, Pegasus"--Pellams rambled on, "we've got to have the motif. I
move from the chair that the guest of the evening gives us 'My Old
Kentucky Home!' Punish your glass and tune up, Jimmie!"

The cry went on until Jimmie had to respond. He began with the intention
of singing it quite carelessly, because there was much in his soul that
night that he dared not show before them all; but Jimmie had the gift of
song in his heart as in his voice, and he threw himself into the music
before the first stanza was half done. Only once before had he sung the
song as he did to-night; it was at last Commencement, when he sang it
for the Seniors going out on their adventures, and when he was done they
had all been still and quiet like men who have seen ghosts--as perhaps
they had, that night, the phantoms of men and times haunting certain
low, arched buildings they were to see no more.

    "Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!"

Jimmie's tender baritone floated up from the table wistfully sweet, and
shaken a little with feeling, for the trouble of the week just past was
sweeping into it. Lyman, listening, knew of what place the boy was
singing, and mentally noted that he had better be thoughtful of the
youngster during the rest of the term.

The fellows were quiet for a moment after they had droned out the
chorus, each one putting his own meaning into that sweet old song of
farewell, and then, to break the charm, a small voice with a Spanish
roll in it, piped "Tamales!" at the crack in the door.

"Hey!--Lupe!--make him sing!"

They raided the stock first, and rendered happy with the jingle of
silver the quaint little remnant of the race who named their valley for
the blessed Santa Clara. Then, when he had counted it and put it safely
away with the officious assistance of Pellams Rex, they set him on the
table in his blue overalls and over-sized hat and made him sing for them
in his pathetic treble, "La Paloma," and for encore, "Two Leetle Girl
een Bloo." Pellams removed him after that, claiming that Langdon was
about to tell the story of his life, which could not be published in the
Sequoia.

Jimmie Mason had sat there all this time, taking it in and drinking with
the others, but there was never a cloud on his brain nor a waver in his
movements. The rest of them wandered from the motif; each was composing
a fugue of his own, according to the mould of his nature. Scraps of
their conversation floated in on him between songs--"Got him just below
the knees--now!"--"and the difference between me and a tank is in the
inferior receptivity--ain't that a peach?--of the receptacle"--"Now, the
fallacy of the original proposition, as Herbert Spencer hath it, lies in
the expression of the component particulars"--this was Langdon--"that
proves that if I had a board Pellams would be summarily chastised"--"Put
it down and order up another, here's good drink going stale"--"Whoa,
Pegasus, old hoss, that's my tamale you have designs on"--"and cut his
name there"--"sing it down! This is to break training for the third
time"--"What's the matter with ----ty-eight?"--All this came in on him,
as he watched them grow from geniality to hilarity and then on toward
enthusiasm. They had forgotten him; only now and then someone shied a
cracker at his head and told him to "jolly up."

Another drink, and the patriotic stage was upon them. The King ordered a
glass, standing, to the Team, and one with a foot on the table to the
Captain, and one with both feet on the table and glasses to the ceiling
to the Victory next fall. Someone started the yell; it went round the
table. Then they joined in on "Here's to Stanford College," with a verse
for every class and its yell at the end, and before they were done there
were three howling factions, each trying to cry the others down.

Frank Lyman, he of the steady head, who was quiet or hilarious as he
willed, but was never beyond the point where he willed to be, sat
watching good-humoredly from his corner, and noted that Jimmie Mason's
voice had risen the loudest, and that he, too, had forgotten the motif.

Pellams had wandered into the outer room "to bust the proprietor's
blamed old nickel-machine and get even," leaving the disturbance to
subside of its own weight. Coming back suddenly to the door, he cried:
"Hey, I've got 'em! The raw material and the finished product! Let's
have a temperance lecture from Lyman."

It was a queer group at the door. The half-gone Pellams, with his face
flushed and his hair dishevelled, in one of his hands little Lupe,
hanging to an empty pail and between laughter and tears; the other hand
tight on the collar of as dirty, as unkempt, and as drunken an old
loafer as ever hung over a Mayfield bar. Pellams swung the ruin in.

"Now, tell us how you got that fine, large tee!" said the tormentor.
"Orate to us, General Jackson!"

The old man braced himself, with drunken dignity, against the door.

"You young fellows c'n make fools o' yourselves," he said, "but you
can't make fool o' me."

"That's all right, pardner--Nature saved us the trouble in your case,"
said Pellams, the thoughtless.

The clear head in the room--Lyman's always--took it all in; Frank made a
step to come between the Junior and his victim. Then he turned,
half-unconsciously, toward Mason. Jimmie was standing with his hands on
the table, looking straight before him, and in that look Frank read the
certainty that the case was out of his control. For the Face was rising
before Jimmie Mason once more; it had twisted itself in with the
relaxed, foolish features before him, until he saw his father there, a
mock and a shame. It was not his father, of course--he passed his hand
before his eyes as though to clear them--but suppose that somewhere else
a crowd had his father--and he not there to----

The Angel of Pity, or the Universal Conscience, or whatever it is that
you and I have learned from our books and our teachers to put as our
symbol of the belief in the higher things, wrote upon his records that
night that a prayer had gone up, for the first time, from the dingy back
room of the Hotel Mayfield.

Pellams had the old man singing now, in a cracked, maudlin voice, and
his keeper was beating time with a billiard cue. Then the amateur
conductor had one of his inspirations.

"Hey, a trio! The event of the evening! General Hardshell Jackson,
Señor Lupe de Tamale, and the renowned lyric barytone, James Russell
Lowell Mason, will combine in a grand farewell concert. Ascend the
platform, Señor!" he cried to the Mexican lad, who stood, wide-eyed, in
a corner. Then he gestured wildly toward the door.

"Hey, Jimmie, come back here," he called; "don't let him out, boys!"

Jimmie had reached the door when Lyman caught his sleeve.

"Where are you going?"

"Home."

"You mean the Hall?"

Jimmie pulled free of the Senior's hand.

"No!" he said. "Home."

A SONG CYCLE AND A PUNCTURE.

A Song Cycle and a Puncture.

    "And I learned about women from 'er!"

