20 ENVIRONMENT AND EDUCATION -I 



been heated nearly to redness and launched from a shovel, 

 the result was that he wore bandages upon his hands for 

 many days. 



Most ingenious were the methods for "training fresh- 

 men," one of the mildest being the administration of 

 soot and water by a hose-pipe thrust through the broken 

 panel of a door. Among general freaks I remember see- 

 ing a horse turned into the chapel, and a stuffed wolf, 

 dressed in a surplice, placed upon the roof of that sacred 

 edifice. 



But the most elaborate thing of the kind I ever saw 

 was the breaking up of a "Second Adventist" meeting 

 by a score of student roysterers. An itinerant fanatic had 

 taken an old wooden meeting-house in the lower part 

 of the town, had set up on either side of the pulpit large 

 canvas representations of the man of brass with feet of 

 clay, and other portentous characters of the prophecies, 

 and then challenged the clergy to meet him in public de- 

 bate. At the appointed time a body of college youth ap- 

 peared, most sober in habit and demure in manner, hav- 

 ing at their head "Bill" Howell of Black Rock and 

 "Tom" Clark of Manlius, the two wildest miscreants in 

 the sophomore class, each over six feet tall, the latter 

 dressed as a respectable farmer, and the former as a 

 country clergyman, wearing a dress-coat, a white cravat, 

 a tall black hat wrapped in crape, leaning on a heavy, 

 ivory-knobbed cane, and carrying ostentatiously a Greek 

 Testament. These disguised malefactors, having taken 

 their seats in the gallery directly facing the pulpit, the 

 lecturer expressed his "satisfaction at seeing clergymen 

 present," and began his demonstrations. For about five 

 minutes all went well; then "Bill" Howell solemnly arose 

 and, in a snuffling voice, asked permission to submit a few 

 texts from scripture. Permission being granted, he put 

 on a huge pair of goggles, solemnly opened his Greek Tes- 

 tament, read emphatically the first passage which attrac- 

 ted his attention and impressively asked the lecturer what 

 he had to say to it. At this, the lecturer, greatly puzzled, 



