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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of At Good Old Siwash, by George Fitch
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: At Good Old Siwash
+
+Author: George Fitch
+
+Release Date: April 25, 2008 [EBook #25163]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AT GOOD OLD SIWASH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Janet Keller, D. Alexander and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+AT
+
+GOOD OLD SIWASH
+
+BY GEORGE FITCH
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1916
+
+
+
+
+_Copyright, 1910, 1911,_ BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.
+
+_Copyright, 1911,_ BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+Printers S. J. PARKHILL & CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Twenty-five yards with four Muggledorfer men hanging on
+his legs
+                    FRONTISPIECE. _Page 19_]
+
+
+
+
+AT GOOD OLD SIWASH
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Little did I think, during the countless occasions on which I have
+skipped blithely over the preface of a book in order to plunge into the
+plot, that I should be called upon to write a preface myself some day.
+And little have I realized until just now the extreme importance to the
+author of having his preface read.
+
+I want this preface to be read, though I have an uneasy premonition that
+it is going to be skipped as joyously as ever I skipped a preface
+myself. I want the reader to toil through my preface in order to save
+him the task of trying to follow a plot through this book. For if he
+attempts to do this he will most certainly dislocate something about
+himself very seriously. I have found it impossible, in writing of
+college days which are just one deep-laid scheme after another, to
+confine myself to one plot. How could I describe in one plot the life of
+the student who carries out an average of three plots a day? It is
+unreasonable. So I have done the next best thing. There is a plot in
+every chapter. This requires the use of upwards of a dozen villains, an
+almost equal number of heroes, and a whole bouquet of heroines. But I
+do not begrudge this extravagance. It is necessary, and that settles it.
+
+Then, again, I want to answer in this preface a number of questions by
+readers who kindly consented to become interested in the stories when
+they appeared in the _Saturday Evening Post_. Siwash isn't Michigan in
+disguise. It isn't Kansas. It isn't Knox. It isn't Minnesota. It isn't
+Tuskegee, Texas, or Tufts. It is just Siwash College. I built it myself
+with a typewriter out of memories, legends, and contributed tales from a
+score of colleges. I have tried to locate it myself a dozen times, but I
+can't. I have tried to place my thumb on it firmly and say, "There, darn
+you, stay put." But no halfback was ever so elusive as this infernal
+college. Just as I have it definitely located on the Knox College
+campus, which I myself once infested, I look up to find it on the Kansas
+prairies. I surround it with infinite caution and attempt to nail it
+down there. Instead, I find it in Minnesota with a strong Norwegian
+accent running through the course of study. Worse than that, I often
+find it in two or three places at once. It is harder to corner than a
+flea. I never saw such a peripatetic school.
+
+That is only the least of my troubles, too. The college itself is never
+twice the same. Sometimes I am amazed at its size and perfection, by the
+grandeur of its gymnasium and the colossal lines of its stadium. But at
+other times I cannot find the stadium at all, and the gymnasium has
+shrunk until it looks amazingly like the old wooden barn in which we
+once built up Sandow biceps at Knox. I never saw such a college to get
+lost in, either. I know as well as anything that to get to the Eta Bita
+Pie house, you go north from the old bricks, past the new science hall
+and past Browning Hall. But often when I start north from the campus, I
+find my way blocked by the stadium, and when I try to dodge it, I run
+into the Alfalfa Delt House, and the Eatemalive boarding club, and other
+places which belong properly to the south. And when I go south I
+frequently lose sight of the college altogether, and can't for the life
+of me remember what the library tower looks like or whether the
+theological school is just falling down, or is to be built next year; or
+whether I ought to turn to my right, and ask for directions at Prexie's
+house, or turn to my left and crawl under a freight train which blocks a
+crossing on the Hither, Yonder and Elsewhere Railroad. If you think it
+is an easy task to carry a whole college in your head without getting it
+jumbled, just try it a while.
+
+Then, again, the Siwash people puzzle me. Professor Grubb is always a
+trial. That man alternates a smooth-shaven face with a full beard in the
+most startling manner. Petey Simmons is short and flaxen-haired, long
+and black-haired, and wide and hatchet-faced in turns, depending on the
+illustrator. I never know Ole Skjarsen when I see him for the same
+reason. As for Prince Hogboom, Allie Bangs, Keg Rearick and the rest of
+them, nobody knows how they look but the artists who illustrated the
+stories; and as I read each number and viewed the smiling faces of
+these students, I murmured, "Goodness, how you have changed!"
+
+So I have struggled along as best I could to administer the affairs of a
+college which is located nowhere, has no student body, has no endowment,
+never looks the same twice, and cannot be reached by any reliable route.
+The situation is impossible. I must locate it somewhere. If you are
+interested in the college when you have read these few stories, suppose
+you hunt for it wherever college boys are full of applied deviltry and
+college girls are distractingly fair; where it is necessary to win
+football games in order to be half-way contented with the universe;
+where the spring weather is too wonderful to be wasted on College
+Algebra or History of Art; and where, whatever you do, or whoever you
+like, or however you live, you can't forget it, no matter how long you
+work or worry afterward.
+
+There! I can't mark it on the map, but if you have ever worried a
+college faculty you'll know the way.
+
+                              GEORGE FITCH.
+          July, 1911.
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+ CHAPTER                                                     PAGE
+
+
+    I OLE SKJARSEN'S FIRST TOUCHDOWN                           1
+
+   II INITIATING OLE                                          28
+
+  III WHEN GREEK MEETS GROUCH                                 50
+
+   IV A FUNERAL THAT FLASHED IN THE PAN                       78
+
+    V COLLEGES WHILE YOU WAIT                                105
+
+   VI THE GREEK DOUBLE CROSS                                 135
+
+  VII TAKING PACE FROM FATHER TIME                           169
+
+ VIII FRAPPÉD FOOTBALL                                       196
+
+   IX CUPID--THAT OLD COLLEGE CHUM                           223
+
+    X VOTES FROM WOMEN                                       253
+
+   XI SIC TRANSIT GLORIA ALL-AMERICA                         284
+
+
+
+
+ ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ Twenty-five yards with four Muggledorfer
+ men hanging on his legs                           _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                             PAGE
+
+ "Aye ent care to stop," he said. "Aye kent suit
+ you, Master Bost"                                            20
+
+ He pulled himself together and touched Ole gently            26
+
+ There wasn't a college anywhere around us that
+ didn't have Ole's hoofmarks all over its pride               33
+
+ Martha caused some mild sensation                            63
+
+ My, but that girl was a wonder!                              74
+
+ "Har's das spy!" he yelled. "Kill him, fallers;
+ he ban a spy!"                                              120
+
+ We spent another five minutes hoisting him aboard
+ a prehistoric plug                                          125
+
+ He may have been fat, but how he could run!                 132
+
+ Naturally I was somewhat dazzled                            147
+
+ He was so bashful that his voice blushed when he
+ used it                                                     151
+
+ With our colors on and four particularly wicked-looking
+ chair legs in our hands                                     167
+
+ Our peculiar style of pushing a football right
+ through the thorax of the whole middle west                 205
+
+ "If you don't like that beanbag, eat it"                    220
+
+ He invited Miss Spencer to go street-car riding
+ with him                                                    246
+
+ You can always spot these family friends                    252
+
+ It was a blow between the eyes                              264
+
+ "How are all the other good old chaps?" she said            270
+
+ Why, they even made us cut chapel to go walking
+ with them                                                   280
+
+
+
+
+AT GOOD OLD SIWASH
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+OLE SKJARSEN'S FIRST TOUCHDOWN
+
+
+Am I going to the game Saturday? Am I? Me? Am I going to eat some more
+food this year? Am I going to draw my pay this month? Am I going to do
+any more breathing after I get this lungful used up? All foolish
+questions, pal. Very silly conversation. Pshaw!
+
+Am I going to the game, you ask me? Is the sun going to get up
+to-morrow? You couldn't keep me away from that game if you put a
+protective tariff of seventy-eight per cent ad valorem, whatever that
+means, on the front gate. I came out to this town on business, and I'll
+have to take an extra fare train home to make up the time; but what of
+that? I'm going to the game, and when the Siwash team comes out I'm
+going to get up and give as near a correct imitation of a Roman mob and
+a Polish riot as my throat will stand; and if we put a crimp in the
+large-footed, humpy-shouldered behemoths we're going up against this
+afternoon, I'm going out to-night and burn the City Hall. Any Siwash man
+who is a gentleman would do it. I'll probably have to run like thunder
+to beat some of them to it.
+
+You know how it is, old man. Or maybe you don't, because you made all
+your end runs on the Glee Club. But I played football all through my
+college course and the microbe is still there. In the fall I think
+football, talk football, dream football, even though I haven't had a
+suit on for six years. And when I go out to the field and see little old
+Siwash lining up against a bunch of overgrown hippos from a university
+with a catalogue as thick as a city directory, the old
+mud-and-perspiration smell gets in my nostrils, and the desire to get
+under the bunch and feel the feet jabbing into my ribs boils up so
+strong that I have to hold on to myself with both hands. If you've never
+sat on a hard board and wanted to be between two halfbacks with your
+hands on their shoulders, and the quarter ready to sock a ball into your
+solar plexus, and eleven men daring you to dodge 'em, and nine thousand
+friends and enemies raising Cain and keeping him well propped up in the
+grandstands--if you haven't had that want you wouldn't know a healthy,
+able-bodied want if you ran into it on the street.
+
+Of course, I never got any further along than a scrub. But what's the
+odds? A broken bone feels just as grand to a scrub as to a star. I
+sometimes think a scrub gets more real football knowledge than a varsity
+man, because he doesn't have to addle his brain by worrying about
+holding his job and keeping his wind, and by dreaming that he has
+fumbled a punt and presented ninety-five yards to the hereditary enemies
+of his college. I played scrub football five years, four of 'em under
+Bost, the greatest coach who ever put wings on the heels of a
+two-hundred-pound hunk of meat; and while my ribs never lasted long
+enough to put me on the team, what I didn't learn about the game you
+could put in the other fellow's eye.
+
+Say, but it's great, learning football under a good coach. It's the
+finest training a man can get anywhere on this old globule. Football is
+only the smallest thing you learn. You learn how to be patient when what
+you want to do is to chew somebody up and spit him into the gutter. You
+learn to control your temper when it is on the high speed, with the
+throttle jerked wide open and buzzing like a hornet convention. You
+learn, by having it told you, just how small and foolish and
+insignificant you are, and how well this earth could stagger along
+without you if some one were to take a fly-killer and mash you with it.
+And you learn all this at the time of life when your head is swelling up
+until you mistake it for a planet, and regard whatever you say as a
+volcanic disturbance.
+
+I suppose you think, like the rest of the chaps who never came out to
+practice but observed the game from the dollar-and-a-half seats, that
+being coached in football is like being instructed in German or
+calculus. You are told what to do and how to do it, and then you
+recite. Far from it, my boy! They don't bother telling you what to do
+and how to do it on a big football field. Mostly they tell you what to
+do and how you do it. And they do it artistically, too. They use plenty
+of language. A football coach is picked out for his ready tongue. He
+must be a conversationalist. He must be able to talk to a greenhorn,
+with fine shoulders and a needle-shaped head, until that greenhorn would
+pick up the ball and take it through a Sioux war dance to get away from
+the conversation. You can't reason with football men. They're not
+logical, most of them. They are selected for their heels and shoulders
+and their leg muscles, and not for their ability to look at you with
+luminous eyes and say: "Yes, Professor, I think I understand." The way
+to make 'em understand is to talk about them. Any man can understand you
+while you are telling him that if he were just a little bit slower he
+would have to be tied to the earth to keep up with it. That hurts his
+pride. And when you hurt his pride he takes it out on whatever is in
+front of him--which is the other team. Never get in front of a football
+player when you are coaching him.
+
+But this brings me to the subject of Bost again. Bost is still coaching
+Siwash. This makes his 'steenth year. I guess he can stay there forever.
+He's coached all these years and has never used the same adjective to
+the same man twice. There's a record for you! He's a little man, Bost
+is. He played end on some Western team when he only weighed one hundred
+and forty. Got his football knowledge there. But where he got his
+vocabulary is still a mystery. He has a way of convincing a man that a
+dill pickle would make a better guard than he is, and of making that man
+so jealous of the pickle that he will perform perfectly unreasonable
+feats for a week to beat it out for the place. He has a way of saying
+"Hurry up," with a few descriptive adjectives tacked on, that makes a
+man rub himself in the stung place for an hour; and oh, how mad he can
+make you while he is telling you pleasantly that while the little fellow
+playing against you is only a prep and has sloping shoulders and weighs
+one hundred and eleven stripped, he is making you look like a bale of
+hay that has been dumped by mistake on an athletic field. And when he
+gets a team in the gymnasium between halves, with the game going wrong,
+and stands up before them and sizes up their insect nerve and rubber
+backbone and hereditary awkwardness and incredible talent in doing the
+wrong thing, to say nothing of describing each individual blunder in
+that queer nasal clack of his--well, I'd rather be tied up in a great
+big frying-pan over a good hot stove for the same length of time, any
+day in the week. The reason Bost is a great coach is because his men
+don't dare play poorly. When they do he talks to them. If he would only
+hit them, or skin them by inches, or shoot at them, they wouldn't mind
+it so much; but when you get on the field with him and realize that if
+you miss a tackle he is going to get you out before the whole gang and
+tell you what a great mistake the Creator made when He put joints in
+your arms instead of letting them stick out stiff as they do any other
+signpost, you're not going to miss that tackle, that's all.
+
+When Bost came to Siwash he succeeded a line of coaches who had been
+telling the fellows to get down low and hit the line hard, and had been
+showing them how to do it very patiently. Nice fellows, those coaches.
+Perfect gentlemen. Make you proud to associate with them. They could
+take a herd of green farmer boys, with wrists like mules' ankles, and by
+Thanksgiving they would have them familiar with all the rudiments of the
+game. By that time the season would be over and all the schools in the
+vicinity would have beaten us by big scores. The next year the last
+year's crop of big farmer boys would stay at home to husk corn, and the
+coach would begin all over on a new crop. The result was, we were a dub
+school at football. Any school that could scare up a good rangy halfback
+and a line that could hold sheep could get up an adding festival at our
+expense any time. We lived in a perpetual state of fear. Some day we
+felt that the normal school would come down and beat us. That would be
+the limit of disgrace. After that there would be nothing left to do but
+disband the college and take to drink to forget the past.
+
+But Bost changed all that in one year. He didn't care to show any one
+how to play football. He was just interested in making the player afraid
+not to play it. When you went down the field on a punt you knew that if
+you missed your man he would tell you when you came back that two stone
+hitching-posts out of three could get past you in a six-foot alley. If
+you missed a punt you could expect to be told that you might catch a
+haystack by running with your arms wide open, but that was no way to
+catch a football. Maybe things like that don't sound jabby when two
+dozen men hear them! They kept us catching punts between classes, and
+tackling each other all the way to our rooms and back. We simply had to
+play football to keep from being bawled out. It's an awful thing to have
+a coach with a tongue like a cheese knife swinging away at you, and to
+know that if you get mad and quit, no one but the dear old Coll. will
+suffer--but it gets the results. They use the same system in the East,
+but there they only swear at a man, I believe. Siwash is a mighty proper
+college and you can't swear on its campus, whatever else you do.
+Swearing is only a lazy man's substitute for thinking, anyway; and Bost
+wasn't lazy. He preferred the descriptive; he sat up nights thinking it
+out.
+
+We began to see the results before Bost had been tracing our pedigrees
+for two weeks. First game of the season was with that little old dinky
+Normal School which had been scaring us so for the past five years. We
+had been satisfied to push some awkward halfback over the line once,
+and then hold on to the enemy so tight he couldn't run; and we started
+out that year in the same old way. First half ended 0 to 0, with our
+boys pretty satisfied because they had kept the ball in Normal's
+territory. Bost led the team and the substitutes into the overgrown barn
+we used for a gymnasium, and while we were still patting ourselves
+approvingly in our minds he cut loose:
+
+"You pasty-faced, overfed, white-livered beanbag experts, what do you
+mean by running a beauty show instead of a football game?" he yelled.
+"Do you suppose I came out here to be art director of a statuary
+exhibit? Does any one of you imagine for a holy minute that he knows the
+difference between a football game and ushering in a church? Don't fool
+yourselves. You don't; you don't know anything. All you ever knew about
+football I could carve on granite and put in my eye and never feel it.
+Nothing to nothing against a crowd of farmer boys who haven't known a
+football from a duck's egg for more than a week! Bah! If I ever turned
+the Old Folks' Home loose on you doll babies they'd run up a century
+while you were hunting for your handkerchiefs. Jackson, what do you
+suppose a halfback is for? I don't want cloak models. I want a man who
+can stick his head down and run. Don't be afraid of that bean of yours;
+it hasn't got anything worth saving in it. When you get the ball you're
+supposed to run with it and not sit around trying to hatch it. You,
+Saunders! You held that other guard just like a sweet-pea vine. Where
+did you ever learn that sweet, lovely way of falling down on your nose
+when a real man sneezes at you? Did you ever hear of sand? Eat it! Eat
+it! Fill yourself up with it. I want you to get in that line this half
+and stop something or I'll make you play left end in a fancy-work club.
+Johnson, the only way to get you around the field is to put you on
+wheels and haul you. Next time you grow fast to the ground I'm going to
+violate some forestry regulations and take an axe to you. Same to you,
+Briggs. You'd make the All-American boundary posts, but that's all.
+Vance, I picked you for a quarterback, but I made a mistake; you ought
+to be sorting eggs. That ball isn't red hot. You don't have to let go of
+it as soon as you get it. Don't be afraid, nobody will step on you. This
+isn't a rude game. It's only a game of post-office. You needn't act so
+nervous about it. Maybe some of the big girls will kiss you, but it
+won't hurt."
+
+Bost stopped for breath and eyed us. We were a sick-looking crowd. You
+could almost see the remarks sticking into us and quivering. We had come
+in feeling pretty virtuous, and what we were getting was a hideous
+surprise.
+
+"Now I want to tell this tea-party something," continued Bost. "Either
+you're going out on that field and score thirty points this last half or
+I'm going to let the girls of Siwash play your football for you. I'm
+tired of coaching men that aren't good at anything but falling down
+scientifically when they're tackled. There isn't a broken nose among
+you. Every one of you will run back five yards to pick out a soft spot
+to fall on. It's got to stop. You're going to hold on to that ball this
+half and take it places. If some little fellow from Normal crosses his
+fingers and says 'naughty, naughty,' don't fall on the ball and yell
+'down' until they can hear it uptown. Thirty points is what I want out
+of you this half, and if you don't get 'em--well, you just dare to come
+back here without them, that's all. Now get out on that field and jostle
+somebody. Git!"
+
+Did we git? Well, rather. We were so mad our clothes smoked. We would
+have quit the game right there and resigned from the team, but we didn't
+dare to. Bost would have talked to us some more. And we didn't dare not
+to make those thirty points, either. It was an awful tough job, but we
+did it with a couple over. We raged like wild beasts. We scared those
+gentle Normalites out of their boots. I can't imagine how we ever got it
+into our heads that they could play football, anyway. When it was all
+over we went back to the gymnasium feeling righteously triumphant, and
+had another hour with Bost in which he took us all apart without
+anæsthetics, and showed us how Nature would have done a better job if
+she had used a better grade of lumber in our composition.
+
+That day made the Siwash team. The school went wild over the score. Bost
+rounded up two or three more good players, and every afternoon he
+lashed us around the field with that wire-edged tongue of his. On
+Saturdays we played, and oh, how we worked! In the first half we were
+afraid of what Bost would say to us when we came off the field. In the
+second half we were mad at what he had said. And how he did drive us
+down the field in practice! I can remember whole cross sections of his
+talk yet:
+
+"Faster, faster, you scows. Line up. Quick! Johnson, are you waiting for
+a stone-mason to set you? Snap the ball. Tear into them. Low! Low! Hi-i!
+You end, do you think you're the quarter pole in a horse race? Nine men
+went past you that time. If you can't touch 'em drop 'em a souvenir
+card. Line up. Faster, faster! Oh, thunder, hurry up! If you ran a
+funeral, center, the corpse would spoil on your hands. Wow! Fumble! Drop
+on that ball. Drop on it! Hogboom, you'd fumble a loving-cup. Use your
+hand instead of your jaw to catch that ball. It isn't good to eat.
+That's four chances you've had. I could lose two games a day if I had
+you all the time. Now try that signal again--low, you linemen; there's
+no girls watching you. Snap it; snap it. Great Scott! Say, Hogboom, come
+here. When you get that ball, don't think we gave it to you to nurse.
+You're supposed to start the same day with the line. We give you that
+ball to take forward. Have you got to get a legal permit to start those
+legs of yours? You'd make a good vault to store footballs in, but you're
+too stationary for a fullback. Now I'll give you one more chance--"
+
+And maybe Hogboom wouldn't go some with that chance!
+
+In a month we had a team that wouldn't have used past Siwash teams to
+hold its sweaters. It was mad all the time, and it played the game
+carnivorously. Siwash was delirious with joy. The whole school turned
+out for practice, and to see those eleven men snapping through signals
+up and down the field as fast as an ordinary man could run just
+congested us with happiness. You've no idea what a lovely time of the
+year autumn is when you can go out after classes and sit on a pine seat
+in the soft dusk and watch your college team pulling off end runs in as
+pretty formation as if they were chorus girls, while you discuss lazily
+with your friends just how many points it is going to run up on the
+neighboring schools. I never expect to be a Captain of Industry, but it
+couldn't make me feel any more contented or powerful or complacent than
+to be a busted-up scrub in Siwash, with a team like that to watch. I'm
+pretty sure of that.
+
+But, happy as we were, Bost wasn't nearly content. He had ideals. I
+believe one of them must have been to run that team through a couple of
+brick flats without spoiling the formation. Nothing satisfied him. He
+was particularly distressed about the fullback. Hogboom was a good
+fellow and took signal practice perfectly, but he was no fiend. He
+lacked the vivacity of a real, first-class Bengal tiger. He wouldn't
+eat any one alive. He'd run until he was pulled down, but you never
+expected him to explode in the midst of seven hostiles and ricochet down
+the field for forty yards. He never jumped over two men and on to
+another, and he never dodged two ways at once and laid out three men
+with stiff arms on his way to the goal. It wasn't his style. He was good
+for two and a half yards every time, but that didn't suit Bost. He was
+after statistics, and what does a three-yard buck amount to when you
+want 70 to 0 scores?
+
+The result of this dissatisfaction was Ole Skjarsen. Late in September
+Bost disappeared for three days and came back leading Ole by a rope--at
+least, he was towing him by an old carpet-bag when we sighted him. Bost
+found him in a lumber camp, he afterward told us, and had to explain to
+him what a college was before he would quit his job. He thought it was
+something good to eat at first, I believe. Ole was a timid young
+Norwegian giant, with a rick of white hair and a reënforced concrete
+physique. He escaped from his clothes in all directions, and was so
+green and bashful that you would have thought we were cannibals from the
+way he shied at us--though, as that was the year the bright hat-ribbons
+came in, I can't blame him. He wasn't like anything we had ever seen
+before in college. He was as big as a carthorse, as graceful as a dray
+and as meek as a missionary. He had a double width smile and a thin
+little old faded voice that made you think you could tip him over and
+shine your shoes on him with impunity. But I wouldn't have tried it for
+a month's allowance. His voice and his arms didn't harmonize worth a
+cent. They were as big as ordinary legs--those arms, and they ended in
+hands that could have picked up a football and mislaid it among their
+fingers.
+
+No wonder Ole was a sensation. He didn't look exactly like football
+material to us, I'll admit. He seemed more especially designed for light
+derrick work. But we trusted Bost implicitly by that time and we gave
+him a royal reception. We crowded around him as if he had been a T. R.
+capture straight from Africa. Everybody helped him register third prep,
+with business-college extras. Then we took him out, harnessed him in
+football armor, and set to work to teach him the game.
+
+Bost went right to work on Ole in a businesslike manner. He tossed him
+the football and said: "Catch it." Ole watched it sail past and then
+tore after it like a pup retrieving a stick. He got it in a few minutes
+and brought it back to where Bost was raving.
+
+"See here, you overgrown fox terrier," he shouted, "catch it on the fly.
+Here!" He hurled it at him.
+
+"Aye ent seen no fly," said Ole, allowing the ball to pass on as he
+conversed.
+
+"You cotton-headed Scandinavian cattleship ballast, catch that ball in
+your arms when I throw it to you, and don't let go of it!" shrieked
+Bost, shooting it at him again.
+
+"Oll right," said Ole patiently. He cornered the ball after a short
+struggle and stood hugging it faithfully.
+
+"Toss it back, toss it back!" howled Bost, jumping up and down.
+
+"Yu tal me to hold it," said Ole reproachfully, hugging it tighter than
+ever.
+
+"Drop it, you Mammoth Cave of ignorance!" yelled Bost. "If I had your
+head I'd sell it for cordwood. Drop it!"
+
+Ole dropped the ball placidly. "Das ban fule game," he smiled dazedly.
+"Aye ent care for it. Eny faller got a Yewsharp?"
+
+That was the opening chapter of Ole's instruction. The rest were just
+like it. You had to tell him to do a thing. You then had to show him how
+to do it. You then had to tell him how to stop doing it. After that you
+had to explain that he wasn't to refrain forever--just until he had to
+do it again. Then you had to persuade him to do it again. He was as
+good-natured as a lost puppy, and just as hard to reason with. In three
+nights Bost was so hoarse that he couldn't talk. He had called Ole
+everything in the dictionary that is fit to print; and the knowledge
+that Ole didn't understand more than a hundredth part of it, and didn't
+mind that, was wormwood to his soul.
+
+For all that, we could see that if any one could teach Ole the game he
+would make a fine player. He was as hard as flint and so fast on his
+feet that we couldn't tackle him any more than we could have tackled a
+jack-rabbit. He learned to catch the ball in a night, and as for
+defense--his one-handed catches of flying players would have made a
+National League fielder envious. But with all of it he was perfectly
+useless. You had to start him, stop him, back him, speed him up,
+throttle him down and run him off the field just as if he had been a
+close-coupled, next year's model scootcart. If we could have rigged up a
+driver's seat and chauffeured Ole, it would have been all right. But
+every other method of trying to get him to understand what he was
+expected to do was a failure. He just grinned, took orders, executed
+them, and waited for more. When a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound man takes
+a football, wades through eleven frantic scrubs, shakes them all off,
+and then stops dead with a clear field to the goal before him--because
+his instructions ran out when he shook the last scrub--you can be
+pardoned for feeling hopeless about him.
+
+That was what happened the day before the Muggledorfer game. Bost had
+been working Ole at fullback all evening. He and the captain had steered
+him up and down the field as carefully as if he had been a sea-going
+yacht. It was a wonderful sight. Ole was under perfect control. He
+advanced the ball five yards, ten yards, or twenty at command. Nothing
+could stop him. The scrubs represented only so many doormats to him.
+Every time he made a play he stopped at the latter end of it for
+instructions.
+
+When he stopped the last time, with nothing before him but the goal, and
+asked placidly, "Vere skoll I take das ball now, Master Bost?" I thought
+the coach would expire of the heat. He positively steamed with
+suppressed emotion. He swelled and got purple about the face. We were
+alarmed and were getting ready to hoop him like a barrel when he found
+his tongue at last.
+
+"You pale-eyed, prehistoric mudhead," he spluttered, "I've spent a week
+trying to get through that skull lining of yours. It's no use, you field
+boulder. Where do you keep your brains? Give me a chance at them. I just
+want to get into them one minute and stir them up with my finger. To
+think that I have to use you to play football when they are paying five
+dollars and a half for ox meat in Kansas City. Skjarsen, do you know
+anything at all?"
+
+"Aye ban getting gude eddication," said Ole serenely. "Aye tank I ban
+college faller purty sune, I don't know. I like I skoll understand all
+das har big vorts yu make."
+
+"You'll understand them, I don't think," moaned Bost. "You couldn't
+understand a swift kick in the ribs. You are a fool. Understand that,
+muttonhead?"
+
+Ole understood. "Vy for yu call me fule?" he said indignantly. "Aye du
+yust vat you say."
+
+"Ar-r-r-r!" bubbled Bost, walking around himself three or four times.
+"You do just what I say! Of course you do. Did I tell you to stop in the
+middle of the field? What would Muggledorfer do to you if you stopped
+there?"
+
+"Yu ent tal me to go on," said Ole sullenly. "Aye go on, Aye gass, pooty
+qveek den."
+
+"You bet you'll go on," said Bost. "Now, look here, you sausage
+material, to-morrow you play fullback. You stop everything that comes at
+you from the other side. Hear? You catch the ball when it comes to you.
+Hear? And when they give you the ball you take it, and don't you dare to
+stop with it. Get that? Can I get that into your head without a drill
+and a blast? If you dare to stop with that ball I'll ship you back to
+the lumber camp in a cattle car. Stop in the middle of the field--Ow!"
+
+But at this point we took Bost away.
+
+The next afternoon we dressed Ole up in his armor--he invariably got it
+on wrong side out if we didn't help him--and took him out to the field.
+We confidently expected to promenade all over Muggledorfer--their coach
+was an innocent child beside Bost--and that was the reason why Ole was
+going to play. It didn't matter much what he did.
+
+Ole was just coming to a boil when we got him into his clothes. Bost's
+remarks had gotten through his hide at last. He was pretty slow, Ole
+was, but he had begun getting mad the night before and had kept at the
+job all night and all morning. By afternoon he was seething, mostly in
+Norwegian. The injustice of being called a muttonhead all week for not
+obeying orders, and then being called a mudhead for stopping for orders,
+churned his soul, to say nothing of his language. He only averaged one
+English word in three, as he told us on the way out that to-day he was
+going to do exactly as he had been told or fill a martyr's grave--only
+that wasn't the way he put it.
+
+The Muggledorfers were a pruny-looking lot. We had the game won when our
+team came out and glared at them. Bost had filled most of the positions
+with regular young mammoths, and when you dressed them up in football
+armor they were enough to make a Dreadnought a little nervous. The
+Muggleses kicked off to our team, and for a few plays we plowed along
+five or ten yards at a time. Then Ole was given the ball. He went
+twenty-five yards. Any other man would have been crushed to earth in
+five. He just waded through the middle of the line and went down the
+field, a moving mass of wriggling men. It was a wonderful play. They
+disinterred him at last and he started straight across the field for
+Bost.
+
+"Aye ent mean to stop, Master Bost," he shouted. "Dese fallers har, dey
+squash me down--"
+
+We hauled him into line and went to work again. Ole had performed so
+well that the captain called his signal again. This time I hope I may be
+roasted in a subway in July if Ole didn't run twenty-five yards with
+four Muggledorfer men hanging on his legs. We stood up and yelled until
+our teeth ached. It took about five minutes to get Ole dug out, and then
+he started for Bost again.
+
+"Honest, Master Bost, Aye ent mean to stop," he said imploringly. "Aye
+yust tal you, dese fallers ban devils. Aye fule dem naxt time--"
+
+"Line up and shut up," the captain shouted. The ball wasn't over twenty
+yards from the line, and as a matter of course the quarter shot it back
+to Ole. He put his head down, gave one mad-bull plunge, laid a windrow
+of Muggledorfer players out on either side, and shot over the goal line
+like a locomotive.
+
+We rose up to cheer a few lines, but stopped to stare. Ole didn't stop
+at the goal line. He didn't stop at the fence. He put up one hand,
+hurdled it, and disappeared across the campus like a young whirlwind.
+
+"He doesn't know enough to stop!" yelled Bost, rushing up to the fence.
+"Hustle up, you fellows, and bring him back!"
+
+[Illustration: "Aye ent care to stop," he said "Aye kent suit you,
+Master Bost"
+                    _Page 24_]
+
+Three or four of us jumped the fence, but it was a hopeless game. Ole
+was disappearing up the campus and across the street. The Muggledorfer
+team was nonplussed and sort of indignant. To be bowled over by a
+cyclone, and then to have said cyclone break up the game by running away
+with the ball was to them a new idea in football. It wasn't to those of
+us who knew Ole, however. One of us telephoned down to the _Leader_
+office where Hinckley, an old team man, worked, and asked him to head
+off Ole and send him back. Muggledorfer kindly consented to call time,
+and we started after the fugitive ourselves.
+
+Ten minutes later we met Hinckley downtown. He looked as if he had had a
+slight argument with a thirteen-inch shell. He was also mad.
+
+"What was that you asked me to stop?" he snorted, pinning himself
+together. "Was it a gorilla or a high explosive? When did you fellows
+begin importing steam rollers for the team? I asked him to stop. I
+ordered him to stop. Then I went around in front of him to stop him--and
+he ran right over me. I held on for thirty yards, but that's no way to
+travel. I could have gone to the next town just as well, though. What
+sort of a game is this, and where is that tow-headed holy terror bound
+for?"
+
+We gave the answer up, but we couldn't give up Ole. He was too valuable
+to lose. How to catch him was the sticker. An awful uproar in the street
+gave us an idea. It was Ted Harris in the only auto in town--one of the
+earliest brands of sneeze vehicles. In a minute more four of us were in,
+and Ted was chiveying the thing up the street.
+
+If you've never chased an escaping fullback in one of those pioneer
+automobiles you've got something coming. Take it all around, a good,
+swift man, running all the time, could almost keep ahead of one. We
+pumped up a tire, fixed a wire or two, and cranked up a few times; and
+the upshot of it was we were two miles out on the state road before we
+caught sight of Ole.
+
+He was trotting briskly when we caught up with him, the ball under his
+arm, and that patient, resigned expression on his face that he always
+had when Bost cussed him. "Stop, Ole," I yelled; "this is no Marathon.
+Come back. Climb in here with us."
+
+Ole shook his head and let out a notch of speed.
+
+"Stop, you mullethead," yelled Simpson above the roar of the auto--those
+old machines could roar some, too. "What do you mean by running off with
+our ball? You're not supposed to do hare-and-hounds in football."
