The following vivid description of a cane rush at Columbia is taken from the N. Y. Times: -

"The sophomores sprang forward eagerly and seized the unhappy freshmen by their ears, noses, necks, arms, shoulders, legs and feet. They yanked the freshmen east, west, north and south. They climbed up on their shoulders and walked on their heads. They tore off the few freshmen who had on shirts every sign of them. They rolled the freshmen on the ground and walked on them. Most of the freshmen looked as if they thought the end of the world had come. Their red paint spread all over them like oil on troubled waters. Their faces were scratched and their trousers were torn. They looked sad and goreful. Sophomore Parker performed ground and lofty tumbling. He was occasionally seen to rise in the air and sail horizontally over the outskirts of the cloud. He usually came down on a freshman's head. When he did the freshman fell, 'and, falling, he uttered a groan and darkness covered his eyes.' In one of sophomore Parker's leaps he jumped clear out of his trousers, and thence-forth his costume was airy if not elegant."