                              KIPLING.

Six Madonnas, from their places on the Chapel walls, gazed at the
spectacle of a student with long hair and energetic manner drilling a
chorus of young men and women from behind the preacher's desk. There was
no visible sign of agitation on the part of the six Madonnas, though an
operatic rehearsal in Chapel might be considered reason enough. To be
sure, one of them, with her feet upon a crescent moon, kept her eyes
fixed religiously on the ceiling, but this had become a habit. The
Madonnas were not surprised.

The early years of the University, when there was no assembly hall and
the temporary chapel was used for everything that did not demand the
superior accommodations of the men's gymnasium, had prepared them for
anything. They had looked calmly down upon student farces and Wednesday
evening prayer meetings, professional impersonations and baccalaureate
sermons. Once, there had been a German farce under the protection of
the Germanic Language department, by a company from town, a boisterous
play with a gigantic comedienne in a short skirt. Beside this
performance, Lillian Arnold's singing a love duet with Jack Smith was
nothing very shocking.

Connor, the man who was getting up the opera for the benefit of the
Junior Annual, waved his baton gracefully and looked pleased. The
rehearsal had gone well that afternoon, and now Cap Smith was singing
with creditable expression the love song in the last act. The experience
of Connor told him that this song would make even the bleachers at the
back of the gymnasium keep a respectful silence, which was saying a good
deal. Smith had a very pretty tenor, redeeming its lack of volume by a
sympathetic quality that was decidedly pleasant. In a song like this,
his voice came out well. There was a high note at the end to be taken
pianissimo with something else that signified "as though you meant it."
Smith could make it sound so, at any rate. One girl at the back of the
chorus always said, "Ah," under her breath when the song was ended at
rehearsal.

Lillian Arnold, who played opposite Smith in the opera, did not conceal
from herself the pleasure she took in the part. Long before rehearsals
began, she had spent her smiles upon Connor with a view to that very
rôle. Miss Arnold was a young person who knew the things she wanted;
one of them was Smith. 'Varsity end, champion pole-vaulter, Glee Club
tenor and Sophomore president, which means principally leading the
cotillion, he was well worth a girl's trouble. There was the more glory
in the winning of this capital prize because he was not very
enthusiastic about Roble. There was somebody up in town who took a great
deal of his blue fraternity-paper. Lillian Arnold knew about the girl in
town, so she accepted gracefully what the gods gave and was outwardly
content.

The gift of the gods was Ted Perkins, whose vest was decorated like
Cap's and who had no entanglements. When the approach of the Sophomore
cotillion set Roble agog with a pleasant but hardly strong-minded
excitement, he "asked her." Peace of mind comes naturally after such an
invitation is given and accepted; on rare occasions this does not last.

The first thing that occurred to ruffle Miss Arnold's complacency was a
chance remark dropped one noon by Perkins as they were strolling home
obliquely from the Quad.

"Cap isn't going to lead with Miss Martin, after all," said he.

"Indeed!" exclaimed Lillian. For some remote feminine reason the
announcement was interesting.

"Her family has gone South suddenly, a death or something. Cap is all
broken up about it. He was going to show her off in style that night."

"I wonder whom he will ask, now," she said, as though it didn't matter
the least bit in the world.

Down somewhere in a girl's heart lies the gambler's instinct. Lillian
would have thrown away then and there the certainty of Ned Perkins'
timely invitation for the torturing suspense, the alluring chance, that
attended the Sophomore president's second choice. Perkins, in his simple
masculine dullness, never guessed this.

"I don't believe he knows yet; he wouldn't tell over at the house if he
did. Another plum for unengaged Roble."

Perkins would have been less at ease over the condition of engaged Roble
could he have looked into the little east music-room where Lillian
played accompaniments, and Cap Smith, leaning over a wicker chair, went
through the music of his part. These cozy rehearsals in the quiet
afternoons had resulted in Smith's asking himself, during a cut home
through the Quad, why he had never noticed Lillian Arnold in particular.
Connor, the director, had a keener eye, evidently. She was pretty,
dashing and real good fun. Perkins was entitled to respect for his
selection. Lillian was "all right;" this is a masculine term which may
mean anything from mild approval to the rapture of "just one girl." The
mild interpretation, of course, is to be put upon Smith's use of the
term, even after he had been to Roble two evenings. Their talk was about
the opera, nothing further, and when he had taken his high note with
just the proper emotional slur, they both laughed. To be honest, there
had been one chat on the moonlit steps of the Museum, but all of this
went down on the blue fraternity-paper among other confidences.

One afternoon, in the middle of a Spring-time walk, Smith gave utterance
to a decision concerning which he had already written, dutifully, to an
interested party in the South. They had passed the willow-fringed bank
of Lagunita, the red boathouse, the double avenue of young pines, and,
crossing into the back road, strolled down to the low gate opposite the
Farm; this they climbed and came into a little hollow where knowing
people find yellow violets. He had just given her a frank compliment.

"You are the best fence-taker I ever saw for a girl."

"That's one practical result of an hour's credit in gym-work," she
laughed. "Sometimes, on lovely days like this, I feel almost as though I
could pole-vault the way you do. It must be glorious to go sailing over
the bar."

"And hear it come clattering down after you?"

They sat on the soft, new grass, and Lillian caught, one after another,
the shy yellow faces peering at her through the long leaves. She looked
so spring-like, so much a part of the fresh, young landscape in its
robes of early February, as she half reclined to reach out for a blossom
larger and yellower than the rest--a pose that she knew was good--that
the Sophomore president put an end to suspense.

"I had expected to lead the cotillion with Miss Martin," he began, "but
she has gone South, so I'm badly left. I'm afraid you are engaged for
it, aren't you?"

Lillian gazed fixedly at the white cupola on a stockfarm building. Her
heart was somewhere deep in hill-grass. She was the most luckless girl
in the whole college! The opportunity of her Sophomore year had come too
late. It was bitter enough for tears.

"I had promised it to Mr. Perkins," she said, irresolutely.

"I was afraid so. Of course, it was awfully late to ask you; but I would
rather go with you than with any of the others, so I ventured."

It was a desperate moment for Lillian.

