Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/109

Rh office, situated just outside of the university grounds, and around which are clustered half a dozen book-stores and general furnishing-stores, which adopt that precept, so often inculcated in our youth, "See a stranger and take him in," and here they lay out all their ready cash in furniture for their rooms.

I go around with my new acquaintance, and give him my advice, in the patronizing manner usual from an old man to a new one, as to what he will and what he will not need to make him comfortable. A carpet, pair of curtains, easy-chair, perhaps two, coal-scuttle, etc., table-cover, lamp and oil-can,—and there you are. He has them sent to his room, the number and locality of which he has forgotten, but I inform the merchant for him. Then I leave him, after receiving the warmest thanks, and after each has expressed a hope of meeting again next day. He returns to his room, and at supper-time enters bashfully and fearfully the large dining-hall, where thirty or forty luckless youngsters, as green if not greener than he, are collected for the first time. The dining-room contains a dozen round tables, each of which will seat ten, and around which are placed wooden stools screwed to the floor for purposes of safety. He drops into the first seat he comes to, too frightened to venture farther, and if there are many "old men" in the room they immediately begin to "grin him;" that is, they strike on their plates with their knives and forks, beat with their feet, and shout at the top of their voices, in the effort to make their victim grin. Woe to him if they succeed; for in that event the same thing will be repeated three times a day, until he ceases to notice it.

Next day I meet him again, wandering about the grounds and buildings and trying to look as if he is enjoying himself. I show him everything of interest, and, meeting some of my old friends, introduce him, and soon we are all on a friendly footing. Within the first two weeks of the opening of the session it is considered perfectly correct to speak without an introduction, but after that time never, except under special circumstances. I have sat by a man for a whole session, in a class-room, and never said a word to him. And I knew two men last session who lived within two rooms of each other, and never spoke until the last day of the session, when they happened to meet in a mutual friend's room, who introduced them.

The men to whom I have introduced my friend soon introduce him to others, and in the first two weeks he has ample opportunity to make the acquaintance of his neighbors, and, if he likes them, to get a seat at their table. He now begins to feel more at home. If he is a pleasant, agreeable fellow, he will become an object of interest to the fraternities, which are a large factor in university society. These dif-