"How was that?" inquired Ralph. "Do go on."
"I don't know," returned Mr. Curtis. "What do you think of Randolph?"
"The best ever!" pronounced Ralph with conviction.
"It's hard to resist such an enthusiastic audience--and so insistent," smiled Mr. Curtis. "Well, they let him alone after that, and he pursued the even tenor of his way and increased in wisdom and stature and in favor--at least with man.
"I can only tell you about Randolph's leaving college, and that takes me to those sadder times of which I spoke. It was late in the spring, when none of us had any longer time or inclination to think of college distinctions or college jealousies. We were all overwhelmed at the thought of the impending conflict. Already most of the Southerners had departed for their homes.
"You see, I'm trying to give you an impression--a picture of a chap I believe to have been one of the truest gentlemen that ever came here--I feel you're entitled to know whose room it is you occupy and to share in these memories, which are, after all, the best thing left in my lonely old bachelor existence. When I tell you the rest and how we parted never to meet again you won't be able to get a true understanding of it unless you can grasp the real spirit of the times, the environment, the intensity of the whole affair.
"Here I was rooming with a flamboyant Southerner who fully intended to enlist as soon as his native State should declare herself, when four of my uncles had already joined the Union army. Of course I wanted to go, but my father wouldn't hear of it. The whole miserable business only drew Randolph and me the closer together. I do not think that his performance with the pistol had increased his popularity; in fact, the sympathies of the undergraduates seemed on the whole to be with Watkins, and the general sentiment that he was the aggrieved party. If Dick had taken his medicine in good part it would doubtless have been better for him in the end. You see, it gave his slanderers a handle and they made the most of it. Neither did he abate any of those idiosyncrasies of which I have spoken, but simply out of bravado, I suppose, rather let himself go. His cravats increased in brilliancy, his waistcoats multiplied their colors, and he was always careering around on Azam through the Yard and Harvard Square. He had a trick of riding suddenly out of nowhere, and appearing at recitations on horseback, turning his beast over to Moses at the door until the lecture had concluded. I have known Randolph at this period to keep his horse waiting an hour in order that he might ride him the length of the Yard. Don't get the impression that I am criticising him unfavorably; I am merely endeavoring to give you the point of view of the outsiders who didn't like him. By April the class was pretty evenly divided on the Randolph question. To half of us he was a rather Quixotic hero--to the rest a sort of cheap _poseur_. Watkins was untiring in his innuendoes, and in this he was aided to a considerable extent by the bitterness of the feeling between North and South. Of course, everything possible was being done to conciliate the Southern States, and it was the aim of the entire North to avert if possible an open rupture. At the theaters the most popular music was the old Southern airs and plantation melodies, and the audiences conscientiously cheered when 'Dixie' was played. Naturally this was vastly gratifying to Randolph, who failed, it seemed to me, to realize its significance. I don't think that anyone really believed actual hostilities would occur.