+
+Ole kept on running. We drove the car on ahead, stopped it across the
+road, and jumped out to stop him. When the attempt was over three of us
+picked up the fourth and put him aboard. Ole had tramped on us and had
+climbed over the auto.
+
+Force wouldn't do, that was plain. "Where are you going, Ole?" we
+pleaded as we tore along beside him.
+
+"Aye ent know," he panted, laboring up a hill; "das ban fule game, Aye
+tenk."
+
+"Come on back and play some more," we urged. "Bost won't like it, your
+running all over the country this way."
+
+"Das ban my orders," panted Ole. "Aye ent no fule, yentlemen; Aye know
+ven Aye ban doing right teng. Master Bost he say 'Keep on running!' Aye
+gass I run till hal freeze on top. Aye ent know why. Master Bost he
+know, I tenk."
+
+"This is awful," said Lambert, the manager of the team. "He's taken
+Bost literally again--the chump. He'll run till he lands up in those
+pine woods again. And that ball cost the association five dollars.
+Besides, we want him. What are we going to do?"
+
+"I know," I said. "We're going back to get Bost. I guess the man who
+started him can stop him."
+
+We left Ole still plugging north and ran back to town. The game was
+still hanging fire. Bost was tearing his hair. Of course, the
+Muggledorfer fellows could have insisted on playing, but they weren't
+anxious. Ole or no Ole, we could have walked all over them, and they
+knew it. Besides, they were having too much fun with Bost. They were
+sitting around, Indian-like, in their blankets, and every three minutes
+their captain would go and ask Bost with perfect politeness whether he
+thought they had better continue the game there or move it on to the
+next town in time to catch his fullback as he came through.
+
+"Of course, we are in no hurry," he would explain pleasantly; "we're
+just here for amusement, anyway; and it's as much fun watching you try
+to catch your players as it is to get scored on. Why don't you hobble
+them, Mr. Bost? A fifty-yard rope wouldn't interfere much with that gay
+young Percheron of yours, and it would save you lots of time rounding
+him up. Do you have to use a lariat when you put his harness on?"
+
+Fancy Bost having to take all that conversation, with no adequate reply
+to make. When I got there he was blue in the face. It didn't take him
+half a second to decide what to do. Telling the captain of the Siwash
+team to go ahead and play if Muggledorfer insisted, and on no account to
+use that 32 double-X play except on first downs, he jumped into the
+machine and we started for Ole.
+
+There were no speed records in those days. Wouldn't have made any
+difference if there were. Harris just turned on all the juice his old
+double-opposed motor could soak up, and when we hit the wooden crossings
+on the outskirts of town we fellows in the tonneau went up so high that
+we changed sides coming down. It wasn't over twenty minutes till we
+sighted a little cloud of dust just beyond a little town to the north.
+Pretty soon we saw it was Ole. He was still doing his six miles per. We
+caught up and Bost hopped out, still mad.
+
+"Where in Billy-be-blamed are you going, you human trolley car?" he
+spluttered, sprinting along beside Skjarsen. "What do you mean by
+breaking up a game in the middle and vamoosing with the ball? Do you
+think we're going to win this game on mileage? Turn around, you chump,
+and climb into this car."
+
+Ole looked around him sadly. He kept on running as he did. "Aye ent care
+to stop," he said. "Aye kent suit you, Master Bost. You tal me Aye skoll
+du a teng, den you cuss me for duing et. You tal me not to du a teng and
+you cuss me some more den. Aye tenk I yust keep on a-running, lak yu
+tal me tu last night. Et ent so hard bein' cussed ven yu ban running."
+
+"I tell you to stop, you potato-top," gasped Bost. By this time he was
+fifteen yards behind and losing at every step. He had wasted too much
+breath on oratory. We picked him up in the car and set him alongside of
+Ole again.
+
+"See here, Ole, I'm tired of this," he said, sprinting up by him again.
+"The game's waiting. Come on back. You're making a fool of yourself."
+
+"Eny teng Aye du Aye ban beeg fule," said Ole gloomily. "Aye yust keep
+on runnin'. Fallers ent got breath to call me fule ven Aye run. Aye tenk
+das best vay."
+
+We picked Bost up again thirty yards behind. Maybe he would have run
+better if he hadn't choked so in his conversation. In another minute we
+landed him abreast of Ole again. He got out and sprinted for the third
+time. He wabbled as he did it.
+
+"Ole," he panted, "I've been mistaken in you. You are all right, Ole. I
+never saw a more intelligent fellow. I won't cuss you any more, Ole. If
+you'll stop now we'll take you back in an automobile--hold on there a
+minute; can't you see I'm all out of breath?"
+
+"Aye ban gude faller, den?" asked Ole, letting out another link of
+speed.
+
+"You are a"--puff-puff--"peach, Ole," gasped Bost.
+"I'll"--puff-puff--"never cuss you again. Please"--puff-puff--"stop!
+Oh, hang it, I'm all in." And Bost sat down in the road.
+
+A hundred yards on we noticed Ole slacken speed. "It's sinking through
+his skull," said Harris eagerly. In another minute he had stopped. We
+picked up Bost again and ran up to him. He surveyed us long and
+critically.
+
+"Das ban qveer masheen," he said finally. "Aye tenk Aye lak Aye skoll be
+riding back in it. Aye ent care for das futball game, Aye gass. It ban
+tu much running in it."
+
+We took Ole back to town in twenty-two minutes, three chickens, a dog
+and a back spring. It was close to five o'clock when he ran out on the
+field again. The Muggledorfer team was still waiting. Time was no object
+to them. They would only play ten minutes, but in that ten minutes Ole
+made three scores. Five substitutes stood back of either goal and asked
+him with great politeness to stop as he tore over the line. And he did
+it. If any one else had run six miles between halves he would have
+stopped a good deal short of the line. But as far as we could see, it
+hadn't winded Ole.
+
+Bost went home by himself that night after the game, not stopping even
+to assure us that as a team we were beneath his contempt. The next
+afternoon he was, if anything, a little more vitriolic than ever--but
+not with Ole. Toward the middle of the signal practice he pulled himself
+together and touched Ole gently.
+
+[Illustration: He pulled himself together and touched Ole gently
+                    _Page 26_]
+
+"My dear Mr. Skjarsen," he said apologetically, "if it will not annoy
+you too much, would you mind running the same way the rest of the team
+does? I don't insist on it, mind you, but it looks so much better to the
+audience, you know."
+
+"Jas," said Ole; "Aye ban fule, Aye gass, but yu ban tu polite to say
+it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+INITIATING OLE
+
+
+Were you ever Hamburgered by a real, live college fraternity? I mean,
+were you ever initiated into full brotherhood by a Greek-letter society
+with the aid of a baseball bat, a sausage-making machine, a stick of
+dynamite and a corn-sheller? What's that? You say you belong to the
+Up-to-Date Wood-choppers and have taken the josh degree in the Noble
+Order of Prong-Horned Wapiti? Forget it. Those aren't initiations. They
+are rest cures. I went into one of those societies which give horse-play
+initiations for middle-aged daredevils last year and was bored to death
+because I forgot to bring my knitting. They are stiff enough for fat
+business men who never do anything more exciting than to fall over the
+lawn mower in the cellar once a year; but, compared with a genuine,
+eighteen-donkey-power college frat initiation with a Spanish Inquisition
+attachment, the little degree teams, made up of grandfathers, feel like
+a slap on the wrist delivered by a young lady in frail health.
+
+Mind you, I'm not talking about the baby-ribbon affairs that the college
+boys use nowadays. It doesn't seem to be the fashion to grease the
+landscape with freshmen any more. Initiations are getting to be as safe
+and sane as an ice-cream festival in a village church. When a frat wants
+to submit a neophyte to a trying ordeal it sends him out on the campus
+to climb a tree, or makes him go to a dance in evening clothes with a
+red necktie on. A boy who can roll a peanut half a mile with a
+toothpick, or can fish all morning in a pail of water in front of the
+college chapel without getting mad and trying to thrash any one is
+considered to be lion-hearted enough to ornament any frat. These are
+mollycoddle times in all departments. I'm glad I'm out of college and am
+catching street cars in the rush hours. That is about the only job left
+that feels like the good old times in college when muscles were made to
+jar some one else with.
+
+Eight or ten years ago, when a college fraternity absorbed a freshman,
+the job was worth talking about. There was no half-way business about
+it. The freshman could tell at any stage of the game that something was
+being done to him. They just ate him alive, that was all. Why, at
+Siwash, where I was lap-welded into the Eta Bita Pies, any fraternity
+which initiated a candidate and left enough of him to appear in chapel
+the next morning was the joke of the school. Even the girls'
+fraternities gave it the laugh. The girls used to do a little quiet
+initiating themselves, and when they received a sister into membership
+you could generally follow her mad career over the town by a trail of
+hairpins, "rats" and little fragments of dressgoods.
+
+Those were the days when the pledgling of a good high-pressure frat
+wrote to his mother the night before he was taken in and telegraphed her
+when he found himself alive in the morning. There used to be
+considerable rivalry between the frats at Siwash in the matter of giving
+a freshman a good, hospitable time. I remember when the Sigh Whoopsilons
+hung young Allen from the girder of an overhead railroad crossing, and
+let the switch engines smoke him up for two hours as they passed
+underneath, there was a good deal of jealousy among the rest of us who
+hadn't thought of it. The Alfalfa Delts went them one better by tying
+roller skates to the shoulders and hips of a big freshman football star
+and hauling him through the main streets of Jonesville on his back,
+behind an automobile, and the Chi Yi's covered a candidate with plaster
+of Paris, with blow-holes for his nose, sculptured him artistically, and
+left him before the college chapel on a pedestal all night. The Delta
+Kappa Sonofaguns set fire to their house once by shooting Roman candles
+at a row of neophytes in the cellar, and we had to turn out at one A. M.
+one winter morning to help the Delta Flushes dig a freshman out of their
+chimney. They had been trying to let him down into the fireplace, and
+when he got stuck they had poked at him with a clothes pole until they
+had mussed him up considerably. This just shows you what a gay life the
+young scholar led in the days when every ritual had claws on, and there
+was no such thing as soothing syrup in the equipment of a college.
+
+Of all the frats at Siwash the Eta Bita Pies, when I was in college,
+were preëminent in the art of near-killing freshmen. We used to call our
+initiation "A little journey to the pearly gates," and once or twice it
+looked for a short time as if the victim had mislaid his return ticket.
+Treat yourself to an election riot, a railway collision and a subway
+explosion, all in one evening, and you will get a rather sketchy idea of
+what we aimed at. I don't mean, of course, that we ever killed any one.
+There is no real danger in an initiation, you know, if the initiate does
+exactly as he is told and the members don't get careless and something
+that wasn't expected doesn't happen--as did when we tied Tudor Snyder to
+the south track while an express went by on the north track, and then
+had the time of our young lives getting him off ahead of a wild freight
+which we hadn't counted on. All we ever aimed at was to make the
+initiate so thankful to get through alive that he would love Eta Bita
+Pie forever, and I must say we usually succeeded. It is wonderful what a
+young fellow will endure cheerfully for the sake of passing it on to
+some one else the next year. I remember I was pretty mad when my Eta
+Bita Pie brethren headed me up in a barrel and rolled me downhill into a
+creek without taking the trouble to remove all the nails. It seemed like
+wanton carelessness. But long before my nose was out of splints and my
+hide would hold water I was perfecting our famous "Lover's Leap" for the
+next year's bunch. That was our greatest triumph. There was an abandoned
+rock quarry north of town with thirty feet of water in the bottom and a
+fifty-foot drop to the water. By means of a long beam and a system of
+pulleys we could make a freshman walk the plank and drop off into the
+water in almost perfect safety, providing the ropes didn't break. It
+created a sensation, and the other frats were mad with jealousy. We took
+every man we wanted the next fall before the authorities put a stop to
+the scheme. That shows you just how repugnant the idea of being
+initiated is to the green young collegian.
+
+Of course, fraternity initiations are supposed to be conducted for the
+amusement of the chapter and not of the candidate. But you can't always
+entirely tell what will happen, especially if the victim is husky and
+unimpressionable. Sometimes he does a little initiating himself. And
+that reminds me that I started out to tell a story and not to give a
+lecture on the polite art of making veal salad. Did I ever tell you of
+the time when we initiated Ole Skjarsen into Eta Bita Pie, and how the
+ceremony backfired and very nearly blew us all into the discard? No?
+Well, don't get impatient and look in the back of the book. I'll tell it
+now and cut as many corners as I can.
+
+[Illustration: There wasn't a college anywhere around us that didn't
+have Ole's hoofmarks all over its pride
+                    _Page 33_]
+
+As I have told you before, Ole Skjarsen was a little slow in grasping
+the real beauties of football science. It took him some time to uncoil
+his mind from the principles of woodchopping and concentrate it on the
+full duty of man in a fullback's position. He nearly drove us to a
+sanitarium during the process, but when he once took hold, mercy me, how
+he did progress from hither to yon over the opposition! He was the
+wonder fullback of those times, and at the end of three years there
+wasn't a college anywhere that didn't have Ole's hoofmarks all over its
+pride. Oh, he was a darling. To see him jumping sideways down a football
+field with the ball under his arm, landing on some one of the opposition
+at every jump and romping over the goal line with tacklers hanging to
+him like streamers would have made you want to vote for him for
+Governor. Ole was the greatest man who ever came to Siwash. Prexy had
+always been considered some personage by the outside world, but he was
+only a bump in the background when Ole was around.
+
+Of course we all loved Ole madly, but for all that he didn't make a
+frat. He didn't, for the same reason that a rhinoceros doesn't get
+invited to garden parties. He didn't seem to fit the part. Not only his
+clothes, but also his haircuts were hand-me-down. He regarded a fork as
+a curiosity. His language was a sort of a head-on collision between
+Norwegian and English in which very few words had come out undamaged. In
+social conversation he was out of bounds nine minutes out of ten, and it
+kept three men busy changing the subject when he was in full swing. He
+could dodge eleven men and a referee on the football field without
+trying, but put him in a forty by fifty room with one vase in it, and he
+couldn't dodge it to save his life.
+
+No, he just naturally didn't fit the part, and up to his senior year no
+fraternity had bid him. This grieved Ole so that he retired from
+football just before the Kiowa game on which all our young hearts were
+set, and before he would consent to go back and leave some more of his
+priceless foot-tracks on the opposition we had to pledge him to three of
+our proudest fraternities. Talk of wedding a favorite daughter to the
+greasy villain in the melodrama in order to save the homestead! No
+crushed father, with a mortgage hanging over him in the third act, could
+have felt one-half so badly as we Eta Bita Pies did when we had pledged
+Ole and realized that all the rest of the year we would have to climb
+over him in our beautiful, beamed-ceiling lounging-room and parade him
+before the world as a much-loved brother.
+
+But the job had to be done, and all three frats took a melancholy
+pleasure in arranging the details of the initiation. We decided to make
+it a three-night demonstration of all that the Siwash frats had learned
+in the art of imitating dynamite and other disintegrants. The Alfalfa
+Delts were to get first crack at him. They were to be followed on the
+second night by the Chi Yi Sighs, who were to make him a brother, dead
+or alive. On the third night we of Eta Bita Pie were to take the remains
+and decorate them with our fraternity pin after ceremonies in which
+being kicked by a mule would only be considered a two-minute recess.
+
+We fellows knew that when it came to initiating Ole we would have to do
+the real work. The other frats couldn't touch it. They might scratch him
+up a bit, but they lacked the ingenuity, the enthusiasm--I might say the
+poetic temperament--to make a good job of it. We determined to put on an
+initiation which would make our past efforts seem like the effort of an
+old ladies' home to start a rough-house. It was a great pleasure, I
+assure you, to plan that initiation. We revised our floor work and added
+some cellar and garret and ceiling and second-story work to it. We began
+the program with the celebrated third degree and worked gradually from
+that up to the twenty-third degree, with a few intervals of simple
+assault and battery for breathing spells. When we had finished doping
+out the program we shook hands all around. It was a masterpiece. It
+would have made Battenberg lace out of a steam boiler.
+
+Ole was initiated into the Alfalfa Delts on a Wednesday night. We heard
+echoes of it from our front porch. The next morning only three of the
+Alfalfa Delts appeared at chapel, while Ole was out at six A. M.,
+roaming about the campus with the Alfalfa Delt pin on his necktie. The
+next night the Chi Yi Sighs took him on for one hundred and seventeen
+rounds in their brand new lodge, which had a sheet-iron initiation den.
+The whole thing was a fizzle. When we looked Ole over the next morning
+we couldn't find so much as a scratch on him. He was wearing the Chi Yi
+pin beside the Alfalfa Delt pin, and he was as happy as a baby with a
+bottle of ink. There were nine broken window-lights in the Chi Yi lodge,
+and we heard in a roundabout way that they called in the police about
+three A. M. to help them explain to Ole that the initiation was over.
+That's the kind of a trembling neophyte Ole was. But we just giggled to
+ourselves. Anybody could break up a Chi Yi initiation, and the Alfalfa
+Delts were a set of narrow-chested snobs with automobile callouses
+instead of muscles. We ate a hasty dinner on Friday evening and set all
+the scenery for the big scrunch. Then we put on our old clothes and
+waited for Ole to walk into our parlor.
+
+He wasn't due until nine, but about eight o'clock he came creaking up
+the steps and dented the door with his large knuckles in a bashful way.
+He looked larger and knobbier than ever and, if anything, more
+embarrassed. We led him into the lounging-room in silence, and he sat
+down twirling his straw hat. It was October, and he had worn the thing
+ever since school opened. Other people who wore straw hats in October
+get removed from under them more or less violently; but, somehow, no one
+had felt called upon to maltreat Ole. We hated that hat, however, and
+decided to begin the evening's work on it.
+
+"Your hat, Mr. Skjarsen," said Bugs Wilbur in majestic tones.
+
+Ole reached the old ruin out. Wilbur took it and tossed it into the
+grate. Ole upset four or five of us who couldn't get out of the way and
+rescued the hat, which was blazing merrily.
+
+"Ent yu gat no sanse?" he roared angrily. "Das ban a gude hat." He
+looked at it gloomily. "Et ban spoiled now," he growled, tossing the
+remains into a waste-paper basket. "Yu ban purty fallers. Vat for yu do
+dat?"
+
+The basket was full of papers and things. In about four seconds it was
+all ablaze. Wilbur tried to go over and choke it off, but Ole pushed him
+back with one forefinger.
+
+"Yust stay avay," he growled. "Das basket ent costing some more as my
+hat, I gass."
+
+We stood around and watched the basket burn. We also watched a curtain
+blaze up and the finish on a nice mahogany desk crack and blister. It
+was all very humorous. The fire kindly went out of its own accord, and
+some one tiptoed around and opened the windows in a timid sort of way.
+It was a very successful initiation so far--only we were the neophytes.
+
+"This won't do," muttered "Allie" Bangs, our president. He got up and
+went over to Ole. "Mr. Skjarsen," he said severely, "you are here to be
+initiated into the awful mysteries of Eta Bita Pie. It is not fitting
+that you should enter her sacred boundaries in an unfettered condition.
+Submit to the brethren, that they may blindfold you and bind you for
+the ordeals to come." Gee, but we used to use hand-picked language when
+we were unsheathing our claws!
+
+Ole growled. "Ol rite," he said. "But Aye tal yu ef yu fallers burn das
+har west lak yu burn ma hat I skoll raise ruffhaus like deekins!"
+
+We tied his hands behind him with several feet of good stout rope and
+hobbled him about the ankles with a dog chain. Then we blindfolded him
+and put a pillowslip over his head for good measure. Things began to
+look brighter. Even a demon fullback has to have one or two limbs
+working in order to accomplish anything. When all was fast Bangs gave
+Ole a preliminary kick. "Now, brethren," he roared, "bring on the
+Macedonian guards and give them the neophyte!"
+
+Now I'm not revealing any real initiation secrets, mind you, and maybe
+what I'm telling you didn't exactly happen. But you can be perfectly
+sure that something just as bad did happen every time. For an hour we
+abused that two hundred and twenty pounds of gristle and hide. It was as
+much fun as roughhousing a two-ton safe. We rolled him downstairs. He
+broke out sixty dollars' worth of balustrade on the way and he didn't
+seem to mind it at all. We tried to toss him in a blanket. Ever have a
+two-hundred-and-twenty-pound man land on you coming down from the
+ceiling? We got tired of that. We made him play automobile. Ever play
+automobile? They tie roller skates and an automobile horn on you and
+push you around into the furniture, just the way a real automobile runs
+into things. We broke a table, five chairs, a French window, a
+one-hundred-dollar vase and seven shins. We didn't even interest Ole.
+When a man has plowed through leather-covered football players for three
+years his head gets used to hitting things. Also his heels will fly out
+no matter how careful you are. We took him into the basement and
+performed our famous trick of boiling the candidate in oil. Of course we
+wanted to scare him. He accommodated us. He broke away and hopped
+stiff-legged all over the room. That wasn't so bad, but, confound it, he
+hopped on us most of the time! How would you like to initiate a bronze
+statue that got scared and hopped on you?
+
+We got desperate. We threw aside the formality of explaining the deep
+significance of each action and just assaulted Ole with everything in
+the house. We prodded him with furnace tools and thumped him with
+cordwood and rolling-pins and barrel-staves and shovels. We walked over
+him, a dozen at a time. And all the time we were getting it worse than
+he was. He didn't exactly fight, but whenever his elbows twitched some
+fellow's face would happen to be in the way, and he couldn't move his
+knee without getting it tangled in some one's ribs. You could hear the
+thunders of the assault and the shrieks of the wounded for a block.
+
+At the end of an hour we were positively all in. There weren't three of
+us unwounded. The house was a wreck. Wilbur had a broken nose. "Chick"
+Struthers' kneecap hurt. "Lima" Bean's ribs were telescoped, and there
+wasn't a good shin in the house. We quit in disgust and sat around
+looking at Ole. He was sitting around, too. He happened to be sitting on
+Bangs, who was yelling for help. But we didn't feel like starting any
+relief expedition.
+
+Ole was some rumpled, and his clothes looked as if they had been fed
+into a separator. But he was intact, as far as we could see. He was
+still tied and blindfolded, and I hope to be buried alive in a
+branch-line town if he wasn't getting bored.
+
+"Vat fur yu qvit?" he asked. "It ent fun setting around har."
+
+Then Petey Simmons, who had been taking a minor part in the assault in
+order to give his wheels full play, rose and beckoned the crowd outside.
+We left Ole and clustered around him.
+
+"Now, this won't do at all," he said. "Are we going to let Eta Bita Pie
+be made the laughing-stock of the college? If we can't initiate that
+human quartz mill by force let's do it by strategy. I've got a plan. You
+just let me have Ole and one man for an hour and I'll make him so glad
+to get back to the house that he'll eat out of our hands."
+
+We were dead ready to turn the job over to Petey, though we hated to see
+him put his head in the lion's mouth, so to speak. I hated it worse than
+any of the others because he picked me for his assistant. We went in
+and found Ole dozing in the corner. Petey prodded him. "Get up!" he
+said.
+
+Ole got up cheerfully. Petey took the dog chain off of his legs. Then he
+threw his sub-cellar voice into gear.
+
+"Skjarsen," he rumbled, "you have passed right well the first test of
+our noble order. You have faced the hideous dangers which were in
+reality but shams to prove your faith, and you have borne your
+sufferings patiently, thus proving your meekness."
+
+I let a couple of grins escape into my sweater-sleeve. Oh, yes, Ole had
+been meek all right.
+
+"It remains for you to prove your desire," said Petey in curdled tones.
+"Listen!" He gave the Eta Bita Pie whistle. We had the best whistle in
+college. It was six notes--a sort of insidious, inviting thing that you
+could slide across two blocks, past all manner of barbarians, and into a
+frat brother's ear without disturbing any one at all. Petey gave it
+several times. "Now, Skjarsen," he said, "you are to follow that
+whistle. Let no obstacle discourage you. Let no barrier stop you. If you
+can prove your loyalty by following that whistle through the outside
+world and back to the altar of Eta Bita Pie we will ask no more of you.
+Come on!"
+
+We tiptoed out of the cellar and whistled. Ole followed us up the steps.
+That is, he did on the second attempt. On the first he fell down with
+melodious thumps. We hugged each other, slipped behind a tree and
+whistled again.
+
+Ole charged across the yard and into the tree. The line held. I heard
+him say something in Norwegian that sounded secular. By that time we
+were across the street. There was a low railing around the parking, and
+when we whistled again Ole walked right into the railing. The line held
+again.
+
+Oh, I'll tell you that Petey boy was a wonder at getting up ideas. Think
+of it! Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Christopher Columbus, old Bill
+Archimedes and all the rest of the wise guys had overlooked this simple
+little discovery of how to make a neophyte initiate himself. It was too
+good to be true. We held a war dance of pure delight, and we whistled
+some more. We got behind stone walls, and whistled. We climbed
+embankments, and whistled. We slid behind blackberry bushes and ash
+piles and across ditches and over hedge fences, and whistled. We were so
+happy we could hardly pucker. Think of it! There was Ole Skjarsen, the
+most uncontrollable force in Nature, following us like a yellow pup with
+his dinner three days overdue. It was as fascinating as guiding a
+battleship by wireless.
+
+We slipped across a footbridge over Cedar Creek, and whistled. Ole
+missed the bridge by nine yards. There isn't much water in Cedar Creek,
+but what there is is strong. It took Ole fifteen minutes to climb the
+other bank, owing to a beautiful collection of old barrel-hoops,
+corsets, crockery and empty tomato cans which decorated the spot. Did
+you ever see a blindfolded man, with his hands tied behind his back,
+trying to climb over a city dump? No? Of course not, any more than you
+have seen a green elephant. But it's a fine sight, I assure you. When
+Ole got out of the creek we whistled him dexterously into a barnyard and
+right into the maw of a brindle bull-pup with a capacity of one small
+man in two bites--we being safe on the other side of the fence, beyond
+the reach of the chain. Maybe that was mean, but Eta Bita Pie is not to
+be trifled with when she is aroused. Anyway, the bull got the worst of
+it. He only got one bite. Ole kicked in the barn door on the first try,
+and demolished a corn-sheller on the second; but on the third he hit the
+pup squarely abeam and dropped a beautiful goal with him. We went around
+to see the dog the next day. He looked quite natural. You would almost
+think he was alive.
+
+It was here that we began to smell trouble. I had my suspicions when we
+whistled again. There was a pretty substantial fence around that
+barnyard, but Ole didn't wait to find the gate.
+
+He came through the fence not very far from us. He was conversing under
+that mangled pillowslip, and we heard fragments sounding like this:
+
+"Purty soon Aye gat yu--yu spindle-shank, vite-face, skagaroot-smokin'
+dudes! Ugh--ump!"--here he caromed off a tree. "Ven Aye gat das
+blindfold off, Aye gat yu--yu Baked-Pie galoots!--Ugh!
+Wow!"--barbed-wire fence. "Vistle sum more, yu vide-trousered polekats.
+Aye make yu vistle, Aye bet yu, rite avay! Up--pllp--pllp!" That's the
+kind of noise a man makes when he walks into a horse-trough at full
+speed.
+
+"Gee!" said Petey nervously. "I guess we've given him enough. He's
+getting sort of peevish. I don't believe in being too cruel. Let's take
+him back now. You don't suppose he can get his hands loose, do you?"
+
+I didn't know. I wished I did. Of course, when you watch a lion trying
+to get at you from behind a fairly strong cage you feel perfectly safe,
+but you feel safer when you are somewhere else, just the same. We got
+out on the pavement and gave a gentle whistle.
+
+"Aye har yu!" roared Ole, coming through a chicken yard. "Aye har yu,
+you leetle Baked Pies! Aye gat yu purty soon. Yust vait."
+
+We didn't wait. We put on a little more gasoline and started for the
+frat house. We didn't have to whistle any more. Ole was right behind us.
+We could hear him thundering on the pavement and pleading with us in
+that rich, nutty dialect of his to stop and have our heads pounded on
+the bricks.
+
+I shudder yet when I think of all the things he promised to do to us. We
+went down that street like a couple of Roman gladiators pacing a hungry
+bear, and, by tangling Ole up in the parkings again, managed to get home
+a few yards ahead.
+
+There was an atmosphere of arnica and dejection in the house when we got
+there. Ill-health seemed to be rampant. "Did you lose him?" asked Bangs
+hopefully from behind a big bandage.
+
+"Lose him?" says I with a snort. "Oh, yes, we lost him all right. He
+loses just like a foxhound. That's him, falling over the front steps
+now. You can stay and entertain him; I'm going upstairs."
+
+Everybody came along. We piled chairs on the stairs and listened while
+Ole felt his way over the porch. In about a minute he found the door.
+Then he came right in. I had locked the door, but I had neglected to
+reënforce it with concrete and boiler iron. Ole wore part of the frame
+in with him.
+
+"Come on, yu Baked Pies!" he shouted.
+
+"You're in the wrong house," squeaked that little fool, Jimmy Skelton.
+
+"Yu kent fule me!" said Ole, crashing around the loafing-room. "Aye yust
+can tal das haus by har skagaroot smell. Come on, yu leetle fallers! Aye
+bet Aye inittyate yu some, tu!"
+
+By this time he had found the stairs and was plowing through the
+furniture. We retired to the third floor. When twenty-seven fellows go
+up a three-foot stairway at once it necessarily makes some noise. Ole
+heard us and kept right on coming.
+
+We grabbed a bureau and a bed and barricaded the staircase. There was a
+ladder to the attic. I was the last man up and my heart was giving my
+ribs all kinds of massage treatment before I got up. We hauled up the
+ladder just as Ole kicked the bureau downstairs, and then we watched him
+charge over our beautiful third-floor dormitory, leaving ruin in his
+wake.
+
+Maybe he would have been satisfied with breaking the furniture. But, of
+course, a few of us had to sneeze. Ole hunted those sneezes all over the
+third floor. He couldn't reach them, but he sat down on the wreck
+underneath them.
+
+"Aye ent know vere yu fallers ban," he said, "but Aye kin vait. Aye har
+yu, yu Baked Pies! Aye gat yu yet, by yimminy! Yust come on down ven yu
+ban ready."
+
+Oh, yes, we were ready--I don't think. It was a perfectly lovely
+predicament. Here was the Damma Yappa chapter of Eta Bita Pie penned up
+in a deucedly-cold attic with one lone initiate guarding the trapdoor.
+Nice story for the college to tell when the police rescued us! Nice end
+of our reputation as the best neophyte jugglers in the school! Makes me
+shiver now to think of it.
+
+We sat around in that garret and listened to the clock strike in the
+library tower across the campus. At eleven o'clock Ole promised to kill
+the first man who came down. That bait caught no fish. At twelve he
+begged for the privilege of kicking us out of our own house, one by one.
+At one o'clock he remarked that, while it was pretty cold, it was much
+colder in Norway, where he came from, and that, as we would freeze
+first, we might as well come down.
+
+At two o'clock we were all stiff. At three we were kicking the plaster
+off of the joists, trying to keep from freezing to death. At four a
+bunch of Sophomores were all for throwing Petey Simmons down as a
+sacrifice. Petey talked them out of it. Petey could talk a stone dog
+into wagging its tail.
+
+We sat in that garret from ten P. M. until the year after the great
+pyramid wore down to the ground. At least that was the length of time
+that seemed to pass. It must have been about five o'clock when Petey
+stopped kicking his feet on the chimney and said:
+
+"Well, fellows, I have an idea. It may work or it may not, but--"
+
+"Shut up, you mental desert!" some one growled. "Another of your fine
+ideas will wreck this frat."
+
+"As I was saying," continued Petey cheerfully, "it may not succeed, but
+it will not hurt any one but me if it doesn't. I'm going to be the
+Daniel in this den. But first I want the officers of the chapter to come
+up around the scuttle-hole with me."
+
+Five of us crept over to the hole and looked down. "Aye har yu, yu
+leetle Baked Pies!" said Ole, waking in an instant. "Yust come on down.
+Aye ban vaiting long enough to smash yu!"
+
+"Mr. Skjarsen," began Petey in the regular dark-lantern voice that all
+secret societies use--"Mr. Skjarsen--for as such we must still call
+you--the final test is over. You have acquitted yourself nobly. You have
+been faithful to the end. You have stood your vigil unflinchingly. You
+have followed the call of Eta Bita Pie over every obstacle and through
+every suffering."
+
+"Aye ban following him leetle furder, if Aye had ladder," said Ole in a
+bloodthirsty voice. "Ven Aye ban getting at yu, Aye play hal vid yu
+Baked Pies!"
+
+"And now," said Petey, ignoring the interruption, "the final ceremony is
+at hand. Do not fear. Your trials are over. In the dark recesses of this
+secret chamber above you we have discussed your bearing in the trials
+that have beset you. It has pleased us. You have been found worthy to
+continue toward the high goal. Ole Skjarsen, we are now ready to receive
+you into full membership."
+
+"Come rite on!" snorted Ole. "Aye receeve yu into membership all rite.
+Yust come on down."
+
+"It won't work, Petey," Bangs groaned. Petey kicked his shins as a sign
+to shut up.
+
+"Ole Skjarsen, son of Skjar Oleson, stand up!" he said, sinking his
+voice another story.
+
+Ole got up. It was plain to be seen that he was getting interested.
+
+"The president of this powerful order will now administer the oath,"
+said Petey, shoving Bangs forward.
+
+So there, at five A. M., with the whole chapter treed in a garret, and
+the officers, the leading lights of Siwash, crouching around a scuttle
+and shivering their teeth loose, we initiated Ole Skjarsen. It was
+impressive, I can tell you. When it came to the part where the neophyte
+swears to protect a brother, even if he has to wade in blood up to his
+necktie, Bangs bore down beautifully and added a lot of extra frills.
+The last words were spoken. Ole was an Eta Bita Pie. Still, we weren't
+very sanguine. You might interest a man-eater by initiating him, but
+would you destroy his appetite? There was no grand rush for the ladder.
+
+As Ole stood waiting, however, Petey swung himself down and landed
+beside him. He cut the ropes that bound his wrists, jerked off the
+pillowslip and cut off the blindfold. Then he grabbed Ole's mastodonic
+paw.
