Loyola University Maryland - Evergreen / Green and Gray Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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16 THE LOYOLA ANNUAL “Now, unfortunate men, I will grant you a half hour ' s liberty to telegraph to your mothers a sad farewell. Extend to them my heartfelt sorrow, but tell them to bear up well as they will meet their sons in heaven. Now go. The patrol will call for you at the telegraph office in a half hour sharp.” It is true that they appeared at the telegraph office a half hour later, is it not? Yes, it is not. When those sophomores felt themselves in pure, unsophisticated liberty they struck out for their rooms like escaped convicts swimming for a foreign shore. “Gee, but this false hair came near falling off when I jumped out of bed,” said Nelson to himself as he closed the door. “But of all successful plots this was the greatest. Just to think that that telephone wire leads under that old Demos- thenes instead of into a police station. By the way. I ' ll have to sneak that back in the dean ' s office and connect it up again before dawn.” And he chuckled and laughed and felt proud. Did it get out? Why didn’t you ask if it was up to the North Pole by lo o ' clock? Why, it raced and raged around college like wildfire and students v rote home for cheques to treat Nelson, others fought for his company and fabricated all kinds of excuses just to be seen conversing with him. And the vanquished sophomores resolved never again to molest pink-cheeked boys with blue eyes and delicate, fair- skinned arms. Joseph J. Quinn, ' i6.

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THE LOYOLA ANNUAL 15 Room 44. Come quick.” Burlington sank to the floor on his knees. ‘‘Oh, please lady, please let us go. It’s all a mistake. We were looking for a little boy to take him for a walk.” “Going to what?” she asked wildly. “Take him for a walk, that is, I mean, to haze him,” replied Burlington with little hope of mercy. “Haze a little boy? Oh, you cruel monsters. What is his name?” “Nelson,” he purred sadly. “My brother,” she gasped and fell back upon the bed. “Oh, what is the world coming to. How lucky I was to save the life of my poor little brother from a gang of ruffians. Oh, I hope every one of you will get a life sentence.” “Oh, please, lady, do let us go. We are innocent boys and we meant no harm” — ‘ What?. No harm with that rope?. Oh, you cruel, hard- hearted man. How can you tell a lie when you face the gal- lows?” “Oh, dear lady, if you let us go, we’ll go to our mothers and”— “I hear them coming,” she shouted joyously, and Burlington, the husky sophomore, listened while a big tear rolled down his face and into his open mouth. “This will ruin our characters forever,” he said sobbingly, and he wiped his eyes with a huge, febrile hand. Burlington then resorted to prayer, entreaty having failed. “Oh, what will your poor mothers say when they see this in the papers? Poor men!” and she wept, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Poor men! I feel something softening my heart tov ard you. Some prayer of yours is being answered.” At this Burlington poured heart and soul into his intercessions and raced over different litanies, waylaying all distractions.

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THE LOYOLA ANNUAL 17 KtUntwxL ’’ AVE you ever noticed, as you traversed some tract of tangled, half-cleared woodland, in what a desultory manner certain berry pickers endeavor to fill their receptacles? On they rush, from bush to bush, after the fashion of the bob- bing humming bird, ever drawn further and further into the copse by a sort of mental mirage of more luscious berries on the bush beyond, neglecting the while the toothsome harvest which would be theirs did they but pause to draw aside the foliage on perhaps any one of the slighted shrubs. Their wonted reward is entanglement in some inadvertent morass, while their more staid companions saunter joyfully homeward with bursting baskets, a bulging guerdon for pleasant, re- quited labor. Much after this fashion do readers peruse their books. Some fancy that voraciousness atones for a lack of thorough- going study of them. They rush pell-mell through a book and straightway crush out its fertile seeds of thought in their minds by weighing them down beneath the burden of another mass of reading matter. Like the berry pickers, they run on and on without plucking the true v ealth of fruitage which should be theirs. Reading of this sort is not only most regrettable, but it is also unfair, both to the reader and to the author. When a writer takes up his pen to convey the message of his impressionistic heart through the mouths of the book’s char- acters, to the great world of his readers, he labors over his brain-child — the book — with a loving care of which the average reader has scarce the slightest conception. No trial is too onerous, no sacrifice too costly, which enables him to add one