She started.  Was it imaginary?

She went downstairs and stood upon the steps of the dormitory in the open air.  No; the cheering was real and loud.  It came from the direction of the railway station, and the night air surged and beat with it.

Below her stood the aged janitor of the building, listening.  “What’s the cheering for?” she asked, remembering grimly that the janitor was one of her acquaintances who had not yet stopped “speaking” to her.  “What’s the matter?”

“It’s a good matter,” the old man answered.  “I guess there must be a big crowd of ’em down there.  One of our students enlisted to-day, and they’re givin’ him a send-off.  Listen to ’em, how they do cheer.  He’s the first one to go.”

She went back to her room, shivering, and spent the next day in bed with an aching head.  She rose in the evening, however—­a handbill had been slid under her door at five o’clock, calling a “Mass Meeting” of the university at eight, and she felt it her duty to go; but when she got to the great hall she found a seat in the dimmest corner, farthest from the rostrum.

The president of the university addressed the tumultuous many hundreds before him, for tumultuous they were until he quieted them.  He talked to them soberly of patriotism, and called upon them for “deliberation and a little patience.”  There was danger of a stampede, he said, and he and the rest of the faculty were in a measure responsible to their fathers and mothers for them.

“You must keep your heads,” he said.  “God knows, I do not seek to judge your duty in this gravest moment of your lives, nor assume to tell you what you must or must not do.  But by hurrying into service now, without careful thought or consideration, you may impair the extent of your possible usefulness to the very cause you are so anxious to serve.  Hundreds of you are taking technical courses which should be completed—­at least to the end of the term in June.  Instructors from the United States Army are already on the way here, and military training will be begun at once for all who are physically eligible and of acceptable age.  A special course will be given in preparation for flying, and those who wish to become aviators may enroll themselves for the course at once.

“I speak to you in a crisis of the university’s life, as well as that of the nation, and the warning I utter has been made necessary by what took place yesterday and to-day.  Yesterday morning, a student in the junior class enlisted as a private in the United States Regular Army.  Far be it from me to deplore his course in so doing; he spoke to me about it, and in such a way that I felt I had no right to dissuade him.  I told him that it would be preferable for college men to wait until they could go as officers, and, aside from the fact of a greater prestige, I urged that men of education could perhaps be more useful in that capacity.  He replied that if he were useful enough as a private a commission might in time come his way, and, as I say, I did not feel at liberty to attempt dissuasion.  He left to join a regiment to which he had been assigned, and many of you were at the station to bid him farewell.