if possible, at any rate, decent.  Straw or rope matting is better than brown, yawning boards.  There you have things put upon an entirely new basis.  At no immoderate expense there is a new sky, a new earth, a new horizon.  If a boy is rich and can furnish his room handsomely, the furnishings will not shame the room and its vicinity.  If he is poor and can provide but cheaply, he will still have a comely home provided for him by the Mater who then will be Alma to some purpose.

Do you laugh at all this?  So did Sarah laugh at the angels, but the angels had the right of it for all that.

I am told that it would all be useless,—­that the boys would deface and destroy, till the last state of the buildings would be worse than the first.  I do not believe one word of it.  It is inferred that they would deface, because they deface now.  But what is it that they deface?  Deformity.  And who blames them?  You see a rough board, and, by natural instinct, you dive into it with your jackknife.  A base bare wall is a standing invitation to energetic and unruly pencils.  Give the boys a little elegance and the tutors a little tact, and I do not believe there would be any trouble.  If I had a thousand dollars,—­as I did have once, but it is gone:  shall I ever look upon its like again?—­I would not be afraid to stake the whole of it upon the good behavior of college students,—­that is, if I could have the managing of them.  I would make them “a speech,” when they came back at the end of one of their long vacations, telling them what had been done, why it had been done, and the objections that had been urged against doing it.  Then I would put the matter entirely into their hands.  I would appeal solely to their honor.  I would repose in them so much confidence that they could by no possibility betray it.  We don’t trust people half enough.  We hedge ourselves about with laws and locks and deeds and bonds, and neglect the weightier matters of inherent right and justice that lie in every bosom.

It may be thought hardly polite to accept hospitality and then go away and inveigh against the hospital; but my animadversions, you will do me the justice to observe, are not aimed at my entertainers.  I am marauding for, not against them.

* * * * *

The Oration and Poem form the first public features of Class-Day, but, arriving late, I could only eddy on the surge that swept around the door.  Strains of distant eloquence would occasionally float musically to my ear; now and then a single word would steer clear of the thousands of heads and come into my port unharmed.  Frequent waves of laughter beat and broke into the vestibule; but what is more “trying” to a frail temper than laughter in which one cannot join?  So we tarried long enough to mark the fair faces and fine dresses, and then rambled under the old trees till the hour for the “collation” came; and this is the second point on which I purpose to dwell.