what he regarded as intellectual people. He never understood what they were saying, but to hear them saying it made him feel superior.
The group which he most frequented gathered in the room of Frank Shallard and Don Pickens, the large corner room on the second floor of Smut Hall.
It was not an esthetic room. Though Frank Shallard might have come to admire pictures, great music, civilized furniture, he had been trained to regard them as worldly, and to content himself with art which "presented a message," to regard "Les Miserables" as superior because the bishop was a kind man, and "The Scarlet Letter" as a poor book because the heroine was sinful and the author didn't mind.
The walls were of old plaster, cracked and turned deathly gray, marked with the blood of mosquitoes and bed-bugs slain in portentous battles long ago by theologians now gone forth to bestow their thus uplifted visions on a materialistic world. The bed was a skeleton of rusty iron bars, sagging in the center, with a comforter which was not too clean. Trunks were in the corners, and the wardrobe was a row of hooks behind a calico curtain. The grass matting was slowly dividing into separate strands, and under the study table it had been scuffed through to the cheap pine flooring.
The only pictures were Frank's steel engraving of Roger Williams, his framed and pansy-painted copy of "Pippa Passes," and Don Pickens' favorite, a country church by winter moonlight, with tinsel snow, which sparkled delightfully. The only untheological books were Frank's poets: Wordsworth, Longfellow, Tennyson, Browning, in standard volumes, fine-printed and dismal, and one really dangerous papist document, his "Imitation of Christ," about which there was argument at least once a week.
In this room, squatting on straight chairs, the trunks, and the bed, on a November evening in 1905, were five young men besides Elmer and Eddie Fislinger. Eddie did not really belong to the group, but he persisted in following Elmer, feeling that not even yet was everything quite right with the brother.
"A preacher has got to be just as husky and pack just as good a wallop as a prize-fighter. He ought to be able to throw out any roughneck that tries to interrupt his meetings, and still more, strength makes such a hit with the women in his con-
