students.

On the first day of my initiation, while the professor was invoking
the Divine blessing, the sight of a big dinner pail belonging to the
fat boy in front of me, proved too much of a temptation, and I hurled
it down the aisle, scattering pork, pickles, doughnuts, and so forth
in its wake, and ending with a loud bang against the platform. Of
course I was the suspect, and cutting off prayer abruptly, down he
rushed, and banged my head till I saw more stars than ever shone in
heaven.

My academy "_alma mater_" has graduated but few who have--

"Climbed fame's ladder so high
From the round at the top they have stepped to the sky,"

and it is sad to recall that many of the most gifted, acquired
in college secret societies the alcohol habit, and now sleep in
drunkards' graves.

Brilliant Charlie, my chum, who mastered languages and sciences as
easy as "rolling off a log." I saw him last summer, a wreck--wine and
bad women did it. The idolized son of pious parents, whose youth was
surrounded at home with the halo of Bible and prayer; but like Esau,
he "sold his birthright for a mess of pottage" and afterwards "found
no space for repentance, though he sought it earnestly and with many
tears."

It seems but yesterday that he and I were enjoying a game of
"pickknife," lacerating the top of a new desk, when in rushed the