"I would rather go with you, too," she said, gazing up at him.

"I'm sure I wish you could," he said, with sincerity. She was at her
prettiest that day.

"I will anyway," she declared.

"But Ted----"

"I don't care," she went on, "it was only that he asked me first.
Couldn't I cut it and go with you? He ought to understand that I have a
right to change my mind."

Smith watched the antics of a gopher for a full minute before he
replied. Although Perkins had said nothing to him of his intentions
regarding the dance--the two had few confidences--Cap had held his
theories. Still, he deemed he had a chance. Being a Sophomore, he
believed that he was thoroughly acquainted with the co-educated sex and
all their wiles and guiles; but a feeling of repulsion toward this frank
readiness to throw down another man, one of his own, too, drowned his
sense of self-satisfaction at finding himself preferred.

"Of course, you and Ted must arrange all that," he said, and turned the
conversation.

Cap's lack of confidential relations with Perkins did not stand in the
way of his mentioning the affair to him that night after dinner.

"I thought you ought to know it, Ted," he concluded. "Of course, you
will do as you please about the matter, only I shall not take her."

"You don't think for a moment that _I_ still intend to, do you?" asked
Perkins, fiercely.

"I don't believe I'd blame you exactly if you backed out," said the
complacent Sophomore; "but, of course, it's none of my funeral now; I'm
only sorry I happened to ask her myself, and start the trouble."

"I think I'll walk home with her after rehearsal," said Perkins.

"Well, I shan't say anything about it one way or the other," said Smith,
and he started toward the Gym with a pleasant sense of having galled
somebody a bit.

Meanwhile, Lillian had eaten her dinner with relish. The prospect of
trouble with Perkins did not worry her in the least. Perkins had been
rather a convenience, and to lead the cotillion with Jack Smith was a
delight that entirely divested the other man of all importance. The
rehearsal went through with a dash; Lillian was all animation and
witchery, and the love-scene was perfectly acted, though Ted Perkins sat
glowering in the privileged audience. Cap Smith took his high note with
a tenderness of voice and gesture that moved Connor, the leader (he was
also stage-manager and chief electrician), to call out, "Good boy, Cap,"
and to shake his carefully untrimmed hair in approval.

After rehearsal, the tenor slipped away just as Perkins, with an
artificial smile, approached Lillian.

The Sophomore was in bed when Perkins came into his room.

"What did you do about it?" Cap asked, to start things.

"I simply said I wanted to be excused from taking her to the cotillion."

"What reason did you give?"

"None."

"But you had to give some explanation."

"She didn't ask for any. She guessed it, probably."

"What did she say? Try to smooth it over?"

"No, nothing, except that she was sorry, and that she would have liked
to go with me."

"Humph," sniffed Cap. "I'll bet she was afraid I hadn't said anything to
you about it, and she wouldn't give herself away as long as you didn't
kick up a row. Now I suppose she expects me to take her."

"That's where she was keen, all right; she never breathed a word about
you; only made me feel like two-bits in a fog for having turned her
down."

"If I had been you I would have roasted her right there, fired the whole
string at her."

This was the point for which the jilted man had come into Cap's room.

"No," said he, "you said you wouldn't take her either, and I thought
that would punish her better than having any scene with me. She'll know
I have had my innings."

This took Smith where he lived, but he put on a cheerful front,
perforce:

"Well, I'll crawl gracefully out of it, to-morrow," said he. "I suppose
she'll be hopping when she thinks it over."

Perkins went up to his room satisfied.

When Cap Smith caught Miss Arnold at the post-office, he began to find
that it was easier to plan a graceful crawling out than to execute the
movement.

"I shall have to take back what I said yesterday about the cotillion,"
he began, cleverly, guiding her toward Roble, "because, you see, it
wouldn't be just square to Ted, would it? He might feel hurt, and I
wouldn't have that. We must have six dances, though, anyway."

This, assuredly, would show her. Unfortunately, Lillian was either dull
or desperate.

"But he released me last night."

"Did he?" said Jack. He had started all wrong.

"Yes, we settled it all very well; he didn't seem to care in the least,
he is so good-natured." She looked as serene as the sky above her,
although she was beginning to have biting suspicions. "So it's all
right."

Cap Smith's feet had become tangled in crawling; he kicked out
recklessly.

"No, it's not all right. I don't believe in a girl's treating a fellow
like that, and I won't be a party to it."

"Why did you ask me, then?" she challenged. "To tempt me because you
happened to be president and a girl loves to lead?"

"I'm not so mean as that. How could I know Perkins had asked you. He
hadn't told me."

"I suppose you told him about it?"

"Yes, I thought that I ought to."

"After telling me that I might arrange it. It was my business."

"I knew how you would do it, and I wasn't willing that Ted should be cut
that way."

"What a lovely friendship!" said Lillian. She was much vexed.

Smith did not reply at once. The beauty of his friendship with Perkins
did not strike him very heavily at the moment.

"At any rate, under the circumstances I don't feel that I can take you
to the cotillion."

"Don't flatter your--" Lillian was too angry to speak without crying, so
she went into the Hall abruptly.

With the approach of Washington's Birthday, the rage of Miss Arnold
grew. Inasmuch as everyone took it for granted that she was going with
Perkins, it was not likely that she would be asked again, instead, late
beginners, running cards for themselves and other people, asked her for
dances, and rather than admit her predicament she let them fill her
card.

The afternoon of the cotillion she went to bed and was ill for a day;
then she appeared at the final rehearsal with a smiling face and a soul
full of wrath. She had very little to say to Smith, but otherwise she
showed no resentment, and her acting was as good as ever. One wiser than
Cap Smith would have augured ill from her fair seeming, a less confident
man would have been on his guard; but he had forgotten all that he had
ever read about the fury of women scorned, and he went to his doom
unconscious.