+
+"Shake, brother!" he said.
+
+Nobody breathed for a few seconds. It was darned terrifying, I can tell
+you. Ole rubbed his eyes with his free hand and looked down at the
+morsel hanging on to the other.
+
+"Shake, Ole!" insisted Petey. "You went through it better than I did
+when I got it."
+
+I saw the rudiments of a smile begin to break out on Ole's face. It grew
+wider. It got to be a grin; then a chasm with a sunrise on either side.
+
+He looked up at us again, then down at Petey. Then he pumped Petey's arm
+until the latter danced like a cork bobber.
+
+"By ying, Aye du et!" he shouted. "Ve ban gude fallers, ve Baked Pies,
+if ve did broke my nose."
+
+"What's the matter with Ole?" some one shouted.
+
+"He's all right!" we yelled. Then we came down out of the garret and
+made a rush for the furnace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WHEN GREEK MEETS GROUCH
+
+
+It's a cinch that college life would be a whole lot more congested with
+pleasure if it wasn't for the towns that the colleges are in. I don't
+mean that a town around a college hasn't its uses. Wherever you find a
+town you can find lunch counters and theaters with galleries from which
+you can learn the drama at a quarter a throw, and street cars that can
+be tampered with, and wooden sidewalks that burn well on celebration
+nights, and nice girls who began being nice four college generations ago
+and never forgot how. All of these things about a town are mighty handy
+when it comes to getting a higher education in a good, live college
+where you don't have to tunnel through three feet of moss to find the
+college customs. But even all this can't reconcile me to the way a town
+butts into college affairs. It is something disgusting.
+
+You know it yourself, Bill. Didn't you go to Yellagain where the police
+arrested the whole Freshman class for painting the Sophomores green?
+Well, it's the same way all over. No sooner does a college town get big
+enough to support a rudimentary policeman who peddles vegetables when
+he isn't putting down anarchy than it gets busy and begins to regulate
+the college students. And the bigger it gets the more regulating it
+wants to do. Why, they tell me that at the University of Chicago there
+hasn't been a riot for nine years, and that over in Washington Park,
+three blocks away, an eleven-ton statue of old Chris. Columbus has lain
+for ages and no college class has had spirit enough to haul it out on
+the street-car tracks. That's what regulating a college does for it.
+There are more policemen in Chicago than there are students in the
+University. If you give your yell off the campus you have to get a
+permit from the city council. It's worse than that in Philadelphia, they
+tell me. Why, there, if a college student comes downtown with a
+flareback coat and heart-shaped trousers and one of those nifty little
+pompadour hats that are brushed back from the brow to give the brains a
+chance to grow, they arrest him for collecting a crowd and disturbing
+traffic. No, sir, no big-town college for me. Getting college life in
+those places reminds me of trying to get that world-wide feeling on
+ice-cream soda. There's as much chance in one as in the other.
+
+Excuse me for getting sore, but that's the way I do when I begin to talk
+about college towns. They don't know their places. Take Jonesville,
+where Siwash is, for instance. When Siwash College was founded by "that
+noble band of Christian truth seekers," as the catalogue puts it,
+Jonesville was a mud-hole freckled with houses. The railroad trains
+whistled "get out of my way" to the town when they whooped through it,
+and when you went into a merchant's store and woke him up he started off
+home to dinner from force of habit. The only thing they ever regulated
+there was the clock. They regulated that once a year and usually found
+that it was two or three days behind time. Hadn't noticed it at all.
+
+That's what Jonesville was when Siwash started. You can bet for the
+first forty years they didn't do much regulating around the college. The
+students just let the town stay there because it was quiet. The citizens
+used to elect town marshals over seventy years old, so their gray hairs
+would protect them from the students, and when the boys had won a debate
+or a ball game and wanted to burn a barn or two to cheer up the
+atmosphere at evening, nothing at all was said--at least out loud.
+Jonesville was meek enough, you bet. Why, back in the seventies the
+students used to vote at town elections, and once for a joke they all
+voted for old "Apple Sally" for president of the village board. Made her
+serve, too. Talk about regulating! Did you ever see a farmer's dog go
+out and try to regulate a sixty-horse-power automobile? That's about as
+much as Jonesville would have regulated us thirty years ago.
+
+But, of course, having a real peppery college in its midst, Jonesville
+couldn't help but grow. People came and started boarding-houses. There
+had to be restaurants and bookstores and necktie emporiums, too, and
+pretty soon the railroad built a couple of branches into town and
+started the division shops. Then Jonesville woke up and walked right
+past old Siwash. In ten years it had street cars, paved streets,
+water-works, a political machine and a city debt, as large as the law
+would allow. And worse than that, it had a police force. It had nine
+officers in uniform, most of whom could read and write and swing big
+clubs with a strictly American accent. Nice sort of a thing to turn
+loose in a quiet college town. This was long before my time, but they
+tell me that the students held indignation meetings for a week after the
+first arrest was made. You see, the students at Siwash always had their
+own rules and lived up to them strictly. The Faculty put them on their
+honor and that honor was never abused. Students were not allowed to burn
+the college buildings nor kill the professors. These rules were never
+broken, and naturally the boys felt rather insulted when the city turned
+loose a horde of blue-coated busybodies to interfere with things that
+didn't concern them.
+
+Still, Siwash got along very well even after the police force was
+organized. You see, after a town has had a college in its middle for
+about fifty years, pretty much everybody in town has attended it at one
+time or another. None of the police had diplomas, but it was no uncommon
+thing to see an ex-member of a college debating society delivering
+groceries, or an ex-president of his class getting up in an engine cab
+to take the flyer into the city. For years every police magistrate was
+an old Siwash man, and, though plenty of the boys would get arrested,
+there were never any thirty-day complications or anything of the sort.
+Two classes would meet on the main street and muss each other up. The
+police would arrest nine or ten of the ringleaders. The next morning the
+prisoners would appear before Squire Jennings, who climbed up on the old
+college building with his class flag in '54 and kept a rival class away
+by tearing down the chimney and throwing the bricks at them. Naturally,
+nothing very deadly happened. The good old fellow would lecture the
+crowd and let them off with a stern warning. Maybe two or three Seniors
+would come home late at night from their frat hall and take a wooden
+Indian cigar sign along with them just for company. One of those Indians
+is such a steady sort of a chap to have along late at night. Of course,
+they would be arrested by old Hank Anderson on the courthouse beat, but
+it wasn't anything serious. They would telephone Frank Hinckley, who was
+editor of the city daily, and just convalescing from four years of
+college life himself, and he would come down and bail them out, and
+Squire Jennings would kick them out of court next morning. Frank was the
+patron saint of the students for years when it came to bail. He used to
+say he had all the fun of being a doctor and getting called out nights
+without having to try to collect any fees. Frank was no Croesus those
+days and I've seen him go bail for fifteen students at one hundred
+dollars apiece, when his total assets amounted to a dress suit, three
+hundred and forty-five photographs and his next week's salary.
+
+By the time I had come to college, getting arrested had gotten to be a
+regular formality. A Freshman would go up Main Street at night, trying
+to hide a nine-foot board sign under his spring overcoat. Halvor
+Skoogerson, a pale-eyed guardian of the peace, who was studying up to be
+a naturalized, would arrest him for theft, riot, disorderly conduct,
+suspicious appearance and intoxication, not understanding why any sober
+man would want to carry a young lumber-yard home under his coat at
+night. The prisoner would telephone for Hinckley, who would crawl out of
+bed, come downtown cussing, and bail away in sleepy tones. The next
+morning the freshie would go up before Squire Jennings, who would ask
+him in awful accents if he realized that the state penitentiary was only
+four hours away by fast train, and that many a man was boarding there
+who would blush to be seen in the company of a man who had stolen a
+nine-foot sign and carried it down Main Street, interfering with
+pedestrians, when there was a perfectly good alley which ought to be
+used for such purposes. Then he would warn the culprit that the next
+time he was caught lugging off a billboard or a wooden platform or a
+corncrib he would be compelled to put it back again before he got
+breakfast; after which he would tell him to go along and try studying
+for a change, and the Freshman would go back to college and join the
+hero brigade. It was a mighty meek man in Siwash who couldn't get
+arrested those days. Even the hymn singers at the Y. M. C. A. had
+criminal records. It got so, finally, that whenever we had a nightshirt
+parade in honor of any little college victory the line of march would
+lead right through the police station. We knew what was coming and would
+save the cops the trouble of hauling us over in the hustle wagon.
+
+Take it all in all, it was about as much fun to be regulated as it was
+to run the town. But one night Squire Jennings put his other foot into
+the grave and died entirely; and before any of us realized what was
+happening a special election had been held and Malachi Scroggs had been
+elected police magistrate.
+
+Malachi Scroggs was a triple extract of grouch who lived on the north
+side two miles away from college in a big white house with one of those
+old-fashioned dog-house affairs on top of it. He was an acrimonious
+quarrel all by himself. Sunlight soured when it struck him. I have seen
+a fox terrier who had been lying perfectly happy on the sidewalk, get up
+after Scroggs had passed him and go over and bite an automobile tire. He
+lived on gloom and law-suits and the last time he smiled was 1878--that
+was when a small boy fell nineteen feet out of a tree while robbing his
+orchard, and the doctor said he would never be able to rob any more
+orchards.
+
+This was the kind of mental astringent Malachi was. Naturally, he loved
+the gay and happy little college boys. Oh, how he loved us! He had
+complained to the police regularly during each celebration for twenty
+years and he had expressed the opinion, publicly, that a college boy was
+a cross between a hyena and a grasshopper with a fog-horn attachment
+thrown in free of charge. He wasn't a college man himself, you
+see--never could find one where the students didn't use slang, probably,
+and he just naturally didn't understand us at all. Of course, we didn't
+mind that. It's no credit to carry an interlinear translation of your
+temperament on your face. So long as he kept in his own yard and
+quarreled with his own dog for not feeding on Freshmen more
+enthusiastically, we got along as nicely as the Egyptian Sphinx and John
+L. Sullivan. Even when he was elected police magistrate we didn't
+object. In fact, we didn't bumpity-bump to the situation until we went
+up against him in court.
+
+Part of the Senior class had been having a little choir practice in one
+of the town restaurants. It was a lovely affair and there wasn't a more
+cheerful crowd of fellows on earth than they were when they marched down
+the street at one A. M. eighteen abreast and singing one of the dear old
+songs in a kind of a steam-siren barytone.
+
+Now they had never attempted to regulate mere noise in Jonesville, but
+that night a brand-new policeman had gone on the courthouse beat, and
+blamed if he didn't arrest the whole bunch for disturbing the
+peace--when they hadn't broken a single thing, mind you. They were
+pretty mad about it at first; but after all it was only a joke, and when
+Hinckley got down to bail them out they were singing with great feeling
+a song which Jenkins, the class poet, had just composed, and which ran
+as follows:
+
+     "As we walked along the street
+     Officer Sikes we chanced to meet,
+     And his shoes were full of feet
+     As he prowled along his beat.
+     He took us down and locked us up;
+     Left us in charge of a Norsky Cop,
+     And we didn't get home till early in the morning."
+
+Hold that "morning" as long as you can and tonsorialize to beat the
+band. Even the desk sergeant enjoyed it.
+
+When the bunch lined up the next morning in police court there was Judge
+Scroggs. They felt as if they ought to treat him nicely, he being a
+newcomer and all of them being very familiar with the ropes; and Emmons,
+the class president, started explaining to him that it was all a
+mistake. Scroggs bit him off with a voice that sounded like a terrier
+snapping at a fly.
+
+"We're here to correct these mistakes," he said. "You were all singing
+on the public street at one o'clock in the morning, weren't you?"
+
+"We were trying to," said Emmons, still friendly.
+
+"Ten days apiece," said the magistrate. "Call the next case."
+
+If any one had removed the floor from under these Seniors and let them
+drop one thousand and one feet into space they couldn't have felt more
+shocked. Even the clerk and the desk sergeant were amazed. They tried to
+help explain, but the human vinegar-cruet turned around and spat the
+following through his clenched teeth:
+
+"Gentlemen, I have been appointed to sit on this bench and I don't need
+any help. Any more objections will be in contempt of court. Sergeant,
+remove these young thugs and have them sent to the workhouse at once."
+
+Maybe you don't think the college seethed when the news got out. There
+were the leading lights of the school, including the president of the
+Senior class, the chairman of the Junior promenade, two halfbacks, the
+pitcher on the baseball team and the president of the Y. M. C. A., all
+on the works for ten days, along with as choice an assortment of plain
+drunks and fancy resters as you could find in ninety miles of mainline
+railroad. The students fairly went mad and bit at the air. Even the
+Faculty got busy and Prexy dropped over to the police court to square
+it. He came out a minute later very white around the mouth. I don't know
+what Old Maledictions said to him, but it was a great sufficiency, I
+guess. He seemed as insulted as Lord Tennyson might have been if the
+milkman had pulled his whiskers.
+
+There wasn't a thing to be done. The Faculty appealed to the mayor, but
+old Scroggs had some regular Spanish-bit hold on him in the way of a
+short-time note, I guess, and he washed his hands of the whole affair.
+Our college great men were hauled out to the works and served their
+time. When they got out they were sights. They weren't strong on
+sanitation in workhouses in those days. Even their friends shook hands
+with them with tongs. Think of sixteen proud monarchs of the campus
+making brick in striped suits, with a cross foreman who used to haul
+ashes from the college campus lording it over them and tracing their
+ancestry back through thirty generations of undesirable citizens! Nice,
+wasn't it? Oh, very!
+
+That was the beginning of a sad and serious year for Siwash. For the
+first time Scroggs enjoyed college boys. Soaking students got to be his
+specialty. We did our blamedest to behave, but you can't break off the
+habits of generations in a week or two. Soon after the Seniors got out
+the Mock Turtles, a Sophomore society, capacity thirty thousand quarts,
+absent-mindedly tipped over a street car on their way home and were
+jugged for thirty days. They had to enlarge the workhouse to take care
+of them, and four of our best football players were retired from
+circulation all through October. Think what that meant! The whole
+college went up, just before the game with Hambletonian, and knelt on
+the sidewalk before Judge Scroggs' house. He set the dog on us. Said
+afterwards he wished the dog had been larger and hadn't had his supper.
+A month later four members of the glee club tried to do our favorite
+stunt of putting the horse in the herdic and hauling him home, and it
+cost them twenty-nine days--just enough to break up the club. The whole
+basket-ball team got thirty days because they took the bronze statue off
+the fountain in the public square one night, laid him on the car tracks
+in some old clothes, and had the ambulance force trying to resuscitate
+him. Nobody had ever objected to this little joke before, but it cost us
+the state championship and two of the team left school when they got
+out. Said they'd come to Siwash for a college education, not for a
+course of etymology in a workhouse.
+
+It was terrible. We scarcely dared to cut out our mufflers enough to
+whistle to each other on the street. By spring we were desperate. We had
+lost the basket-ball championship. The glee club was ruined.
+Muggledorfer had bumped us in football--that was the year before Ole
+Skjarsen came to school--and college spirit at Siwash had been gummed up
+until it could have been successfully imitated by a
+four-thousand-year-old mummy. Our college meetings resembled the
+overflow from a funeral around the front steps. We used to shut down all
+the windows, say "shsh" nine times, and then write out our college yell
+on curl papers and burn the papers. You could have swapped Siwash off
+for a correspondence school without noticing any difference in the
+reverberations. That was Petey Simmons' first year in college--as a
+matter of fact, he was a Senior prep. I've told you more or less about
+Petey before. He was the only son of one of these country bankers who
+manage to get as much fun out of a half million as a New Yorker could
+out of a whole railroad. Petey was a little chap who had always had what
+he wanted and would cheerfully sit up all night thinking up new things
+to want. He wasn't a Freshman yet, but he could give points to all the
+college in the matter of explosive clothes and nifty ways of being
+expensive to Dad. He couldn't get along without coat-cut underwear long
+before we had heard of it, and you could tell by looking at his shoes
+just what the rest of the school would be wearing in two years. That was
+Petey all the way through. He was first and Father Time was nowhere,
+forty miles back with a busted tire.
+
+[Illustration: Martha caused some mild sensation
+                    _Page 63_]
+
+Petey took to college life like a kid to candy and just soaked himself
+in college spirit. He proposed his sixty-five-dollar banjo for
+membership in the club and went in with it of course. He was elected
+yell-master before he had been in school two weeks, and if you ever want
+to know how much noise can come out of a comparatively small orifice you
+should have seen him emitting riot and pandemonium in the second half of
+a lively football game. Naturally, it worried Petey almost to death to
+see the dear old Coll. disintegrating under the Scroggs Inquisition, and
+he used to sit around the frat house with his head on his hands for
+hours, smoking his pipe, which had the largest bowl in school, and
+combing his convolutions for a plan. Then, along in March, he
+electrified the whole school by taking Martha Scroggs to the college
+promenade.
+
+Martha was old Malachi's daughter. We hadn't known it, but she had been
+in school all that year. She was a quiet girl who was designed like a
+tall problem in plane geometry. While it was possible for a clock to run
+in the same room with her, still she was not what you might call a
+picnic to look at. She was the kind of girl a man would look at once and
+then go off and admire the scenery, even if it only consisted of a
+ninety-acre cornfield and a grain elevator. Martha was only about
+eighteen, and I never could understand how she got on to the styles of
+thirty-six years ago and wore them as fluently as she did.
+
+Naturally, Martha had gotten along in her studies without being pestered
+by society to any extent. I sometimes think this helped old Scroggs to
+hate us. She was his only child, and he had taken all the affection and
+interest that most people distribute over their entire acquaintanceship
+and concentrated it on her. They had grown up together since she became
+a motherless baby, and they did say that while you could bombard the old
+man with gatling guns without jarring his opinions he would lie down,
+jump through a hoop or play dead whenever Martha wanted him to.
+
+Naturally Martha caused some mild sensation when she appeared at the
+biggest social spasm of the college year, with her sleeves bulging in
+the wrong place, and nothing but her own hair on her head. But what
+caused the real sensation was the fact that Petey had been released from
+the workhouse the day before. Yes, sir--just turned out with seven more
+days to serve. He had thrown a brick at a Sophomore who was trying to
+catch him and dye his hair the Sophomore colors, and the brick had
+annihilated one of the city's precious thirty-seven-cent street lights.
+Petey had gone to the works for ten days, leaving a new dress suit that
+hadn't been dedicated and unlimited woe among the girls, for he was a
+Class A fusser.
+
+Petey was non-committal about his insanity. He had the best eye for
+beauty in the college, and yet he had been taking Miss Scroggs around to
+church socials and town affairs for two months. But college boys aren't
+slow, whatever you want to say about them. We had faith in Petey and we
+backed up his game. We gave Martha the time of her young life at the
+Prom.--pulled off three imitation rows over her program--and then we
+turned in that winter and gave her a good, hot rush--which is a
+technical college expression for keeping a girl dated up so that she
+doesn't have time to wash the dishes at home once a month.
+
+I must say that it wasn't much of a punishment, either, when we got
+acquainted with Martha. She was a good fellow clear through and had a
+smile that illuminated her plain face like a torchlight parade. Of
+course, after you get out of school you learn that beauty is only skin
+deep and seldom affects the brain; but this is a wonderful discovery for
+a college boy to make when there are so many raving beauties about him
+that he has to take a nap in the afternoon in order to dream about all
+of them. At any rate, we took Martha to everything that came along, one
+of us or another, and before a month we didn't have to pretend very much
+to scrap for her dances, even if you did have to lug her around the room
+by main strength--she was as heavy on her feet as a motor-bus.
+
+April came and the first baseball game with it, and Saunders, our
+pitcher, managed to draw a thirty-day sentence for stealing a steam
+roller one noon and racing off down the avenue with a fat cop in
+pursuit. We nearly fell dead once more when Saunders came walking into
+chapel three days later. He had been released by Judge Scroggs with a
+warning never under any circumstances to do anything of any sort at any
+time any more, and been assured that he was nothing more than hangman's
+meat. But he had been released! That night he took Martha Scroggs to the
+Alfalfa Delt hop. And the next day he held Muggledorfer down to two hits
+and no runs, with Martha waving hurrahs at him from a tally-ho.
+
+We wanted to elect Petey president of the college, for we laid the whole
+affair to him. But he wouldn't talk at all. If anything, he seemed a
+little sore about the whole thing. Martha didn't loosen up, either. She
+just smiled and told those of us who knew her well enough to ask
+questions that Saunders was a lovely boy and that she had had that date
+with him for ages--flies' ages, I guess she meant, for Alice Marsters,
+one of the beauties of the school, stayed home from the dance after
+announcing that she was going with Saunders, and never seemed able to
+remember him by sight after that.
+
+About a week afterward Maxwell, the college orator, a very solemn member
+of the Siwash brain trust, was arrested for ever so little a thing. I
+believe he so far forgot himself as to help give the college yell on
+Main Street the night his literary society won a debate. Anyway, he got
+ten days, and he was due in three days to orate for Siwash against the
+whole Northwest. It was the biggest event of the school year--the
+oratorical contest. We'd won seven of them--more than any other school
+in the sixteen states--and we stood a good show with Maxwell. We were
+crazy to win. Of course nobody ever goes to the contests; but we all
+stay up all night to hear the results, and when we win, which we do once
+every other college generation, we try to make the celebration bigger
+than the stories of other celebrations that have been handed down. We'd
+been planning this celebration all winter and had everything combustible
+in Jonesville spotted.
+
+Some of us were for going out and burning up the workhouse, but before
+we got around to it Maxwell appeared. It was the day before the contest.
+He'd served only two days, but instead of rushing right off to rehearse
+his oration, which he couldn't do in the workhouse, owing to an
+accountable prejudice the tramps and other prisoners had against
+oratory, he took the evening off and went driving with Martha
+Scroggs--about as queer a thing for him to do as it would be for the
+Pope to take a young lady to the theatre. But we didn't ask any
+questions. We cheered him off on the midnight train, and the next night,
+when he won and we got the news, we turned out and built a bonfire of
+everything that wasn't nailed down. And when the police got done chasing
+us they had nineteen of the brightest and best sons of Siwash bottled up
+in the booby hatch.
+
+We didn't mind that on general principles. The bonfire was worth it,
+especially since we managed to get a few palings from old Scroggs' fence
+for it--but, as usual, the wrong men got pinched. There was the
+intercollegiate track meet due in two weeks, and there, in the list of
+felons, were Evans, our crack sprinter, Petersen, our hammer heaver, and
+yours truly, who could pole vault about as high as they run elevators in
+Europe, even if he was only a sub-Freshman with field mice in his hair.
+
+Now, this was really serious. We could afford to lose an oratorical
+contest--it just meant no bonfire for another year--but we had our
+hearts set on that track meet. We were up against our lifelong
+rivals--Muggledorfer, the State Normal, Kiowa, Hambletonian, and all the
+rest of them. We had to win--I don't know why. Beats all how many things
+you have to do in college that don't seem so absolutely necessary a few
+years afterward. Anyhow, if we three point-gobblers had to spend the
+next ten days in the works instead of rounding into form, the points
+Siwash would win in that meet could be added up by a three-year-old boy
+who was a bad scholar. It was so desperate that we hired a lawyer and
+laid the case before him that night as we sat in our horrid cells--they
+wouldn't take Hinckley for bail any more.
+
+"Get a continuance," said he. And the next morning he appeared with us
+before the awful presence and demanded the continuance on the score of
+important evidence, lack of time to perfect a defense, other
+engagements, poor crops, Presidential election, and goodness knows
+what--regular lawyer style, you know.
+
+Old Scroggs glared at us the way an unusually hungry tiger might look at
+a lamb that was being taken away to get a little riper. "I cannot object
+to a reasonable continuance," he said sourly. "And I don't deny that you
+will need all the defense you can get. The case is an atrocious one, and
+I propose to do my small part toward putting down arson and riot in this
+unhappy town. You will appear two weeks from this morning."
+
+The field meet was two weeks from that afternoon! And we didn't have a
+ghost of a defense!
+
+We three scraped up the required bail and went back to college feeling
+cheerful as a man who has been told that his hanging has been postponed
+until his wedding morning. Of course we sent for Petey Simmons. He
+arrived dejected. "No use, fellows," he remarked as he came in the door.
+"I know what you all want. You all want engagements with Martha Scroggs.
+It's no go. I've been over to see her and she's afraid to tackle it. The
+old man's told her that if she runs around with any more of this
+disgraceful, disgusting and nine other epitheted college bunch he'll
+show her the door. Says he's been worked and he's through. Says he's
+going to give you the limit and, if possible, he's going to give you
+enough to keep you in all vacation instead of letting you loose on a
+defenseless world all summer. That's how strong you are up at the
+Scroggs house."
+
+There you were! Siwash College, the pride of six decades, mollycoddled
+by an old parody on a gorilla with a grouch against the solar system! We
+trained these two weeks in hopes that a chariot of fire would come up
+and take the old man down, but there was nothing doing. He remained
+abnormally healthy and supernaturally mad. On the morning before the
+fatal day we all wrote letters home, explaining that we had secured
+elegant jobs in various emporiums over the city and wouldn't be home
+until late in the summer. Then we shivered a shake or two apiece and got
+ready to retire from this vain world for somewhere between thirty and
+ninety days. Just about that time Petey Simmons blew down to the
+college, bursting with information. He demanded a meeting of the
+Athletic Council at once and of us three sterling athletes as well. We
+were all in order in ten minutes.
+
+"Fellows, it's this way," said Petey. "Martha Scroggs is very loyal to
+the college, as you all know. She has done her very best with old
+Fireworks, but it hasn't made a dent in him. No little old party or
+buggy ride is going to get any one out this time. There's just one
+chance, she says, and she's taken it. This morning she confessed to her
+father that she is engaged to one of the men who is to come up for trial
+to-morrow morning. They think the old man will be well enough to
+unmuzzle before noon, but he's been acting like a bad case of dog-days
+all morning. He's given her twenty-four hours to name the man--and
+Martha thinks that by night he'll be resting comfortably enough to
+promise to let him off to-morrow. And she has given us the privilege of
+choosing the man she's engaged to. Now, it's up to this council to pick
+out the lucky chap. It's our only hope, fellows. We'll have one
+point-winner anyway--unless the old man eats him alive to-morrow."
+
+Evans and Petersen turned pale--they had real fiancées in college. But
+each stepped forward nobly and offered himself for the sacrifice. I
+stepped out, too, though I was so young at that time that I didn't know
+any more how to go about being engaged to a girl than I did about my
+Greek lessons. Then the council began to discuss the choice. And just
+there the trouble began.
+
+It all came about through the frats, of course. Frats are a good thing
+all right, but they stir up more trouble in a college than a Turk's nine
+wives can make for him. Ashcroft was president of the council. He was an
+Alfalfa Delt. So was Evans. Ashcroft hung out for Evans like a bulldog
+hanging to a tramp. Beeman, a council member, was a Sigh Whoop and so
+was Petersen. Beeman argued that Petersen could win more points than the
+rest of the school put together and that it would be unpatriotic,
+unmanly, disgraceful and un-Siwash-like not to select him. Bailey, the
+third member, was an Eta Bita Pie, and while sub-Freshmen are not
+supposed to be anything with Greek letters on, we understood each other,
+and I was to be initiated the next fall. Bailey pointed out caustically
+that to imprison a sub-Freshman would be to ruin his reputation, break
+his spirit and disgrace the school--that one world's record was worth
+fifty points, and that, if allowed to, I would pole-vault so high the
+next day that I would have to come down in a parachute. The result was
+the council broke up in one big row and Martha Scroggs spent the
+afternoon unengaged.
+
+About five o'clock Bailey came over to the track, where we were going
+through the last sad rites, and hauled me aside.
+
+"Take off those togs, kid," he said. "I've got a stunt. These yaps are
+going to hold another meeting to-night to decide on Martha Scroggs'
+fiancé. In the meantime you're going out to ask the old man for her.
+Understand? You're going to ask him and take what he gives you like a
+little man and beg off for to-day, and then you're going to break the
+pole-vault record. See?"
+
+Unfortunately, I did. I liked the job just as well as I would like
+getting boiled in oil. But one must stand by one's frat, you know--Gee,
+how proud I felt when I said that! I didn't have any idea how an engaged
+man ought to look or act, but I went home, put on the happiest duds I
+had, and shinned up the street about eight o'clock.
+
+The man-eating dog of the Scroggses was somewhere else, gorging himself
+on another unfortunate, and I got to the front door all right. I rang
+the bell. Some one opened the door. It was Judge Scroggs. He looked at
+me as one might look at a bug which had wandered on to the table and was
+trying to climb over a fork.
+
+"Young man," he said, "what do you want?"
+
+Did you ever have your voice slink around behind your larynx and refuse
+to come out? Mine did. I only wish I could have slunk with it. I started
+talking twice. My tongue went all right, but I couldn't slip in the
+clutch and make any sound.
+
+"Well," roared Scroggs, "what is it?"
+
+That jarred me loose. "Mr. Scroggs," I sputtered, "I am engaged to your
+daughter. I want to marry her. I want your permission. I--I'll be good
+to her, sir."
+
+He glared at me for a minute. "Oh!" he said with a queer look. "Well,
+come on in with the rest of them."
+
+I followed him into the parlor. There sat Evans and Petersen. They were
+older than I, but if I looked as scared as they did I wish somebody had
+shot me. In the corner was another student. His name was Driggs. His
+specialty was cotillons.
+
+We four sat and looked at each other with awful suspicions. Something
+was excessively wrong. I felt indignant. Can't a fellow go to see his
+fiancée without being annoyed by a Roman mob? I noticed Petersen and
+Evans looked indignant, too. We took it out by staring Driggs almost
+into the collywobbles. Who was he anyway, and why was he billy-goating
+around?
+
+Old Scroggs had called Martha. He sat and looked at us so peculiarly
+that I got gooseflesh all over. Here I was, a Freshman so green that the
+cows looked longingly at me, and up against the job of saving the
+college, winning out for the frat and becoming engaged to a girl I
+didn't know before a whole roomful of rivals. I wasn't up to the job. If
+only I had gone to the works! They seemed a haven of sweet peace just
+then.
+
+Martha Scroggs came into the room. She looked at the quartet. We looked
+at her with hunted looks. Scroggs looked at all of us.
+
+"Martha," he said at last, "each one of these four young idiots says he
+is engaged to you. Which of them shall I throw out?"
+
+The jig was up! The college was ruined! Each one of us had the same
+bright thought!
+
+For a moment I thought Martha was going to faint. She looked at the mob
+with a dazed expression. You could almost see her brain grabbing for
+some explanation. It was just for a moment, though. My, but that girl
+was a wonder! She gulped once or twice. Then she smiled in an inspired
+sort of way.
+
+"None of them, Papa," she said ever so sweetly. "I am engaged to all of
+them."
+
+The eruption of Vesuvius was only a little sputter to what followed. For
+a moment we had hopes that old Scroggs would explode. I think if he had
+had us there alone he would have tried to hang us. But every tyrant has
+his master, so before long we began to see the halter on old Scroggs.
+And his daughter held the leading rope. She let him rave about so long
+and then she retired into her pocket-handkerchief and turned on a
+regular equinoctial. Scroggs looked more uncomfortable than we felt. He
+took her in his arms and there was a family reconciliation. Every little
+while Martha would look over his shoulder at us four hopefuls sitting up
+against the wall as lively as wooden Indians, and then she would bury
+her face in her handkerchief again and shake her shoulders and writhe
+with grief--or maybe it was something else. Martha always did have a
+pretty keen sense of humor.
+
+[Illustration: My, but that girl was a wonder!
+                    _Page 74_]
+
+Suddenly Scroggs remembered us and we went out of the house like
+projectiles fired from a very loud gun. We cussed each other all the
+way home--we three athletes. We would have cussed Driggs, but he sneaked
+the other way and we lost him.
+
+The next morning we went up to police court in our old clothes. Judge
+Scroggs looked at us sourly when our turn came.
+
+"Young men," he said, "my daughter has admitted that she has been
+foolish enough to engage herself provisionally to all of you, with the
+idea of choosing the hero in this afternoon's games. I do not admire her
+taste. I think she is indeed reckless to fall in love with collegians
+when there are so many honest cab drivers and grocery boys to choose
+from. But I have, in the interests of peace, consented to allow you to
+compete this afternoon. You are discharged. I do this the more willingly
+because I have seen you here before and shall again. You may go."
+
+We did go, and when we got through that afternoon the knobby-legged
+athletes from our rival schools looked like quarter horses plowing home
+just ahead of the next race. Siwash won by an enormous lead and we three
+were the stars of the meet. Why shouldn't we be when our fiancée sat in
+a box in the grandstand and cheered us impartially? More than that, old
+Scroggs sat with her and I have an idea that he got excited, too, in the
+breath-catching parts.
+
+I think that engagement business must have broken the old man's spirit,
+or else so much association with college people began to waken dormant
+brain cells in his head. The rest of the rioters got out of the
+workhouse right away, and that fall he retired from the bench, declaring
+that if he was to have a college student for a son-in-law, as looked
+extremely likely, he needed to put in all of his time at home protecting
+his property. In honor of his retirement we had a pajama parade which
+was nine blocks long and forty-two blocks loud, and a platoon of six
+policemen led the way.
+
+Of course that engagement business left all sorts of complications.
+Scroggs pestered his daughter for about a month to make her decision. He
+seemed somewhat relieved when she finally announced that she couldn't;
+but it wasn't much relief, after all, for by this time he couldn't walk
+around his own house without falling over Petey Simmons. Just two years
+ago I got cards to Petey's wedding. He and Martha are living in Chicago
+in one of those flats where you have seven hundred and eighty-nine
+dollars' worth of bath-room, and eighty-nine cents' worth of living
+room, and which you have to lease by measure just as you would buy a
+vest. If Petey hangs on long enough he is going to be a big man in the
+banking business, too.
