contrast needed to make the evening perfect. All joked him. The most
popular verse in a class-song Watts wrote, was devoted to burlesquing
his soberness, the gang never tiring of singing at all hours and places:

"Goodness gracious! Who's that in the 'yard' a yelling in the rain?
That's the boy who never gave his mother any pain,
But now his moral character is sadly on the wane,
'Tis little Peter Stirling, bilin' drunk again.
Oh, the Sunday-school boy,
His mamma's only joy,
Is shouting drunk as usual, and raising Cain!"

Yet joke Peter as they would, in every lark, be it drive, sail, feed,
drink, or smoke, whoever's else absence was commented upon, his never
passed unnoticed.

In Sophomore year, Watts, without quite knowing why, proposed that they
should share rooms. Nor would he take Peter's refusal, and eventually
succeeded in reversing it.

"I can't afford your style of living," Peter had said quietly, as his
principal objection.

"Oh, I'll foot the bills for the fixings, so it shan't cost you a cent
more," said Watts, and when Peter had finally been won over to give his
assent, Watts had supposed it was on this uneven basis. But in the end,
the joint chambers were more simply furnished than those of the rest of
the gang, who promptly christened them "the hermitage," and Peter had
paid his half of the expense. And though he rarely had visitors of his
own asking at the chambers, all cost of wine and tobacco was equally