Florida State University - Renegade / Tally Ho Yearbook (Tallahassee, FL)

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I -£ MAIN BUILDING.

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Cbe Brier Patch episode There is a brilliant young Normal at this college who is now called by the suggestive, but hateful, name, Brier Patch Williams. The way he came to have this name is as follows: For several weeks the High School boys had been initiating all the new boys (especially the Dormitory boys) by seizing them bodily and casting them into a deep and gloomy hole called the brier patch. Now it happened that the dignified and brave Normal Williams was thus ingloriously initiated, and not being of a yielding disposition, he swore vengeance upon all who thus maltreated him. So when a few, in fact very few, Third Year classmen were obliged to return to the college one afternoon for physiology work, the brave (?) Williams, collecting about him a crowd of Dormitory boys, in number about twice the Third Years, proposed that they, Williams and the crowd, should ti-eat the Third Years to a dose of their own medicine and put them into the brier patch. Accordingly this was done, but no sooner was it done than Williams regretted his hasty action. The next morning Williams set out for school, not, however, without many misgivings as to what treatment he would receive. But he was destined to be surprised, for he was not immediately seized and borne away; on the con- trary, the boys seemed well disposed toward him. Seeing all this, Williams banished from his mind all fear that he would be hazed. But at recess, when he was beginning to swagger again, he was met by the Third Years whom he had so lately gloated over and was seized by them. Whereupon Williams, losing all his bravery, begau to beg from the bottom of his heart. But his prayers were of no avail. He was taken, handled roughly and finally thrown into that most hateful hole, the brier patch, where he would most probably have been yet but for the fact that one of the Normals, seeing his classmate ' s plight, came and lifted Williams out of the hole. This is how Williams gained the name Brier Patch, and though he still shudders when he is so addressed, he is now becoming accustomed to it. Moral: Don ' t act too bravely when just a few are around ; you may have to beg when the crowd catches you. B. A. M. 23