Harvard. At college, as at school, he plugged away at his studies,
and he managed to win sufficiently high marks in mathematics. But his
mathematical genius was of a queer twist. In the practical dollars and
cents sort of figuring he was almost worthless. Money did not interest
him at all. What interested him was to estimate how many bricks there
were in "Mem" and how many more there might have been if it had been
built a story higher.

"This room," he said to a classmate, referring to his study in old
Thayer, "was built in ----" naming the year. "Now allowing that a
different fellow lived in it each year, which is fair enough because
they almost always change, that means that at least so many fellows,"
giving the number, "have occupied this room since the beginning. That
is, provided there was but one fellow living in the room at a time. Now
we know that, for part of the time, this was a double room, so--"

"Oh, for the love of Mike, Loosh!" exclaimed the classmate, "cut it out.
What do you waste your time doing crazy stunts like that for?"

"But it's fun. Say, if they had all cut their initials around on the
door frames and the--ah--mop boards it would be great stuff to puzzle
'em out and make a list of 'em, wouldn't it? I wish they had."

"Well, I don't. It would make the old rat hole look like blazes and it
is bad enough as it is. Come on down and watch the practice."

One of young Bangs' peculiar enjoyments, developed during his senior
year, was to visit every old cemetery in or about the city and examine
and copy the ancient epitaphs and inscriptions. Pleasant spring
afternoons, when normal-minded Harvard men were busy with baseball or