Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/183

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FIRST CONSEQUENCES
171

reason of weather, but because of football; the whole college followed the eleven at home or away, gathering at the gymnasium nearly every Friday night for a great "pep" mass-meeting to practice songs and yells and to cheer the team; and then Saturday was to be saved, hopefully, for the celebration of victory.

But May and June were the months of minor sports, of baseball and tennis to be played and of races to be run during the afternoon, leaving the evenings free; and the twilight was long and agreeable. Everywhere windows and doors were open; lawns became carpets of soft, cool grass; elms became quiet canopies, and the lake lay like a mirror for moon and stars, inviting to canoes. So these were favorite months for the music of "formals" from which couples could wander between dances and stroll hatless and without scarf over bare shoulders or dance with equal delight on veranda or ball-room floor.

Almost every fraternity and sorority saved one of its allotted quota of entertainments to give a ball on some such Friday or Saturday evening of May or June.

It was the custom of each society, when entertaining, to invite, in addition to its friends of the opposite sex, a select few from each of its own rival organizations. And last year, no matter whether a fraternity or a sorority was the host, Alice Sothron and David Herrick were on every list. This spring, every fraternity invited Alice and every sorority chose her for one of the guests from Tau Gamma; but every sorority but one, besides Tau Gamma which already had en-