The Winslow mail., 1900-11-08

M sWATT's college days were a
lSI revelations; not only to the fac
ulty, but to himself also. lie had
never suspected the versatility of his
nature or the vGstness of his resource.
He was summoned one day to APP
pear before the board, under COM
paint of having caricatured his Latin
professor on the class room walls,
thereby making that worthy to ap-
pear, his face wreathed in smiles,
dancing the "couchy couchy" and cry
ing: ITO Hades with Caesar, ct tu,
Brute and numerous other incongru-
GUS and indelicate things. McSwatt
arose to the occasion, aye, passed far
beyond it and made college history;
so-Eompletely was he master of the
situation that Jones, head professor
ofEvldences of Christianity, inwardly
resolved to espouse his canon.zation,
should McSwatt's soul soon take it's
flight.
1t was not so easy, however, to pull
the wool over the eyes of his class
mates. ''Indignation" Smythe, who
was Il member of fraternity consti-
tutionally opposed to the one whose
rolls McSwatt's name honored, and
more or less dyspeptic, voiced the SEN
timent of the student body when he
stated, with his usual variations, that
McSwatt was a cheerful liar and an
inimitable dead beat. The remark
cost Smythe nasal hemorrhage; Nc
Swat, the remainder of his reputa-
ton for the allegations were never
successfully controverted.
To drown his sorrow, McSwatt in
gratiated himself with the bibulous
crowd, and he lived to see the sorrow
completely inundated He was often
er found at the inn than at the col
lege, and he consequently became more
proficient in poker than in Greek The
quarterly report, sent home, elected
much wonder, no enthusiasm. There
had been a series of extraordinary
drains on the family purse for such
odd purposes that the olu gentleman
was apprehensive lest the boy be de-
mented. The cost of books alone, a
mere drop in the bucket of general ex-
penditures, was sufficient to have
started town library, and that of
dentistry mortgaged the farm. Hence
the elder McSwatt visited college. but
the magnificent library had taken to
Itself wings, and there remained no
evidence of the dentists work. Even
McSwatt's wardrobe left much TO he
desired. To tell the whole truth.
naught of it remained save a light
summer suit which McSwatt. Sr..
fancied he had seen before, and which
the younger man was heroically en-
deavoring to make fill all of the re-
quirements of the season.
The first view which the old gentle
man obtained of his offspring in his
college environments was through a
haze of tobacco smoke. and not ealcu-
lated to inspire confidence for that
young man, with 4 coterie of maudlin
companions, as mOngrel lot as ever
disgraced an institution of learning.
was dividing his attention between a
hand of poker and mammoth cuspi-
dor which he spat at with the regu-
larity of an automaton, an accuracy
college born.
McSwatt, Sr., frightened the purse
strings. and the act induced a much
needed period of reform. Under the
stimulus of parental adjuration, Nc
Swat settled to business, forged into
the first division of his class, and his
natural genius would have put him
in the way of honors had it not been
for the ever present conviction of the
lnanity of it all. Where was the use
of torturing oneself with Iogarithms
when poker was on the tapis at the
inn: Self-immola;ion was no part of
his creed. HIS hasty resolutions for
good were repented at leisure until
the time came that there seemed no
longer use of struggling against his
discomfort, hope went glimmering,
and he resolved rather than make a
mess of it, to be wholly, truly bad.
He broadly intimated that he intend
ed to inargnrate the most comprehen-