Vag was very nervous and very worried--somehow or other he knew that he'd never look well amid the mysterious implements of a boudoir table. Eau de Cologne bothered him, and eyebrow pencil embarrassed him with its frank fraudulence. And yet there he was destined to lie-surrounded by the rouge pots and the powder puffs. It was a sad fate, but it was inevitable, and Vag believed with Confucius that the inevitable must be accepted.

The summons had been unexpected but imperious: "Dear Vag--There has been an ugly bare spot on my dressing table ever since Scotties went out of fashion. Could use your picture to fill it up until I think of something more original. Please try not to look as glum as usual!"

Vag surveyed in his mind the pictures he'd had taken in the past four or five years, trying to decide which was most appropriate. There was the prep school graduation picture with the underslung jaw and the moronic look around the eyes. Then there was the Red Book picture with that particularly and characteristically harried Freshman look about it. And finally there was the wishfully comic picture in which he was perched on the famous Yale fence immortalized by Professor Hooton's ape pictures. Obviously, there was no solution of the problem to be found here. Finally Vag got his brilliant idea, and immediately swung into action.

He was encased in a small, closet-like cubicle. A maze of dangerous looking wires surrounded him on all sides. Bright lights shone in his eyes until everything had assumed an unpleasant roseate hue. Summoning all his bewildered faculties, he made a gallant effort to concentrate on the mirror in front of him which, under the glare of the strong lights, looked like a blazing inferno. Now Vag knew what it meant to be given the third degree.

Seen through blurred eyes, his reflected image was in a constant flux of alternate expansion and contraction. Do what he would, one lick of hair insisted on standing straight up in the air, and the knot in his tie would never assume the proper Mount Auburn Street air. Completely overwhelmed by this terrifying mechanical monster, he was incapable of simulating any form of non-chalance--the all-essential part of the successful Harvard man.

The situation was desperate and fraught with excitement. Despairing of improvement, Vag reached out with a timid hand, slowly, carefully, and then with a sudden bold motion firmly pressed the metal plunger. Another summoning of courtage, another depression of the plunger, and it was all over. Vag stood up, slipped a few coins into the small box marked P-L-E-A-S-E, and dashed out the door back to the comparative security of his third-floor room. Now there was only the anxiety of waiting for a small while envelope bearing the printed legend, "The Crimson Portro-self."