"Look here, Charlie," Vandover would exclaim, throwing down the
Announcement of Courses, "I can't make this thing out. It's all in a
tangle. See here, I've got to fill up my hours some way or other; _you_
straighten this thing out for me. Find me some nice little course, two
hours a week, say, that comes late in the morning, a good hour after
breakfast; something easy, all lectures, no outside reading, nice
instructor and all that." And Geary would glance over the complicated
schedule, cleverly untangling it at once and would find two or three
such courses as Vandover desired.

Vandover's yielding disposition led him to submit to Geary's
dictatorship and he thus early began to contract easy, irresponsible
habits, becoming indolent, shirking his duty whenever he could, sure
that Geary would think for the two and pull him out of any difficulty
into which he might drift.

Otherwise the three freshmen were very much alike. They were hardly more
than boys and full of boyish spirits and activity. They began to see
"college life." Vandover was already smoking; pretty soon he began to
drink. He affected beer, whisky he loathed, and such wine as was not too
expensive was either too sweet or too sour. It became a custom for the
three to go into town two or three nights in the week and have beer and
Welsh rabbits at Billy Park's. On these occasions, however, young Haight
drank only beer, he never touched wine or spirits.

It was in Billy Park's the evening after the football game between the
Yale and Harvard freshmen that Vandover was drunk for the first time. He
was not so drunk but that he knew he was, and the knowledge of the fact
so terrified him that it kept him from getting very bad. The first