Aowever, did not begin till our Junior year, though I was greatly at- 

 tracted by Osborn when I first saw him. As a Freshman, he was very 

 young-looking, tall, slender, with fair hair and pink and white com- 

 plexion; he was, despite a very obvious manliness, almost girlish in 

 appearance, which earned him the nickname of "Polly," and "Polly Os- 

 born" he is to this day to the men of '77. We were rather lavish with 

 girls' names: "Sally Speir" was so called because of his soft voice and 

 poor little "Lucy Colton" was our first loss; he died early in the year. 



Hazing, which is now as extinct as the dinosaurs, had a somewhat 

 chequered career, while it lasted. Often it died away almost to nothing 

 and again it flared up into a serious abuse which had to be sternly sup- 

 pressed. There was Uttle hazing in my undergraduate time and, per- 

 sonally, I saw nothing of it, though I heard of some very mild at- 

 tempts in that line. 



The "Cane Spree" was not the organized and representative affair 

 that it afterwards became, but was a rather enjoyable and thoroughly 

 sportsmanlike contest between the whole Freshman and Sophomore 

 classes, with the upperclassmen as umpires. The theory was that Fresh- 

 men were not allowed to carry canes and when, on an appointed eve- 

 ning, the whole Freshman class marched up Nassau Street, each one 

 with a cane, the Sophomores soon appeared and endeavoured to take 

 our canes away from us. It was not a mass attack, but a series of single 

 combats and, in a rough and ready way, the contestants were as evenly 

 matched as possible. I was attacked by a little Frenchman from New 

 Orleans and instantly we were roUing in the thick dust of Nassau Street. 

 I kept my cane, for my opponent was no Hercules and neither of us 

 had much skill. 



That I could play a fair game of baseball was my one redeeming fea- 

 ture. I began as catcher on the second nine of the class and was speedily 

 promoted to the first; no small honour, for the class nines were then 

 held in high esteem, perhaps I might even have "made the Varsity," 

 had I been able to go on. At all events, I was so hammered to pieces, 

 that I had to give up the game. Underhand throwing, almost as swift 

 as the overhand, had just come in and the pitcher's box was fifteen 

 feet nearer the plate than it is now, yet the catcher had no protection, 

 neither mask nor padded glove, body pad, or leg-guards. No one could 

 have endured the pounding, had it been necessary for the catcher to 

 play the whole game close up to the bat, as is now the practice. We 

 played close up only when there was a runner on base; at other times 

 the catcher stood far back, taking the pitched balls on the bound, for, 



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