There are two kinds of hazing, as practiced by undergraduates at Ann
Arbor; the plain and the ornamental.
The first may be a mere practical joke, as the "stacking" of a room, the
kidnapping of a freshman toastmaster, or the "losing" of a fraternity
initiate in the broad fields that lie between the town and the North
Pole.
But ornamental hazing is quite a different thing. It is the sort most
indulged in by practical hazers, professionals, as it were; by juniors;
even by seniors; and as such is found to have many and varied forms.
Moreover it differs from the plain brand in that a genuine injury is, by
its application, wrought upon the hazee. Thus, a man may be lost in a
swamp and made to find his own way home by the tenets of the plain
hazing code; whereas, if, in the swamp, he is "injured," that is to say
if he is painted with iodine, if a broad pink parting is shaved across
his scalp, or if his hair is cut off in scrubby patches, he may quite
properly consider himself to have been allowed a taste of the ornamental
sort.
It may be seen from these distinctions therefore, that plain hazing is
really harmless; no one is hurt, unless, as not infrequently occurs, and
justly, the hazers, themselves; and as a consequence of this the
University authorities seldom concern themselves in these really feeble
attempts to smirch the honor and destroy the valor of the freshman
class, which in most instances is sufficiently lusty an infant to take
excellent care of itself.
For instance, no excitement is created by the appearance on the campus,
or even in the corridors of the recitation buildings, of a lanky youth
in exceedingly snug knee breeches who drags about behind him by a long
string a gaudy little horse on squeaking wheels. Indeed, men whose
height reaches a flat six feet have not infrequently ridden to classes
on very small tricycles to the ecstatic delight of certain upper
classmen and to the pitying sneers of their instructors.
As has been observed, the authorities of the University are not wont to
interest themselves in such manifestations of under-class idiocy.
But a hazing of the second sort!
That, truly, is a different matter.
There was the case of Cleaver, for instance, whose disappearance from
Ann Arbor on a wet night in March six years ago was telegraphed to every
paper of consequence in the country and which furnished a delectable
topic of conversation at faculty dinners for the entire two months of
his absence.
Hazed?
Of course he was hazed.
He was _persona non grata_ to the sophomore class as represented by the
fraternity contingent and that contingent had simply done away with him
temporarily. When he _did_ return it was a wan and haggard figure that
he presented. The belief gained currency that his people had known his
whereabouts, but no one ever knew to a certainty. As for Cleaver
himself, he would not--or perhaps could not--tell what had been done to
him or who had planned and carried out the adventure of his
disappearance. The faculty was nonplussed. No one else had been missed.
Who, then, could have accompanied Cleaver to his dungeon, if dungeon had
been his residence for two months? No one, to this day, has solved the
mystery. As for Cleaver, he was given his credits and permitted to
graduate in due time. And to-day whenever he speaks of a certain
individual--now a lawyer in Syracuse--who was a sophomore during his own
freshman days, it is with a twinkle in his eyes. But he still keeps a
sacred silence.
Ann Arbor was shaken to its foundations by the incident. Shaken, too,
has it been by circus riots; but it is doubted if ever within the period
of the University's establishment has it been so tremendously excited,
for a little period, as it became over the case of Catherwood.
In the first place Catherwood had incurred the enmity of no one. A
student of fair attainments and average record who, during his three
years in the University, had taken but small part in undergraduate
activities, he found himself, of a sudden, standing in the blinding
lime-light of an official investigation. And an official investigation
at the University of Michigan is not to be considered lightly. All over
this broad land are men who have the questionable privilege of looking
back upon a time when they were the unwilling subjects of such
investigations.
Catherwood's case, to be sure, was different in that he was the sufferer
from others' depredations, but the odium of participation rested upon
him nevertheless, and so delicate and shrinking was his nature that he
was known to suffer miserably from the publicity of his position.
For three days he was conscious that every man's eye was upon him; that
every finger pointed at him, that every tongue discussed him. An attempt
was made to heroize him, but he withdrew to the seclusion of his room
and would see no one. His, indeed, was a case to defy, in its solution,
the most subtle reasoner, the most invincible logician on the faculty.
In detail it was as follows:
Mrs. Turner, Catherwood's landlady, a most estimable woman who had moved
into town from a not-distant farm for the purpose of "putting Willie
through school," was away from the house all the evening of February
ninth. A "social" at the Congregational Church--socials were her chief,
indeed, her only, diversion--on the arrangement committee of which she
was most active, delayed her return until nearly midnight. Willie
accompanied her to the church and at nine o'clock was put to bed in a
pew up-stairs. Therefore Mrs. Turner could not know what had transpired
in one of her second-floor rooms between the hours of seven-thirty and
twelve on that momentous night. Moreover, as Mrs. Turner varied the
monotony of house work with "plain sewing by the day" and was, all the
morning of the tenth, at the Alpha Phi house "fitting" Miss Houston, she
did not set about to "do the room work" until eleven-thirty.
At that hour, tired beyond measure,--Miss Houston had been so finicky
about the hang of the skirt--she suddenly realized that if she did not
make haste Mr. Catherwood would return from college to find his room in
the condition of untidiness that he, presumably, had left it on going
out.
So she dragged her leaden limbs up the stairs and from force of habit
knocked on the door of the second room, back. There was no reply. She
had expected none. She pushed open the door.