The Gym had never held a bigger audience, and the opera, as usual, was
proving itself the greatest success in the annals of Stanford
theatricals; the show was so inoffensively proper, Connor declared with
a sigh, that it was disgusting. No hitch or jar marred the perfect
running of the performance, and the conductor, directing the
scene-shifting between acts, stopped now and then to shake hands with
himself. The borrowed scenery almost fitted; there was no wait of more
than half an hour; very few of the chorus got out of tune; the costumes
had been expunged by a board of lady managers and declared officially to
have no _Said Pasha_ tendencies; the leading ladies were actually
keeping their tempers; things moved on as smoothly as though the Fates
were deadening suspicion in order to make the coming catastrophe the
more overwhelming.

The third act drew on. The low comedian had just finished joshing back
and forth with the bleachers, whose chorus work had equalled, in some
respects, that on the stage. A soft light began to illumine the painted
heavens, and a three-hundred-candle-power Luna, the pride and joy of
Connor's heart, rose in wavering majesty. The house was quiet now,
listening to Smith's solo to Lillian in the moonlit garden. The music
swept softly on to the close of the song. As Jack took a deep breath for
his tender love-note, the note that was to make men sigh and women
quiver, Lillian leaned closer to him, as if drawn by the caressing
sweetness in his voice, and one round, white arm stole about his neck in
the prettiest gesture imaginable. No one knew that with the other hand
she had quickly drawn out the big black pin that held the flowers on her
breast. One wicked jab, and the precious high note broke in a wild
"ouch" of pain.

The bleachers laughed uproariously.

ONE COMMENCEMENT.

One Commencement.[A]

    "Within the camp they lie, the young, the brave;
       Half knight, half schoolboy, acolytes of fame;
     Pledged to one altar, and perchance one grave."

                                        BRET HARTE.

There is one Wednesday morning, the last in May, when the sun, peeping
over the observatory dome on Mount Hamilton and flooding the wide valley
of Santa Clara, wakes unfeelingly a reluctant set of mortals to the
realization that this is the last of their mornings.

The girl in Roble who has lived four happy, independent years where the
winds of freedom blow, and who is going back this afternoon to the
household duties and narrow sympathies of a not over-interesting home,
leans thoughtfully on the foot-rail of her iron bed; the dear, familiar
view blurs as she gazes out beyond the dormitory room and its
reminiscent treasures of program and photograph, out where the warm
light brightens the concrete pillars of the museum and the arboretum
with its waving tops, and makes the whole fair landscape one Field of
the Cloth of Gold.

The Encina student who has slaved his uneasy way, with no resources save
his willingness to do anything that may help him from one semester to
the next, springs exultantly from his alcove, for to-day he has finished
the struggle, and there is a good job waiting for him.

Over in the fraternity house, the man who has sung his grasshopper songs
in careless disregard of changing seasons, and who has found some
impossible examinations barring his primrose path, blinks painfully at
the merciless sun of Commencement Day, laughing at him above the roofs
of siren Mayfield, and holds his foolish head in his hands; for last
night, while the other Seniors, full of honors and regrets, were trying
to choke down a little of the good-bye supper after the Promenade, he
went a bit too far in celebrating his mixed emotions of grief at
flunking and joy at coming back again.

Upon all alike--upon him who has watched for it, dreading it through
four enchanted years, as upon him who has forgotten until the list of
candidates for graduation glared at him from the registrar's
bulletin-board with a vacancy in that section where his name ought to
be; upon him who has hoped for this as a commencement in very truth of
things great and new, as upon him who cares not--shines this early
sunlight of the last Wednesday in May.

There is never a cloud in the sky this morning; the meadow lark sings
more joyously than on any other day; the campus is more radiantly
beautiful, because some hundred and fifty people are looking at it
through tears for the last time.

On his own Commencement Day, Tom Ashley lay sleeping, hidden away from
the splendor of the morning, two-score miles from the smiling campus.

The man lying next him in the upper tier but one rolled over and shook
him by the shoulder:

"Wake up, Tom; it's Commencement Day! Don't you want your degree?"

The Senior struggled back from sleep; a dream influence lingered with
him, a vision of a cloistered enclosure, a dream in which all his
senses, now assailed by the sights and smells and sounds of a
troop-ship, drew in again the familiar things; he beheld the red tiles
a-shimmer above the yellow stone; the aromatic scent of budding
eucalyptus was in his nostrils, the sound of the young laughter of women
in his ears. He sat up, gazing uncertainly at the dark, crowded space,
the narrow stairway, the great iron racks covered with gray-blanketed
shapes; then he crawled into his uniform and out on the ship's deck. The
early dawn had set the towers of the city glittering; already the low
wharf-sheds along the water-front were astir with life. Back of the town
the twin peaks, named by the early Franciscans for a woman's breasts,
rose veiled with a filmy scarf of fog. Everywhere below them spangled
flags in myriads flapped from the tops of the city and among the crowded
shipping.

Ashley leaned over the rail of the _Peking_ and watched the yellow tide
slide by with its burden of dèbris. Not far away in the stream lay the
other two transports, unattended; it was too early for the fussy craft
that curtseyed about them during the day. At three o'clock that
afternoon these vessels were to sail for the distant Philippines,
bearing arms against the ancient country of the Spanish Fathers--the
pioneers who had shown the Saxon the way to this golden coast and had
made vine and rose flourish for him on the barren sandhills, that he
might now strip from the land of their forefathers the last possession
of a dying empire. By the strange turnings of history, from the very
city of their patron saint the New World was sending forth its first
hostile expedition against the Old, and the great community that had
grown from their nestling mission of Dolores would shriek Godspeed to
these enemies of Old Spain.

Nothing of this was in Ashley's mind as he watched the water lapping at
the beach-side of the transports. He kept saying over in his mind the
words of his bunk-mate, "It's Commencement Day! Don't you want your
degree?"

In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Tom, looking at his coarse
blue uniform, smiled as he thought on his plans for Graduation Week.
Those feet, now clad in new government gunboats, were to have waltzed
but two nights before in shining patent-leather at the head of the
Senior Ball. Only yesterday he should have been galloping around the
bases in fantastic costume at the Senior-Faculty game. Monday afternoon,
when he should have been before the Chapel site with Her, listening to
the glories of the Class as told over its freshly-mortared plate, he was
tramping on the wrenching cobble-stones of Market Street with a bunch of
roses in his campaign hat and another in his gun barrel, and the city
going mad on the curbing. Lord High Ruler of the Senior dance and
counsellor in all the affairs of the Class, he was cooped up with a
thousand others on the troopship _City of Peking_, a sergeant at
eighteen a month and lucky to get so much, with a chain of superiors
ordering his comings and goings.

