"I'll be sick. I'll be sick as a dog! I'll be sick as the sickest dog
that ever--"

"No use, ole man. The frat seniors'll be on the job. They'll know
whether you're sick or not, and they'll have you there, right on the
spot to the minute!"

The prediction was accurate. The too fatherly "frat seniors" did all
that Fred said they would, and more. For the honour of the "frat," they
coached the desperate Ramsey in the technic of Lumen debate, told him
many more things to say than could be said in six minutes, and produced
him, despairing, ghastly, and bedewed, in the large hall of the Lumen
Society at eight o'clock on Friday evening.

Four other "twelve-minute debates" preceded his and the sound of these,
in Ramsey's ears, was the sound of Gabriel practising on his horn in
the early morning of Judgment Day. The members of the society sat, three
rows deep, along the walls of the room, leaving a clear oblong of green
carpet in the centre, where were two small desks, twenty feet apart, the
rostrums of the debaters. Upon a platform at the head of the room sat
dreadful seniors, the officers of the society, and, upon benches near
the platform, the debaters of the evening were aligned. One of the
fraternal seniors sat with sweltering Ramsey; and the latter, as his
time relentlessly came nearer, made a last miserable squirm.

"Look here, Brother Colburn, I got to get out o' here."

"No, you don't, young fellow."