Chapter 26

Not much in my life at college is essential to this history - save the
training. The students came mostly from other and remote parts of
the north country - some even from other states. Coming largely
from towns and cities they were shorn of those simple and rugged
traits, that distinguished the men o' Faraway, and made them
worthy of what poor fame this book may afford. In the main they
were like other students the world over, I take it' and mostly, as
they have shown, capable of wiling their own fame. It all seemed
very high and mighty and grand to me especially the names of the
courses. I had my baptism of Sophomoric scorn and many a heated
argument over my title to life, liberty and the pursuit of learning. It
became necessary to establish it by force of arms, which I did
decisively and with as little delay as possible. I took much interest
in athletic sports and was soon a good ball player, a boxer of some
skill, and the best wrestler in college. Things were going on
comfortably when an upper classman met me and suggested that
on a corning holiday, the Freshmen ought to wear stove-pipe hats.
Those hats were the seed of great trouble.

'Stove-pipe hats!' I said thoughtfully.

'They're a good protection,' he assured me.

It seemed a very reasonable, not to say a necessary precaution. A
man has to be young and innocent sometime or what would
become of the Devil. I did not see that the stove-pipe hat was the
red rag of insurrection and, when I did see it' I was up to my neck
in the matter.

You see the Sophs are apt to be very nasty that day,' he continued.

I acknowledged they were quite capable of it.

'And they don't care where they hit,' he went on.

I felt of my head that was still sore, from a forceful argument of
the preceding day, and admitted there was good ground for the
assertion.

When I met my classmen, that afternoon, I was an advocate of the
'stove-pipe' as a means of protection. There were a number of
husky fellows, in my class, who saw its resisting power and
seconded my suggestion. We decided to leave it to the ladies of the
class and they greeted our plan with applause. So, that morning,
we arrayed ourselves in high hats, heavy canes and fine linen,
marching together up College Hill. We had hardly entered the gate
before we saw the Sophs forming in a thick rank outside the door
prepared, as we took it, to resist our entrance. They out-numbered
us and were, in the main, heavier but we had a foot or more of
good stiff material between each head and harm. Of just what
befell us, when we got to the enemy, I have never felt sure. Of the
total inefficiency of the stove-pipe hat as an article of armour, I
have never had the slightest doubt