Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/111

Rh Greek verb, to "show," to "point out,"—I suppose from the action of pointing with the right hand at the victim as you scream, "Dyke!"

The preparations are made by procuring all the old horns, some of them six, eight, and ten feet long, that we can lay our hands on; all the coal-scuttles, not in actual use, for drums; and old clothes, wrapped around sticks and saturated with oil, for torches. With this paraphernalia we collect around the door of our innocent friend, and, making the rest conceal themselves behind pillars, trees, and everything else available, I go into his room and watch him dress, talking all the time in the most unexcited way possible. At last he is ready. I stay behind to blow out the lamp, as he goes out of the door. I hear the words "Here he is, boys!" "All right," and a hurried "Why, what's the matter? What are you going to do?" His questions are unheeded, and, after a momentary halt to give the fifty torch-bearers time to apply a match to the combustible material on the ends of their poles, the prolonged shout "Dyke! dyke! dyke!" is heard echoing and re-echoing up and down the arcades, rousing all students, especially the new ones, from their studies. The cry spreads like wildfire, and is taken up from room to room, house to house, range to range, until the venerable old walls seem to shake with the din. Amid the shouts, the blowing of the immense horns, and the beating of tin pans, the victim, in the hands of his quasi-friends and by the glaring light of torches, now increased to perhaps a hundred, is rushed around the lawn, around the ranges, and then up the middle of the campus, and is finally placed upon the topmost step, leading to the rotunda porch, some fifteen or twenty feet above the sea of upturned faces, which seem to be so cruelly enjoying themselves at his expense. Some kind friend behind him takes off his hat for him, another catches him back of the neck and compels him to make a bow. The cries of "Speech! speech!" make the welkin ring and the windows in the old dome rattle. If he is a wise young man, he will keep silent; if not, he will attempt to speak; but he will never get further than the first word, to be deafened by the applause. In some ten minutes he is considered to have had enough. The audience take him down, put on his hat, and rush him down the middle of the lawn at full speed. When the house at which the entertainment is given is reached, the two hundred men (for I have frequently seen that many engaged in a dyke) form a double line extending fifty or seventy-five yards, and the luckless victim is rushed through by two captors, right up into the house, little pitied by, but affording much amusement to, the girls assembled at the windows. But when, despite Scylla and Charybdis, he has safely reached his haven, they make up for their heart-