JACK was a queer fellow. His rooms up in one of the
buildings were always open to the •‘gang’' aud a
• more generous, good hearted fellow in college was
hard to find. Jack’s rooms always had a good supply of
reading material on hand, as their owner was a pronounced
book worm, and that is one of the reasons why the gang
always congregated in “West 44. ” But Jack had one fail
ing, and that was talking to himself—a thing he invariably
did when busily engaged in some study or thinking over
something in his mind; and the boys had lots of fun with
Jack’s “secrets.”
College had not yet opened, few of the boys were back,
and time hung heavily on my hands. Consequently I soon
found myself in the neighborhood of the “den” —a place
where more than one scheme had been born and put in mo
tion by “our gcing” when we were sophomores. The door
was wide open and I found Jack, in a sweater and white
ducks, his hair in all directions, a pipe in his mouth and
hands in his pockets, standing in the middle of the room,
surrounded by a cloud of smoke and gazing aimlessly around
at the walls. “Hello, old fellow! I-low are you?”. I greeted
him. “Busy—make yourself miserable,” grumbled the in
dividual, still deep in his meditation.
Being used to such capers, I curled myself up on a win
dow seat, picked up a new book and was soon deep in its
contents.
In a few minutes I became conscious that there was
trouble in the wind, as Jack was hard at work talking to
himself. He was standing in front of his trunk, scratching
his head and puffing at liis pipe. “Well ! Well!! Well!!!”
—puff—“where in the”—puff—“did I put my keys—con
founded nuisance anyhow—think I will abolish keys—l cer
tainly brought them along, as Mother gave them to me as I
JACK’S TROUBLES.