Page 29 - The Adventures of a Freshman

Young looked sober and said nothing. To tell the truth, he did not know what they were talking about. Was it
that the Sophs were going to turn the college proctors against them in some cowardly way? But what
Saturday's baseball game between the two classes had to do with it he knew no more than what a cane-spree
might be; and he walked home wondering.

That evening at the club one of the fellows--who, perhaps, had also overheard a conversation--said, in a pause,
"I understand the Sophs will bring out the procs pretty soon."

Young was not so shy before his own crowd. "No, they won't," said he. "Not until after Saturday's baseball
game."

"Why not, Young?" he was asked.

"What are the procs, anyway?" inquired Barrows, at the foot of the table, who had been Young's champion on
the first trip to the canal. He was a small, ingenuous fellow with a big head, and had taken a prize for passing
the best entrance examinations from his State.

Young was about to laugh and own up that he did not know, when the Junior who ran the club cleared his
throat and explained. He was fond of instructing these Freshmen. He had been very green himself two years
before, and he knew how it felt. He also knew how impressive an upper-classman seems to the entering
student.

"The two lower classes," he said, with a great deal of Junior dignity, "always get out proclamations on each
other. It is one of the customs. The Sophs generally bring theirs out first; they are like big bill posters."

"What's on them?" asked Barrows.

"On them is printed a lot of nonsense in green type. They cast aspersions on you, call you fresh and green and
heap ignominy on your prominent men and deride your eccentric characters."

"Well, where do they put them?" asked the one who brought up the subject.

"All over the State."

"What!"

"They paste them all over this town and its environs, on the blank walls and the sidewalks, and on every barn
in the county, on wagons, on telegraph-poles, on freight-cars--not only that, but they go off to Trenton and
New Brunswick and paste them all over the town and on freight-trains about to pull out."

"Well! what do we do all this time?" asked Young. Everyone was listening now.

"Pull them down," said the Junior, simply, "and soon afterward you get out a proc saying sarcastic things
about them, which they pull down, feeling very indignant, and then they haze you worse than ever. Please
hand me the butter."

"But I still don't see," said Barrows, the small fellow with the big head, "what Saturday's baseball game has to
do with it?"

"They wait until after that," replied the Junior, smiling, "in order to write verses on the score and jeer you on
being so badly beaten."