+
+I forgot to clear up this Driggs mystery. The evening after the races,
+Martha called up Petey Simmons. "Petey," said she, "I wish you would
+tell me who this fourth man is that I'm engaged to. He doesn't seem to
+be on the track team and I didn't catch his name. I don't mind having to
+make up an excuse for being engaged to four men right on the spur of
+the moment if it is necessary, but I'd at least like to know their
+names."
+
+Petey was as puzzled as she was and lit out to find Driggs. He was gone,
+but the next day he turned up and confessed all. He had a terrible
+affair with a girl in the next town, it seems, and had a date to bring
+her to the games. He was one of the nineteen criminals, and was so
+terror-stricken at the idea of being compelled to desert his hypnotizer
+that when the news of the engagement business leaked out he took a long
+chance and went up and announced himself. It worked, but we caught him
+two nights later and shaved his hair on one side as a gentle warning not
+to do it again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A FUNERAL THAT FLASHED IN THE PAN
+
+
+Honest, Bill, sometimes when I sit down in these sober, plug-away
+days--when we are kind to the poor dumb policemen and don't dare wear
+straw hats after the first of September--and think about the good old
+college times, I wonder how we ever had the nerve to imitate insanity
+the way we did. Here I am, rubbing noses with thirty, outgrowing my
+belts every year, and sitting eight hours at a desk without exploding.
+Am I the chap who climbed up sixty feet of waterspout a few short years
+ago and persuaded the clapper of the college bell to come down with me?
+Here you are all worn smooth on top and proprietor of an overflow
+meeting in a nursery. In about ten minutes you'll be tearing your
+coat-tails out of my hands because you have to go back home before the
+eldest kid asks for a story. Are you the loafer who spent all one night
+getting a profane parrot into the cold-air pipes of the college chapel?
+Maybe you think you are, but I don't believe it. If I were to tip this
+table over on you now you'd get mad and go home instead of handing me a
+volume of George Barr McCutcheon in the watch-pocket. You're not the
+good old lunatic you used to be, and neither am I.
+
+Yes, times have changed. I don't feel as unfettered as I used to. There
+are a few things nowadays that I don't care to do. When I come home at
+night I take my shoes off and tiptoe to my room instead of standing
+outside and trying to persuade my landlady that the house is on fire.
+When I visit a friend in his apartments I do not, as a bit of repartee,
+throw all of his clothes out of the window while he is out of the room,
+and it has been a long time since I last hung a basket out of my window
+on Saturday night, expecting some early-rising friend to put a pocketful
+of breakfast in it as he came past from boarding-club. I am a slave to
+conventions and so are you, you slant-shouldered, hollow-chested,
+four-eyed, flabby-spirited pill-roller, you! The city makes more mummies
+out of live ones than old Rameses ever did out of his obituary crop.
+
+And yet it's no time at all since you and I were back at Siwash College,
+making a dear playmate out of trouble from morning till night. I wonder
+what it is in college that makes a fellow want to stick his finger into
+conventions and customs and manners, to say nothing of the revised
+statutes, and stir the whole mess 'round and 'round! When you're in
+college, college life seems big and all the rest of the world so small
+that what you want to do as a student seems to be the only important
+thing in life--no matter if what you want to do is only to put a
+free-lunch sign over the First Methodist Church. What does the college
+student care for the U. S. A., the planet or the solar system? Why, at
+Siwash, I remember the biggest man in the world was Ole Skjarsen. Next
+to him was Coach Bost, then Rogers, captain of the football team, and
+then Jensen, the quarter. After him came Frankling, of the Alfalfa
+Delts, whose father picked up bargains in railroads instead of gloves;
+then came Prexy, and after him the President of the United States and a
+few scattered celebrities, tailing down to the Mayor of Jonesville and
+its leading citizens--mere nobodies.
+
+That's how important the outside world seemed to us. Is it any wonder
+that when we wanted to go downtown in pajamas and plug hats we paddled
+right along? Or that when we wanted to steal a couple of actors and tie
+them in a barn, while two of us took their places, we did not hesitate
+to do so? We felt perfectly free to do just what we pleased. The college
+understood us, and what the world thought never entered our heads.
+
+Those were certainly nightmarish times for the Faculty of a small but
+husky college filled with live wires who specialized in applied
+mischief. It beats all what peculiar things college students can do and
+not think anything of it at all; and it's funny how closely wisdom and
+blame foolishness seem to be related. I remember after I had spent two
+hours putting my Polykon down on a concrete foundation so that I could
+recite John Stuart Mill by the ream, it seemed as if I couldn't live
+half an hour longer without a certain kind of pie that was kept in
+captivity a mile away downtown at a lunch-counter. And, moreover, I
+couldn't eat that pie alone. A college student doesn't know how to
+masticate without an assistant or two. When I think of the hours and
+hours I have spent traveling around at midnight and battering on the
+doors of perfectly respectable houses, trying to drag some student out
+and take him a mile or two away downtown after pie, I am struck with
+awe. When I came to this town I walked two days for a job and then sat
+around with my feet on a sofa cushion for three days. I'll bet I've
+walked twice as far hunting up some devoted friend to help me go
+downtown and eat a piece of pie. And that pie seemed three times as
+important as the easy lessons for beginners in running the earth that I
+had been absorbing all the evening.
+
+You needn't grin, Bill. You were just as bad. I remember you were the
+biggest math. shark in college. You could do calculus problems that took
+all the English letters from A to Z and then slopped over into the Greek
+alphabet; and everybody predicted that you would be a great man if
+anybody ever found any use for calculus. And yet the chief ambition of
+your life was to find a way of tampering with the college clock so that
+it would run twice as fast as its schedule. You used to sit around and
+figure all evening over it and declare that if you could only do it once
+and watch the profs. letting out classes early and going home to supper
+at one P. M. you would consider your life well spent. Sounds fiddling
+now, doesn't it? But I admired you for it then. I really looked up to
+you, Bill, as a man with a firm, fixed purpose, while I was just a
+trifler who would be satisfied to steal the hands of the clock or jolly
+it into striking two hundred times in a row.
+
+There was Rearick, for instance. He was the smartest man in our class.
+Took scholarship prizes as carelessly as a policeman takes peanuts from
+a Dago stand. Since then he's gone up so fast that every time I see him
+I insult him by congratulating him on getting the place he's just been
+promoted from. But what was Rearick's hobby at Siwash? Stealing hatpins.
+He had four hundred hatpins when he graduated, and he never could see
+anything wrong in it. Guess he's got them yet. Perkins is in Congress
+already. He out-debated the whole Northwest and wrote pieces on subjects
+so heavy that you could break up coal with them. But I never saw him so
+earnest in debate as he was the night he talked old Bill Morrison into
+letting him drive his hack for him all evening. He told me he had driven
+every hack in town but Bill's, and that Bill had baffled him for two
+years. It cost him four dollars to turn the trick, but he was happier
+after it than he was when he won the Siwash-Muggledorfer debate. Said he
+was ready to graduate now--college held nothing further for him.
+Perkins' brains weren't addled, because he has been working them double
+shift ever since. He just had the college microbe, that's all. It gets
+into your gray matter and makes you enjoy things turned inside out. You
+remember "Prince" Hogboom's funeral, don't you?
+
+What year was it? Why, ninety-ump-teen. What? That's right, you got out
+the year before. I remember they held your diploma until you paid for
+the library cornerstone that your class stole and cut up into
+paper-weights. Well, by not staying the next year you missed the most
+unsuccessful funeral that was ever held in the history of Siwash or
+anywhere else. It was one of the very few funerals on record in which
+the corpse succeeded in licking the mourners. I've got a small scar from
+it now. You may think you're going home to that valuable baby of yours,
+but you are not. You'll hear me out. I haven't talked with a Siwash man
+for a month, and all of these Hale and Jarhard and Stencilmania fellows
+give me an ashy taste in my mouth when I talk with them. It's about as
+much fun talking college days with a fellow from another school as it is
+to talk ranching with a New England old maid; and when I get hold of a
+Siwash man you can bet I hang on to him as long as my talons will stick.
+You just sit right there and start another Wheeling conflagration while
+I tell you how we killed Hogboom to make a Siwash holiday.
+
+I helped kill him myself. It was my first murder. It was an awful thing
+to do, but we were desperate men. It was spring--in May--and not one of
+us had a cut left. You know how unimportant your cuts are in the fall
+when you know that you can skip classes ten times that year without
+getting called up on the green carpet and gimleted by the Faculty. Ten
+cuts seem an awful lot when you begin. You throw 'em away for anything.
+You cut class to go downtown and buy a cigarette. You cut class to see a
+dog fight. I've even known a fellow to cut a class in the fall because
+he had to go back to the room and put on a clean collar. But, oh, how
+different it is in May, when you haven't a cut left to your name and the
+Faculty has been holding meetings on you, anyway; when classroom is a
+jail and the campus just outside the window is a paradise, green and
+sunshiny and fanned by warm breezes--excuse these poetries. And you can
+sit in your class in Evidences of Christianity--of which you knew as
+much as a Chinese laundryman does of force-feed lubrication--and look
+out of the window and see your best girl sitting on the grass with some
+smug oyster who has saved up his cuts. How I used to hate these chaps
+who saved up their cuts till spring and then took my girl out walking
+while I went to classes! Is there anything more maddening, I'd like to
+know, than to sit before a big, low window trying to follow a psychology
+recitation closely enough to get up when called on, and at the same time
+watch five girls, with all of whom you are dead in love, strolling
+slowly off into the bright distance with five job-lot male beings who
+are dull and uninteresting and just cold-blooded enough to save their
+cuts until the springtime? If there is I've never had it.
+
+In this spring of umpty-steen it seemed as if only one ambition in the
+world was worth achieving--that was to get out of classes. Most of us
+had used up our cuts long ago. The Faculty is never any too patient in
+the spring, anyhow, and a lot of us were on the ragged edge. I remember
+feeling very confidently that if I went up before that brain trust in
+the Faculty room once more and tried to explain how it was that I was
+giving absent treatment to my beloved studies, said Faculty would take
+the college away from me and wouldn't let me play with it never no more.
+And that's an awful distressing fear to hang over a man who loves and
+enjoys everything connected with a college except the few trifling
+recitations which take up his time and interfere with his plans. It hung
+over five of us who were trying to plan some way of going over to
+Hambletonian College to see our baseball team wear deep paths around
+their diamond. We were certain to win, and as the Hambletonians hadn't
+found this out there was a legitimate profit to be made from our
+knowledge--profit we yearned for and needed frightfully. I wonder if
+these Wall Street financiers and Western railroad men really think they
+know anything about hard times? Why, I've known times to be so hard in
+May that three men would pool all their available funds and then toss up
+to see which one of them would eat the piece of pie the total sum
+bought. I've known Seniors to begin selling their personal effects in
+April--a pair of shoes for a dime, a dress suit for five dollars--and to
+go home in June with a trunk full of flags and dance programs and
+nothing else. I've known students to buy velveteen pants in the spring
+and go around with big slouch hats and very long hair--not because they
+were really artistic and Bohemian, but because it was easier to buy the
+trousers and have them charged than it was to find a quarter for a
+haircut.
+
+That's how busted live college students with unappreciative dads can get
+in the spring. That's how busted we were; and there was Hambletonian,
+twenty miles away, full of money and misguided faith in their team. If
+we could scrape up a little cash we could ride over on our bicycles and
+transfer the financial stringency to the other college with no trouble
+at all. But it was a midweek game and not one of us had a cut left. That
+was why we murdered Hogboom.
+
+It happened one evening when we were sitting on the front porch of the
+Eta Bita Pie house. That was the least expensive thing we could do. We
+had been discussing girls and baseball and spring suits, and the
+comparative excellence of the wheat cakes at the Union Lunch Counter and
+Jim's place. But whatever we talked about ran into money in the end and
+we had to change the subject. There's mighty little a poor man can talk
+about in spring in college, I can tell you. We discussed around for an
+hour or two, bumping into the dollar mark in every direction, and
+finally got so depressed that we shut up and sat around with our heads
+in our hands. That seemed to be about the only thing to do that didn't
+require money.
+
+"We'll have to do something desperate to get to that game," said Hogboom
+at last. Hogboom was a Senior. He ranked "sublime" in football,
+"excellent" in baseball, "good" in mandolin, "fair" in dancing, and from
+there down in Greek, Latin and Mathematics.
+
+"Intelligent boy," said Bunk Bailey pleasantly; "tell us what it must
+be. Desperate things done to order, day or night, with care and
+thoroughness. Trot out your desperate thing and get me an axe. I'll do
+it."
+
+"Well," said Hogboom, "I don't know, but it seems to me that if one of
+us was to die maybe the Faculty would take a day off and we could go
+over to Hambletonian without getting cuts."
+
+"Fine scheme; get me a gun, Hogboom." "Do you prefer drowning or
+lynching?" "Kill him quick, somebody." "Look pleasant, please, while the
+operator is working." "What do you charge for dying?" Oh, we guyed him
+good and plenty, which is a way they have at old Harvard and middle-aged
+Siwash and Infant South Dakota University and wherever two students are
+gathered together anywhere in the U. S. A.
+
+Hogboom only grinned. "Prattle away all you please," he said, "but I
+mean it. I've got magnificent facilities for dying just now. I'll
+consider a proposition to die for the benefit of the cause if you
+fellows will agree to keep me in cigarettes and pie while I'm dead."
+
+"Done," says I, "and in embalming fluid, too. But just demonstrate this
+theorem, Hoggy, old boy. How extensively are you going to die?"
+
+"Just enough to get a holiday," said Hogboom. "You see, I happen to have
+a chum in the telegraph office in Weeping Water, where I live. Now if I
+were to go home to spend Sunday and you fellows were to receive a
+telegram that I had been kicked to death by an automobile, would you
+have sense enough to show it to Prexy?"
+
+"We would," we remarked, beginning to get intelligent.
+
+"And, after he had confirmed the sad news by telegram, would you have
+sense enough left to suggest that college dismiss on Tuesday and hold a
+memorial meeting?"
+
+"We would," we chuckled.
+
+"And would you have foresight enough to suggest that it be held in the
+morning so that you could rush away to Weeping Water in the afternoon to
+attend the funeral?"
+
+"Yes, indeed," we said, so mildly that the cop two blocks away strolled
+down to see what was up.
+
+"And then would you be diplomatic enough to produce a telegram saying
+that the report was false, just too late to start the afternoon
+classes?"
+
+"You bet!" we whooped, pounding Hogboom with great joy. Then we sat down
+as unconcernedly as if we were planning to go to the vaudeville the next
+afternoon and arranged the details of Hogboom's assassination. As I was
+remarking, positively nothing looks serious to a college boy until after
+he has done it.
+
+That was on Friday night. On Saturday we killed Hogboom. That is, he
+killed himself. He got permission to go home over Sunday and retired to
+an upper back room in our house, very unostentatiously. He had already
+written to his operator chum, who had attended college just long enough
+to take away his respect for death, the integrity of the telegraph
+service and practically everything else. The result was that at nine
+o'clock that evening a messenger boy rang our bell and handed in a
+telegram. It was brief and terrible. Wilbur Hogboom had been submerged
+in the Weeping Water River while trying to abduct a catfish from his
+happy home and had only just been hauled out entirely extinct.
+
+It was an awful shock to us. We had expected him to be shot. We read it
+solemnly and then tiptoed up to Hogboom with it. He turned pale when he
+saw the yellow slip.
+
+"What is it?" he asked hurriedly. "How did it happen?"
+
+"You were drowned, Hoggy, old boy," Wilkins said. "Drowned in your
+little old Weeping Water River. They have got you now and you're all
+damp and drippy, and your best girl is having one hysteric after
+another. Don't you think you ought to throw that cigarette away and show
+some respect to yourself? We've all quit playing cards and are going to
+bed early in your honor."
+
+"Well, I'm not," said Hogboom. "It's the first time I have ever been
+dead, and I'm going to stay up all night and see how I feel. Another
+thing, I'm going down and telephone the news to Prexy myself. I've had
+nothing but hard words out of him all my college course, and if he can't
+think up something nice to say on an occasion like this I'm going to
+give him up."
+
+Hogboom called up Prexy and in a shaking voice read him the telegram. We
+sat around, choking each other to preserve the peace, and listened to
+the following cross section of a dialogue--telephone talk is so
+interesting when you just get one hemisphere of it.
+
+"Hello! That you, Doctor? This is the Eta Bita Pie House. I've some very
+sad news to tell you. Hogboom was drowned to-day in the Weeping Water
+River. We've just had a telegram--Yes, quite dead--No chance of a
+mistake, I'm afraid--Yes, they recovered him--We're all broken up--Oh,
+yes, he was a fine fellow--We loved him deeply--I'm glad you thought so
+much of him--He was always so frank in his admiration of you--Yes, he
+was honorable--Yes, and brilliant, too--Of course, we valued him for
+his good fellowship, but, as you say, he was also an earnest boy--It's
+awful--Yes, a fine athlete--I wish he could hear you say that,
+Doctor--No, I'm afraid we can't fill his place--Yes, it is a loss to the
+college--I guess you just address telegram to his folks at Weeping
+Water--That's how we're sending ours--Good-night--Yes, a fine
+fellow--Good-night."
+
+Hogboom hung up the 'phone and went upstairs, where he lay for an hour
+or two with his face full of pillows. The rest of us weren't so gay. We
+could see the humor of the thing all right, but the awful fact that we
+were murderers was beginning to hang over our heads. It was easy enough
+to kill Hogboom, but now that he was dead the future looked tolerably
+complicated. Suppose something happened? Suppose he didn't stay dead?
+There's no peace for a murderer, anyway. We didn't sleep much that
+night.
+
+The next day it was worse. We sat around and entertained callers all
+day. Half a hundred students called and brought enough woe to fit out a
+Democratic headquarters on Presidential election night. They all had
+something nice to say of Hoggy. We sat around and mourned and gloomed
+and agreed with them until we were ready to yell with disgust.
+
+Hogboom was the most disgracefully lively corpse I ever saw. He insisted
+on sitting at the head of the stairs where he could hear every good word
+that was said of him, and the things he demanded of us during the day
+would have driven a stone saint to crime. Four times we went downtown
+for pie; three times for cigarettes; once for all the Sunday newspapers,
+and once for ice cream. As I told you, it was May, the time of the year
+when street-car fare is a problem of financial magnitude. We had to
+borrow money from the cook before night. Hoggy had us helpless, and he
+was taking a mean and contemptible advantage of the fact that he was a
+corpse. Half a dozen times we were on the verge of letting him come to
+life. It would have served him right.
+
+Old Siwash was just naturally submerged in sorrow when Monday morning
+came. The campus dripped with sadness. The Faculty oozed regret at every
+pore. We loyal friends of Hogboom were looked on as the chief mourners
+and it was up to us to fill the part. We did our best. We talked with
+the soft pedal on. We went without cigarettes. We wiped our eyes
+whenever we got an audience. Time after time we told the sad story and
+exhibited the telegram. By noon more particulars began to come in. Prexy
+got an answer to his telegram of condolence. The funeral, the telegram
+said, would be on Tuesday afternoon. There was great and universal grief
+in Weeping Water, where Hogboom had been held in reverent esteem.
+Hoggy's chum in the telegraph office simply laid himself out on that
+telegram. Prexy read it to me himself and wiped his eyes while he did
+it. He was a nice, sympathetic man, Prexy was, when he wasn't discussing
+cuts or scholarship.
+
+Getting the memorial meeting was so easy we hated to take it. The
+Faculty met to pass resolutions Monday afternoon, and when our
+delegation arrived they treated us like brothers. It was just like
+entering the camp of the enemy under a flag of truce. Many a time I've
+gone in on that same carpet, but never with such a feeling of holy calm.
+"They would, of course, hold the memorial meeting," said Prexy. They had
+in fact decided on this already. They would, of course, dismiss college
+all day. It was, perhaps, best to hold the memorial in the morning if so
+many of us were going out to Weeping Water. It was nice so many of us
+could go. Prexy was going. So was the mathematics professor, old
+"Ichthyosaurus" James, a very fine old ruin, whom Hogboom hated with a
+frenzy worthy of a better cause, but who, it seemed, had worked up a
+great regard for Hogboom through having him for three years in the same
+trigonometry class.
+
+We went out of Faculty meeting men and equals with the professors. They
+walked down to the corner with us, I remember, and I talked with Cander,
+the Polykon professor, who had always seemed to me to be the embodiment
+of Comanche cruelty and cunning. We talked of Hogboom all the way to the
+corner. Wonderful how deeply the Faculty loved the boy; and with what
+Spartan firmness they had concealed all indications of it through his
+career!
+
+When Monday night came we began to breathe more easily. Of course there
+was some kind of a deluge coming when Hogboom appeared, but that was
+his affair. We didn't propose to monkey with the resurrection at all. He
+could do his own explaining. To tell the truth, we were pretty sore at
+Hogboom. He was making a regular Roman holiday out of his demise. It
+kept four men busy running errands for him. We had to retail him every
+compliment that we had heard during the day, especially if it came from
+the Faculty. We had to describe in detail the effect of the news upon
+six or seven girls, for all of whom Hogboom had a tender regard. He
+insisted upon arranging the funeral and vetoed our plans as fast as we
+made them. He was as domineering and ugly as if he was the only man who
+had ever met a tragic end. He acted as if he had a monopoly. We hated
+him cordially by Monday night, but we were helpless. Hoggy claimed that
+being dead was a nerve-wearing and exhausting business, and that if he
+didn't get the respect due to him as a corpse he would put on his plug
+hat and a plush curtain and walk up the main street of Jonesville. And
+as he was a football man and a blamed fool combined we didn't see any
+way of preventing him.
+
+However, everything looked promising. We had made all the necessary
+arrangements. The students were to meet in chapel at nine o'clock in the
+morning and eulogize Hogboom for an hour, after which college was to be
+dismissed for the day in order that unlimited mourning could be indulged
+in. There were to be speeches by the Faculty and by students. Maxfield,
+the human textbook, was to make the address for the Senior class. We
+chuckled when we thought how he was toiling over it. Noddy Pierce, of
+our crowd, was to talk about Hogboom as a brother; Rogers, of the
+football team, was to make a few grief-saturated remarks. So was
+Perkins. Every one was confidently expecting Perkins to make the effort
+of his life and swamp the chapel in sorrow. He was in the secret and he
+afterward said that he would rather try to write a Shakespearean tragedy
+offhand than to write another funeral oration about a man who he knew
+was at that moment sitting in a pair of pajamas in an upper room half a
+mile away and yelling for pie.
+
+As a matter of fact, there were so many in the secret that we were dead
+afraid that it would explode. We had to put the baseball team on so that
+they would be prepared to go over to Hambletonian at noon. The game had
+been called off, of course, and Hambletonian had been telegraphed. But I
+was secretary of the Athletic Club and had done the telegraphing. So I
+addressed the telegram to my aunt in New Jersey. It puzzled the dear old
+lady for months, I guess, because she kept writing to me about it. We
+had to tell all the fellows in the frat house and every one of the
+conspirators let in a friend or two. There were about fifty students who
+weren't as soggy with grief as they should have been by Monday night.
+
+I blame Hogboom entirely for what happened. He started it when he
+insisted that he be smuggled into the chapel to hear his own funeral
+orations. We argued half the Monday night with him, but it was no use.
+He simply demanded it. If all dead men are as disagreeable as Hogboom
+was, no undertaker's job for me. He was the limit. He put on a blue
+bath-robe and got as far as the door on his promenade downtown before we
+gave in and promised to do anything he wanted. We had to break into the
+chapel and stow him away in a little grilled alcove in the attic on the
+side of the auditorium where he could hear everything. Sounds
+uncomfortable, but don't imagine it was. That nervy slavedriver made us
+lug over two dozen sofa pillows, a rug or two, a bottle of moisture and
+three pies to while away the time with. That was where we first began to
+think of revenge. We got it, too--only we got it the way Samson did when
+he jerked the columns out from under the roof and furnished the material
+for a general funeral, with himself in the leading rôle.
+
+By the time we got Hogboom planted in his luxurious nest, about three
+A. M., we were ready to do anything. Some of us were for giving the
+whole snap away, but Pierce and Perkins and Rogers objected. They wanted
+to deliver their speeches at the meeting. If we would leave it to them,
+they said, they would see that justice was ladled out.
+
+The whole college and most of the town were at the memorial meeting. It
+was a grand and tear-spangled occasion. There were three grades of
+emotion plainly visible. There was the resigned and almost pleased
+expression of the students who weren't in on the deal and who saw a
+vacation looming up for that afternoon; the grieved and sympathetic
+sorrow of the Faculty who were attempting to mourn for what they had
+always called a general school nuisance; and there was the phenomenally
+solemn woe of the conspirators, who were spreading it on good and thick.
+
+The Faculty spoke first. Beats all how much of a hypocrite a good man
+can be when he feels it to be his duty. There was Bates, the Latin prof.
+He had struggled with Hogboom three years and had often expressed the
+firm opinion that, if Hoggy were removed from this world by a
+masterpiece of justice of some sort, the general tone of civilization
+would go up fifty per cent. Yet Bates got up that morning and
+cried--yes, sir, actually cried. Cried into a large pocket handkerchief
+that wasn't water-tight, either. That's more than Hoggy would ever have
+done for him. And Prexy was so sympathetic and spoke so beautifully of
+young soldiers getting drawn aside by Fate on their way to the battle,
+and all that sort of thing, that you would have thought he had spent the
+last three years loving Hogboom--whereas he had spent most of the time
+trying to get some good excuse for rooting him out of school. You know
+how Faculties always dislike a good football player. I think, myself,
+they are jealous of his fame.
+
+Maxfield made a telling address for the Senior class. He and Hoggy had
+always disagreed, but it was all over now; and the way he laid it on was
+simply wonderful. I thought of Hoggy up there behind the grilling,
+swelling with pride and satisfaction as Maxfield told how brave, how
+tender, how affectionate and how honorable he was, and I wished I was
+dead, too. Being dead with a string to it is one of the finest things
+that can happen to a man if he can just hang around and listen to
+people.
+
+Pierce got up. He was the college silver-tongue, and we settled back to
+listen to him. Previous speakers had made Hoggy out about as fine as Sir
+Philip Sidney, but they were amateurs. Here was where Hoggy went up
+beside A. Lincoln and Alexander if Pierce was anywhere near himself.
+
+There is no denying that Pierce started out magnificently. But pretty
+soon I began to have an uneasy feeling that something was wrong. He was
+eloquent enough, but it seemed to me that he was handling the deceased a
+little too strenuously. You know how you can damn a man in nine ways and
+then pull all the stingers out with a "but" at the end of it. That was
+what Pierce was doing. "What if Hogboom was, in a way, fond of his
+ease?" he thundered. "What if the spirit of good fellowship linked arms
+with him when lessons were waiting, and led him to the pool hall? He may
+have been dilatory in his college duties; he may have wasted his
+allowance on billiards instead of in missionary contributions. He may
+have owed money--yes, a lot of money. He may, indeed, have been a
+little selfish--which one of us isn't? He may have frittered away time
+for which his parents were spending the fruit of their early toil--but
+youth, friends, is a golden age when life runs riot, and he is only half
+a man who stops to think of petty prudence."
+
+That was all very well to say about Rameses or Julius Cæsar or some
+other deceased who is pretty well seasoned, but I'll tell you it made
+the college gasp, coming when it did. It sounded sacrilegious and to me
+it sounded as if some one who was noted as an orator was going to get
+thumped by the late Mr. Hogboom about the next day. I perspired a lot
+from nervousness as Pierce rumbled on, first praising the departed and
+then landing on him with both oratorical feet. When he finally sat down
+and mopped his forehead the whole school gave one of those long breaths
+that you let go of when you have just come up from a dive under cold
+water.
+
+Rogers followed Pierce. Rogers wasn't much of a talker, but he surpassed
+even his own record that day in falling over himself. When he tried to
+illustrate how thoughtful and generous Hogboom was he blundered into the
+story of the time Hoggy bet all of his money on a baseball game at
+Muggledorfer, and of how he walked home with his chum and carried the
+latter's coat and grip all the way. That made the Faculty wriggle, I can
+tell you. He illustrated the pluck of the deceased by telling how
+Hogboom, as a Freshman, dug all night alone to rescue a man imprisoned
+in a sewer, spurred on by his cries--though Rogers explained in his
+halting way, it afterward turned out that this was only the famous
+"sewer racket" which is worked on every green Freshman, and that the
+cries for help came from a Sophomore who was alternately smoking a pipe
+and yelling into a drain across the road. Still, Rogers said, it
+illustrated Hogboom's nobility of spirit. In his blundering fashion he
+went on to explain some more of Hoggy's good points, and by the time he
+sat down there wasn't a shred of the latter's reputation left intact.
+The whole school was grinning uncomfortably, and the Faculty was acting
+as if it was sitting, individually and collectively, on seventeen great
+gross of red-hot pins.
+
+By this time we conspirators were divided between holy joy and a fear
+that the thing was going to be overdone. It was plain to be seen that
+the Faculty wasn't going to stand for much more loving frankness. Pierce
+whispered to Tad Perkins, Hogboom's chum, and the worst victim of his
+posthumous whims, to draw it mild and go slow. Perkins was to make the
+last talk, and we trembled in our shoes when he got up.
+
+We needn't have feared for Perkins. He was as smooth as a Tammany
+orator. He praised Hogboom so pathetically that the chapel began to show
+acres of white handkerchiefs again. Very gently he talked over his
+career, his bravery and his achievements. Then just as poetically and
+gently he glided on into the biggest lie that has been told since
+Ananias short-circuited retribution with his unholy tale.
+
+"What fills up the heart and the throat, fellows," he swung along, "is
+not the loss we have sustained; not the irreparable injury to all our
+college activities; not even the vacant chair that must sit mutely
+eloquent beside us this year. It's something worse than that. Perhaps I
+should not be telling this. It's known to but a few of his most intimate
+friends. The saddest thing of all is the fact that back in Weeping Water
+there is a girl--a lovely girl--who will never smile again."
+
+Phew! You could just feel the feminine side of the chapel
+stiffen--Hogboom was the worst fusser in college. He was chronically in
+love with no less than four girls and was devoted to dozens at a time.
+We had reason to believe that he was at that time engaged to two, and
+spring was only half over at that. This was the best of all; our revenge
+was complete.
+
+"A girl," Perkins purred on, "who has grown up with him from childhood;
+who whispered her promise to him while yet in short dresses; who sat at
+home and waited and dreamed while her knight fought his way to glory in
+college; who treasured his vows and wore his ring and--"
+
+"'Tain't so, you blamed idiot!" came a hoarse voice from above. If the
+chapel had been stormed by Comanches there couldn't have been more of a
+commotion. A thousand pairs of eyes focused themselves on the grill. It
+sagged in and then disappeared with a crash. The towsled head of Hogboom
+came out of the opening.
+
+"I'll fix you for that, Tad Perkins!" he yelled. "I'll get even with you
+if it takes me the rest of my life. I ain't engaged to any Weeping Water
+girl. You know it, you liar! I've had enough of this--" You couldn't
+hear any more for the shrieks. When a supposedly dead man sticks his
+head out of a jog in the ceiling and offers to fight his Mark Antony it
+is bound to create some commotion. Even the professors turned white. As
+for the girls--great smelling salts, what a cinch! They fainted in
+windrows. Some of us carried out as many as six, and you had better
+believe we were fastidious in our choice, too.
+
+There had never been such a sensation since Siwash was invented. Between
+the panic-stricken, the dazed, the hilarious, the indignant and the
+guilty wretches like myself, who were wondering how in thunder there was
+going to be any explaining done, that chapel was just as coherent as a
+madhouse. And then Hogboom himself burst in a side door, and it took
+seven of us to prevent him from reducing Perkins to a paste and
+frescoing him all over the chapel walls. Everybody was rattled but
+Prexy. I think Prexy's circulation was principally ice water. When the
+row was over he got up and blandly announced that classes would take up
+immediately and that the Faculty would meet in extraordinary session
+that noon.
+
+How did we get out of it? Well, if you want to catch the last car, old
+man, I'll have to hit the high spots on the sequel. Of course, it was a
+tremendous scandal--a memorial meeting breaking up in a fight. We all
+stood to be expelled, and some of the Faculty were sorry they couldn't
+hang us, I guess, from the way they talked. But in the end it blew over
+because there wasn't much of anything to hang on any one. The telegrams
+were all traced to the agent at Weeping Water, and he identified the
+sender as a long, short, thick, stout, agricultural-looking man in a
+plug hat, or words to that effect. What's more, he declared it wasn't
+his duty to chase around town confirming messages--he was paid to send
+them. Hogboom had a harder time, but he, too, explained that he had come
+home from Weeping Water a day late, owing to a slight attack of
+appendicitis, and that when he found himself late for chapel he had
+climbed up into the balcony through a side door to hear the chapel talk,
+of which he was very fond, and had found, to his amazement, that he was
+being reviled by his friends under the supposition that he was dead and
+unable to defend himself. Nobody believed Hogboom, but nobody could
+suggest any proof of his villainy--so the Faculty gave him an extra
+five-thousand-word oration by way of punishment, and Hogboom made
+Perkins write it in two nights by threats of making a clean breast. Poor
+Hoggy came out of it pretty badly. I think it broke both of his
+engagements, and what between explaining to the Faculty and studying to
+make a good showing and redeem himself, he didn't have time to work up
+another before Commencement--while the rest of us lived in mortal terror
+of exposure and didn't enjoy ourselves a bit all through May, though it
+was some comfort to reflect on what would have happened if the scheme
+had worked--for Hambletonian beat us to a frazzle that afternoon.
+
+That's what we got for monkeying with a solemn subject. But, pshaw! Who
+cares in college? What a student can do is limited only by what he can
+think up. Did I ever tell you what we did to the English Explorer? Take
+another cigar. It isn't late yet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+COLLEGES WHILE YOU WAIT
+
+
+Mind you, old head, I'm not saying that a little education isn't a good
+thing in a college course. I learned a lot of real knowledge in school
+myself that I wouldn't have missed for anything, though I have forgotten
+it now. But what irritate me are the people who think that the education
+you get in a modern American super-heated, cross-compound college comes
+to you already canned in neat little textbooks sold by the trust at one
+hundred per cent profit, and that all you have to do is to go to your
+room with them, fill up a student lamp with essence of General Education
+and take the lid off.
