I alluded, just now, to my feelings at witnessing tricks played on the
Freshmen. Had the Sophomores asked my advice before they played those
tricks, I should have dissuaded them; but when they played them, with
such courage and enterprise, I stood before them with admiration. But
while I was under that quilt, I found that I did not admire the
Sophomores at all, any more than I did the Seniors who then had me in
their power.
The enemies of freedom, in College, had a great triumph the other
evening. One of them, in one of the Literary Societies, read an Original
Poem, the title of which was, "The Fly-time of Freedom." He spoke of
"our glorious summer of Liberty" being infested and pestered with noisy,
provoking things, which he characterized under the names of dor-bugs,
millers, and all those creatures which fly into the room when the lamp
is lighted; the swarms of black gnats which are about your head in the
woods; horse-flies which stick, and leave blood running; and
devil's-darning-needles. One brave man here, a great "friend of
freedom," who, they falsely say, loves to be persecuted, and longs for
martyrdom, and interprets everything that way, he described as a miller,
who seems to court death in the flame.
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