The scene of chaos that met her gaze defies description. The room had
been completely and most effectively "stacked." Strewn about the floor
were papers. The inverted waste-basket was cocked rakishly upon an arm
of the chandelier. Books from the rack were lying everywhere. The rack
lay flat on the floor. The face of every hanging picture was turned to
the wall, and the Morris chair, which had been carefully taken apart,
was piled upon the writing table. Mrs. Turner at a single sweep of her
eye noted these details and also certain splotches that were
unmistakably ink spots on the walls and on the carpet.
The divan had reared itself and now stood upon one end. Three chairs
were piled upon the bed.
These Mrs. Turner noted last.
She understood the meaning of the chaos. Someone, during his absence,
had entered Mr. Catherwood's room and "stacked" it. And as she
calculated the time necessary to complete a restoration of its usual
neat appearance, the poor woman sighed deeply.
Suddenly she started.
Was it an echo of her sigh she heard? Surely she had heard a human
sound. She peered, stooping.
"Mr. Catherwood!" she called; her face pale.
A distinct, graveyard moan was the answer.
The blood fled from Mrs. Turner's lips and her eyes bulged. She
cautiously approached the bed, whence, seemingly, had come the moan. She
peered between the legs of the chairs. Then, with a cry that rang
through the house, she fled from the room, down the stairs and into the
freezing out-of-doors.
As she ran down the walk, slipping, stumbling, the bells in the library
tower rang out twice, musically clear on the frosty air--fifteen minutes
past twelve. And approaching, she saw her neighbor, the assistant
professor of history, returning from the examination.
Mrs. Turner flung herself heavily upon him. His spectacles slipped from
his nose. The armful of thin "blue books" he was carrying littered the
walk. He parried awkwardly with hands that were encased in gray-striped
woolen mittens.
"Madame! Madame!" he cried, "what the--what is the matter--are you
crazy?"
Mrs. Turner gasped--gasped like a pickerel dying on the grass. It was
quite half a minute before she found her voice and when she spoke it was
with many vocal quavers.
"Oh, Professor Lowe! Professor Lowe!" she wailed, "Mr. Catherwood--Mr.
Catherwood----"
"Well, well; what of him, madame, what of him?"
The assistant professor spoke sharply.
"_He's been murdered!_"
"WHAT!"
She seized him by the arm.
"Come--come, quick," she cried. "He's on the bed: his face is all
blood."
"Yes, yes," he replied, stooping and hastily gathering up the "blue
books"--"I'll fling these in the hall; you run on ahead--I'll be right
there."
From the doorway he called to his wife,
"Young man murdered next door, Jenny," and from the porch at the end
nearest Mrs. Turner's house he leaped into a snow-drift. He floundered
out and into the house as his wife appeared upon the porch wringing her
hands and moaning.
He bounded up the stairs in the wake of Mrs. Turner and brushed past her
into the room of horror.
He brought up stock still and looked about.
"There's the corpse! There; over there on the bed!" the woman wailed,
frantically.
He pulled away the piled chairs, and seizing the body rolled it upon its
back. Over Catherwood's eyes was bound a strip of cloth and a gag made
of a stocking was tied across his mouth. The assistant professor
unknotted the gag with trembling fingers and tore away the blindfold and
Catherwood blinked up at him owlishly.
"Are you dead?" the assistant professor asked with bated breath.
Catherwood's mouth worked convulsively and then he muttered hoarsely:
"Water! water!"
Mrs. Turner hurried to the bathroom and returned with a cup, which the
assistant professor took from her and held to the young man's lips. He
gulped eagerly.
"Look at his face!" cried Mrs. Turner.
It was streaked and spotted with a brown stain.
"Is it blood?" The woman shivered.
The assistant professor sniffed.
"Iodine," he exclaimed. "And see," he added, stooping, "here's the
bottle." He held up the phial that had caught his eye where it lay on
the floor at the foot of the bed.
"Untie my hands," Catherwood gurgled--"Here, behind me!"
They were tied securely by two handkerchiefs knotted together. The
assistant professor fumbled at the loops. He disengaged the swollen
wrists and Catherwood sat up in bed. He loosened the bindings of his
ankles himself and stood up.
"Whew!" he whistled.
He caught sight of his brown-streaked and spotted face in the dresser
mirror.
"Cæsar!" he exclaimed, "that was a fine job!"
Satisfied that a rescue had been accomplished in good time, the
assistant professor said:
"Sit down, Mr. Catherwood, and explain, if possible, the meaning of
this--this hazing. I observed you were not present at the examination
to-day."
Mrs. Turner, who till now had stood by wringing her hands, commenced,
with mechanical precision, to wrest order out of chaos in the room.
From time to time during Catherwood's recital she stopped in her work
long enough to voice an ejaculatory "oh," or exclaim--"Well,
_I_ declare."
"It is clearly a case of hazing--hazing of the most malicious sort,"
observed the assistant professor, "and as such merits the fullest
investigation on the part of the faculty, which I have no doubt the
faculty will undertake. Do you know your assailants, Mr. Catherwood?"
"Yes--and no," the young man replied, rubbing a red and swollen wrist.
"Why do you say that?" the assistant professor inquired, significantly.
"I thought I did from the writing of the note I received yesterday
afternoon----"
"Ah--you received a note then?"
"Yes--wait." Catherwood dove a hand into the inside pocket of his coat.
"Here it is," he said, and held out to his questioner a crumpled bit of
paper written in a hand obviously disguised.
The assistant professor examined the writing closely.
"This, Mr. Catherwood," he opined finally, "is, as you see, 'back-hand.'
Moreover, it is quite clear to me that it was penned by some one who
used his left hand, although he is, naturally, what we call 'right
handed.'"