+
+Honest, lots of them think that. It might have been so, too, in the good
+old days when there was only one college graduate for each town and he
+had to do the heavy thinking for the whole community. But, pshaw! the
+easiest job in the world nowadays is to stuff your storage battery full
+of Greek verbs and obituaries in English literature, and the hardest job
+is to get it hitched up to something that will bring in the yellowbacks,
+the chopped-wood furniture, the automobile tires and the large
+majorities in the fall elections. I've seen brilliant boys at old
+Siwash go out of college knowing everything that had ever happened in
+the world up to one hundred years ago, and try to peddle hexameters in
+the wholesale district in Chicago. And I've seen boys who slid through
+the course just half a hair's breadth ahead of the Faculty boot, go out
+and do the bossing for a whole Congressional district in five years.
+They hadn't learned the exact chemical formula of the universe, but they
+had learned how to run the blamed thing from practicing on the college
+during study hours.
+
+Not that I'm knocking on knowledge, you understand. Knowledge is, of
+course, a grand thing to have around the house. But nowadays knowledge
+alone isn't worth as much as it used to be, seems to me. A man has to
+mix it up with imagination, and ingenuity, and hustle, and nerve, and
+the science of getting mad at the right time, and a fourteen-year course
+of study in understanding the other fellow. The college professors lump
+all this in one course and call it applied deviltry. They don't put it
+down in the catalogue and they encourage you to cut classes in it. But,
+honestly, I wouldn't trade what I learned under Professor Petey Simmons,
+warm boy and official gadfly to the Faculty, for all the Lat. and Greek
+and Analit. and Diffy. Cal., and the other studies--whatever they
+were--that I took in good old Siwash.
+
+You remember Petey, of course. He went through Siwash in four years and
+eight suspensions, and came out fresh--as fresh as when he went in,
+which is saying a good deal. Every summer during his career the Faculty
+went to a rest cure and tried to forget him. He was as handy to have
+around school as a fox terrier in a cat show. There are two varieties of
+college students--the midnight-oil and the natural-gas kind; and Petey
+was a whole gas well in himself. Not that he didn't study. He was the
+hardest student in the college, but he didn't recite much in classes.
+Sometimes he recited in the police court, sometimes to his Pa back home,
+and sometimes the whole college took a hand in looking over his
+examination papers. He used to pass medium fair in Horace; sub-passable
+in Trig., and extraordinary mediocre in Polikon. But his marks in
+Imagination, the Psychological Moment and Dodging Consequences were plus
+perfect, extra magnificent, and superlatively some, respectively.
+
+I saw Petey last year. He is in Chicago now. You have to bribe a
+doorkeeper and bluff a secretary to get to him--that is, you do if you
+are an ordinary mortal. But if you give the Siwash yell or the Eta Bita
+Pie whistle in the outside office he will emerge from his office out
+over the railing in one joyous jump. He came to Chicago ten years ago
+equipped with a diploma and a two-year tailor-bill back at Jonesville
+that he had been afraid to tell his folks about. If he had been a
+midnight-oil graduate he would have worn out three pairs of shoes
+hunting for a business house which was willing to let an earnest young
+scholar enter its employ at the bottom and rise gradually to the top as
+the century went by. But Petey wasn't that kind. He had been used to
+running the whole college and messing up the universe as far as one
+could see from the Siwash belfry if things didn't suit him. So he picked
+out the likeliest-looking institution on Dearborn Street and offered it
+a position as his employer. He was on the payroll before the president
+got over his daze. Two weeks later he promoted the firm to a more
+responsible job--that of paying him a bigger salary--and a year ago the
+general manager gave up and went to Europe for two years; said he would
+take a positive pleasure in coming back and looking at the map of
+Chicago after Petey had done it over to suit himself.
+
+Imagination was what did it. You can't take Imagination in any college
+classroom, but you can get more of it on the campus in four years than
+you can anywhere else in the world. You've got to have a mighty good
+imagination to get into any real warm trouble--and by the time you have
+gotten out of it again you have had to double its horse-power. That was
+Petey's daily recreation. In the morning he would think up an absolutely
+air-tight reason for being expelled from Siwash as a disturber, an
+anarchist, a superfluosity and a malefactor of great stealth. That night
+he would go to his room and figure out an equally good proof that
+nothing had happened or that whatever had happened was an act of
+Providence and not traceable to any student. Figuring out ways for
+selling bonds in carload lots was just recreation to him after a
+four-year course of this sort.
+
+But to back in on the main track. I whistled outside of Petey's office
+the other day and went in with him past two magnates, three salesmen and
+a bank president. I sat with my feet on a mahogany table--I wanted to
+put them on an oak desk, but Petey declared mahogany was none too good
+for a Siwash man--and we spent an hour talking over the time when Petey
+manufactured excitement in wholesale lots at Siwash, with me for his
+first assistant and favorite apprentice. Those are my proudest memories.
+I won my track S. and got honorably mentioned in three Commencement
+exercises; but when I want to brag of my college career do I mention
+these things? Not unless I have a lot of time. When I want to paralyze
+an alumnus of some rival college with admiration and envy, I tell him
+how Petey and I manufactured a real Wild West college--buildings,
+Faculty, bad men and all--for one day only, for the benefit of an
+Englishman who had gotten fifteen hundred miles inland without noticing
+the general color scheme of the inhabitants.
+
+We met this chap accidentally--a little favor of Providence, which had a
+special pigeonhole for us in those days. Our team had been using the
+Kiowa football team as a running track on their own field that
+afternoon, and the score was about 105 to 0 when the timekeeper turned
+off the massacre. Naturally all Siwash was happy. I will admit we were
+too happy to be careful. About two hundred of us made the hundred-mile
+trip home by local train that night, and I remember wondering, when the
+boys dumped the stove off the rear platform and tied up the conductor in
+his own bell-rope, if we weren't getting just a little bit indiscreet;
+and when a college boy really wonders if he is getting indiscreet he is
+generally doing something that will keep the grand jury busy for the
+next few months.
+
+I was in the last car, and had just finished telling "Prince" Hogboom
+that if he poked any more window-lights out with his cane he would have
+to finish the year under an assumed name, when Petey crawled over two
+mobs of rough-housers and came up to me. He was seething with
+indignation. It was breaking out all over him like a rash. Petey was
+excitable anyway.
+
+"What do you suppose I've found in the next car?" he said, fizzing like
+an escape valve.
+
+"Prof?" said I, getting alarmed.
+
+"Naw," said Petey; "worse than that. A chap that has never heard of
+Siwash. Asked me if it was a breakfast food. He's an Englishman. I'm
+ag'in' the English." He stopped and began kicking a water tank around to
+relieve himself.
+
+"How did he get this far away from home?" I asked.
+
+"He's traveling," snorted Petey; "traveling to improve his mind.
+Hopeless job. He's one of those quarter-sawed old beef-eaters who stop
+thinking as soon as they've got their education. He's the editor of a
+missionary publication, he told me, and he is writing some articles on
+Heathen America. Honest, it almost made me boil over when he asked me if
+anything was being done to educate the aborigines out here."
+
+"What did you do?" I asked.
+
+"Do?" said Petey. "Why, I answered his question, of course. I told him
+he wasn't fifty miles from a college this minute, and he said, 'Oh, I
+say now! Are you spoofing me?' What's 'spoofing'?"
+
+"Kidding, stringing, stuffing, jollying along, blowing east wind,
+turning on the gas," says I. "'Spoofing' is University English. They
+don't use slang over there, you know."
+
+"Well, then, I spoofed him," said Petey, grinning. "He said it was
+remarkable how very few revolvers he had seen, and then he wanted to
+know why there was no shooting on the train with so much disorder. He's
+pretty well posted now. I'd go a mile out of my way to help a poor dumb
+chap like him. I told him this was the Y. M. C. A. section of Siwash and
+that the real rough students were coming along on horseback. I said they
+weren't allowed on the trains because they were so fatal to passengers.
+I informed him that all the profs at Siwash went armed, and that the
+course of study consisted of mining, draw poker, shooting from the hip,
+broncho-busting, sheep-shearing, History of Art, bread-making and
+Evidences of Christianity."
+
+"Did he admit by that time that you were a good, free-handed liar?" I
+asked.
+
+"Admit nothing," said Petey; "he took it all down in his notebook and
+remarked that in a wild country like this, remote from civilization, a
+knowledge of bread-making would undoubtedly be invaluable to a man."
+
+"He was spoofing you," says I.
+
+"He wasn't," said Petey; "he thinks he's a thousand miles from a plug
+hat this minute. He's so interested he is going to stop over for a day
+or two and write up the college for his magazine. I've invited him to
+stay at the Eta Bita Pie House with us, and we're going to show him a
+real Wild West school if we have to shoot blank cartridges at the cook
+to do it."
+
+"Petey," said I solemnly, "some day you'll bump an asteroid when you go
+up in the air like this. This friend of yours will take one look at
+Siwash and ask you if Sapphira is feeling well these days."
+
+"Bet you five, my opera hat, a good mandolin and a meal ticket on Jim's
+place against your dress suit," said Petey promptly. "And you better not
+take it, either."
+
+"Done!" says I. "I bet you my hunting-case suit against your earthly
+possessions that you can't tow old Britannia-rules-the-waves around
+Siwash for a day without disclosing the fact that you are the best
+catch-as-catch-can liar in this section of the solar system."
+
+"All right," said Petey. "But you've got to help me win the stuff. This
+is a great big contract. It's going to be my masterpiece, and I need
+help."
+
+"I'm with you clear to Faculty meeting, as usual," says I. "But what's
+the use? He'll catch on."
+
+"Leave that to me," said Petey. "Anyway, he won't catch on. When I told
+him we had a checkroom for pappooses in the Siwash chapel he wrote it
+down and asked if the Indians ever massacred the professors. He wouldn't
+catch on if we fed him dog for dinner. Just come and see for yourself."
+
+I agreed with Petey when I took a good look at the victim a minute
+later. We found him in the car ahead, sitting on the edge of the seat
+and looking as if he expected to be eaten alive, without salt, any
+minute. You could have told that he was from extremely elsewhere at
+first glance. He was as different as if he had worn tattoo-marks for
+trousers. He was a stout party with black-rimmed eyeglasses, side
+whiskers that you wouldn't have believed even if you had seen them, and
+slabs of iron-gray hair with a pepper-and-salt traveling cap stuck on
+top of his head like a cupola. He was beautifully curved and his black
+preacher uniform looked as if it had been put on him by a paperhanger. I
+forgot to tell you that his name was the Reverend Ponsonby Diggs. He had
+to tell it to me four times and then write it down, for the way he
+handled his words was positively heartless. He clipped them, beheaded
+them, disemboweled them and warped them all out of shape. Have you ever
+heard a real ingrowing Englishman start a word in the roof of his mouth
+and then back away from it as if it was red-hot and had prickles on it?
+It's interesting. They seem to think it is indecent to come brazenly out
+and sound a vowel.
+
+The Reverend Ponsonby Diggs--as near as I could get it he called himself
+"Pubby Daggs"--greeted Petey with great relief. He seemed to regard us
+as a rescue brigade. "Reahly, you know, this is extraordinary," he
+sputtered. "I have never seen such disorder. What will the authorities
+do?"
+
+That touched my pride. "Pshaw, man!" I says; "we're only warming up.
+Pretty soon we'll take this train out in the woods and lose it."
+
+I meant it for a joke. But the Reverend Mr. Diggs hadn't specialized in
+American jokes. "You don't mean to say they will derail the train!" he
+said anxiously. Then I knew that Petey was going to win my dress suit.
+
+I assured the Reverend--pshaw, I'm tired of saying all that! I'm going
+to save breath. I assured Diggsey that derailing was the kindest thing
+ever done to trains by Siwash students, but that as his hosts we would
+stand by him, whatever happened. Then Petey slipped away to arrange the
+cast and I kept on answering questions. Say! that man was a regular
+magazine gun, loaded with interrogation points. Was there any danger to
+life on these trains? Would it be possible for him to take a ride in a
+stage-coach? Were train robbers still plentiful? Had gold ever been
+found around Siwash? Were the Indians troublesome? Did we have regular
+school buildings or did we live in tents? Had not the railroad had a
+distinctly--er--civilizing influence in this region? Was it not, after
+all, remarkable that the thirst for learning could be found even in this
+wild and desolate country?
+
+And Siwash is only half a day from Chicago by parlor car!
+
+I answered his questions as well as I could. I told him how hard it was
+to find professors who wouldn't get drunk, and how we had to let the men
+and women recite on alternate days after a few of the hen students had
+been winged by stray bullets. I had never heard of Greek, I said, but I
+assured him that we studied Latin and that we had a professor to whom
+Cæsar was as easy as print. I told him how hard we worked to get a
+little culture and how many of the boys gave up their ponies altogether,
+wore store clothes and took 'em off when they went to bed all the time
+they were in college; but, try as I would, I couldn't make the answers
+as ridiculous as his questions. He had me on the mat, two points down
+and fighting for wind all the time. His thirst for knowledge was
+wonderful and his objection to believing what his eyes must have told
+him was still more wonderful. There he was, half-way across the country
+from New York, and he must have looked out of the car windows on the
+way; but he hadn't seen a thing. I suppose it was because he wasn't
+looking for anything but Indians.
+
+All this time Petey was circulating about the car, taking aside members
+of the Rep Rho Betas and talking to them earnestly. The Rep Rho Betas
+were the Sophomore fraternity and were the real demons of the college.
+Each year the outgoing Sophomore class initiated the twenty Freshmen who
+were most likely to meet the hangman on professional business and passed
+on the duties of the fraternity to them. The fraternity spent its time
+in pleasure and was suspected of anything violent which happened in the
+county. Petey was highbinder of the gang that year and was very far gone
+in crime.
+
+We were due home about ten P. M., and just before they untied the
+conductor Petey hauled me off to one side.
+
+"It's all fixed," he said; "it's glorious. We'll just make Siwash into a
+Wild West show for his benefit. The Rep Rho Betas will entertain him
+days and he'll stay at the Eta Pie House nights. I'm putting the Eta
+Bites on now. You've got to get him off this train before we get to the
+station and keep him busy while I arrange the program. Just give me an
+hour before you get him there. That's all I ask."
+
+Now I never was a diplomat, and the job of lugging a fat old foreigner
+around a dead college town at night and trying to make him think he was
+in peril of his life every minute was about three numbers larger than
+my size. I couldn't think of anything else, so I slipped the word to Ole
+Skjarsen that Diggs was a Kiowa professor who was coming over to get
+notes on our team and tip them off to Muggledorfer College. I judged
+this would create some hostility and I wasn't mistaken. Ole began to
+climb over his fellow-students and I was just able to beat him to his
+prey.
+
+"Come on," I whispered. "Skjarsen's on the warpath. He says he wants to
+bite up a stranger and he thinks you'll do."
+
+"Oh, my dear sir," said the Reverend Ponsonby, jumping up and grabbing a
+hatbox, "you don't mean to tell me that he will use violence?"
+
+"Violence nothing!" I yelled, picking up four pieces of baggage. "He
+won't use violence. He'll just eat you alive, that's all. He's awful
+that way. Come, quick!"
+
+"Oh, my word!" said Diggsey, grabbing his other five bundles and piling
+out of the car after me.
+
+The train was slowing down for the crossing west of Jonesville, and I
+judged it wouldn't hurt the great collector of Western local color to
+roll a little. So I yelled, "Jump for your life!" He jumped. I swung off
+and went back till I met him coming along on his shoulder-blades, with a
+procession of baggage following him. He wasn't hurt a bit, but he looked
+interesting. I brushed him off, cached the baggage--all but a suitcase
+and the hatbox which he hadn't dropped for a minute--and we began to
+edge unostentatiously into Jonesville.
+
+For an hour or more we dodged around in alleys and behind barns, while
+up on the campus the boys burned a woodshed, an old fruit-stand, half a
+hundred drygoods boxes and half a mile of wooden sidewalk by way of
+celebration. The glare in the sky was wild enough to satisfy any one,
+and when some of the boys got the old army muskets that the cadets
+drilled with out of the armory and banged away, I was happy. But how I
+did long to be close up to that fire! It was a cold night in early
+November, and as I lay behind woodsheds, with my teeth wearing
+themselves out on each other, I felt like an early Christian
+martyr--though it wasn't cold they suffered from as a rule. As for the
+Reverend Pubby, he wanted to creep away to the next town and then start
+for England disguised as a chorus girl, or anything; but I wouldn't let
+him. We sneaked around till nearly midnight and then crept up the alley
+to the Eta Bita Pie House, wondering if we would ever get warm again.
+
+I've seen some grand transformation scenes, but I never saw anything
+more impressive than the way the Eta Bita Pie House had been done over
+in two hours. We always prided ourselves on our house. It cost fifteen
+thousand dollars, exclusive of the plumber's little hold-up and the
+Oriental rugs, and it was full of polished floors and monogram
+silverware and fancy pottery and framed prints, and other
+bang-up-to-date incumbrances. But in two hours thirty boys can change a
+whole lot of scenery. They had spread dirt and sand over the floor, had
+ripped out the curtains and chased the pictures. They had poked out a
+window-light or two, had unhung a few doors, and had filled the corners
+with saddles, old clothes, flour barrels and dogs. You never saw so many
+dogs. The whole neighborhood had been raided. They were hanging round
+everywhere, homesick and miserable; and one of the Freshmen had been
+given the job of cruising around and kicking them just to keep them
+tuned up.
+
+A dozen of the fellows were playing poker on an old board table in the
+middle of the big living-hall when we came in. Their clothes were
+hand-me-downs from Noah's time, and every one of them was outraging some
+convention or other. Our boys always did go in for amateur theatricals
+pretty strongly, and the way our most talented members abused the
+English language that night when they welcomed the Reverend Pubby was as
+good as a book.
+
+"Proud ter meet you," roared Allie Bangs, our president, taking off his
+hat and making a low bow. "Set right in and enjoy yourself. White chips
+is a dime, limit is a dollar and no gunplay goes."
+
+When Pubby had explained for the third time that he had never had the
+pleasure of playing the game, Bangs finally got on to the curves in his
+pronunciation and understood him.
+
+"What! Never played poker!" he whooped. "Hell a humpin', where was you
+raised? You sure ain't a college man? Any lop-eared galoot that didn't
+play poker in Siwash would get run out by the Faculty. You ought to see
+our president put up his pile and draw to a pair of deuces. What!--a
+Reverend! I beg your pardon, friend. 'S all right. Jest name the game
+you're strong at and we'll try to accommodate you later on. Here, you
+fellows, watch my chips while I show the Reverend around our diggin's.
+You nip one like you did last time, Turk Bowman, and there'll be the
+all-firedest row that this shack has ever seed. Come right along,
+Reverend."
+
+[Illustration: "Har's das spy'" he yelled "Kill him, fallers, he ban a
+spy!"
+                    _Page 132_]
+
+That tour was a great triumph for Bangs. We always did admire his
+acting, but he outdid himself that night. The rest of us just kept quiet
+and let him handle the conversation, and I must say it sounded desperate
+enough to be convincing. Of course he slipped up occasionally and stuck
+in words that would have choked an ordinary cow-gentleman, but Diggsey
+was that dazed he wouldn't have suspected if they had been Latin. I
+thought it would be more or less of a job to explain how we were living
+in a fifteen-thousand-dollar house instead of dugouts, but Bangs never
+hesitated a minute. He explained that the house belonged to a
+millionaire cattle-owner who had built it from reading a society novel,
+and that he let us live in it because he preferred to live in the barn
+with the horses. The boys had filled their rooms full of junk and one of
+them had even tied a pig to his bed--while the way Bangs cleared
+rubbish out of the bathtub and promised to have some water heated in the
+morning was convincingly artless. He had just finished explaining that,
+owing to the boiler-plate in the walls, the house was practically Indian
+proof, when an awful fusillade of shots broke out from the kitchen.
+Bangs disappeared for a moment, gun in hand, and I watched our guest
+trying to make himself six inches narrower and three feet shorter. I
+don't know when I ever saw a chap so anxious to melt right down into a
+corner and be mistaken for a carpet tack.
+
+"'S all right," said Bangs, clumping in cheerfully. "Jest the cook
+having another fit. We've got a cook," he explained, "who gets loaded up
+'bout oncet a month so full that he cries pure alcohol, and when he gits
+that way he insists on trying to shoot cockroaches with his gun. He
+ain't never killed one, but he's gotten two Chinamen and a mule, and
+we've got to put a stop to it. He's tied up in the cellar a-swearin'
+that if he gits loose he'll come upstairs and furnish material for
+nineteen fancy funerals with silver name-plates. But, don't you worry,
+Reverend. He can't hurt a fly 'less he gits loose. Here's your room.
+That hoss blanket on the cot's brand new; towel's in the hall and you'll
+find a comb somewheres round. Just you turn in if you feel like it, and
+when you hear Wall-Eye Denton and Pete Pearsall trying to massacre each
+other in the next room it's time to git up."
+
+Pubby said he would retire at once, and we left him looking scared but
+relieved. I'll bet he sat up all night taking notes and expecting things
+to happen. We sat up, too, but for a different reason. You can't imagine
+how much work it took to get that house running backward. And it was an
+awful job to do the Wild West stunt, too. We sat and criticised each
+other's dialect and actions until there were as many as three free
+fights going on at once. One man favored the Bret Harte style of bad
+man; another adhered to the Henry Wallace Phillips brand; while still
+another insisted on following the Remington school. We compromised on a
+mixture and then spent the rest of the night learning how to forget our
+table manners.
+
+The result was magnificent. I shall never forget the Reverend Pubby's
+pained but fascinated expression as he sat at breakfast the next morning
+and watched thirty hungry savages shoveling plain, unvarnished grub into
+their faces. The breakfast couldn't have gone better if we had had a
+dress rehearsal. Our guest couldn't eat. He was afraid to talk. He just
+held on to his chair, and we could see him stiffen with horror every
+time some eater would rise up so as to increase his reach and spear a
+piece of bread six feet away with his fork. The breakfast was a
+disgusting display of Poland-China manners and was successful in every
+particular.
+
+We confidently expected Petey Simmons to turn up during the meal and
+tell us what to do next. He had spent the night with his odoriferous
+Rep Rho Beta brothers cooking up the rest of the plot and had promised
+to run up at breakfast. But no Petey appeared. We strung the meal along
+as far as we could toward dinner and then took up the job of keeping the
+Reverend Pubby contented and in the house until the life-saving crew
+arrived. Did you ever try to lie all morning with a slow-speed
+imagination? That's what we had to do. We explained to Pubby that the
+students caroused all night and never came to college in the morning; we
+told him it was against the rules for strangers to go on the campus in
+the morning; we told him it was dangerous to go out-of-doors because of
+the Alfalfa Delta, who were suspected of being cannibals; we told him
+forty thousand things, most of which contradicted each other. If it
+hadn't been for the boys who kindly started a fight whenever his
+reverence had tangled Bangs and me up hopelessly on some question we
+couldn't have survived the inquisition. As it was, I perspired about a
+barrel and my brain ached for a week.
+
+We went to lunch and put on another exhibition of free-hand feeding,
+getting more grumpy and disgusted every minute. We were all ready to
+yell for mercy and put on our civilized clothes when we heard a terrific
+riot from outside. Then Petey came in.
+
+If there ever was a sure-enough Wild Westerner it was Petey that
+afternoon. He had on the whole works--two-acre hat, red woolen shirt,
+spurs, and even chaps--nice hairy ones. I discovered next day that he
+had swiped my fine bearskin rug and cut it up to make them. In his belt
+he had a revolver which couldn't have been less than two feet long.
+Petey was a little fellow, with one of those nineteen-sizes-too-large
+voices, and when he turned the full organ on you would have thought old
+Mount Vesuvius had wakened up and rumbled into the room.
+
+"Howdy, Reverend," he thundered. "We jest come along to take you on a
+little ride over to college. Got a nice gentle cow-pony out here. She
+bucks as easy as a rockin'-horse. Don't mind about your clothes. Just
+hop right on. The boys is some anxious to get along, it being most
+classtime."
+
+We followed the two of them out to the back yard. There were seven Rep
+Rho Betas on seven moth-eaten ponies which they had dug up from goodness
+knows where. The rigs they had on represented each fellow's idea of what
+a cowboy looked like, and would have made a real cowpuncher hang himself
+for shame. Petey confessed afterward that, of all the Rep Rho Betas,
+only seven had ever been on a horse, and, of these, three kept him in
+agony for fear they would fall off and compel him to explain that they
+were on the verge of delirium tremens. They were a weird-looking bunch,
+but, gee! they were fierce. Pirates would have been kittens beside them.
+
+[Illustration: We spent another five minutes hoisting him aboard a
+prehistoric plug
+                    _Page 125_]
+
+I guess the Reverend Pubby had never done much in the Centaur line, for
+he came very near balking entirely right there. It took us five minutes
+to explain that there was no other way of getting out to Siwash and
+that the Faculty would take it as a personal insult if he didn't come.
+We also had to explain how disagreeable the Faculty was when it was
+insulted. And then after he had consented we spent another five minutes
+hoisting him aboard a prehistoric plug and telling him how to stick on.
+Then the line filed out through the alley with a regular ghost-dance
+yell, while we detained Petey. We were about to massacre him for leaving
+us to sweat all morning, but we forgot all about it when Petey told us
+what he had been doing. He admitted that, in order not to annoy the
+profs and cause unnecessary questions, he had taken the liberty to build
+a temporary Siwash College for this special occasion.
+
+Yes, sir; nothing less than that. You remember Dillpickle Academy, the
+extinct college in the west part of town? It had been closed for years
+because the only remaining student had gotten lonesome. But most of the
+equipment was still there, and Petey had borrowed it of the caretaker
+for one day only, promising to give it back as good as new in the
+morning. Petey could have borrowed the great seal away from the
+Department of State. He and his Rep Rho Betas had let a lot of students
+into the deal, had been working all morning, and Siwash was ready for
+business at the new stand.
+
+We wanted to measure Petey for a medal then and there, but he refused,
+being needed on the firing-line. He rode off and we made a grand rush
+for the new Siwash College--special one-day stand, benefit performance.
+We got there before the escorting committee and had a fine view of the
+grand entry. The Reverend Pubby had fallen off four times, and the last
+mile he had led his horse. It was a sagacious scheme bringing him along,
+as none of the others had a chance to exhibit their extremely sketchy
+horsemanship in anything better than a mile-an-hour gait.
+
+Old Dillpickle Academy was busier than it had ever been in real life
+when we got there. Fully fifty students were on the scene. They were
+decked out in cowboy clothes, hand-me-downs, big straw hats,
+blankets--any old thing. One thing that impressed me was the number of
+books they were carrying. At Siwash we always refused to carry books
+except when absolutely necessary. It seemed too affected--as if you were
+trying to learn something. But out there at near-Siwash every man had at
+least six books. I saw geographies, spellers, Ella Wheeler Wilcox's
+poems, Science and Health, and the Congressional Record. Learning was
+just naturally rampant out there. Students were studying on the fence.
+They were walking up and down the campus "boning" furiously. They were
+even studying in the trees. You get fifty college boys to turn actors
+for a day and you will see some mighty mixed results. There was "Bay"
+Sanderson, for instance. "Bay's" idea of being a wild and Western
+student was to sit on the front gate with a long knife stuck in his
+belt and read detective stories. He did it all through the performance,
+and whenever the guest was led past him he would turn the book down
+carefully, pull the knife out of his belt and whoop three times as
+solemn as a judge.
+
+You never saw any one so interested as the Reverend Ponsonby Diggs. His
+eyes stuck out like incandescent globes. He had been pretty well jolted
+up, and he yelled in a low, polite way every time he made a quick
+movement, but his thirst for information was still vigorous. As head
+host Petey was pumpee, and he was always four laps ahead of the job.
+
+"Eh, I say," said Pubby, after surveying the scene for a few minutes.
+"This is all very interesting, you know. But what a little place!"
+
+"Hell, Reverend," said Petey emphatically, "she's the biggest school in
+the world."
+
+The Reverend was a man of guile. He didn't bat an eye.
+
+"How many students has the college?" he inquired.
+
+"We've got a hundred, all studying books and learning things," said
+Petey proudly.
+
+"Reahly, now?" said the Reverend; "I say, reahly? And these cows! Might
+I ask if these cows are a part of the college?"
+
+"Sure thing," said Petey. "Sophomore roping class uses 'em. Great class
+to watch."
+
+"I say now, this is extraordinary," said the Reverend. "You don't mean
+to tell me you tie up cows?"
+
+"Rope 'em and tie 'em and brand 'em," said Petey. "What's college for if
+it ain't to learn you things?"
+
+"I say now, this is extraordinary," said the Reverend. I gave him four
+more "extraordinaries" before I did something violent. He'd used two
+hundred that morning. "Might I see the class at work?" he inquired.
+
+Petey didn't even hesitate. "Sorry, Reverend," says he. "But the
+Professor of Roping and Branding has been drunk for a week. Class ain't
+working now."
+
+The college bell tapped three times. "That's cleaning-up bell," said
+Petey.
+
+"Oh, I say now," said the Reverend, hauling out his notebook. "What's
+cleaning-up bell?"
+
+"Why, to clean up the college," said Petey. "We clean it up once a week.
+With the fellows riding their horses into class and tracking mud and
+clay in, and eating lunches and stuff around, it gets pretty messy
+before the end of the week. We make the Freshmen clean it out. There
+they go now."
+
+A dozen "supes" filed slowly into the building with brooms and shovels.
+Pubby couldn't have looked more interested if they had been crowned
+heads of Europe.
+
+Just then a fine assortment of sounds broke out in the old building. The
+doors burst open and a young red-headed Mick from the seventh ward near
+by rode a pony down the steps and away for dear life. Behind him came a
+double-sized gent with yard-wide mustaches. He was dressed in a red
+shirt, overalls and firearms. He was a walking museum of weapons. Petey
+told me afterward that he had borrowed him from the roundhouse near by,
+and that for a box of cigars he had kindly consented to play the part of
+an irritable arsenal for one afternoon only.
+
+"That's the janitor," said Petey in an awestruck whisper. "Get behind a
+tree, quick. He's sure some vexed. He hates to have the boys ride their
+ponies into classroom."
+
+We got a fine view of the janitor as he swept past. He was a regular
+volcano in pants. Never have I heard the English language more richly
+embossed with profanity. Firing a fat locomotive up the grades around
+Siwash with bad coal gives a man great talent in expression. We listened
+to him with awe. Pubby was entranced. He asked me if it would be safe to
+take anything down in his notebook, and when I promised to protect him
+he wrote three pages.
+
+By this time the campus was filling up. Word had gotten around the real
+college that the big show of the season was being pulled off up at
+Dillpickle, and the students were arriving by the dozen. We were getting
+pretty nervous. The new arrivals weren't coached, and sooner or later
+they were bound to give the snap away. We decided to introduce our guest
+to the president. If we could keep things quiet another half hour all
+would be safe, Petey assured us.
+
+We took the Reverend up to the main entrance, Petey's thinker working
+like a well-oiled machine all the way. He pointed out the tree where
+they hanged a horse thief, and Pubby made us wait till he had gotten a
+leaf from it. The Senior classes at Dillpickle had had the custom of
+hauling boulders on to the campus as graduation presents. Petey
+explained that each boulder marked the resting place of some student
+whose career had been foreshortened accidentally, and he described
+several of the tragedies--invented them right off the reel. Pubby was so
+interested he didn't care who saw his notebook. When Petey told him how
+a pack of timber wolves had besieged the school for nine days and
+nights, four years before, he almost cried because there was no
+photograph of the scene handy. We had to promise him a wolf skin to
+comfort him.
+
+Dillpickle Academy was a plain old brick building, with one of those
+cupolas which were so popular among schools and colleges forty years
+ago. I don't know just what mysterious effect a cupola has on education,
+but it was considered necessary at that time. In front of the building
+was a wide stone porch. Inside we could see half a dozen dogs and a
+horse. Pubby looked a bushel of exclamation points when Petey explained
+that they belonged to the president. He looked a lot more when he saw a
+counter with a fine assortment of chewing tobacco and pipes on it.
+That, Petey whispered to me, was his masterpiece. He had borrowed the
+whole thing from a corner grocery store.
+
+Petey had just put his eye to the window of the president's room,
+ostensibly to find out whether Prexy was in a good humor and in reality
+to find out whether Kennedy, an old grad who had consented to play the
+part, was on duty, when one of the boys hurried up and grabbed me.
+
+"Just evaporate as fast as you can," he whispered; "there are six cops
+on the way out. They're going to pinch the whole bunch of us."
+
+Now this was a fine predicament for a young and promising college--to be
+arrested by six lowly cops on its own campus, in the act of showing a
+distinguished visitor how it ran the earth, and was particular Hades
+with the trigger-finger! Bangs was showing Pubby the window through
+which the Professor of Arithmetic had thrown him the term before, and I
+told Petey. He sat down and cried.
+
+"After all this work and just as we had it cinched!" he moaned. "I'll
+quit school to-morrow and devote my life to poisoning policemen. This
+has made an anarchist of me."
+
+There was nothing to do. We couldn't very well explain that the college
+would now have to run away and hide because some enthusiastic Freshman
+had fired a horse-pistol on the streets of Jonesville. I looked at the
+crowd of fantastic students getting ready to bolt for the fence. I
+looked at our victim, fairly punching words into his notebook. It was
+the brightest young dream that was ever busted by a fat loafer in brass
+buttons. Then I saw Ole Skjarsen and had my one big inspiration.
+
+"Excuse me," I said, rushing over to Pubby, "but you'll have to mosey
+right out of here. There's Ole Skjarsen, and he looks ugly."
+
+"Oh, my word!" said Pubby; he remembered Ole from the night before.
+
+"Right around the building!" yelled Petey, grabbing the cue. Naturally
+Ole heard him and saw those whiskers. "Har's das spy!" he yelled. "Kill
+him, fallers; he ban a spy!" We dashed around the building, Ole
+following us. And then, because the cops had arrived at the front gate,
+the whole mob thundered after us.