All this because of the destruction of an American battleship in the
harbor of Havana.

The notes of a bugle-call drifted across the water from the nearest
transport, and Tom's mind went back to the time when the unfamiliar
sound was first heard on the Stanford campus. It seemed like a very old
memory, although it was but three weeks past. He remembered how, when
the recruiting sergeant came down from the city, the after-dinner crowd
used to sit on the Hall steps watching him drill the men in the
moonlight. After drill, they would loaf in his Hall room, talking it
over, and when the civilians had drifted off to bed or to the inglorious
studies of a routine now ended for Tom, he would sit with "Nosey" Marion
and blow smoke. Neither spoke much, only a word now and then, but they
were thinking of the same thing.

The days passed; the college used to drop out between recitations to
watch them drilling on the football field; the uniforms arrived, and
then the orders. There was a baseball rally that night, but when the
enlisted men came into the Hall and word was passed that they were going
on the morrow, the occasion was all theirs. Marion, who had been twice
on the debating team, stood up, looking slimmer than ever in his plain
blue, and spoke for them. He said only simple things; it was not like
his speech of a year before, when his impassioned arguments turned
defeat into victory at the Inter-Collegiate; but the crowd listened with
their eyes on the floor and applauded with their hands only when he had
done, because they couldn't trust their voices. They sang the terrible
"Battle Hymn of the Republic" after that; Langdon led it. "Peg" could
hardly carry a tune with that awful voice of his, but he sang the verses
so that the chills ran down your back and you had to join in the chorus,
"Our God is marching on."

Next day they themselves were marching on, forty of them, with hardly a
thought of what they were leaving behind, their minds fixed on the
distant Isles of Philip. Tom had never expected to leave the campus in
that spirit. He loved it all, from the quiet slopes by Frenchman's Lake
to that lofty redwood treetop, first rampart of the smiling city to the
eager Freshman, last long-watched glimpse of the land of his memories to
the reluctant Senior.

He had always felt that it would be a tug to say good-bye, yet he, too,
his mind over-seas, had gone away to town with hardly a thought. He had
time to reflect in that dreary fortnight at the Presidio when the
unseasonable rains drenched his tent, and the wretched routine of beans
and coffee hurt the romance of enlistment.

The life had its compensating features. Every city girl he had ever met
in College or town society came out to camp and asked for him at K
Street--K Street with its saucy cardinal flag waving above the first
tent to the left. Most of them brought candy; a vary few, with
super-feminine understanding, made it beer; one, she was a genius, sent
over on a drizzling evening a piping-hot steak. Then, too, he had three
white angles on his sleeve and "Sergeant Ashley" sounded well. Cap Smith
was not even a corporal; the emphasis with which Cap mentioned the fact
showed anything but college spirit.

These things made it easier not to think about the campus and what the
rest of the fellows were doing, but the old life came drifting in after
all. Sometimes, after the long, hard morning drill on the green slope
beyond the car-track, between drill and the welcome mess-call, Marion
would come into the Sergeant's tent and they would sit apart to talk
about the Faculty game or the Senior ball and the dances they had
expected to put on their cards. Each Saturday some of the boys came up
and brought the campus news. One time, all enlisted Stanford tumbled
out of their tents, every last one of them, to welcome a big,
slow-moving, slow-speaking man, who plays first-base at the Commencement
Game. A corporal who had never been to college and who had a newspaper
idea of students, asked if that was the football captain whom they were
crowding around and almost trying to hug, and Marion answered no; that
he was a bigger man than even the head coach. The boys held their
visitor until the officer of the day ordered civilians out of camp, and,
when the unfeeling guard drove him out, they gave the yell in good old
style. The colonel sent his orderly to find what was the matter, for it
was a high offence against martial law, and when the messenger reported
that it was those Stanford kids in K, yelling for their President, his
superior said that he guessed it was all right; this was the first
California regiment, and the old man was a part of the state. This was
before the final dispatches came, before the men learned that they were
going on the first expedition.

Monday morning and marching orders. On this, the morning of Wednesday,
as he looked across the water and watched the city growing brighter, he
thrilled again with the remembrance of that feeling, that purely
physical tingling of the nerves, which came over him at the barracks
when he lifted his gun to start. The load on his back was snug and
light as he stood there in marching rig; how much heavier and harder it
was to grow before he should stand on American soil again, he could not
know. Then, the shuffling of many feet and the flutter of a flag outside
the stone gates, so strangely like the gates which stand at the entrance
of the Land of his Memories--and his Commencement week had begun.

Class Day, from that time, on, lay in his memory a mass of unassimilated
matter to be thought out in the long weeks of idleness on the _Peking's_
blistering deck. The crowd, huge, wild, packed from building to curb,
the merry, merry flags waving them on, the little kaleidoscopic flashes
of expressions which he caught, when he stopped to look at them, on the
grim faces to right and left,--all these impressions and many more were
jumbled in his brain. He remembered the excitement and sympathy mingled
in the countenances of the people. One or two little things were caught
along with the larger recollections--a woman's face that looked like
Hers and almost made him forget for the moment that She was then
doubtless listening to the Class history; a baby holding a flag in its
little hand, and staring with awed, uncomprehending eyes at the
sober-faced soldiers tramping on and on; a man mounted on a truck crying
above the cheering, "Give 'em hell for us!" A remembrance that stood
out above the others was that of someone calling a good-bye to the
Major, of the choke in the officer's voice as he answered. He was an
older man, and his expression of feeling nearly upset Tom. He trudged
on, file-closer for the front rank and six-feet-one of target, and
wondered if he had been a fool after all. It was well enough for those
people yelling acclaim from street and housetop; but they were going
back home, or down to the University, and he--to the troopship, and the
high seas, and after that no telling. The strap of his knapsack hurt
him. They said that Manila was a furnace. He wished that the women would
stop loading them with flowers; he wished that Pellams and the other
fellows wouldn't keep running out to march beside him; didn't they know
how hard he was trying to hold it back? And what did this going amount
to, anyway? If he had staid out, there would have been only one gap in
the company. Then, in a rest, Pellams got to his side with a bottle of
ice-cold Pilsener and Tom pointed its base to the sky and gained
courage.

