There came to college a young man who was reputed to be a poet. He wore his hair long and parted in the middle, was addicted to broad Byronic collars, could take very pretty and pensive attitudes, and was an adept in the art of leaning his head abstractedly upon his hand. He at once became that terrible thing among the ladies, a lion. And he was a very impudent lion. Regardless of my claims and feelings, he sent to her, whom I had fondly called mine own, an acrostic valentine of his own composition, taking care that she should know from whom it came. The result was that I was--as we Western people would term it--"flopped!"
Then came a reaction. I scorned the sex and sought balm for my wounded feelings in the worst pages of Byron.
Having by this time attained the sophomoric dignity, I discovered that the end and aim of existence was to be _fast_,--that the divine significance of life consisted in drinking villanous whiskey "on the sly," and proclaiming the fact by eating cardamom seeds; in stealing gates and the clapper of the chapel bell; in devouring half-cooked chickens, purloined from professional coops; in hazing freshmen; in playing euchre for "ten cents a corner;" and in parading the streets at midnight, singing "Landlord, fill the flowing bowl," and vociferously urging some one to "rip and slap and set 'em up ag'in, all on a summer's day." I smoked vile Scarfalatti tobacco in a huge Dutch pipe, wore a blue coat with brass buttons, a shocking hat, and my trousers tucked into my boots,--which after my great disappointment befell me I ceased to black with any degree of regularity,--and regulated my language according to a certain slangy work called "Yale College Scrapes."
I am inclined to look upon these youthful pranks not as unpardonable sins, though I freely admit their utter folly, but as the vagaries of immature _genius_,--if I may say so,--scorning to walk decorously, because other people do, struggling to throw off the fetters of conventionality, burning to distinguish itself in some new and original way, striking out from the beaten paths,--to repent of it afterward. For it does not take many years to teach one that the beaten paths are the safest; and I have often wished that I had had a tithe of the application and assiduity of "Old Sobriety," as we rapid youngsters called the Nestor of the class, who plodded on from morn till dewy eve and far into the night, and quietly carried off the honors from the brilliant geniuses, who wore flash neckties and shone at free-and-easys. But what thoughtless college-boy does not prefer worshipping at the shrine of the fast goddess to treading the straight and safe paths of propriety? It takes time and one or two private interviews with a committee of the Faculty to rid him of his delusion.