The Republican., 1892-02-05
"REMINISCENCES OF HAzlNe.
How come sophpmore We're Convinced
of Its Bad Taste.

How come soph pmores We're Convinced
of Its Bad Taste.
81 never read accounts in the news
papers of the pranks of college boys in
'hazing' the freshmen" said white
haired, rosy-faced old New Yorker in
the parlor of a big athletic club the
other night to Tribune reporter, but
my Ioind reverts at once to a hazing
scra2e l got myself into in my salad
days Like all sophomores, l was par
ticnlarly intolerant to freshmen; much
more so of course, than the seniors
We had been strictly forbidden by the
faculty to do any hazing at all, under
penalty of expulsion, and so we could
not get together more than half a
dozen adventurous souls who were
willing to take the risk in order to pun
ish the freshmen properly for daring to
live and presuining to come to the col
lege at all We had to do the thing
quietly, so after all the lamps were out
we would steal from our rooms, meet
in the corridor, and then make a de-
scent on some lonely freshman and do
him up without any unnecessary fuss
I'VE had operated successfully on two
or three men, only one in a night. and
were enjoying the sport thoroughly.
The following night it became the turn
of long raw-boned, quiet, bashful
youth from Maine, who had little or
nothing to say TO anyone, and whose
only care seemed to be to keep his
hands and feet out of sight. We antici-
pated some rare sport with him, and 1
remember the naughty feeling with
which | strobe into his dark bed cham
Der at the head of our gang after we
had pried his door open with one good
twist of a real burglars Jimmy
The other men had generally cow
cred under their bed clothes or arisen
embliagly in their night shirts and
asked piteously to be let alone This
Maine man jumped out of bed, however,
as if glad to meet u.s. He said not
word, he made not sound as he moved
about in the dark, but o, my! how he
did swat us! ! never before expert
enced such fiendish strength as that fell
low seemed to have. We were not ia
miliar with his room, and it seemed to
be full of furniture, against which we
oSohh OASos dhN ONSh ahp AbuCI WhiCh bC
knocked us in the darkness, with the
precision and force of trip-hammer.
He seemed to have a cats sight, and he
knew the room thoroughly, and the
way he damned us was so unexpected
that we got confused and lost our reck-
oning in trying to get out of that infer
nal room again.
Il don't believe one of us hit him
once. know that after had caught
a terrific right-hander on the tip of my
nose, which sent me backward over an
awfully angular coal-scuttle, kept on
my hands and knees and wabbled
about in blind search for the door,
with the blood pouring into my mouth
and over my shirt front He hit US with
fists like hams. he threw chairs at us,
he kicked us when we went down with
his bare toes, which seemed as hard as
iron; he jumped on our stomachs with
heels made tough by running barefoot
on his native shingly beaches, he
mauled us, he pulled our hair out, he
scratched us, he loosened our teeth, he
broke our noses, he joggled our most
internal organs, he utterly demoralized
us, this whirlwind from Maine, and
when at last we all got out of his horrid
den, more dead than alive, and had had
time to collect our shattered senses and
make hasty estimate OF our cuts and
abrasions, l said:
The Maine fellow must have gone
out, boys, and left gorilla in his bed
instead
But just then we heard that vicious
freshman call out with mocking laugh:
Now go to bed, little men, and come
again some other night, when you're
rested. This hazin's heaps of fun
But we had decided that the sport
was unmanly, anyway, and not the
proper sort of thing for young gentle
men to engage in. Chicago Tribune