There was a falling apart to his right, and he felt rather than saw that
his mother had slipped through the crowd and taken his hand in her slim,
white one, was marching beside him over the cruel cobble-stones;
Pellams, too, closed up on the other side, for the officers were not
trying to keep the alignment as they drew near the end. These three went
on together, she trying to be brave now that the last had come, Pellams
clumping along over the rough pavement and joking in ecstatic disregard
of the discomfort of his fat body. It was over at last, the mounted
police were pushing back the crowd; it was to be all alone now. The
Stanford men gave their yell together, the volunteer held his mother
close for a moment. Then,--"Company, attention!"--the dock faded into
mist, so that he stumbled on the gangway.

Not until that night, when a group of them paced along the wharf, had
anyone spoken of Class Day. Cap Smith had started it.

"They are going to the Ball now," said he.

"I wonder if Lyman came out ahead on the Show," said Marion, his eye on
the dollar, even at that solemn moment.

"I wonder if the programs got down in time," said Tom, and then he
laughed to think of himself, the chairman of the Ball committee,
plodding along the splintered dock in a dusty uniform and buff leggings
and with the rudiments of a scraggly beard on his face. It was a queer
ending.

Down there, the others were floating round, now, to high-priced music
from town. In a little note which Pellams had brought him from Her that
morning, she had said that she was to wear a small silk flag instead of
flowers this time. He would have liked to peep in, as he used to from
the gym roof when he was a Freshie, to see if she had really done it.

During these wharf-edge musings, taps had blown, bringing the men on
board again. On the way up the plank, he remembered, they passed one of
the fellows with his face in his hands, and Tom had to put his arm
around the boy and lead him, so that he might be in quarters in time.
Neither of them could know that this was to be the one who did not
return.

He had his first sight of the hold, after that, and the truth knocked
out some of the poetry. Ashley, and K Company in general, were quartered
just over the screw; but a man gets used to anything, even to bullets
that sing past your ears and clip off little bamboo leaves about two
feet from your hair. There were twelve hundred men below decks; when
most of the landsmen should be seasick--ugh!

The second night, Tuesday, he had sat with Cap among the coiled ropes on
deck. Beyond the shipping, the city of hills twinkled at them, striped
with long, sloping lines of dotted light; out of the blackness above,
the crown of the Spreckels building made a circlet like a halo over St.
Francis and his city; across the bay slid the mysterious, luminous
honeycombs of the silent ferry-boats. Far aft, the band was trying to
cheer things up with a Sousa march. That very tune was being played,
probably, down there where the Quadrangle, softly glowing with the faint
edging of lanterns, shimmered in the fairy-land mystery of long
palm-studded vistas, a-flutter with white dresses.

"They are saying good-bye to each other, now," said Tom, by way of a
feeler.

"Humph!" said Cap. He was flat on his back, looking up at the stars. "It
doesn't mean anything. When you're going to pull out across the Pacific
for God knows what, then it's different."

"I didn't expect to spend this evening lying on a ship's deck," murmured
Tom. He was thinking of what the Promenade Concert usually means to
people who have been taught something by co-education. That good-bye,
said in the Quadrangle when the music and the thoughtless people have
gone and the lanterns blaze up and drop, one after another, and lie
smoldering on the moonlit asphalt; those last words with people from
whom you have concealed yourself these four years and to whom you can
now afford to lay open your heart, as can the happy dead, because your
ways after to-night may lie apart,--Tom knew that this good-bye does
mean something, in spite of the superior announcement of Sophomore
Smith. Only it meant more to a fellow lying thinking about it among the
ropes of a transport's deck, with the Spaniards in prospect.

Cap's cigarette shone like a glowworm in the shadow of the stack.

"Our good-bye supper will be sloppy weather, all right;" said he. "Six
going out."

"No," answered Tom, "it won't be a drunk to-night, Cap. You haven't been
in long enough. I'll bet they don't get through the first case; I'll bet
it's a cry. You didn't see '95 go out."

"Well, perhaps," assented the Sophomore. "The fellows are pretty well
worked up."

Tom went back to his Freshman days.

"I remember our '95 feed in the Hall. Stanton cried that night, and
Gray. I never saw them do it before." Then, more slowly, "It must be
tough on a girl."

After which he was not talkative.

There was little enough, this last morning, to suggest Commencement, as
he leaned on the damp rail of the ship and dreamed over the last few
days. A voice at his elbow said:

"Captain wants you, Sergeant."

Tom started out of his reverie, and the military tilt came into his
back. He was not a student bidding the College farewell; he was a
sergeant at eighteen a month and lucky to get so much.

The city had awakened when he came to the rail again. There was a tense
feeling abroad, a gathering excitement that grew through the morning.
All manner of water-craft fussed and fumed and dodged around the
transports,--tugs, rowboats, launches and clumsy river steamers strung
with flags and black with civilians. One tug that hung close by shone
with more color than the others by reason of the women crowding it; Tom
could discern the face of his mother looking, looking with yearning eyes
that would have called him back. He drew a quick breath of surprise and
his hands tightened on the black rigging. There on the tug, standing
beside his mother instead of among those who were saying good-bye to the
Campus, he saw the Other One.

Soon after three, the screw throbbed, moved, the craft wheeled into
lines flanking the huge vessel; the noises of the city awoke:

    "For the large birds of prey
     They'll carry you away,
     And you'll never see your soldiers any more."

The grey town lay back among her hills, shrieking with every manner of
mechanical voice her farewell to the troops. Above this uproar rose and
fell the weird sobbing of a siren and a cannon from the top of a
sky-scraper boomed in at solemn intervals. On the roofs were knots of
people flashing white signals of Godspeed; when the wind was right, one
could catch, very faintly, the sound of their cheering.

