- bly bent forward, gripped his ankles with his hands
—and waited. The worst always happened. The upper-classman brought the paddle down with a resounding whack on the seat of the freshman’s trousers.
“Does it hurt?”
“Yes, sir.”
Another resounding whack. “What?”
“No—no, sir.”
“Oh, well, if it does n’t hurt, I might as well give you another one.” And he gave him another one.
A freshman was paddled if he forgot to say “sir” to an upper-classman; he was paddled if he neglected to touch the floor with his fingers every time he passed through a door in the fraternity house; he was paddled if he laughed when an upper¬ classman told a joke, and he was paddled if he didn’t laugh; he was paddled if he failed to return from an errand in an inconceivably short time: he was paddled for every and no reason, but mainly because the upper-classmen, the sophomores par¬ ticularly, got boundless delight out of doing the paddling.
Every night a freshman stood on the roof of the Nu Delta house and announced the time every fif¬ teen seconds. “One minute and fifteen seconds after nine, and all’s well in the halls of Nu Delta, one minute and thirty seconds after nine, and all’s well in the halls of Nu Delta; one minute and
