We, unsuspecting, imbibed freely the seductive fluids, and soon our heads were in a whirl.  We wildly sang the war songs and gave the college yells.  It is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous.  That night, Jupiter Pluvius burst upon our frail tents in all his fury, and I awoke the next morning half covered with water, and in a raging fever.  I was taken to the hospital, and as I was a minor my father took me from the service.

For weeks I was a wreck, and all my dreams of martial glory vanished, alas,—­like the many which have bloomed in the summer of my heart.  Before I regained the little strength I ever had, the war was over, but I had done my best to serve my country, and the rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished know.  The few remaining students plodded along through the curriculum; but our hearts were far away on the battle-fields, from the glory of which, cruel fate debarred us.

In my senior year I was forced by the necessity for securing lucre to pay the increasing graduation expenses, to teach the high school in Bristol, Conn., and returned to the university to “cram” for the final examinations.  For days and nights the merciless grind went on until, as by a miracle, I escaped the lunatic asylum.  I knew but little of the higher mathematics, but the “Green” professor was a strong sectarian if not an humble Christian, and when the hour for my private examination arrived, I contrived to waste the most of it telling him about the Bristol Church.  It was near his dinner hour, and he yearned for its delights to such an extent, that he did not detect me in copying the “Pons Asinorum” onto the blackboard from a paper hidden in my bosom, and as he glanced at the figures on the board, he said:  “That’s right, I suppose you know the rest,” passed me, and hasted to his walnuts and his wine.

The good president, of blessed memory, had another pressing engagement, as I well knew, when I called for his examination, he asked for but little, was too preoccupied to hear whether my answers were correct, passed me, and my “A.B.” was won.

We spoke our pieces on graduation day, rejoiced in the applause of our “mulierculae,” took our sheepskins, and went forth from “alma mater” conquering and to conquer the unsympathizing world.  I had acquired here but a modicum of that learning which was supposed to flow from this “Pierian Spring,” but I rejoiced in the fact that I had cast away forever my belief in the “total depravity” of the human race, that in “Adam’s fall we sin-ned all, that in Cain’s murder, we sin-ned furder,” and could now look hopefully upon my fellow-men in the full assurance that

  There lies in the centre of each man’s heart
    A longing and love for the good and pure,
  And if but an atom, or larger part,
    I know that this shall forever endure. 
  After the body has gone to decay—­
  Yes, after the world has passed away.