The flotilla drew around the curving water-front and toward the Gate. To
the left, the remains of the camp dotted the plain below the Presidio
hills; every last man of them was on the bulkhead in front of the fort,
waving his brown hat and cheering the lucky devils who went first. The
great hill guns bellowed good-bye as the transports slipped through the
gleaming strait. Gradually the convoy wheeled 'round again, the bigger
vessels keeping up until outside the Heads. Then the first expedition
went on alone.

Tom Ashley, Senior and 'Varsity fullback, with his eyes wet in spite of
himself, set his face to the west. The round sun hung red above the
horizon; a few seconds earlier, it had looked over the Palo Alto hills
at the deserted University campus. Beyond the ship, a path of gold lay
out toward Manila and its future. Marion, leaning beside him, looked
back at the fading line of surf below the Cliff House.

"Well, Tom," he said, a bit huskily, "Commencement Day's over."

"Yes," answered the Sergeant, without turning, "we're up against it, all
right!"

FOOTNOTES:

  [Footnote A: On May 25, 1898, Commencement Day at the
  University, the First California Volunteers sailed for the
  Philippine Islands. With Company K of that regiment went
  thirty-five Stanford students, a part of the hundred who
  volunteered, in various regiments, for the Spanish War.]

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible, including obsolete and variant spellings. Obvious
typographical errors in punctuation (misplaced quotes and the like) have
been fixed. Corrections in the text are noted below, with corrections
inside the brackets:

Table of Contents: typos fixed

  The Substituted Full-back[Fullback]

  A Song-cycle[Song Cycle] and a Puncture

page 21: typo fixed

  "Ill[I'll] be hanged if I will!" shouted the
  patient, preparing to rise.

page 106: typo fixed

  special runs up on the University track and stops
  betwen[between] the Library and Encina, the flaming bunting

page 141: typo fixed

  Your theory might work all right at a city college or even at
  Berkeley, but on this campus, nit[not] so!"

page 270: typo fixed

  talking it over, and when the civilians had drifted off to
  ed[bed] or to the inglorious studies of a routine now ended for


not drawn many breaths before the Kingston catcher rapped on the plate
and threw back his bat to knock the stuffing out of any ball that
Reddy might hurl at him; and, indeed, his intentions were nearly
realized, for the very first throw that Reddy made hit the bull's-eye
on the Charleston bat, and then leaped away with a thwack.

Reddy leaped for it first, but it went far from his fingers.

Next after him Tug went up into the air and fell back beautifully.

And after him--just as if they had been jumping-jacks--the
center-fielder bounded high and clutched at the ball, but past his
finger-tips, too, it went, and he turned ignominiously after it. If he
was running the Charlestonian was flying. He shot across first base,
and on, just grazing second base--unseen by Tug, who had turned his
back and was yelling vainly to the center-fielder to throw him the
ball he had not yet caught up with. On the Charlestonian sped in a
blind hurry. He very much resembled a young man decidedly anxious to
get home as soon as possible. He flew past third base and on down like
an antelope to the plate. This he spurned with his toe as he ran on,
unable to check his furious impetus, until he fell in the arms of the
other Charleston players on the bench.

And then the Charleston faction in the crowd raised crawled in at the
back door and been ousted unceremoniously!

The Kingstonians had certainly played a beautiful game, but
the Charlestonians had played one quite as good. All that the
Kingston-lovers could do when they saw their nine come to the bat for
the ninth time was to look uncomfortable, mop their brows, and remark:

"Whew!"

The Kingstonian center-fielder was the first to the bat, and he struck
out.

Then Jumbo appeared, and played a waiting game he was very fond of:
while pretending to be willing to hit anything that was pitched, he
almost always let the ball go by him; and since he was so short and
stocky,--"built so close to the ground," as he expressed it,--the
pitcher usually threw too high, and Jumbo got his base on balls
a dozen times where he earned it with a base-hit or lost it on a
strike-out.

And now he reached first base in his old pet way, and made ardent
preparations to steal second; but his enterprise was short-lived, for
the Kingston third baseman knocked an easy grounder to the short-stop,
who picked it from the ground and tossed it into the second baseman's
hands almost with one motion; and the second baseman, just touching
the base with his toe to put Jumbo out on a forced run, made a clean
throw to first that put out the batsman also, and with him the side.

The scientists marked down upon the calendars of their memory the fact
that they had seen two preparatory school teams play a nine-inning
game without scoring a run. The others in the crowd only felt sick
with hope deferred, and wondered if that home plate were going to be
as difficult to reach as the north pole.

The Charleston third baseman came to the bat first for his side in the
tenth inning, and he struck out. The left-fielder followed him, and
by knocking a little bunt that buzzed like a top just in front of the
plate, managed to agonize his way to first base before Reddy and Heady
could field the ball, both of them having jumped for it and reached it
at the same time. But this man, making a rash and foolish effort to
steal second, was given the eighteenth-century punishment of death for
theft, Heady having made a perfect throw from the plate.

The Charleston short-stop reached second on a fly muffed by the
Kingston right-fielder--the first error made by this excellent player.

And now once more the redoubtable Charleston catcher appeared at the
bat. Once more he showed his understanding of Reddy's science. This
time he was evidently determined to wipe out the mistake he had made
of too great haste on his previous home runs. After warming up with
two strikes, and letting three balls pass, he found the ball where he
wanted it, and drove out into left-field a magnificent fly.

Pretty saw it coming, and turning, ran to the best of his ability for
the uttermost edge of his field, hoping only to delay the course of
the ball. At length it overtook him, and even as he ran he sprang into
the air and clutched upward for it, and struck it as if he would bat
it back to the home plate.

It did not stick to his fingers, but none of the scorers counted it as
an error on the clean square beside his name under the letter E. He
had not achieved the impossible of catching it, but he had done the
next best thing: he had knocked it to the ground and run it down in
two or three steps, and turned, and drawing backward till the ball
almost touched the ground behind him, had strained every muscle with a
furious lunge, and sent the ball flying for home in a desperate race
with the Charleston short-stop, who had passed third base and was
sprinting for dear life homeward.

