Chapter XIII

Ramsey passed the slightly disfigured Linski on the campus next day
without betraying any embarrassment or making a sign of recognition.
Fred Mitchell told his roommate, chuckling, that Linski had sworn
to "get" him, and, not knowing Fred's affiliations, had made him the
confidant of his oath. Fred had given his blessing, he said, upon the
enterprise, and advised Linski to use a brick. "He'll hit you on the
head with it," said the light-hearted Fred, falling back upon this old
joke. "Then you can catch it as it bounces off and throw it back at
him."

However, Linski proved to be merely an episode, not only so far as
Ramsey was concerned but in the Lumen and in the university as well. His
suspension from the Lumen was for a year, and so cruel a punishment it
proved for this born debater that he noisily declared he would found
a debating society himself, and had a poster printed and distributed
announcing the first meeting of "The Free Speech and Masses' Rights
Council." Several town loafers attended the meeting, but the only
person connected with the university who came was an oriental student,
a Chinese youth of almost intrusive amiability. Linski made a fiery
address, the townsmen loudly appluading his advocacy of an embargo
on munitions and the distribution of everybody's "property," but the
Chinaman, accustomed to see students so madly in earnest only when
they were burlesquing, took the whole affair to be intended humour, and