+
+[Illustration: He may have been fat, but how he could run!
+                    _Page 132_]
+
+Well, sir, you never saw a more successful race in your life. There were
+no less than a hundred Siwash students behind us, and, though no one but
+Ole Skjarsen had any interest in us, they were all trying to break the
+sprint record in our direction, it being the line of least resistance.
+And, say! We certainly had misjudged the Reverend Ponsonby Diggs. He may
+have been fat, but how he could run! His work was phenomenal. I think he
+must have been on a track team himself at some earlier part of his
+career, for the way he steamed away from the gang would have reminded
+you of the _Lusitania_ racing the Statue of Liberty. He lost his cap. He
+shed his long black coat. He rolled over the fence at the rear of the
+campus without even hesitating, and the last we saw of him he was going
+down the road out of Jonesville into the west, his legs revolving in a
+blue haze. Even if we had wanted to stop him, we couldn't have caught
+him. And besides, Ole caught Petey and me just outside of the campus and
+we had to do some twenty-nine-story-tall explaining to keep from getting
+punched for harboring spies. No one had thought to put him next to the
+game.
+
+That all? Goodness, no! We cleaned up for a week and had been so good
+that the Faculty had about decided that nothing had happened when the
+Reverend Ponsonby Diggs appeared in Jonesville again. He came with a
+United States marshal for a bodyguard, too. He had footed it to the next
+town, it seems, and had wired the nearest British consul that he had
+been attacked by savages at Siwash College and robbed of all his
+baggage. They say he demanded battleships or a Hague conference, or
+something of the sort, and that the consul's office asked a Government
+officer to go out and pacify him. They stepped off the train at the
+Union Station and went right up to college--only four blocks away.
+
+Petey and I remained considerably invisible, but the boys tell me that
+the look on the Reverend's face when he arrived at the real Siwash was
+worth perpetuating in bronze. He went up the fine old avenue, past the
+fine new buildings, in a daze; and when our good old Prexy, who had him
+skinned forty ways for dignity, shook hands with him and handed him a
+little talk that was a saturated solution of Latin, he couldn't even say
+"most extraordinary." You can realize how far gone he was.
+
+Some of the boys got hold of the marshal that day and told him the
+story. He laughed from four P. M. until midnight, with only three stops
+for refreshments. The Reverend Pubby Diggs stayed three days as the
+guest of the Faculty and he didn't get up nerve enough in all that time
+to talk business. We saw him at chapel where he couldn't see us, and he
+looked like a man who had suddenly discovered, while falling out of his
+aeroplane, that somebody had removed the earth and had left no address
+behind. His baggage mysteriously appeared at his room in the hotel on
+the first night, and when he left he hadn't recovered consciousness
+sufficiently to inquire where it came from. I think he went right back
+to England when he left Siwash, and I'll bet that by now he has almost
+concluded that some one had been playing a joke on him. You give those
+Englishmen time and they will catch on to almost anything.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE GREEK DOUBLE CROSS
+
+
+Suffering bear-cats! Say! excuse me while I take a long rest, Jim. I
+need it. I've just read a piece of information in this letter that makes
+me tired all over.
+
+What is it? Oh, just another variety of competition smothered with a
+gentlemanly agreement--that's all; another bright-eyed little trust
+formed and another readjustment of affairs on a business basis. We old
+fellows needn't break our necks to get back to Siwash and the frat this
+fall, they write me. Of course they'll be delighted to see us and all
+that; but there's no burning need for us and we needn't jump any jobs to
+report in time to put the brands on the Freshmen and rescue them from
+the noisome Alfalfa Delts and Sigh Whoops--because there isn't going to
+be any rescuing this fall.
+
+They've had an agreement at Siwash. They're going to approach the
+Freshies under strict rules. No parties. No dinners at the houses. No
+abductions. No big, tall talk about pledging to-night or staggering
+through a twilight life to a frowzy-headed and unimportant old age in
+some bum bunch. All done away with. Everything nice and orderly.
+Freshman arrives. You take his name and address. Call on him, attended
+by referees. Maintain a general temperature of not more than sixty-five
+when you meet him on the campus. Buy him one ten-cent cigar during the
+fall and introduce him to one girl--age, complexion and hypnotic power
+to be carefully regulated by the rushing committee. Then you send him a
+little engraved invitation to amalgamate with you; and when he answers,
+per the self-addressed envelope inclosed, you are to love him like a
+brother for the next three and a half years. Gee! how that makes me
+ache!
+
+Think of it! And at old Siwash, too!--Siwash, where we never considered
+a pledge safe until we had him tied up in a back room, with our colors
+on him and a guard around the house! That settles me. I've always
+yearned to go back and cavort over the campus in the fall when college
+opened; but not for me no more! Why, if I went back there and got into
+the rushing game, first thing I knew they'd have me run up before a
+pan-Hellenic council, charged with giving an eligible Freshman more than
+two fingers when I shook hands with him; and I'd be ridden out of town
+on a rail for rushing in an undignified manner.
+
+Rushing? What's rushing? Oh, yes; I forgot that you never participated
+in that delicious form of insanity known as a fall term in college.
+Rushing is a cross between proposing to a girl and abducting a coyote.
+Rushing a man for a frat is trying to make him believe that to belong to
+it is joy and inspiration, and to belong to any other means misery and
+an early tomb; that all the best men in college either belong to your
+frat or couldn't get in; that you're the best fellows on earth, and that
+you're crazy to have him, and that he is a coming Senator; that you
+can't live without him; that the other gang can't appreciate him; that
+you never ask men twice; that you don't care much for him anyway, and
+that you are just as likely as not to withdraw the spike any minute if
+you should happen to get tired of the cut of his trousers; that your
+crowd can make him class president and the other crowds can make him
+fine mausoleums; that you love him like real brothers and that he has
+already bound himself in honor to pledge--and that if he doesn't he will
+regret it all his life; and, besides, you will punch his head if he
+doesn't put on the colors. That's rushing for you.
+
+What's my crowd? Why, the Eta Bita Pie, of course. Couldn't you tell
+that from my skyscraper brow? We Eta Bites are so much better than any
+other frat that we break down and cry now and then when we think of the
+poor chaps who can't belong to us. We're bigger, grander, nobler and
+tighter about the chest than any other gang. We've turned out more
+Senators, Congressmen, Supreme Justices, near-Presidents, captains of
+industry, foreign ambassadors and football captains than any two of
+them. We own more frat houses, win more college elections, know more
+about neckties and girls, wear louder vests and put more cross-hatch
+effects on our neophytes than any three of them. We're so immeasurably
+ahead of everything with a Greek-letter name that every Freshman of
+taste and discrimination turns down everything else and waits until we
+crook our little finger at him. Of course, sometimes we make a mistake
+and ask some fellow that isn't a man of taste and discrimination; he
+proves it by going into some other frat; and that, of course, keeps all
+the men of poor judgment out of our gang and puts them in the others.
+Regular automatic dispensation of Providence, isn't it?
+
+It's been a long time since I had a chance to gather with the brethren
+back at Siwash and agree with them how glorious we are, but this note
+brings it all back. My! how I'd like this minute to go back about ten
+years and cluster around our big grate fire, which used to make the
+Delta Kaps so crazy with envy. Those were the good old days when we came
+back to college in the fall, looked over the haycrop in the Freshman
+class, picked out the likeliest seed repositories, and then proceeded to
+carve them out from the clutches of a round dozen rival frats, each one
+crazy to get a spike into every new student who looked as if he might be
+president of the Senior class and an authority on cotillons some day. No
+namby-pamby, drop-three-and-carry-one crochet effects about our rushing
+those days! We just stood up on our hind legs and scrapped it out. For
+concentrated, triple-distilled, double-X excitement, the first three
+weeks of college, with every frat breaking its collective neck to get a
+habeas corpus on the same six or eight men, had a suffragette riot in
+the House of Parliament beaten down to a dove-coo.
+
+There was nothing that made us love a Freshman so hard as to have about
+six other frats after him. I've seen women buy hats the same way.
+They've got to beat some other woman to a hat before they can really
+appreciate it. And when we could swat half a dozen rival frats over the
+heart by waltzing a good-looking young chap down the walk to chapel with
+our colors on his coat, and could watch them turning green and purple
+and clawing for air--well, I guess it beat getting elected to Congress
+or marrying an heiress-apparent for pure, unadulterated, unspeckled joy!
+
+Competition was getting mighty scarce in the country even then. There
+were understandings between railroad magnates and beef kings and biscuit
+makers--and even the ministers had a scale of wedding fees. But
+competition had a happy home on our campus. About the best we had been
+able to do had been to agree not to burn down each other's frat houses
+while we were haltering the Freshmen. I've seen nine frats, with a total
+of one hundred and fifty members, sitting up nights for a week at a time
+working out plans to despoil each other of a runty little fellow in a
+pancake hat, whose only accomplishment was playing the piano with his
+feet. One frat wanted him and that started the others.
+
+Of course we'd have got along better if we'd put the whole Freshman
+class in cold storage until we could have found out who the good men
+were and who the spoiled fruit might be. We were just as likely to fall
+in love with a suit of clothes as with a future class orator. We took in
+one man once because he bought a pair of patent-leather tan shoes in his
+Junior year. We argued that, if he had the nerve to wear the things to
+his Y. M. C. A. meetings, there must be some originality in him after
+all--and we took a chance. We won. But it's a risky business. Once five
+frats rushed a fellow for a month because of the beautiful clothes he
+wore--and just after the victorious bunch had initiated him a clothing
+house came down on the young man and took the whole outfit. You can't
+always tell at first sight. But then, I don't know but that college
+fraternities exercise as much care and judgment in picking brothers as
+women do in picking husbands. Many a woman has married a fine mustache
+or a bunch of noble clothes and has taken the thing that wore them on
+spec. That's one more than we ever did. You could fool us with clothes;
+but the man who came to Siwash with a mustache had to flock by himself.
+He and his whiskers were considered to be enough company for each other.
+
+There were plenty of frats in Siwash to make things interesting in the
+fall. There were the Alfalfa Delts, who had a house in the same block
+with us and were snobbish just because they had initiated a locomotive
+works, two railroads and a pickle factory. Then there were the Sigh
+Whoopsilons, who got to Siwash first and who regarded the rest of us
+with the same kindly tolerance with which the Indians regarded Daniel
+Boone. And there were the Chi Yis, who fought society hard and always
+had their picture taken for the college annual in dress suits. Many's
+the time I've loaned my dress suit to drape over some green young Chi
+Yi, so that the annual picture could show an unbroken row of open-faced
+vests. And there were the Shi Delts, who were a bold, bad bunch; and the
+Fli Gammas, who were good, pious boys, about as exciting as a
+smooth-running prayer-meeting; and the Delta Kappa Sonofaguns, who got
+every political office either by electing a member or initiating one;
+and the Delta Flushes; and the Mu Kow Moos; the Sigma Numerous; and two
+or three others that we didn't lie awake nights worrying about. Every
+one of these bunches had one burning ambition--that was to initiate the
+very best men in the Freshman class every fall. That made it necessary
+for us, in order to maintain our proud position, to disappoint each one
+of them every year and to make ourselves about as popular as the
+directors of a fresh-air and drinking-water trust.
+
+Of course we always disappointed them. Wouldn't admit it if we didn't.
+But, holy mackerel! what a job it was! Herding a bunch of green and
+timid and nervous and contrary youngsters past all the temptations and
+pitfalls and confidence games and blarneyfests put up by a dozen frats,
+and landing the bunch in a crowd that it had never heard of two weeks
+before, is as bad as trying to herd a bunch of whales into a fishpond
+with nothing but hot air for gads. It took diplomacy, pugnacity and
+psychological moments, I tell you; and it took more: it took ingenuity
+and inventiveness and cheek and second sight and cool heads in time of
+trouble and long heads on the job, from daybreak to daybreak. I'd rather
+go out and sell battleships to farmers, so far as the toughness of the
+job is concerned, than to tackle the job of persuading a wise young
+high-school product with two chums in another frat that my bunch and he
+were made for each other. What did he care for our glorious history? We
+had to use other means of getting him. We had to hypnotize him, daze
+him, waft him off his feet; and if necessary we had to get the other
+frats to help us. How? Oh, you never know just how until you have to;
+and then you slip your scheme wheels into gear and do it. You just have
+to; that's all. It's like running away from a bear. You know you can't,
+but you've got to; and so you do.
+
+Makes me smile now when I think of some of the desperate crises that
+used to roll up around old Eta Bita Pie like a tornado convention and
+threaten to engulf the bright, beautiful world and turn it into a
+howling desert, peopled only by Delta Kappa Whoops and other
+undesirables. I'm far enough away, now, to forget the heart-bursting
+suspense and to see only the humor of it. Once I remember the Shi Delts,
+in spite of everything we could do, managed so to befog the brain of the
+Freshman class president that he cut a date with us and sequestered
+himself in the Shi Delt house in an upper back room, with the horrible
+intention of pledging himself the next morning. Four of the largest Shi
+Delts sat on the front porch that evening and the telephone got
+paralysis right after supper. They had told the boy that if he joined
+them he would probably have to leave school in his Junior year to become
+governor; and he didn't want to see any of us for fear we would wake him
+up. I chuckle yet when I think of those four big bruisers sitting on the
+front porch and guarding their property while I was shinning up the
+corner post of the back porch, leaving a part of my trousers fluttering
+on a nail and ordering the youngster in a blood-curdling whisper to hand
+down his coat, unless he wanted to lose forever his chance of being
+captain of the football team in his Sophomore year. He weighed the
+governorship against the captaincy for a minute, but the right triumphed
+and he handed down his coat. I sewed a big bunch of our colors on it,
+discoursed with him fraternally while balancing on the slanting roof,
+shook hands with him in a solemn, ritualistic way and bade him be firm
+the next morning. When the Shi Delts came in and found that Freshman
+pledged to another gang they had a convulsion that lasted a week; and to
+this day they don't know how the crime was committed.
+
+There was another Freshman, I remember, who was led violently astray by
+the Chi Yis and was about to pledge to them under the belief that their
+gang contained every man of note in the United States. We had to get him
+over to the house and palm off a lot of our alumni as leading actors and
+authors, who had dropped in to dinner, before he was sufficiently
+impressed to reason with us. Of course this is not what the English
+would call "rully sporting, don't you know!" but in our consciences it
+was all classified as revenge. We got the same doses. Pillings, of the
+Mu Kow Moos, pulled one of our spikes out in beautiful fashion once by
+impersonating our landlord. He rushed up the steps just as a Freshman
+rushee was starting down all alone and demanded the rent for six months
+on the spot, threatening to throw us out into the street that minute.
+The Freshman hesitated just long enough to get his clothes out of the
+house, and we didn't know for a month what had frozen his feet.
+
+The Fli Gams weren't so slow, either. They found out once that one of
+the men we were just about to land had a great disgust for two of our
+men. What did one of their alumni do but happen craftily over our way
+and mention in the most casual manner the undying admiration that the
+boy had for those two? Of course we sandwiched him between them for a
+week--and of course we were pained and grieved when he tossed us into
+the discard; but we got even with them the next year. We picked up an
+eminent young pugilist, who made his headquarters in the next town, and
+for a little consideration and a suit of clothes that was a regular
+college yell we got him to hang around the campus for a week. We rushed
+him terrifically for a day and then managed to let the Fli Gams get him.
+They rushed him for a week in spite of our carefully regulated
+indignation and then proposed to him. When he told them that he might
+consider coming to school--as soon as he had gone South and had cleaned
+up a couple of good scraps--they let out an awful shriek and fumigated
+the house. They were nice young chaps, but no judge of a pugilist. They
+expected to be able to see his hoofs.
+
+Well, it was this way every year all fall. Ding-dong, bing-bang, give
+and take, no quarter and pretty nearly everything fair. As I said, it
+wasn't considered exactly proper to burn a rival frat house in order to
+distract the attention of the occupants while they were entertaining a
+Freshman, but otherwise we did pretty nearly what we pleased to each
+other--only being careful to do it first. Of course a lot of things are
+fair in love and war that would not be considered strictly ethical in a
+game of croquet. And rushing a Freshman is as near like love as
+anything I know of. It isn't that we love the Freshman so much. When I
+think of some of the trash we fought over and lost I have to laugh. But
+we couldn't bear the idea of losing him. To sit by and watch another
+gang win the affections of a young fellow who you know is designed by
+Nature for your frat and the football team; to note him gradually
+breaking off the desperate chumminess that has grown up between you in
+the last forty-eight hours; to think that in another day he will have on
+the pledge colors of another fraternity and will be lost to you forever
+and ever and ever, and then some--what is losing a mere girl to some
+other fellow compared with that? Of course I realize now that, even if a
+Freshman does join another frat, you can eventually get chummy with him
+again after college days are over if you find him worth crossing the
+street to see; and I find myself lending money to Shi Delts and
+borrowing it from Delta Whoops just as freely as if they were Eta Bites.
+But somehow you don't learn these things in time to save your poor old
+nerves in college.
+
+[Illustration: Naturally I was somewhat dazzled
+                    _Page 147_]
+
+When I was in school the Alfalfa Delts, the Sigh Whoopsilons and the Chi
+Yis were giving us a horrible race. I'm willing to admit it now, though
+I'd have fought Jeffries before doing it ten years ago. Each fall was
+one long whirlwind. The President of the United States in an
+office-seekers' convention would have had a placid time compared with
+the Freshmen. We didn't exactly use real axes on each other and we
+didn't actually tear any Freshman in two pieces, but we came as near the
+limit as was comfortable. No frat was safe for a minute with its guests.
+If you tried to feed 'em there was kerosene in the ice cream. If you
+entertained them some frat with a better quartet worked outside the
+house. If you took them out to call the parlor would fill up with
+riffraff in no time; and if you took your eye off your victim for a
+minute he was gone--some other gang had got him. I sometimes think some
+of the crowds knew how to palm Freshmen the way magicians do, from the
+way they disappeared.
+
+Even the girls took a hand in it. When I was a Sophomore I was intrusted
+with the task of leading a Freshman three blocks down to Browning Hall
+to call on one of our solid girls, and before I had gone a block two
+Senior girls met us. They were bare acquaintances of mine, being strong
+Delta Kap. allies, and they usually managed to see me only after a
+severe effort; but this time you'd have thought I was a whole regiment
+of fiancés. They literally fell on my neck. It was cruel of me, they
+declared, to be so unsociable. There I was, a football hero--I'd just
+broken my rib on the scrub team--and every girl in school was dying to
+tell me how grand it was to suffer for one's college; and yet I wouldn't
+so much as hint that I wanted to come to the sorority parties--and lots
+more talk of the same kind. Naturally I was somewhat dazzled and I'd
+walked about half a block with the prettiest one before I noticed that
+the other one was steering Freshie the other way. I turned around and
+never even said "Good day" to that girl; but it was too late. About a
+dozen Delta Kaps appeared out of the ground and tried to look surprised
+as they gathered around that scared little Freshman and engulfed him. We
+never saw him again--that is, in his innocent condition--and the boys
+wouldn't even trust me with the pledges we were rushing around for bait
+the rest of the fall term. Bait? Oh, yes. Sometimes we'd pledge a man on
+the quiet and leave him out a week or two, so that plenty of frats could
+bid him--made them appreciate his worth, you know, and got every one
+well acquainted.
+
+By the time I was a Senior the competition was desperate. We spent the
+summers scouring the country for prospects and we spent the first week
+of school smuggling our trophies into our houses and pledging them,
+without giving the other fellow a look in--that is, we tried to. We came
+back fairly strong in my Senior year, with a good bunch of prospects;
+but the one that excited us most was a telegram from Snooty Vincent in
+Chicago. It was brief and erratic, like Snooty himself, and read as
+follows:
+
+     Freshman named Smith will register from Chicago. Son of old man
+     Smith, multimillionaire. Kid's a comer. Get him sure! SNOOTY.
+
+That was all. One of the half million Smiths of Chicago was coming to
+college--age, weight, complexion, habits and time of arrival unknown.
+That telegram qualified Snooty for the paresis ward. We didn't even know
+what Smith his millionaire father was. The world is full of Smiths who
+are pestered by automobile agents. All we knew was the fact that we had
+to find him, grab him, sequester him where no meddling Alfalfa Delt or
+Chi Yi could find him, and make him fall in love with us inside of
+forty-eight hours. Then we could lead him forth, with the colors and his
+_art-nouveau_ clothes on, spread the glad news--and there wouldn't have
+to be any more rushing that fall. We'd just sit back and take our pick.
+
+We sat back and built brains full of air-castles for about three
+minutes--and then got busy. It was matriculation day. There were half a
+dozen trains to come yet from Chicago on various roads. We had to meet
+them all, pick out the right man by his aura or by the way the porter
+looked when he tipped him, and grab him out from under the ravenous foe.
+The next train was due in ten minutes and the depot was a mile away. We
+sent Crawford down. He was trying for the distance runs anyway.
+
+The rest of us went out to show a couple of classy boys from a big prep
+school how to register and find a room, and pick out textbooks; and
+incidentally how to distinguish a crowd of magnificent young student
+leaders from eleven wrangling bunches of miscellaneous thickheads, who
+wouldn't like anything better than to rope in a couple of good men to
+teach them the ways of the world. We were succeeding in this to the
+queen's taste, having accidentally dropped in on our porch with the
+pair, when young Crawford rushed up green with despair and took the
+rushing committee inside. He almost cried when he told us. He'd watched
+the train as carefully as he could, he said, but he couldn't be
+everywhere at once; and so a couple of Mu Kow Moos had got Smith. He
+knew it because he had heard them ask what his name was and he had told
+them Smith. He'd pretty nearly wrecked his brain trying to think of an
+excuse to butt in, but they had taken the boy away and he'd run all the
+way to the house to see if something couldn't be done.
+
+Petey Simmons had listened, sitting crosslegged on the windowseat, which
+was a habit of his. Petey was a Senior and his deep studies in rhetoric
+during his four years in the frat had given him a great power of
+expression. He turned to the despairing Crawford and reduced him to a
+cinder with one look.
+
+"So you couldn't think of any excuse to butt in!" he remarked slowly,
+"Say, Crawford, if you saw a young lady falling through the ice you'd
+write to her mother for permission to cheer her up. Which way did they
+go?"
+
+"They're coming this way," said what was left of Crawford.
+
+[Illustration: He was so bashful that his voice blushed when he used it
+                    _Page 151_]
+
+Petey grabbed his hat and discharged himself toward the depot. We
+brought in those big prep school boys and tried to give them the time of
+their lives, but our hearts weren't in it. We were thinking of those Mu
+Kow Moos--that frat of all others--blissfully towing home a prize they'd
+stumbled onto and didn't know anything about! We thought of those
+beautifully designed air-castles we were hoping to move into and we got
+pumpkins in our throats. Stung on the first day of school by a bunch
+that had to wear their pins on their neckties to keep from being
+mistaken for a literary society! Oh, thunder! We went in to dinner all
+smeared up with gloom. Then the door opened and Petey came in. He was
+five feet five, Petey was, but he stooped when he came under the
+chandelier. He had a suitcase in one hand and a stranger in the other.
+
+"Boys," he said, "I want you to meet Mr. Smith, of Chicago."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At first glance you wouldn't have taken Smith for a perambulating
+national bank, with a wheelbarrow of spending-money every month. He was
+well-enough dressed and all that, but he didn't loom up in any
+mountainous fashion as to looks. He was runty and his hair was a kind of
+discouraged red. He had freckles, too, and he was so bashful that his
+voice blushed when he used it. He didn't have a word to say until
+dinner, when he said "thank you" to Sam, the waiter. Altogether he was
+so meek that he had us worried; but then, as Allie Bangs said, you can't
+always tell about these multimillionaires. Some of them didn't have the
+nerve of a mouse. He'd seen millionaires in New York, he said, who were
+afraid of cab drivers.
+
+"And besides," said Petey, when a few of us were talking it over after
+dinner, "I'd never have got him if he hadn't been so meek. I was
+determined that no Mu Kow Moo was going to hang anything on us; and when
+I saw the three of them coming I waded right in. Allison and Briggs,
+those two dumb Juniors, were doing the steering. It was like taking
+candy from the baby. I just fell right into them and took about five
+minutes to tell those two how glad I was to see them back. I introduced
+myself to Smith; and--would you believe it?--he was still carrying his
+suitcase! I grabbed it and apologized for not having carried it all the
+way up from the station. You should have seen those yaps scowl. They
+wanted to shred me up, but I never noticed them again. I pointed out all
+the sights to Smith and told him his friends had written me about him.
+There was so little room on the sidewalk that I suggested we two walk
+ahead; and I shoved him right into the middle of the walk and made
+Allison and Briggs fall behind. I had a piece of luck just then. Old
+Pete and his sawed-off cab came by and I flagged him in a minute. I
+shoved Smith in and got in after him. Then I told the two babes that I
+could take care of Smith all right and that there was no need of their
+walking clear up to the house. After that I shut the door and we came
+away. If looks could kill I'd be tuning up my harp this minute. Say, if
+I didn't have any more nerve than those two I'd get a permit from the
+city to live. And all the time Smith never made a kick. I had him
+hypnotized. Now I'm going in and make him jump through a hoop."
+
+We should have been very happy--and we would have been, but just then
+Symington came in with some astounding news. The Alfalfa Delts had a man
+named Smith, of Chicago, over at their house. He was on the front porch,
+with the whole gang around him; and from the looks of things they'd have
+him benevolently assimilated before twenty-four hours. Naturally this
+created a tremendous lot of emotion around our house. It was a serious
+situation. We might have the right Smith and then again we might have a
+Smith who would be borrowing money for car fare inside of ten minutes.
+We had to find out which Smith it was before we tampered with his young
+affections.
+
+Did you ever snuggle up to a young captain of industry and ask him who
+his father was and whether he was important enough in the business world
+to be indicted by the Government for anything? That was the job we
+tackled that night. Smith was meek enough, but somehow even Petey's
+nerve had its limits. We approached the subject from every corner of the
+compass. We led up to it, we beat around it--and finally we got
+desperate and led the boy up to it. But he was too shy to come down with
+the information. Yes, he lived in Chicago. Oh, on the North Side. Yes,
+he guessed the stock market was stronger. Yes, the Annex was a great
+hotel. No, he didn't know whether they were going to put a tower on the
+Board of Trade or not. Yes, the lake Shore Drive was dusty in
+summer.--[Good!]--He wouldn't care to live on it.--[Bah!]--Altogether he
+was as unsatisfactory to pump as a well full of dusty old brickbats.
+Just then Rawlins, who had been scouting around seeing what he could run
+against in the dark of the moon, arrived with the stunning information
+that the Chi Yis had a man named Smith, of Oak Park, at their house and
+that every corner of the lawn was guarded by picked men!
+
+When we got this news most of us went upstairs and bathed our heads in
+cold water. Oak Park sounded even more suspicious than Chicago. It's a
+solid mahogany suburb and everybody there is somebody or other. You have
+to get initiated into the place just as if it were a secret society,
+it's so exclusive. That meant there were three Smiths from Chicago in
+school. We had only one Smith. We had a one-in-three shot.
+
+We stuck the colors on the boys from the big prep school just to keep
+our hands in and went to bed so nervous that we only slept in patches.
+Still, two Chicago Smiths in other frat houses were better than one. It
+meant that at least one frat wasn't sure of its man. Maybe neither one
+was. Our scouts had reported that, from what they could pick up, neither
+Smith had it on our Smith much in looks. That could only mean one thing:
+there had been a leak in the telegraph office again. What show has a
+guileless sixty-five-dollar-a-month operator against a bunch of crafty
+young diplomatists? They had read our telegram and were after the same
+Smith that we were.
+
+By morning the suspense around the house could have been shoveled out
+with a pitchfork. If one of the other frats had the right Smith and knew
+it, and had pledged him during the night, there was positively no use in
+living any longer. Petey, who had shared his room with our Smith,
+reported that he was now like wax in our hands. But that didn't comfort
+us much. It was too confoundedly puzzling. Maybe we had the heir to a
+subtreasury panting to join us and maybe his freckles were his fortune.
+All Petey had gouged out of him during the night was the fact that his
+father wanted him to come to Siwash because it was a nice, quiet place.
+Oh, yes; it was deadly calm!
+
+It couldn't have been more than seven o'clock when the telephone rang.
+Petey answered it. A relative of Smith's was at the hotel and had heard
+the boy was at our house. Would we please tell him to come right down?
+Petey said he would and then rang off. Then he grabbed the 'phone again
+and asked Central excitedly why she had cut him off. Central said she
+hadn't, but of course she rang the other line again.
+
+"Hello!" said Petey blandly. "This is the Alfalfa Delt house?"
+
+"No; it's the Chi Yi house," was the answer. Petey put the receiver up
+contentedly and we all turned handsprings over the library table. Fifty
+per cent safe, anyway. The Chi Yis were trying to sort out the Smiths,
+too.
+
+It was an hour before anything else happened. Then Matheson of the
+Alfalfa Delts, a ponderous personage, who wore a silk hat on Sunday and
+did instructing, came over and asked if we had a man named Smith with
+us. He was to be a pupil of his, he said, and he wanted to arrange his
+work. Of course Matheson was hoping to get a green man at the door, but
+he didn't have any luck. Bangs himself let him in and let him read two
+or three magazines through in the library while we turned some more
+handsprings--in the dining room this time. The Alfalfa Delts were
+fishing, too. It was a fair field and no favors.
+
+After a while Bangs told Matheson that the man named Smith presented his
+compliments and said it was all a mistake. His tutor's name was not
+Matheson, but Muttonhead. That sent Matheson away as pleasant as you
+please.
+
+All that day we sat around and beat off the enemy and got beaten off
+ourselves. Our Smith got a Faculty notice to appear at once and
+register--that is, it got as far as the door. We sent it back to the Chi
+Yi house. We sent the Alfalfa Delt Smith a telegram from Chicago,
+reading: "Father ill. Come at once." That only got as far as a door,
+too. Some Alfalfa Delt got it and sent the boy back with the answer: "So
+careless of father!" Blanchard called up the fire department and sent it
+over to the Chi Yi house, hoping to be able to slip over and cut out
+Smith in the confusion that followed; but the game was too old. The Chi
+Yis had played it themselves the year before and refused to bite.
+Meantime we had found a Chi Yi alumnus in the kitchen trying to sell a
+book to the cook; and in the proceedings that followed we discovered
+that the book had a ten-dollar bill in it. All around, it was an
+entertaining but profitless day. By night, there wasn't another idea
+left in the three camps. We sat exhausted, each clutching its Smith and
+glaring at the other two.
+
+As far as our Smith was concerned we almost wished some one would steal
+him. He was about as interesting as a pound of baking powder. What with
+fishing for his Bradstreet rating, and inventing lies to keep him from
+going out and seeing the town, and watching the horizon for predatory
+Alfalfa Delts and Chi Yis, we were plumb worn out. We were so skittish
+that, when the bell rang about eight o'clock, we let it ring four times
+more before we answered it; and when the ringer claimed to be an Eta
+Bita Pie from Muggledorfer who had come over to attend Siwash, we made
+him repeat pretty nearly the whole ritual before we would consider his
+credentials good.
+
+He got in at last, slightly peevish at our unbrotherly welcome, and took
+his place in the library circle. We were explaining the whole situation
+to him, when Allie Bangs gave an earnest yell and stood on his head in
+the corner.
+
+"What did you say your name was?" he asked the visitor after he had been
+set right side up again.
+
+"Maxwell, of Fella Kappa chapter," said the latter.
+
+"No, it isn't," said Bangs earnestly. "You ought to know your own name!"
+he went on severely. "It's Smith--and you're a barb from the cornfield!
+You've come to Siwash to forget how to plow and to-morrow you're going
+to organize a Smith Club. Do you hear? Don't let me catch you forgetting
+your name now--and listen closely."
+
+It was all as simple as beating a standpat Congressman. Maxwell was a
+stranger, of course. He was to pin his Eta Bita Pie pin on his
+undershirt and go forth in the morning a brand-new Smith, green and
+guileless. It was to occur to him just before chapel that a Smith Club
+ought to be formed and he was to post a notice to that effect. He would
+get a couple of well-known non-fraternity Smiths interested and have
+them visit the houses and see the Chicago Smiths. With all the Smiths in
+session that night he ought to have no difficulty in finding out which
+was the son of old man Smith. He could be lowdown and vulgar enough to
+ask right out if he wished. If he found out he was to cut out that Smith
+and bring him to our house--if he had to bind and gag him. If he didn't
+he was to bring all three--if he could.
+
+There was a quiet and most reassuring tone in Maxwell's voice as he
+said: "I can." They evidently had their little troubles at Muggledorfer,
+too.
+
+"After we get them here," said Bangs earnestly, "we'll just pledge all
+three. We'll surely get the right one that way and perhaps the other two
+will not be so bad."
+
+Upstairs, Petey Simmons was wearily explaining to our Smith for the
+ninth time that Freshmen were not allowed to appear on the campus for
+the first three days; and that it was considered good form to keep
+indoors until the Sophomore rush; and that there wasn't a room left in
+town anyway, and he might as well stay with us a while; and that the
+police were looking for college students downtown and locking them up,
+as they did each fall, to show their authority. Blanchard relieved him
+of his task and he came downstairs mopping his brow. Then we went to
+work and planned details until midnight. It was to be the plot of the
+century and every wheel had to mesh.
+
+We spent the next day in a cold perspiration. Neither Alfalfa Delt nor
+Chi Yi paraded any pledged Freshmen. They were still hunting for the
+right Smith, too--evidently. They fell for the Smith Club plan with such
+suspicious eagerness that it was plain each bunch had some nasty,
+low-lived scheme up its sleeves. We were righteously indignant. It was
+our game and they ought not to butt in. But Maxwell only smiled. He was
+a Napoleon, that boy was. He just waved us aside. "I'll run this little
+thing the way we do at Muggledorfer," he explained. "You fellows can
+play a few lines of football pretty well, but when it comes to
+surrounding a Freshman and making a Greek out of him, I wouldn't take
+lessons from old Ulysses himself." And so we left him alone and held
+each other's hands and smoked and cussed--and hoped and hoped and hoped.
