Page:Lynch Williams--The girl and the game.djvu/264

 picking out the exceptional, bad ones so as to point a moral. You can't blame me for that altogether.

Here we are at chapel already. And here comes the academic procession. Stand aside and let them pass in first. A certain amount of pomp and ceremony are necessary, even in America, to the plain living and high thinking of cloistered seclusion. It must be fun to wear those impressive gowns and pretty colored hoods, and they do no harm to you or me. Well, well, here you are, about to begin your Freshman year, and somehow I haven't been able to say anything to you. Yes, that's the President. I hope you will study a little, Dick, even if you desire to devote yourself to graceful loafing. You can do it so much more gracefully and comfortably if, first, you study hard in Freshman year. That will give you a start and a reputation which will last you through the other three. But if you should loaf this year you'd have a handicap and a reputation—that you might never shake off. There was Charlie MacMurdoch, the old baseball