of everybody’s “property,” but the Chinaman, accustomed to see students so madly in earnest only when they were burlesquing, took the whole affair to be intended humour, and tittered politely without cessation—­except at such times as he thought it proper to appear quite wrung with laughter.  Then he would rock himself, clasp his mouth with both hands and splutter through his fingers.  Linski accused him of being in the pay of “capital.”

Next day the orator was unable to show himself upon the campus without causing demonstrations; whenever he was seen a file of quickly gathering students marched behind him chanting repeatedly and deafeningly in chorus:  “Down with Wall Street!  Hoch der Kaiser!  Who loves Linski?  Who, who, who?  Hoo Lun!  Who loves Linski?  Who, who, who?  Hoo Lun!”

Linski was disgusted, resigned from the university, and disappeared.

“Well, here it isn’t mid-year Exams yet, and the good ole class of Nineteen-Eighteen’s already lost a member,” said Fred Mitchell.  “I guess we can bear the break-up!”

“I guess so,” Ramsey assented.  “That Linski might just as well stayed here, though.”

“Why?”

“He couldn’t do any harm here.  He’ll prob’ly get more people to listen to him in cities where there’s so many new immigrants and all such that don’t know anything, comin’ in all the time.”

“Oh, well,” said Fred.  “What do we care what happens to Chicago!  Come on, let’s behave real wild, and go on over to the ’Teria and get us a couple egg sandwiches and sassprilly.”

Ramsey was willing.

After the strain of the “mid-year Exams” in February, they lived a free-hearted life.  They had settled into the ways of their world; they had grown used to it, and it had grown used to them; there was no longer any ignominy in being a freshman.  They romped upon the campus and sometimes rioted harmlessly about the streets of the town.  In the evenings they visited their fellows and Brethren and were visited in turn, and sometimes they looked so far ahead as to talk vaguely of their plans for professions or business—­though to a freshman this concerned an almost unthinkably distant prospect.  “I guess I’ll go in with my father, in the wholesale drug business,” said Fred.  “My married brother already is in the firm, and I suppose they’ll give me a show—­send me out on the road a year or two first, maybe, to try me.  Then I’m going to marry some little cutie and settle down.  What you goin’ to do, Ramsey?  Go to Law School, and then come back and go in your father’s office?”

“I don’t know.  Guess so.”

It was always Fred who did most of the talking; Ramsey was quiet.  Fred told the “frat seniors” that Ramsey was “developing a whole lot these days”; and he told Ramsey himself that he could see a “big change” in him, adding that the improvement was probably due to Ramsey’s having passed through “terrible trials like that debate.”