Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 May 1901 — What the Big "V" Meant. [ARTICLE]

What the Big "V" Meant.

Many years ago a young fellow entered the freshman class at Amherst College—a lad with a square jaw, a steady eye, a pleasant smile and a capacity for hard and persistent work. One day, after he had been in college about a week, he took a chair from hjs room into the hall, mounted it and nailed over the door a large square of cardboard on which was painted a big black V, and nothing else. College boys do not like mysteries, and the young man’s neighbors tried to make him tell what the big V meant Was it “for luck?” Was it a joke? What was it? The sophomores took it up and treated the freshman to some hazing, but he would make no answer to the questions they put. At last he was let alone and his V remained over the door, merely a mark of the eccentricity of the occupant Four years passed. On commencement day Horace Maynard delivered the Maledictory of his class, the highest honor the college bestowed. After he had left the platform, amid the plause of his fellow-students and of the audience, one of his classmates accosted him: “Was that what your ‘V* meant? Were you after the valedictory when you tacked up that card?” “Of course,” Maynard replied. “What else could it have been? How else could I have got it?”—Youth’s Companion.