+
+Maxwell went after the three Smiths himself that night. He had taken a
+room in an out-of-the-way part of town and his plan was to take them
+over there after the meeting to discuss the future good of the Smith
+Club. Then about a dozen of us would slide gently over there--and a
+curtain would have to be drawn over the woe that would ensue for the
+other gangs. Meanwhile, all we had to do was to sit around the house and
+gnaw our fingers. Maxwell called for our Smith last and he had the other
+two in tow. Oh, no; we didn't invite them in. Two Alfalfa Delts and
+three Chi Yis were sitting on our porch, visiting us. Three Chi Yis and
+two Eta Bita Pies were sitting on the Alfalfa Delt porch. Four Eta
+Bites and two Alfalfa Delts were calling on the Chi Yi house. It was a
+critical moment and none of us was taking chances. We couldn't keep our
+Smiths from wandering, but we could make sure they didn't wander into
+the wrong place.
+
+Maxwell led his flock of Smiths away and we all sat and talked to each
+other in little short bites. The Chi Yis were nervous as rabbits. They
+looked at their watches every five minutes. The Alfalfa Delts listened
+to us with one ear and swept the other around the gloom. The night was
+charged with plots. Innumerable things seemed trembling in the immediate
+future. When the visitors excused themselves a little later, and went
+away very hurriedly, we learned with pleasure from one of our boys, who
+had been wandering around to break in a new pair of shoes or something,
+that the Smith meeting, which had been called for the Erosophian Hall,
+had been attended by four nondescript and unknown Smiths and fourteen
+Chi Yis, who had dropped in casually. First blood for us! Maxwell had
+evidently succeeded in segregating his Smiths. We expected a telephone
+call from his room at any minute.
+
+We kept on expecting it until midnight and then strolled down that way.
+The house was dark. A very mad landlady came down in response to our
+earnest request and informed us that the young carouser who had rented
+her room had not been there that evening; and that if we were his rowdy
+friends we could tell him that he would find his trunk in the alley.
+Then we went home and our brains throbbed and gummed up all night long.
+
+We went to chapel the next morning to keep from going insane outright.
+The Chi Yis were there looking perfectly sour. The Alfalfa Delts on the
+other hand were riotous. Every one of them had a pleasant greeting for
+us. They slapped us on the back and asked us how we were coming on in
+our rushing. Matheson was particularly vicious. He came over to Bangs
+and put his arm around him in a friendly way. "I am going to have dinner
+with my pupil to-night," he said triumphantly. "He wants me to come over
+and get his trunk. Says he's got a good room now and he's much obliged
+to you fellows for your trouble. Have you heard that there's another
+Smith in school--son of a big Chicago man? There's some great material
+here this fall, don't you think?"
+
+Bangs tripped on Matheson's pet toe and went away. Something horrible
+had happened. How we hated those Alfalfa Delts! They had stung us
+before, but this was a triple-expansion, double-back-action,
+high-explosive sting, with a dum dum point. We hurt all over; and the
+worst of it was, we hadn't really been stung yet and didn't know where
+it was going to hit us. Did you ever wait perfectly helpless while a
+large, taciturn wasp with a red-hot tail was looking you over?
+
+The Alfalfa Delts frolicked up and down college that day, Smithless but
+blissful. We consoled ourselves with a couple of corking chaps whom the
+Delta Flushes had been cultivating, and put the ribbons on them in
+record time. Ordinarily we would have been perfectly happy about this,
+but instead we were perfectly miserable. We detailed four men at a time
+to be gay and carefree with our pledges; and the rest of us sat around
+and listened to our bursting hearts. Of all the all-gone and utterly
+hopeless feelings, there is nothing to compare with the one you have
+when your frat--the pride of the nation--has just been tossed into the
+discard by some hollow-headed Freshman.
+
+I took my head out of my hands just before dinner and went down the
+street to keep a rushing engagement. I had to pass the Alfalfa Delt
+house. It hurt like barbed wire, but I had to look. I was that miserable
+that it couldn't have bothered me much more, anyway, to see that wildly
+happy bunch. But I didn't see it. I saw instead a crowd of fellows on
+the porch who made our dejection look like disorderly conduct. There was
+enough gloom there to fit out a dozen funerals, and then there would
+have been enough left for a book of German philosophy. The crowd looked
+at me and I fancied I heard a slight gnashing of teeth. I didn't
+hesitate. I just walked right up to the porch and said: "Howdedo? Lovely
+evening!" says I. "How many Smiths have you pledged to-day?"
+
+The gang turned a dark crimson. Then Matheson got up and came down to
+me. He was as safe-looking as somebody else's bull terrier.
+
+"We don't care to hear any more from you," he said, clenching his words;
+"and it would be safer for you to get out of here. We're done with your
+whole crowd. You're lowdown skates--that's what you are. You're
+dishonorable and sneaky. You're cads! We'll get even. I give you
+warning. We'll get even if it takes a hundred years."
+
+"Thanks!" says I. "Hope it takes twice as long." Then I went back home
+and let my date take care of itself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We went through dinner in a daze and sat around, that night, like a
+bunch of vacant grins on legs. Our grins were vacant because we didn't
+know why we were grinning. We'd stung the Alfalfa Delts. We didn't know
+why or how or when. But we'd stung them! We had their word for it.
+Sooner or later something would turn up in the shape of particulars;
+only we wished it would hurry. If it didn't turn up sooner we were
+extremely likely to burst at the seams.
+
+It turned up about nine o'clock. There was a commotion at the front door
+and Maxwell came in. He was followed by an avalanche of Smiths. There
+was our Smith, and a tall, lean Smith, and a Smith who waddled when he
+walked. They were all dirty and dusty; they all wore our pink-and-blue
+pledge ribbons on their coat lapels and when they got in the house they
+gave the Eta Bita Pie yell and sang about half of the songbook. Maxwell
+had not only pledged them, but he had educated them.
+
+After we had stopped carrying the bunch about on our shoulders, and had
+put the roof of the house back, and had righted the billiard table, and
+persuaded the cook to come down out of a tree in the back yard, we
+allowed Maxwell to tell his story.
+
+"It was perfectly simple," he said. "Didn't expect to be kidnapped, of
+course; but it's all in the day's work. You've no idea what a job I had
+getting colors to pin on these chumps. If it hadn't been for my pink
+garters and a blue union suit I'd put on yesterday--"
+
+We stopped Maxwell and backed him up to the starting pole again. But he
+was no story-teller. He skipped like a cheap gas engine. We had to take
+the story away from him piece by piece. He'd dodged his Smiths down a
+side street, it seems, on the plea that there weren't any more Smiths
+coming--and they might as well go over to his room. All would have been
+well if one Smith hadn't got an awful thirst. There was a corner drug
+store on the way to the room and while the quartet were insulting their
+digestions with raspberry ice-cream soda a college man with a wicked eye
+came by. A few minutes later, just as they were crossing the railroad
+viaduct near Smith's home, two closed carriages drove up and six husky
+villains fell upon them, shouting: "Chi Yi forever!" And after dumping
+them in the carriages, they sat on them while the teams went off.
+
+"After I'd got my man's knee out of my neck," said Maxwell, "I didn't
+seem to care much whether I was kidnapped or not. It would bind us four
+closer together after we escaped; and, besides, I have never found
+kidnapping to pay--too much risk. Anyway, they drove us nothing less
+than twenty miles and bundled us into an old deserted house. The leader
+told us, with a whole lot of unnecessary embroidery, that we were to
+stay there until we pledged to Chi Yi if we rotted in our shoes. Then,
+of course, I saw through the whole thing. It was an Alfalfa Delt gang
+disguised as Chi Yis. The Alfalfa Delts would send another gang out the
+next day, rout the bogus Chi Yis and allow the poor Freshies to fall on
+their necks and pledge up. That used to be popular at Muggledorfer.
+
+"I did the talking and let my knees knock together considerably. I told
+them that we'd been too badly shaken up to think, but if they would let
+us alone that night we'd try to learn to love them by morning. So they
+put us upstairs and warned us that every window was guarded; then we lay
+down together and I began at the first chapter and pumped those chaps
+full of Eta Bita Pie all night.
+
+[Illustration: With our colors on and four particularly wicked-looking
+chair legs in our hands
+                    _Page 167_]
+
+"It was six o'clock when they finally pledged. When the gang came up
+they found us adamant. 'Never!' said I. 'We'll pledge Alfalfa Delt or
+die martyrs to a holy cause!' Of course they didn't dare give
+themselves away. They couldn't even shout for joy. All they could do was
+to wait for the rescuing party. I spent the day teaching the boys the
+songs and the yell in whispers; and about three o'clock I got my grand
+inspiration about the colors and rigged them out. Then I dug my own pin
+out and put on my vest and about four o'clock the rescuing party drove
+up. Say, you'd have laughed to see that fight! Ham-actors in Richard the
+Third would have made it look tame. The Chi Yis put up a fist or two,
+threw a brick and then cut for the timber; and the noble Alfalfa Delts
+burst open the door just as I got the chorus going on that grand old
+song:
+
+     "_'Oh, you've got to be an Eta Bita Pie
+     Or you won't get a scarehead when you die!_'
+
+"When they saw us there, with our colors on and four particularly
+wicked-looking chair legs in our hands, they gave one simultaneous
+gasp--and say, boys, I don't believe in ghosts, but I don't see yet how
+they disappeared so instantaneously! And anyway, for Heaven's sake,
+bring out the prog. We drilled eight miles to a railroad station and my
+vest buttons are tickling my backbone."
+
+Just then a telegram arrived.
+
+     "Don't look for Smith. Changed his mind and went to Jarhard!
+
+                    "SNOOTY."
+
+No wonder we couldn't blast any information out of our Smiths! Oh, they
+were our Smiths all right--and they weren't such a bad bunch at that.
+The fat one turned out to be the champion mandolin teaser in school and
+the lean one made the debating team; while our own particular first
+edition Smith won the catch-as-catch-can chess championship of the
+college three years later.
+
+Just the same, I'd like to get one fair crack at that Smith who went to
+Jarhard. I'd get even for those three days, I'll bet a few!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+TAKING PACE FROM FATHER TIME
+
+
+Honestly, Bill, it's so hard to keep up to date these days, that
+sometimes I'm afraid to go to sleep at night for fear I'll find myself
+in an ethnological museum when I wake up the next morning, with people
+making funny cracks about the strange clothes I was wearing when they
+caught me.
+
+I'm not constitutionally a back number myself either. I come as near
+wearing next year's styles as most fellows, and I had my wrist broken
+cranking an automobile before most Americans believed the things would
+go. I was tired of this hand-chopped furniture fad years ago, and if you
+hand me any slang that I can't catch on the fly you'll have to make it
+up right now. But there's no use talking. No one man can keep up with
+this world all by himself. Sometimes I get to thinking I'm so far ahead
+that I can afford to sit down and get a breath or two, and when I get up
+I have to eat dust for the next year trying to catch up.
+
+Take colleges, for instance. I've been conceited enough to think that
+these flappy little college boys, with their front hair brushed back
+down on their necks, couldn't show me anything that I wasn't tired of.
+I've kept up to date on college things, I've always flattered myself.
+You might lose me now and then on some new way of abusing lettuce during
+a salad course, perhaps, but as far as looking startled at anything that
+might be said or done around a college campus goes, I've had a notion
+that I wasn't in the learning class--which shows how much I knew about
+it. This morning a gosling from the old school--a Sophomore--came in and
+visited with me for a few minutes, on the strength of the fact that he
+knew my baby brother in high school. We hadn't talked a minute before he
+handed me "pragmatism" and "zing-slingers." While I was rolling my eyes
+and clawing for a foothold he confessed that he was the best glider in
+college. When I remarked that I had been somewhat of a glider myself,
+but that I had preferred the twostep, he laughed and explained that he
+was captain of the aviation team--that they had three gliders and were
+finishing a monoplane that had a home-made engine with concentric
+cylinders.
+
+Can you beat it? There I was, Petey Simmons' best friend, and personally
+acquainted with eleven thousand forms of college excitement, listening
+to an infant with my mouth open and stopping him every few words to say
+"land sakes," "dew tell" and "what d'ye mean by that?" I never was so
+humiliated in my life, but there's no getting around the truth. I've
+been ten years out of college, and when I go back they'll pull the
+grandfather clause on me and wheel me in early nights. I'm a back number
+and I know the symptoms. When that young Sophomore told me the boys of
+Eta Bita Pie had just spent twenty dollars apiece on a formal dance and
+house party, I put up the same kind of a lecture to him that my father
+gave me when I explained that we simply had to spend five dollars apiece
+on our party, or belong in the fag end of things. And I suppose when my
+father's crowd blew in a couple of dollars for a load of wood, his
+father reminded him that when HE went to college they didn't coddle
+themselves with fires in their dormitories. And I suppose that some day
+this Sophomore will be telling his son that when he was in college a
+simple little home-made aeroplane furnished amusement for twenty
+fellows, and that they never dreamed of dropping over to the coast on
+Saturdays for a dip in the surf in their private monoplanes. Oh, well,
+it's human nature and natural law, I suppose. No use trying to put a
+rock on the wheels of progress--and there's no use trying to ride the
+darned thing either. It'll throw you every time.
+
+When I went to college, Billy--loud pedal on that "I"--things were
+different. We didn't spend our time fooling with gliders or blow
+ourselves up monkeying with pragmatism. We attended strictly to
+business. We were there for educational purposes and we had no time to
+chase humming birds and chicken hawks. Why, the gasoline money of a
+young collegian to-day would have paid my board bills then! We didn't
+go to Japan on baseball tours, or lug telescopes around South America
+when we ought to have been studying ethics. We lived simply and plainly.
+There wasn't an automatic piano in a single frat house when I was in
+college, and as for wasting our money on motion-picture shows and
+taxi-cabs--nonsense. We'd have died first.
+
+You see I'm getting into practice. Some day I'll have a son, I hope, and
+he'll go back to Siwash. Just wait till he comes home at the end of the
+first semester and tries to put across any bills for radium stickpins
+and lookophonic conversations with the co-eds at Kiowa. I'll pull a
+When-I-was-at-Siwash lecture on him that will make him feel like a
+spider on a hot stove. If I've got to be a back number I want to romp
+right back far enough to have some fun out of it. I'll make him sweat as
+much lugging me up to date as I had to perspire in the old days to
+illuminate things for Pa.
+
+After all, there is no question at college more serious than the Pa
+question, anyway, Bill. It was always butting into our youthful
+ambitions and tying pig iron to our coat-tails when we wanted to soar.
+It's simply marvelous how hard it is to educate a Pa a hundred miles or
+more away into the supreme importance of certain college necessities. It
+isn't because they forget, either. It's because they don't realize that
+the world is roaring along.
+
+I can see it all since this morning. Take my father, for instance.
+There was no more generous or liberal a Pa up to a certain point. He
+wanted me to have a comfortable room and vast quantities of good food,
+and he was glad to pay literary society dues, and he would stand for
+frat dues; but when it came to paying cab hire, you could jam an
+appropriation for a post-office in an enemy's district past Joe Cannon
+in Congress more easily than you could put a carriage bill through him.
+He just said "no" in nine languages; said that when he went to
+Siwash--"and it turned out good men then, too, young fellow"--the girls
+were glad to walk to entertainments through the mud; and when it was
+unusually muddy they weren't averse to being carried a short distance. I
+believe I would have had to lead disgusted co-eds to parties on foot
+through my whole college course if I hadn't happened across an old
+college picture of father in a two-gallon plug hat. That gave me an
+idea. I put in a bill for a plug hat twice a year and he paid it without
+a murmur. Then I paid my carriage bills with the money. Plug hats had
+been the peculiar form of insanity prevalent at Siwash in his day and he
+thought they were still part of the course of study.
+
+I got along much easier than many of the boys, too. Allie Bangs' Pa made
+him buy all his clothes at home, for fear he'd get to looking like some
+of the cartoons he'd seen in the funny papers. "Prince" Hogboom was a
+wonder of a fullback, and his favorite amusement was to get out at night
+and try to pull gas lamps up by the roots. He was a natural born holy
+terror, but his father thought he was fitted by nature to be a
+missionary, and so Hoggie had to harness himself up in meek and
+long-suffering clothes and attend Bible-study class twice a week. The
+crimes he committed by way of relieving himself after each class were
+shocking. Then there was Petey Simmons, who was a perpetual sunbeam and
+greatly beloved because it was so easy to catch happiness from him. And
+yet Petey went through school with a cloud over his young life, in the
+shape of a Pa who gave him a thousand dollars a year for expenses and
+wouldn't allow a single cent of it to be spent for frivolity. And he had
+a blanket definition for frivolity that covered everything from dancing
+parties to pie at an all-night lunch counter. By hard work Petey could
+spend about four hundred dollars on necessary expenses, and that left
+him six hundred dollars a year to blow in on illuminated manuscripts,
+student lamps, debating club dues and prints of the old masters. He had
+to borrow money from us all through the year, and then hold a great
+auction of his art trophies and student lamps, before vacation came, in
+order to pay us back.
+
+But all of these troubles weren't even annoyances beside what Keg
+Rearick had to endure. Keg was an affectionate contraction of his real
+nickname--"Keghead." He had the worst case of "Pa" I ever heard of. He
+was a regular high explosive--one of these fine, old, hair-triggered
+gentlemen, who consider that they have done all the thinking that the
+world needs and refuse to have any of their ideas altered or edited in
+any particular. Keg had had his life laid out for him since the day of
+his birth, and when he left for Siwash--on the precise day announced by
+his father eighteen years before--the old man stood him up and
+discoursed with him as follows:
+
+"My son, I am about to give you the finest education obtainable. You are
+to go down to Siwash and learn how to be a credit to me. Let me impress
+it on you that that is your only duty. You will meet there companions
+who will try to persuade you that there are other things to be done in
+college besides becoming a scholar. You will pay no attention to them.
+You are to spend your time at your books. You are to lead your class in
+Latin and Greek. Mathematics I am not so particular about. You are to
+waste no time on athletics and other modern curses of college. I shall
+pay your expenses and I shall come down occasionally to see how you are
+progressing. And you know me well enough to know that if I find you
+deviating from the course I have laid out in any particular, you will
+return home and go into the store at six dollars a week."
+
+That's the way Keg always repeated it to us. With that affectionate
+farewell ringing in his ears he came on down to Jonesville; and when the
+Eta Bita Pies saw his honest features and his particularly likable
+smile, they surrounded and assimilated him in something less than
+fifteen minutes by the clock. And then his troubles began. Keg's father
+had come down the week before school and had selected a quiet place
+about three miles from the college--out beyond the cemetery in a nice
+lonely neighborhood, where there was just about enough company to keep
+the telephone poles from getting despondent. Moreover, he hadn't given
+Keg any spending money.
+
+"Education is the cheapest thing in the world," he roared. "You don't
+have to keep your pockets full of dollars to live in the times of Homer
+and Horace. I've told them to let you have what you need at the
+bookstore. For the rest, the college library should be your haunt and
+the debating society your recreation." If ever any one was getting
+knowledge put down his throat with a hydraulic ram, it certainly was Keg
+Rearick.
+
+It isn't hard to imagine the result. Keg toiled away three miles from
+anything interesting and got bluer and gloomier and more anarchistic
+every day. Wouldn't have been so bad if nobody had loved him. Lots of
+fellows go through college with no particular friends and emerge in good
+health and spirits. But we had courted Keg and had tried to make it
+impossible for him to live without us. We liked him and we hankered for
+his company. We wanted to parade him around the campus and confer him
+upon the prettiest co-ed in his boarding hall, and teach him to sing a
+great variety of interesting songs, with no particular sense to them,
+and snatch off two or three important offices around school. Instead of
+that he only got to say "howdy" to us between classes, and the rest of
+his time he spent Edward Payson Westoning back and forth from his
+suburban lair, without a cent in his pockets and the street-car
+motor-men giving him the bell to get off of the track into the mud every
+other block.
+
+We very soon found this wasn't going to do. Keg's spirits were down
+about two notches below the absolute zero. If this was college life, he
+said, would somebody kindly take a pair of forceps and remove it. It
+ached. The upshot was we made Keg steward of the frat-house table, which
+paid his board and room and moved him into the chapter house. He
+objected at first, because of what his father would say when he heard of
+it. But he finally concluded that anything he might say would be
+pleasanter than going all day without hearing anything, so he
+surrendered and came along.
+
+The first night at dinner, when we pushed back our chairs and sang a few
+lines by way of getting ready to go upstairs and chink a little assorted
+learning into our headpieces, Keg cried for pure joy. He buckled down to
+work the way a dog takes hold of a root, and inside of a week he
+couldn't remember a time in his young existence when he had been
+unhappy. He was tossing out Greek declensions to the prof. like a
+geyser, and Conny Matthews, our champion Livy unraveler, had shown him
+how to hold a Latin verb in his teeth while he broke open the rest of
+the sentence. And, besides that, we had introduced him to all the
+nicest girls in the college and had assisted the glee club coach to
+discover that he had a fine tenor voice. He was a sure-enough find, and
+fitted into college life as if it had been made to measure for him.
+
+Of course all this pleasantness had to have a gloom spot in it
+somewhere. Rearick's father furnished the gloom. He was certainly the
+most rambunctious, most unreconstructed and most egregious Pa that ever
+tried to turn the sunshine off of a bright young college career.
+Regularly once a week a letter would come to Keg from him. It always
+began "When I was in college," and it always wound up by ordering Keg to
+eat a few assorted lemons for the good of his future. He was to go to
+morning prayer, regularly--there hadn't been any for twenty years. He
+was to become as well acquainted as possible with his professors,
+because of the inspiration it would give him--fancy snuggling up to old
+Grubb. He was to take a Sunday-school class at once. He was to remember
+above all things that though it was a disgrace to waste a minute of the
+precious college years it was equally a disgrace to go through college
+without being self-supporting. He should by all means learn to milk at
+once. He, Keg's father, had been valet to a couple of very fine Holstein
+cows while he was in college, and he attributed much of his success to
+this fact. He would of course pay Keg's expenses while he had to, but he
+would hold it to his discredit. He must at once begin to find work.
+
+This last command impressed Keg deeply, for he had been sailing along
+with us without a cent. He'd been earning his board and room, of course,
+but that was already paid for for a month out on the edge of the planet;
+and as it was the first time the family that owned the house had ever
+got a student boarder they firmly declined to rebate. It's pretty hard
+to butterfly joyously along with the fancy-vest gang without any other
+assets than unlimited credit at the bookstore, so Keg began to prowl for
+a job. Presently he picked up a laundry route. The laundry wagon was a
+favorite vehicle on which to ride to fame and knowledge in those days.
+By getting up early two mornings a week and working late nights, Keg
+managed to put away about six dollars and forty-five cents a week,
+providing every one paid his laundry bill. He was so pleased and tickled
+over the idea that he wrote to his father at once explaining that he now
+had plenty of work, but had had to move downtown in order to do it.
+
+Did this please old pain-in-the-face? Not noticeably. There had been no
+such things as laundry wagons in his day. Students were lucky if they
+had a shirt to wear and one to have washed at the same time. He wrote a
+letter back to Keg that bit him in every paragraph. He was to give up
+the frivolous laundry job and get some wood to saw. That and tending
+cows were the only real methods of toiling through college. He, Keg's
+father, had received his board and room for milking cows and doing
+chores, and he had sometimes earned as much as three dollars a week
+after school hours and before breakfast sawing cordwood at seventy-five
+cents a cord. It was healthful and classic. He would send his old saw by
+express. And he was further to remember--there were about four more
+pages to memorize, a headache in every page.
+
+Good old Keg did his best to be obedient, but he had no chance. In the
+first place, cordwood was phenomenally scarce in Jonesville, and anyway,
+people had a vicious habit of hindering the cause of education by sawing
+it at the wood-yards with a steam saw. There were plenty of cows in the
+outskirts, but they were either well provided with companions for their
+leisure hours, or their owners declined to allow Keg to practice on
+them--he knowing about as much about a cow as he did about a locomotive.
+And so he dawdled on with us at the chapter house, gulping down Livy,
+getting a strangle hold on Homer, and pulling in six or seven dollars a
+week at his frivolous laundry job, some of which cash he was saving up
+for a dress suit. And then, one day, Pa Rearick blew in for another
+visit and caught his son playing a mandolin in our lounging room--far,
+far from the nearest cyclone cellar.
+
+To judge from the conversation that followed--we couldn't help hearing
+it, although we went out-of-doors at once--one might have thought that
+Keg had been caught in a gilded den of sin, playing poker with
+body-snatchers. Pa Rearick simply cut loose and bombarded the
+neighborhood with red-hot adjectives. That he should have brought up a
+son to do him honor and should have found him dawdling his college
+moments away with loafers; fawning on the idle sons of the rich;
+tinkling a mandolin instead of walking with Homer; wasting time and
+money instead of trying to earn his way to success--"Bah," likewise
+"Faugh," to say nothing of other picturesque expressions of entire
+disgust--from all of which one would judge almost without effort that
+Keg was in bad, and in all over.
+
+I suppose Keg attempted to explain. Possibly some people try to argue
+with a funnel-shaped cloud while it is juggling the house and the barn
+and the piano. Anyway the explanations weren't audible. Presently Pa
+Rearick announced, for most of the world to hear, that he was going to
+take his idle, worthless, disgraced and unspeakable nincompoop of a son
+back to his home and set him to weighing out dried apples for the rest
+of his life. Then up rose Keg and spoke quite clearly and distinctly as
+follows:
+
+"No, you're not, Dad."
+
+"Wh-wh-wh-whowhowwy not!" said Pa Rearick, with perfect self-possession
+but some difficulty.
+
+"Because I like this college and I'm going to stay here," said Keg. "I'm
+standing well in my studies and I'm learning a lot all around."
+
+"All I have to say is this," said Pa Rearick. I really haven't time to
+repeat all of those few words, but the ukase, when it was completely
+out, was the following: Keg was to have a chance to ride home in the
+cars if he packed up within ten minutes. After that he could walk home
+or dance home or play his way home with his mandolin. And he was given
+to understand that, when he finally arrived, the nearest substitute to a
+fatted calf that would be prepared for dinner would be a plate of cold
+beans in the kitchen with the hired man.
+
+"You may stay here and dawdle with your worthless companions if you
+desire," shouted Pa Rearick to a man in an adjoining county. "The lesson
+may be a good one for you. I wash my hands of the whole matter. But
+understand. Don't write to me for a cent. Not one cent. You've made your
+bed. Now lie on it."
+
+With which he went away, and we tiptoed carefully in to rearrange the
+shattered atmosphere and comfort Keg. We found him looking thoughtfully
+at nothing, with his hands deep in his pockets, from which about six
+dollars and seventy-five cents' worth of jingle sounded now and then. We
+waited patiently for him to speak. At last he turned on us and grinned
+pensively.
+
+"Do you know, boys," he said, "as a bed-maker I can beat the owner of
+that prehistoric old corn-husk mattress out in the suburbs with one hand
+tied behind me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of course it is a sad thing to be regarded with indignation and disgust
+by one's only paternal parent, but Keg bore up under it pretty
+manfully. He dug into his work harder than ever--and he was a good
+student. Latin words stuck to him like sandburrs. That wasn't his fault,
+of course. Some men are born with a natural magnetism for Latin words;
+and others, like myself, have to look up _quoque_ as many as nine times
+in a page of Mr. Horace's celebrated metrical salve-slinging. Keg went
+into a literary society, too, and developed such an unholy genius at
+wadding up the other fellow's words and feeding them back to him that he
+made the Kiowa debate in his Freshman year. He also chased locals for
+the college paper, made his class football team, got on the track squad
+and won the Freshman essay prize. In fact, he killed it all year long
+and likewise he trained all year long with his idle and vicious
+companions--meaning us.
+
+It beats all how much benefit you can get from training with idle and
+vicious companions, if you are built that way. Of course we taught him
+how to play a mandolin, and how to twostep on his own feet exclusively,
+and how to roll a cigarette without carpeting the floor with tobacco,
+and how to make a pretty girl wonder if she is as beautiful as all that,
+without really saying it himself, and dozens of other pretty and
+harmless little tricks. But that wasn't half he picked up while he was
+loafing away the golden hours of his college course in our chapter
+house. Conny Matthews, whose hobby was Latin verse, plugged him up to
+sending in translated sonnets from Horace for Freshman themes. Noddy
+Pierce showed him how to grab the weak point in the other fellow's
+debate and hang on to it through the rebuttal, while the enemy
+floundered and struggled and splattered disjointed premises all over the
+hall. Allie Bangs had a bug on fencing, and because he and Keg used to
+tip over everything in the basement trying to skewer each other, they
+got to reading up on old French customs of producing artistic
+conversations and deaths and other things, and eventually they wrote one
+of those "Ha" and "Zounds" plays for the Dramatic Club. In fact, there's
+no limit to what you can absorb from idle and vicious companions. In one
+term alone I myself picked up banjo playing, pole vaulting, a little
+Spanish, a bad case of mumps, and two flunks, simply by associating with
+the Eta Bita Pie gang twenty-seven hours a day.
+
+But nobody had to show Keg how to get jobs after his first experience.
+He had a knack of scenting a soft financial snap a mile away to leeward,
+and working his way through college was the least of his troubles. It
+used to make me tired to see the nonchalance with which he would sleuth
+up to a nice fat thing like a baseball season program, and put away a
+couple of hundred with a single turn of the wrist and about four days'
+hard soliciting among the long-suffering Jonesville merchants. I never
+could do it myself. I had the popular desire to work my way through
+school when I entered Siwash, and I pictured myself at the end of my
+college career receiving my diploma in my toil-scarred fist, without
+having had a cent from home. But pshaw! I was a joke. I mowed one lawn
+in my Freshman year, after hunting for work for three weeks; and I lost
+that engagement because the family decided the hired girl could do it
+better. After that I gave up and took my checks from home like a little
+man. In Siwash it is all right to get sent through school, and nobody
+looks down on you for it. The boys who make their own way are very kind
+and never taunt you if you have to lean on Pa. But all the same, you
+feel a little bit disgraced. Why, I've seen a cotillon leader run all
+the way home from a downtown store where he clerked after school hours,
+in order to get into his society harness on time; and when the winner of
+the Interstate Oratorical in my Freshman year had received his laurel
+wreath and three times three times three times three from the crazy
+student body, he excused himself and went off to the house where he
+lived, to fill up the hard-coal heater and pump the water for the next
+day's washing.
+
+As I started to say, some time ago, Keg proved to be a positive genius
+in nailing down jobs. He hadn't been with us three months until he had
+presented his laundry route to one of the boys. He didn't have time to
+attend to it. He had hauled down a chapel monitorship that paid his
+tuition. He got his board and room from us for being steward, and how he
+ever got the fancy eats he gave us out of four dollars per week per
+appetite is an unsolved wonder. He made twenty-five dollars in one week
+by introducing a new brand of canned beans among the hash clubs. He took
+orders for bookbinding on Saturdays, and sold advertising programs for
+the college functions after school hours. More than once I borrowed ten
+dollars from him that year, while I was living on hope and meeting the
+mailman half-way down the block each morning just before the first of
+the month. And I wasn't the only man who did it, either.
+
+Perhaps you wonder how he had time to do all this and to mix up in all
+the various departments of student bumptiousness, besides absorbing
+enough information laid down and prescribed by the curriculum to batter
+an "A" out of old Grubb, who hated to give a top mark worse than most
+men hate to take quinine. That's one of the mysteries of college life.
+No one has time to do anything but the busy man. In every school there
+are a few hundred joyous loafers who hold down an office or two, and
+make one team, and then have only time to take a few hasty peeps at a
+book while running for chapel; and there are a dozen men who do the
+debating and the heavy thinking for half a dozen societies, and make
+some athletic team, and get their lessons and make their own living on
+the side--and who always have time, somehow, to pick up some new and
+pleasant pastime, like reading up for an oration on John Randolph, of
+Roanoke, or some other eminent has-been. When I think of my wasted years
+in college and of how I was always going to take hold of Psych. and
+Polykon and Advanced German, and shake them as a terrier does a rat,
+just as soon as I had finished about three more hands of whist--oh,
+well, there's no use of crying about it now. What makes me the maddest
+is that my wife says I'm an imposingly poor whist player at that.
+
+Keg went home with one of us for the semester holidays. And at
+commencement time he wrote an affectionate letter home to his volcanic
+old sire, and told him that he was going to stride forth into the
+unappreciative world and yank a living away from it that summer. That
+was the great ambition of almost every Siwash boy. When we weren't
+thinking of girls and exams in the blissful spring days, we were
+stalking some summer job to its lair and sitting down to wait for it.
+There wasn't anything that a Siwash boy wouldn't tackle in the summer
+vacation. The farmer boys had a cinch, of course. They were skilled
+laborers; and, besides, they came back in the fall in perfect condition
+for the football squad. Some of the town boys became street-car
+conductors. The new railroad that was built into Jonesville about that
+time was a bonanza for us. It was no uncommon thing, the summer of my
+Sophomore year, to find a dozen muddy society leaders shoveling dirt in
+a construction crew and singing that grand old hymn composed by Petey
+Simmons, which ran as follows:
+
+     _I've a blister on me heel, and me beak's begun to peel;
+       I've an ache for every bone that's in me back.
+     I've a feeling I could eat rubber hose and call it sweet,
+       And me hands is warped from lugging bits of track._
+
+     _Oh, me closes they are tore, and me shoulders they are sore,
+       And I sometimes wish that I had died a 'borning';
+     And me eye is full of dirt, and there's gravel in me shirt,
+       But I'm going back to Siwash in the mor-r-r-r-r-r-r-rning._
+
+One of our own boys is a division superintendent on one of the big
+western roads to-day, and he caught the railroad microbe in the shovel
+gang.
+
+The boys got newspaper positions and clerked in the stores, and one or
+two of them tooted cornets or other disturbances at summer-resort
+hotels. One junior, during my time, aroused the envy of the whole
+college by painting the steeple of the First Baptist Church during
+vacation; and when he finished the job his class numerals were painted
+in big letters on top of the ornamental knob that tipped the spire. At
+least, so he announced, and no rival class had the nerve to investigate.
