With just the merest hint of deviltry in his roving eye, Vag waited for the big event of the day at Braves Field. It was Reading Period, but so what! Encased in his now rather shoddy seersucker jacket, with a Chesterfield protruding not at all jauntily from his mouth, he waited while a man in a double-breasted suit walked onto the field. Today, of all things foolish, they were going to raffle off a '47 Packard, and what was more silly, he was waiting around on the hope that he would win it. Of course he never won anything, and there were great wads of textbooks waiting for him back in his room. Still he waited, and struck up a conversation with the girl sitting next to him, who had bangs and very dirty legs. "Radcliffe" he had said to himself right away, and although he felt that he ought to sound scornful, he couldn't help letting a twinge of nostalgia come in. It wasn't quite the same in the summer, without the Annex. "Pretty good game today, wasn't it?" he ventured. "Sloppy," she replied out of the corner of her mouth. "Well, that starting pitcher just had a bad day," he said bravely. "Bad day! Why that pantywaist couldn't hit the broad side of I wouldn't like to say what." "Not Radcliffe," Vag breathed to himself. "What did you say?" asked the girl. "Oh, I just wondered if you thought you were going to win the raffle." "Me? You nuts? Er, it's the big bankers who win those things. Fixed, they all are." "Guess so." Vag said.

Finally after a lot of talking and shaking hands, someone started drawing the ticket stubs out of a bowl, and Vag found himself sitting forward in his seat. But someone else won, and there was a short, disappointed burst of applause. The girl gave him an "I told you so" look, and stalked away, while Vag ambled with the crowd through the exit and toward the bridge. Raffles were pretty good, he said to himself after a little consideration. Even if you didn't win, there was the excitement. And that was one thing that Harvard lacked, excitement. In the summer it was perfectly natural, but in the fall something ought to be done about it. A raffle at the end of one of the football games. Perhaps one of the smaller, early affairs, which would not attract a crowd otherwise. Everyone would get out there and cheer louder than he ever had before, because of the approaching excitement; that was pretty good, and Vag walked jauntily: soon they'd call him Machiavel Vag. He could see the crowd shouting, Harvard men shouting, for in his mind they would have the cherished prize of...of.., sure, Memorial Hall. Mem Hall, the perfect prize. Vag chuckled softly, and started to hurry back, for it was still Reading Period.