Page 36 - The Adventures of a Freshman

Little Lee fairly gasped to himself: "Going to make us paste procs--procs against our own class!"

Ballard, who had apparently just got the idea through his head, began to laugh, and said, "That's a good
scheme, Chan, haw, haw, haw!"

"Don't laugh so loud," said Channing. "Come on, Freshmen, that blank wall across the street is a good place to
begin."

They were led across the street to the corner grocery store. A tight hold was kept on Young and Lee this time.

"Now, this is the way it is done." Channing quickly and rather daintily pasted up a proclamation.

By this time it was light enough for the letters to show green, and the Freshmen read the thing.

Up near the top Lee, the class secretary, was called "a puppy drum major" and "Mamma's blue-eyed baby boy,
the little toy secretary." In the portion in finer type, beneath the slurs on the baseball team and the arrogant
prohibitions against the wearing of the college colors and silk-hats and the smoking of pipes and carrying of
canes, Young spied his own name.

"Next in the line of freaks," it said, "will amble that poor, meek butt of all classes, Deacon Young, the
overgrown baby of Squeedunk, who always does everything you tell him to, and says 'Thank you, marm!'"

"That means me," thought Young, scowling, as he remembered how important he had always been considered
by everyone out at home. "What would they think of me now, I wonder?"

Channing had finished his work.

"Now then," he said, and unfolded another proc and advanced toward the Freshmen. "Don't all speak at once,
children; will Little Willie Young show us how they handle the brush when they whitewash the fences on the
farm?"

"Naw, let the class secretary do it first," interrupted Ballard, in his rough voice.

Though the crowd had often hazed Lee they had always found him such a bright, good-natured little chap that
Ballard was never allowed to humble him as much as since the rush he had always wanted to. Here was a fine
chance. Young could wait; it was not much fun to haze Young, anyway, he was so meek.

"Get to work there now, Secretary," Ballard shouted in his loud voice. He did not have brains enough, Young
thought, to be sarcastic, but he had plenty of lungs. "Close in around them, fellows."

Of course the Freshmen required the use of their hands if they were to paste procs, so the two were shoved in
toward the wall and the dozen Sophomores with locked arms formed a semi-circle about them. It would be out
of the question for the two to try and escape now.

Young and Lee were standing by the paste-bucket with their backs to the Sophomores, who were about twelve
feet away from them.

"Come, get to work there, little boys," said Channing. "You and Young have nearly fifty more to paste before
breakfast."

"Hurry up there," Ballard echoed, shouting in a tone to wake the neighborhood.