At the plate stood Heady, beckoning the carrier-pigeon home with
frantic hope, Sawed-Off and Reddy both rushing to get behind him and
back him up, so that at least not more than one run should be scored.

With a gasp of resolve the Charleston runner, seeing by Heady's eyes
that the ball was just at hand, flung himself to the ground, hoping to
lay at least a finger-tip on the plate; but there was a quick thwack
as the ball struck Heady's gloves, there was a stinging blow at the
Charlestonian's right shoulder-blade, and the shrill cry of the
umpire:

"Out!"

Once more the spectators shifted in their seats and knit their brows,
and observed:

"Whew!"

And now Sleepy opened the second half of the tenth inning. He had a
little splutter of applause for his magnificent throw when he came to
the plate; but he either was dreaming of base-hits and did not
hear it, or was too lazy to lift his cap, for he made no sign of
recognition. He made a sign of recognition of the Charleston's
pitcher's first upshoot, however, for he sent it spinning leisurely
down into right-field--so leisurely that even he beat it to first
base. The Kingston right-fielder now atoned for his previous error by
a ringing hit that took Sleepy on a comfortable jog to second base and
placed himself safely on first.

Then Reddy came to the bat. He was saved the chagrin of striking out
to his deadly rival, but the hit he knocked was only a little fly that
the pitcher caught. The two base-runners, however, had not had great
expectations of Reddy's batting prowess, so they did not stray far
from their bases, and were not caught napping.

Now Tug came to the bat; and while he was gathering his strength for
a death-dealing blow at the ball, the two base-runners made ready to
take advantage of anything he should hit. The right-fielder played off
too far, and, to Tug's despair, was caught by a quick throw from the
pitcher to the first baseman.

Tug's heart turned sick within him, for there were two men out, and
the only man on base was Sleepy, who could never be counted on to make
a two-base run on a one-base hit.

As Tug stood bewailing his fate, the ball shot past him, and the
umpire cried:

"Strike--one!"

Tug shook himself together with a jolt, and struck furiously at the
next ball.

"Strike--two!" sang the umpire.

And now the umpire had upon his lips the fatal words:

"Strike--three!"

For as he looked down the line traced in the air by the ball, he saw
that Tug had misjudged it. But for once science meant suicide; for
though Tug struck wildly, the ball condescendingly curved down and
fell full and fair upon the bat, and danced off again over the first
baseman's head and toward the feet of the right-fielder. This worthy
player ran swiftly for it and bent forward, but he could not reach it.
It struck him a smarting whack on the instep, and bounded off outside
the foul-line; and while he limped painfully after it, there was time
even for the sleepy Sleepy to reach the plate and score a run.

And then the right-fielder, half blinded with pain, threw the ball at
nobody in particular, and it went into the crowd back of third base,
and Tug came in unopposed.

And since the game was now Kingston's, no one waited to see whether
Heady would have knocked a home run or struck out. He was not given a
chance to bat.

CONCLUSION

There was great rejoicing in Kingston that night, much croaking of
tin horns, and much building of bonfires. The athletic year had been
remarkably successful, and every one realized the vital part played
in that success by the men from Lakerim--the Dozen, who had made some
enemies, as all active people must, and had made many more friends, as
all active people may.

The rejoicing of the Lakerimmers themselves had a faint tang of
regret, for while they were all to go back to the same town together
for their vacation, yet they knew that this would be the last year of
school life they could ever spend together. Next year History, Punk,
Sawed-Off, and Jumbo were to go to college. The others had at least
one more year of preparatory work.

And they thought, too, that this first separation into two parts was
only the beginning of many separations that should finally scatter
them perhaps over the four quarters of the globe.

There was Bobbles, for instance, who had an uncle that was a great
sugar magnate in the Hawaiian Islands, and had offered him a position
there whenever he was ready for it.

B.J. had been promised an appointment to Annapolis, for he would be a
sailor and an officer of Uncle Sam's navy.

And Tug had been offered a chance to try for West Point, and there
were no dangers for him in either the rigid mental or the physical
examinations.

Pretty, who had shown a wonderful gift for modeling in clay, was going
some day to Paris to study sculpture.

And Quiz looked forward to being a lawyer.

The Twins would go into business, since their father's busy sawmill
property would descend to both of them, and, as they thought it out,
could not very well be divided. Plainly they must make the best of
life together. It promised to be a lively existence, but a pleasant
one withal.

History hoped to be a great writer some day, and Punk would be a
professor of something staid and quiet, Latin most probably.

Sawed-Off and Jumbo had not made up their minds as to just what
the future was to hold for them, but they agreed, that it must be
something in partnership.

Sleepy had never a fancy of what coming years should bring him to do;
he preferred to postpone the unpleasant task of making up his mind,
and only took the trouble to hope that the future would give him
something that offered plenty of time for sleeping and eating.

Late into the night the Twelve sat around a waving bonfire, their eyes
twinkling at the memory of old victories and defeats, of struggles
that were pleasant, whatever their outcome, just because they were
struggles.

At length Sleepy got himself to his feet with much difficulty.

"Going to bed?" Jumbo sang out.

"Nope," drawled Sleepy, and disappeared into the darkness.

They all smiled at the thought of him, whom none of them respected and
all of them loved.

In a space of time quite short for him, Sleepy returned with an
arm-load of books--the text-books that had given him so much trouble,
and would have given him more had they had the chance offered them.

"Fire's getting low," was all he said, and he dumped the school-books,
every one, into the blaze.

The other Lakerimmers knew that they had passed every examination,
either brilliantly or, at the worst, well enough to scrape through.
Sleepy did not even know whether he had failed or not; but the next
morning he found out that he should sadly need next year those books
that were charred ashes in a corner of the campus, and should have to
replace them out of his spending-money.

That night, however, he was blissful with ignorance, and having made
a pyre of his bookish tormentors, he fell in with the jollity of the
others.

When it grew very late silence gradually fell on the gossipy Twelve.
The beauty of the night and the union of souls seemed to be speech
enough.

Finally the fire fell asleep, and with one mind they all rose and,
standing in a circle about glimmering ashes, clasped hands in eternal
friendship, and said:

"Good night!"

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