sensation soon wore off, and by the time that Geary took charge of him
and brought him back to Cambridge he was disposed to treat the affair
less seriously. Nevertheless when he got to his room he looked at
himself in the mirror a long time, saying to himself over and over
again, "I'm drunk--just regularly drunk. Good Heavens! what _would_ the
governor say to _this_?"

In the morning he was surprised to find that he felt so little ashamed.
Geary and young Haight treated the matter as a huge joke and told him of
certain funny things he had said and done and which he had entirely
forgotten. It was impossible for him to take the matter seriously even
if he had wished to, and within a few weeks he was drunk again. He found
that he was not an exception; Geary was often drunk with him, fully a
third of all the Harvard men he knew were intoxicated at different
times. It was out of the question for Vandover to consider them as
drunkards. Certainly, neither he nor any of the others drank because
they liked the beer; after the fifth or sixth glass it was all they
could do to force down another. Such being the case, Vandover often
asked himself why he got drunk at all. This question he was never able
to answer.

It was the same with gambling. At first the idea of playing cards for
money shocked him beyond all expression. But soon he found that a great
many of the fellows, fellows like young Haight, beyond question steady,
sensible and even worthy of emulation in other ways, "went in for that
sort of thing." Every now and then Vandover's "crowd" got together in
his room in Matthew's, and played Van John "for keeps," as they said,
until far into the night. Vandover joined them. The stakes were small,
he lost as often as he won, but the habit of the cards never grew upon
him. It was like the beer, he "went in for it" because the others did,