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''Jimmie Sophomore''
It was a bitter night. The snow crunched, the ice crackled and
the purple-nosed earth turned his chapped old face to the freezing
stars and shivered. In the dusk a boj' came hurrying along, breathing
out such clouds of white and flapping his arms to such a prodigious
extent that he seemed to be in the midst of a personal conflict
with the weather. He turned into a yard, clumped up some steps
and banged his heels on the door sill, then banged the door itself.
In a jiff'y he had his poor blue hands through the arm-holes of a
soft old sweater and his feet into slippers. There in the dark room,
a glowing fire was busily manufacturing great 'gobs' of heat. The
boy crept in very close, stretched himself upon a low seat with his
feet all but in the blaze. Then out came his i^ipe and up into the
shadows slowly rose long tangled skeins of smoke.
Now, I'll tell you who he is. He's Jimmy. He's the boiled-down
essence of all us Sophomores. He's the composite body and soul,
you might say, of the whole big class. He's thinking this minute
of his two years of college.
He's thinking of how fast time has glided for him and how he's
getting to be a man before he knows it; how he's got to grab his
chances and have all his big times quick before he's an old 'un
and no good. His Freshman winter seems like yesterday; not a
detail has he forgotten. He's chuckling over the green caps and
the hair cuts; all the foolish things he did and laughed at then.
He's feeling a sort of satisfaction as he reviews the different events
in which he licked the class above him: Flag rush, football, baseball
and swimming. He's pondering over the "Cons" he got and
has never made up, wondering whether he'll take a crack at them
in the June exams. He's remembering slipping by the last ones
with the necessary twenty-five credits. How glad he was to get
away somewhere for a much-needed vacation; and yet all summer
there was that old longing to start football practice. He's remembering
how, when he did find himself out on Carson Field punting,
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