+
+But the most popular road to prosperity during the summer was the
+canvassing route. About the last of April various smooth young college
+chaps from other schools would drift into Siwash and begin to sign up
+agents for the summer. There were three favorite lines--books,
+stereopticon slides and a patent combination desk, blackboard,
+sewing-table, snow-shovel, trundle-bed and ironing-board--which was sold
+in vast numbers at that time by students all over the country. All
+through May the agents fished for victims. They signed them up with
+contracts guaranteeing them back-breaking profits, and then instructed
+them with great care in a variety of speeches. Speech No. 1,
+introductory. Speech No. 2, to women. Speech No. 3, clinching talk for
+waverers. Speech No. 4, to parents. Speech No. 5, rebuttal to argument
+that victim already has enough reading matter. Speech No. 6, general
+appeal to patriotism and love of progress. Then on Commencement day the
+hopeful young collegians would go forth to argue with the calm and
+unresponsive farmer's wife and sell her something that she had never
+needed and had never wanted, until hypnotized by the classic eloquence
+of a bright-eyed young man with his foot in the crack of the half-opened
+door.
+
+I chose the book game one summer, and went out with about thirty others.
+Twenty-five of them quit at the end of the first week. That was about
+the usual proportion--but the rest of us stuck. I devastated a swath of
+territory fifty miles wide and a hundred miles long. I talked, argued,
+persuaded, plead, threatened and mesmerized. I sold books to men on
+twine binders, to women with their hands in the bread dough, and once,
+after a farmer had come grudgingly out to rescue me from his dog, I sold
+a book to him from a tree. I worked two months, tramped four hundred
+miles, told the same story of impassioned praise for and confidence in
+my book eleven hundred times, and sold sixty-five volumes at a gross
+profit of seventy-nine dollars--my expenses being eighty dollars even.
+But it was worth the effort. I was a shy young thing at the beginning
+of the summer, who believed that strangers would invariably bite when
+spoken to. When school began I was a tanned pirate who believed the
+world belonged to him who could grab it, and who would have walked up to
+a duke and sold him a book on practical farming with as much assurance
+as if it were a subpoena I was serving.
+
+Keg went out with the desk crowd, and it was evident from the first
+minute that he was going to return a plutocrat. He sold a desk to the
+train brakeman on his way to his field, and another to a kind old
+gentleman who incautiously got into conversation with him. He raged
+through four counties like a plague, selling desks in farmhouses, public
+libraries, harness stores, banks and old folks' homes. He was the
+season's sensation and won a prize every month from the proud and happy
+company. When he had finished collecting he took a hasty run to Denver
+on a sight-seeing trip, and came back to Siwash that fall in a parlor
+car, with something over four hundred dollars in his jeans.
+
+Naturally we would have ceased worrying about the probability of keeping
+Keg with us then if we had not done so long before. As a matter of fact,
+he was more prosperous than any of us. He had made his own money and he
+drew his own checks when he pleased, instead of taking them the first of
+the month wrapped up in a cayenne coating composed of parental remarks
+on extravagance and laziness. He gave away all of his little jobs to the
+rest of us first thing, and said he was content with what he had; but,
+pshaw!--when a man has the gift he can't dodge prosperity. Keg had to
+manage the college paper that year because no one else could do it quite
+so well; and it netted him about fifty dollars a month. When the
+glee-club manager got cold feet over the poor prospects, Keg backed a
+trip himself--and I hate to say how much he cleared from it. That was
+the first year we swept the West with our famous football team of
+trained mastodons; and at the earnest solicitation of about a dozen
+daily papers here and there, Keg dashed off something like one hundred
+yards of football dope at five dollars a column--sort of a literary
+hundred-yard dash. He used to write it between bites at the dinner
+table. And then to top off everything, his precious desk company came
+along and stole him from us early in April. It considered him too
+valuable a man to tramp the country selling desks, while there were
+other young collegians who only needed the touch of a magic tongue to
+get them into the great calling. So Keg made a tour of Kiowa and
+Muggledorfer and Hambletonian and Ogallala colleges, lining up
+canvassers at a net profit of something like fifty dollars per
+head--full or empty. When he blew in at the end of the year to spend
+Commencement week with us he was nothing short of an amateur Croesus.
+He bulged with wealth. I remember yet the awe with which the rest of us,
+hoarding our last nickels at the end of the long and billful year, took
+a peep at the balance in his checkbook and touched him humbly for
+advances, great and small.
+
+Keg had gone out the second evening of Commencement week to bring a
+little pleasure into the barren life of a girl who hadn't been shown any
+attention by any one for upward of four hours. The rest of the boys were
+also away scattering seeds of kindness in a similar manner, and so I was
+alone when Pa Rearick stumped up the walk to the chapter-house porch and
+glared at me.
+
+"I want to see my boy," he said, out of the corner of his beard. He
+seemed to suspect that I had made him into a meat pie or otherwise done
+away with him.
+
+"He's out," I said, not very scared; "but if you want to wait for him,
+won't you make yourself quite at home?"
+
+He took a seat on the porch without a word. I went on smoking a
+cigarette in my most abandoned style and saying all I had to say, which
+was nothing. After a while Pa Rearick glared over at me again in a most
+belligerent manner.
+
+"Is he well?" he asked.
+
+"Finer'n silk," I answered, most disrespectfully.
+
+"Humph!" said he; which, being freely translated, seemed to mean: "If I
+had an impudent, lazy, immoral, shiftless, unlicked cub like you, I'd
+grind him up for hen feed."
+
+Much more silence. I lit another cigarette.
+
+"Does he get enough to eat?"
+
+"When he has time," I said. "He's generally pretty busy."
+
+"Playing the mandolin, I suppose."
+
+"Most of the time," said I. "He runs the college in his odd moments."
+
+"He wouldn't have run the Siwash I went to," said Pa Rearick grimly.
+
+"No," said I, "you egregious timber-head, he'd have spent his time
+limping after Homer." But as I said it only to myself, no one was
+insulted.
+
+"Has he learned anything?" said old Hostilities, after some more
+silence.
+
+"Took the Sophomore Greek prize this year," I said, blowing one of the
+most perfect smoke rings I had ever achieved.
+
+"I don't believe it," said Pa Rearick deliberately.
+
+I blew another ring that was very fair, but it lacked the perfect double
+whirl of the first one. And presently the neatest spider phaeton that
+was owned by a Jonesville livery stable drew up before the house and Keg
+jumped out, telling a delicious chiffon vision to hold old Bucephalus
+until he got his topcoat. Keg was a good dresser, but I never saw him
+quite as letter-perfect and wholly immaculate as he was just then. He
+hurried up the steps, took one look, and yelled "Dad," then made a rush;
+and I went inside to see if I couldn't beat that smoke ring where there
+was not so much atmospheric disturbance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pa Rearick stayed the rest of the week, and after he had interviewed
+certain professors the next day he moved over to the house and stayed
+with us. Mrs. Rearick came down, too, and on this account we didn't see
+quite as much of Keg as we had hoped to. The girl in chiffon didn't,
+either, but that's neither here nor there. She was only a passing fancy,
+anyway. By successive degrees Keg's father viewed the rest of us with
+disapproval, suspicion, tolerance, benevolence, interest and
+friendliness. But I am convinced that it was only on Keg's account. He
+gave us credit for exercising unexpected good taste in liking him. And
+maybe it wasn't interesting to see him thaw and melt and struggle with a
+stiff, wintry smile, as a young man does with his first mustache, and
+finally give himself up unreservedly to fatherly pride. When a father
+has religiously put away these things all his life for fear of spoiling
+a son, and finally finds that that son is unspoilable, even by
+friendliness and parental tenderness, he has a lot of pleasure to
+indulge himself in during his remaining years.
+
+It was like the old fire-eater to call us together before he went and
+punished himself. I suppose it was his sense of justice which was too
+keen for any good use. "I've misjudged my son," he said to us; "and I
+want to make public admission of it. I am perhaps a little out of
+date--a little old-fashioned. The world didn't move so fast when I was a
+boy here. When I was in school we saved our money and studied. My son
+tells me he can't afford to save money--that time is too precious. I
+don't pretend to understand all your ways, but he seems to think you
+have been good to him and I want to thank you for it. My son has made
+his way alone these two years. I threw him out to support himself. When
+I casually mentioned yesterday that times were very hard in the business
+just now, he wanted to put five hundred dollars into it. I want you to
+know I'm proud of him. I hope you young gentlemen will feel free to stop
+and visit us when you come through our town. I must say, times seem to
+have changed."
+
+Right he was. Times have changed. And here I have been dunderheading
+along in just his way, imagining that I was pacing them, instead of
+sitting on the fence and watching them go by. If I can find that little
+Sophomore who insulted me this morning, I'm going to make him come to
+dinner and tell me some more about the way they do things this
+afternoon. As for to-morrow--what does he or any one else know about it?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+FRAPPÉD FOOTBALL
+
+
+As a rule there is only about one thing to mar the joy of college days
+and nights and early mornings. That is the Faculty. Honestly, I used to
+sit up until long after bedtime every little while trying to figure out
+some real reason for a college Faculty. They interfere so. They are so
+inappropriate. Moreover, they are so confoundedly ignorant of college
+life.
+
+How a professor can go through an assorted collection of brain
+stufferies, get so many college degrees that his name looks like
+Halley's Comet with an alphabet tail, and then teach college students
+for forty years without even taking one of them apart to find out what
+he is made of, beats my time! That's a college professor for you, right
+through. He thinks of a college student only as something to
+teach--whereas, of all the nineteen hundred and eighty-seven things a
+college student is, that is about the least important to his notion. A
+boy might be a cipher message on an early Assyrian brick and stand a far
+better chance of being understood by his professor.
+
+A college Faculty is a collection of brains tied together by a firm
+resolve--said resolve being to find out what miscreant put plaster of
+Paris in the keyhole of the president's door. It is a wet blanket on a
+joyous life; it is a sort of penance provided by Providence to make a
+college boy forget that he's glad he's alive. It's a hypodermic syringe
+through which the student is supposed to get wisdom. It takes the place
+of conscience after you've been destroying college property. When I sum
+it all up it seems to me that a college Faculty is a dark, rainy cloud
+in the middle of a beautiful May morning--at least that's the way the
+Faculty looked to me when I was a humble seeker after the truth in
+Siwash College.
+
+The Faculty was to boys in Siwash what indigestion is to a jolly good
+fellow in the restaurant district. It was always either among us or
+getting ready to land on us. Our Faculty had thirty-two profs and
+thirty-three pairs of spectacles. It also had two good average heads of
+hair and considerable whiskers. It could figure out a perihelion or a
+Latin bill-of-fare in a minute, but you ought to hear it stutter when it
+tried to map out the daily relaxations of a college full of husky young
+hurricanes, who had come to school to learn what life looks like from
+the inside. Fairy tales in the German and tea and wafers with quotations
+looked like a jolly good time to the Faculty; and it couldn't understand
+why some of us liked to put gunpowder in the tea.
+
+Now don't understand me to say that there isn't anything good about a
+college professor. Bless you, no! There's a lot of it. A Faculty is a
+lot of college profs in a state of inflammation, but individually most
+of the Siwash profs were nearly human at times. I look back at some of
+them now with awe. They really knew a lot. They knew so much that most
+of them are there yet; and I go back and look at them with a good deal
+more respect than I used to have. I'll tell you it fills a chap with awe
+to see a man teaching along for twenty years at eighteen hundred dollars
+per, and raising children, and buying books, and going off to Europe now
+and then on that princely sum--and coming through it all happy and
+content with life. I go around them nowadays with my hat off and try to
+persuade them that if it wasn't for my sprained arm I could quote Latin
+almost as well as the stone dog in front of Prexy's house.
+
+And some of them are bully good fellows, too. Nowadays they take me into
+their studies at Commencement and give me good cigars, making sure first
+that there are no undergraduates around. Why, one of the profs I worried
+the most, when I was a cross between a Sophomore and a spotted hyena, is
+as glad to see me nowadays as though I owed him money. He runs a little
+automobile, and I hope I may get laid out in the subway if I haven't
+heard him cuss in real United States when the clutch slipped. And he was
+the chap who used to pick out the passages in Livy that had inflammatory
+rheumatism and make me recite on them, and who always told me that a
+student who smoked cigarettes would be making a wise business move if he
+brought his hat to recitation and left the less important part of his
+head at home.
+
+But, as I was saying, the Faculty at Siwash, like all other Faculties,
+didn't know its place. It wasn't satisfied with teaching us Greek and
+Latin and Evidences of Christianity and tall-brow twaddle of all sorts.
+It had to butt into our athletics and regulate them. Did you ever see a
+farmer regulate a weed patch with a hoe? You know how unhealthy it is
+for the weeds. Well, that was the way the Faculty regulated our
+athletics. It didn't believe in athletics anyway. They were too
+interesting. They might not have been sinful, but they were not literary
+and they were uneconomic. Of course all the professors admitted that
+good outdoor exercise was healthy for college boys, but most of them
+believed that you ought to get it in the college library out of Nature
+books. And so the way they went at the real athletics, to keep them pure
+and healthful, almost drove us into the violent ward.
+
+Those were the days at Siwash when our football team could start out for
+a pleasant stroll through any teams in our section and wonder after it
+had passed the goal line, why those undersized fellows had been jogging
+their elbows all the way down the field. That was the kind of a team we
+built up every fall; and it wasn't half so much trouble to keep other
+teams from beating it as it was to keep the Faculty from blowing it to
+pieces with non-eligibility notices. There was something diabolical
+about that Faculty when it was wrestling with the athletic problem. It
+wasn't human. It was like Mount Etna. You never could tell just when it
+would stop being lovely and quiet, and scatter ruin all over the
+vicinity.
+
+Its idea of regulating athletics at Siwash was to think up excuses for
+flunking every man who weighed over one hundred and fifty-five and could
+have his toes stepped on without saying "Ouch!" And it never got the
+excuses thought up until the night before the most important games. The
+Faculty pretended to be as bland and innocent as Mary's lamb, but no one
+can ever tell me it didn't know what it was about. Men have to have real
+genius to think up the things it did. You couldn't do it accidentally.
+When a Siwash Faculty could moon along happily all fall until
+twenty-four hours before the Kiowa game and then discover with regret
+that our two-hundred-and-twenty-pound center had misspelled three words
+in an examination paper the year before; that our two-hundred-pound
+backs didn't put enough rear-end collisions into their words when they
+read French; and that Ole Skjarsen read Latin with a Norwegian accent
+and was therefore too big an ignoramus to play football, I decline to be
+fooled. I never was fooled. Neither was Keg Rearick. But that is
+hurdling about three chapters.
+
+Honestly, we used to spend one day out of six building up our football
+team and the other five defending it from the Faculty. It positively
+hungered for a bite out of the line-up. It had us helpless. If we didn't
+like the way it ran things we could take our happy young college life up
+by the roots and transplant it to some other school, where the football
+team moved around the field like a parade. Theoretically the Faculty
+could sit around and take our best players off the team, as fast as we
+developed them, for non-attention to studies. But, as a matter of fact,
+it wasn't an easy matter. It beats all how early in the morning you have
+to get up to get ahead of college lads who have got it into their heads
+that the world will gum up on its axle and stop dead still if their
+innocent little pleasures are interfered with.
+
+I remember the fall that the Faculty decided Miller couldn't play
+because he hadn't attended chapel quite persistently enough the spring
+before. Miller was our center and as important to the team that year as
+the mainspring of a watch. The ponderous brain trust that sat on this
+case didn't decide it until the day before the big game with
+Muggledorfer; then they practically ruled that he would have to go back
+to last spring and take his chapel all over again. It took us all night
+to sidestep that outrage, but we did it. The next morning an indignation
+committee of fifty students met the Faculty and presented alibis that
+were invincible. It was demonstrated by a cloud of witnesses that Miller
+had been absent nine times hand-running because he had been sitting up
+nights with a sick chum. The Faculty was inexperienced that year and let
+him play; but, when it found out the next day by consulting the records
+that the chum had attended chapel every one of those nine mornings, it
+got more particular than ever and its heart seemed to harden.
+
+On the day before the Thanksgiving game that year the Faculty held a
+long meeting and decided that our two guards were ineligible. There
+wasn't a word of truth in it. They weighed two hundred and twenty pounds
+apiece and were eligible to the All-American team, but you couldn't make
+the human lexicons look at it that way. They found them deficient in
+trigonometry and canned them off the team. It was an outrage, because
+the two chaps didn't know what trigonometry meant even and couldn't take
+an examination. We had to call the trig. professor out of town by a
+telegram that morning and then have the suspended men demand an
+immediate examination. That worked, too; but every time we managed to
+preserve a glory of old Siwash, the Faculty seemed to get a little more
+crabby and unreasonable and diabolically persisted in its determination
+to regulate athletics.
+
+The next fall it was well understood when football practice began that
+there was going to be war to the knife between the Faculty and the
+football team. We were meek and resigned to trouble, but you can bet we
+were not going to sit around and embrace it. The longest heads in the
+school made themselves into a sort of an unofficial sidestepping
+committee; and we decided that if the Faculty succeeded in massacring
+our football team they would have to outpoint, outfoot, outflank and
+outscheme the whole school. Just to draw their fire, we advertised the
+first practice game as a deadly combat, in which the honor of Old Siwash
+was at stake. It was just a little romp with the State Normal, which had
+a team that would have had to use aeroplanes to get past our ends; but
+the Faculty bit. It held a special session that night and declared the
+center, the two backs and the captain ineligible because they had not
+prepared orations the spring before at the request of the rhetoric
+professor. That was first blood for us. We chased the Normalites all
+over the lot with a scrub team and Keg Rearick sat up nights the next
+week writing the orations. The result was we got four fine new
+dry-cleaned records for our four star players and the Faculty was so
+pleased with their fine work on those orations that we could scarcely
+live with it for a week.
+
+That was only a skirmish, however. We knew very well that the sacred
+cause of education would come right back at us and we decided to be
+elsewhere when it struck its next blow for progress. We talked it all
+over with Bost, the coach, and the result was that a week before the
+Muggledorfer game, the last week in September, Bost gave out his line-up
+for the season in chapel. There were a good many surprises in the
+line-up to some of us. It seemed funny that Miller shouldn't make the
+team out and that Ole Skjarsen should have been left off; but the best
+of men will slump, as Bost explained, and he had picked the team that he
+thought would do the most good for Siwash. It was a team that I wouldn't
+have hired to chase a Shanghai rooster out of a garden patch, but the
+blind and happy Faculty didn't stop to reason about its excellence. It
+held a meeting the night before the Muggledorfer game and suspended nine
+of the men for inattention to chapel, smoking cigarettes during vacation
+and other high crimes. The whole school roared with indignation. Bost
+appeared before the Faculty meeting and almost shook his fist in Prexy's
+face. He told the Faculty that it was the greatest crime of the
+nineteenth century; and the Faculty told him in very high-class language
+to go chase himself. So Bost went sorrowfully out and put in the regular
+team as substitutes. The next day we whipped Muggledorfer 80 to 0.
+
+[Illustration: Our peculiar style of pushing a football right through
+the thorax of the whole middle west
+                    _Page 205_]
+
+I think that would have discouraged the Faculty if it hadn't been for
+Professor Sillcocks. Did I ever tell you about Professor Sillcocks? It's
+a shame if I haven't, because every one is the better and nobler for
+hearing about him. He was about a nickel's worth of near-man with
+Persian-lamb whiskers and the disposition of a pint of modified milk.
+Crickets were bold and quarrelsome beside him. He knew more musty
+history than any one in the state and he could without flinching tell
+how Alexander waded over his knees in blood; but rather than take off
+his coat where the world would have seen him he would have died. He was
+just that modest and conventional. He had to come to his classes through
+the back of the campus up the hill; and they do say that one day, when
+half a dozen of the Kappa Kap Pajama girls were sitting on the low stone
+wall at the foot of the hill swinging their feet, he cruised about the
+horizon for a quarter of an hour waiting for them to go away in order
+that he might go up the hill without scorching his collar with blushes.
+That was the kind of a roaring lion Professor Sillcocks was.
+
+Well, to get back from behind Robin Hood's barn, Professor Sillcocks had
+a great hobby. He believed that college boys should indulge in
+athletics, but that they should do it with their fingers crossed. Those
+weren't his exact words, but that was what he meant. It was noble to
+play games, but wicked to want to win. In his eyes a true sport was a
+man who would start in a foot race and come in half a mile behind
+carrying the other fellow's coat. Our peculiar style of pushing a
+football right through the thorax of the whole Middle West nearly made
+him shudder his shoes off and every fall in chapel he delivered a talk
+against the reprehensible state of mind that finds pleasure in the
+defeat of others. We always cheered those talks, which pleased him; but
+he never could understand why we didn't go out afterward and offer
+ourselves up to some high-school team as victims. It pained him greatly.
+
+Naturally Professor Sillcocks participated with great enthusiasm in the
+work of pruning our line-up, and after the Faculty had thrown up its
+hands he climbed right in and led a new campaign. We had to admire the
+scientific way in which he went about it, too. For a man whose most
+violent exercise consisted of lugging books off a top shelf, and who had
+learned all he knew about football from the Literary Pepsin or the
+Bi-Weekly Review, he got onto the game in wonderful style. Somehow he
+managed to learn just who were our star players--what they played and
+how badly they were needed--and then he went to work to quarantine these
+players.
+
+First thing we knew the Millersburg game, which was always a fierce
+affair, arrived; and on the morning of the game Bumpus and Van
+Eiswaggon, our two star halfbacks, got notices to forget there was such
+a game as football until they had taken Freshman Greek over again--they
+being Seniors and remembering about as much Greek as their hats would
+hold on a windy day. I'll tell you that mighty near floored us; but
+virtue will pretty nearly always triumph, and when you mix a little luck
+into it, it is as slippery to corner as a corporation lawyer. We had the
+luck. There were two big boners, Pacey and Driggs, in college who wore
+whiskers. There always are one or two landscape artists in college who
+use their faces as alfalfa farms. We took Bumpus and Van Eiswaggon and
+the leading man of a company that was playing at the opera house that
+night over to these two Napoleons of mattress stuffing and they kindly
+consented to be imitated for one day only. Old Booth and Barrett had a
+tremendous layout of whiskers in his valise and before he got through he
+had produced a couple of mighty close copies of Pacey and Driggs. That
+afternoon the two real whisker kings went out in football suits and ran
+signals with the team until their wind was gone. Then they went back
+into the gym and their improved editions came out. Most of the college
+cried when they found that the two eminent authorities on tonsorial art
+were going to try to interfere with Millersburg's ambition, but those of
+us who were on to the deal simply prayed. We prayed that the whiskers
+wouldn't come off. They didn't, either. It was a grand game. We won, 20
+to 0; and the school went wild over Pacey and Driggs. Even Prexy came
+out of it for a little while and went into the gym to shake hands with
+them. It took lively work to detain him until we could get them stripped
+and laid out on the rubbing boards. They were the heroes of the school
+for the rest of the year and, being honest chaps, they naturally
+objected. But we persuaded them that they had saved the college with
+their whiskers; and before they graduated we begged a bunch from each of
+them to frame and hang up in the gym some day when the incident wasn't
+quite so fresh.
+
+Naturally, by this time, we believed that the Faculty ought to consider
+itself lucky to be allowed to hang around the college. Professor
+Sillcocks looked rather depressed for a day or two, but he soon cheered
+up and seemed to forget the team's existence. We swam right along,
+beating Pottawattamie, scoring sixty points on Ogallala and getting into
+magnificent condition for the Kiowa game on Thanksgiving. That was the
+game of the year for us. Time was when Kiowa used to beat us and look
+bored about it, but that was all in the misty past. For two years we had
+tramped all the lime off her goal lines; and maybe we weren't crazy to
+do it again! As early as October we used to sit up nights talking over
+our chances, and as November wore along the suspense got as painful as a
+good lively case of too much pie. We watched the team practise all day
+and dreamed of it all night. And then the blow fell.
+
+It wasn't exactly a blow. It was more like a dynamite explosion. School
+let out the day before Thanksgiving, and when announcement time came in
+chapel Professor Sillcocks got up and begged permission to make a few
+remarks. Then this little ninety-eight-pound thinking machine, who
+couldn't have wrestled a kitten successfully, paralyzed half a thousand
+husky young students and a whole team of gladiators with the following
+remarks:
+
+"I have long held, young gentlemen, that the pursuit of athletic
+exercises for the mere lust of winning is one of the evils of college
+life. It does not strengthen the mind or build up one's manhood. It does
+not encourage that sporting spirit which leads a man to smile in defeat
+or to give up his chances of winning rather than take an undue
+advantage. It does not make for gentleness, mildness or generosity. I
+have, young gentlemen, endeavored to make you see this in the past year
+by all the poor means at my disposal. I have not succeeded. But this
+morning I propose to bring it to you in a new way. As chairman of the
+credentials committee which passes upon the eligibility of your football
+players I have decided that the entire team is ineligible. If you ask
+for reasons, I have them. They may not, perhaps, suit you, but they suit
+me. These players are ineligible because they play too well. With them
+you cannot hope to be defeated and I am determined that the Siwash
+football team shall be defeated to-morrow. Your college experience must
+be broadened. Your football team, I understand, has not been defeated in
+three years. This is monstrous. All of you, except the Seniors, are
+totally uneducated in the art of taking defeat. This education I propose
+to open to you to-morrow. I have made it more certain by suspending all
+of what you call your second team and your scrubs--I believe that is
+correct. And the Faculty joins me, young gentlemen, in assuring you that
+if the game with Kiowa College is abandoned--abrogated--called off, I
+believe you express it--football will cease permanently at Siwash. Young
+gentlemen, accept defeat to-morrow as an opportunity and try to
+appreciate its great benefits. That is all."
+
+That last was pure sarcasm. Imagine an executioner carving off his
+victim's head and murmuring politely, "That is all," to the said victim
+when he had finished! There we were, wiped out, utterly
+extinguished--legislated into disgrace and defeat--and all by a smiling
+villain who said "That is all" when he had read the death sentence!
+
+There wasn't a loophole in the decree. Sillcocks had carved the entire
+football talent of the school right out of it with that little list of
+his. We would have to play Kiowa with a bunch of rah-rah boys who had
+never done anything more violent than break a cane on a grandstand seat
+over a touchdown. The chaps who were butchered to make a Roman holiday
+didn't have anything at all on us. We were going to be tramped all over
+by our deadly rival in order to afford pleasure to a fuzzy-faced old
+fossil who had peculiar ideas and had us to try them out on.
+
+I guess, if the students had had a vote on it that day, Professor
+Sillcocks would have been elected resident governor of Vesuvius. We
+seethed all day and all that night. The board of strategy met, of
+course, but it threw up its hands. It didn't have any first aid to the
+annihilated in its chest. Besides, Professor Sillcocks hadn't played the
+game. He had just grabbed the cards. It was about to pass resolutions
+hailing Sillcocks as the modern Nero, when Rearick began to come down
+with an idea. Nowadays people pay him five thousand dollars apiece for
+ideas, but he used to fork them out to us gratis--and they had twice the
+candle-power. As soon as we saw Rearick begin to perspire we just
+knocked off and sat around, and it wasn't two minutes before he was
+making a speech.
+
+"Fellows," he said, "we're due for a cleaning to-morrow. It's official.
+The Faculty has ordered it. If I had a Faculty I'd put kerosene on it
+and call the health department; but that's neither here nor there. We've
+got to lose. We've got to let Kiowa roll us all over the field; and if
+we back out we've got to give up football. Now some of you want to
+resign from college and some of you want to burn the chapel, but these
+things will not do you any good. Kiowa will beat us just the same.
+Therefore I propose that if we have to be beaten we make it so emphatic
+that no one will ever forget it. Let's make it picturesque and
+instructive. Let's show the Faculty that we can obey orders. Let's play
+a game of football the way Sillcocks and his tools would like to see it.
+You let me pick the team now, and give me to-night and to-morrow morning
+to drill them, and I'll bet Kiowa will never burn any property
+celebrating."
+
+Bost was there with his head down between his knees and he said he
+didn't care--Rearick or Sillcocks or his satanic majesty could pick the
+team. As for himself, he was going to leave college and go to herding
+hens somewhere over two thousand miles from the Faculty. So we left it
+to Rearick and went home to sleep and dream murderous dreams about
+meeting profs in lonesome places.
+
+The first thing I saw next morning when I went out of the house was a
+handbill on a telegraph pole. It was printed in red ink. It implored
+every Siwash student to turn out to the game that afternoon. "New
+team--new rules--new results!" it read. "The celebrated Sillcocks system
+of football will be played by the Siwash team. Attendance at this game
+counts five chapel cuts after Thanksgiving. Admission free. Tea will be
+served. You are requested to be present."
+
+Were we present? We were--every one of us that wasn't tied down to a
+bed. There was something promising in that announcement. Besides, the
+greenest of us were taken in by that chapel-cut business. Besides, it
+was free! College students are just like the rest of the world. They'd
+go to their great-grandmother's funeral if the admission was free. Our
+gang put on big crêpe bows, just to be doing something, and marched into
+the stadium that afternoon with hats off. It was packed. Talk about
+promotion work. Rearick had pasted up bills until all Jonesville was red
+in the face. And the Faculty was there, too. Every member was present.
+They sat in a big special box and Sillcocks had the seat of honor. He
+looked as pleased as though he had just reformed a cannibal tribe. I
+suppose the programs did it. They announced once more that the
+celebrated Sillcocks system of football as worked out by the coach and
+Mr. Keg Rearick would be played in this game by the Siwash team. The
+whole town was there too, congested with curiosity. In one big bunch
+sat all the Siwash men who had ever played football, in their best
+clothes and with their best girls. They were the guests of honor at
+their own funeral.
+
+The Kiowa team came trotting out--behemoths, all of them--ready to get
+revenge for three painful years. They had heard all about the massacre
+and regarded it as the joke of the century on Siwash. They also regarded
+it as their providential duty to emphasize the joke--to sharpen up the
+point by scoring about a hundred and ten points on the scared young
+greenhorns who would have to play for us. All our ex-players stood up
+and gave them a big cheer when they came. So did everybody else. It's
+always a matter of policy to grin and joke while you're being dissected.
+Nothing like cheerfulness. Cheerfulness saved many a martyr from worry
+while he was being eaten by a lion.
+
+Then our gymnasium doors opened and the brand-new and totally innocent
+Siwash football team came forth. When we saw it we forgot all about
+Kiowa, the Faculty, defeat, dishonor, the black future and the
+disgusting present. We stood up and yelled ourselves hoarse. Then we sat
+down and prepared to enjoy ourselves something frabjous.
+
+Rearick had used nothing less than genius in picking that team. First in
+line came Blakely, a mandolin and girl specialist, who had never done
+anything more daring than buck the line at a soda fountain. He had on
+football armor and a baseball mask. Then came Andrews. Andrews
+specialized in poetry for the Lit magazine and commonly went by the name
+of Birdie, because of an unfortunate sonnet that he had once written.
+Andrews wore evening dress, and carried a football in a shawl strap.
+Then came McMurty and Boggs, sofa-pillow punishers. They roomed together
+and you could have tied them both up in Ole Skjarsen's belt and had
+enough of it left for a handle. James, the champion featherweight fusser
+of the school, followed. He carried a campchair and a hot-water bottle.
+Petey Simmons, five feet four in his pajamas, and Jiggs Jarley, champion
+catch-as-catch-can-and-hold-on-tight waltzer in college, came next. Then
+came Bain, who weighed two hundred and seventeen pounds, had been a
+preacher, and was so mild that if you stood on his corns he would only
+ask you to get off when it was time to go to class. He was followed by
+Skeeter Wilson, the human dumpling, and Billings, who always carried an
+umbrella to classes and who had it with him then. Behind these came a
+great mob of camp-followers with chairs, books, rugs, flowers, lunch
+tables, tea-urns and guitars. It was the most sensational parade ever
+held at Siwash; and how we yelled and gibbered with delight when we got
+the full aroma of Rearick's plan!
+
+The Kiowa men looked a little dazed, but they didn't have time to
+comment. The toss-up was rushed through and the two teams lined up, our
+team with the ball. It would have done your eyes good to see Rearick
+adjust it carefully on a small doily in the exact center of the field,
+mince up to it and kick it like an old lady urging a setting hen off the
+nest. A Kiowa halfback caught it and started up the field. Right at him
+came Birdie Andrews, hat in hand, and when the halfback arrived he bowed
+and asked him to stop. The runner declined. McMurty was right behind and
+he also begged the runner to stop. Boggs tried to buttonhole him.
+Skeeter Wilson, who was as fast as a trolley car, ran along with him for
+twenty-five yards, pleading with him to listen to reason and consent to
+be downed. It was no use. The halfback went over the goal line. The
+Kiowa delegation didn't know whether to go crazy with joy or disgust.
+Our end of the grandstand clapped its hands pleasantly. Down in the
+Faculty box one or two of the professors, who hadn't forgotten
+everything this side of the Fall of Rome, wiggled uneasily and got a
+little bit red behind the ears.
+
+The teams changed goals and Rearick kicked off again. This time he
+washed the ball carefully and changed his necktie, which had become
+slightly soiled. The other Kiowa half caught the ball this time; he
+plowed into our boys so hard that McMurty couldn't get out of the way
+and was knocked over. Our whole team held up their hands in horror and
+rushed to his aid. They picked him up, washed his face, rearranged his
+clothes and powdered his nose. He cried a little and wanted them to
+telegraph his mother to come, but a big nurse with ribbons in her
+cap--it was Maxwell--came out and comforted him and gave him a stick of
+candy half as large as a barber-pole.
+
+By this time you could tell the Faculty a mile off. It was a bright red
+glow. Every root-digger in the bunch had caught on except Sillcocks. He
+was intensely interested and extremely grieved because the Kiowa men did
+not enter into the spirit of the occasion. As for the rest of the crowd,
+it sounded like drowning men gasping for breath. Such shrieks of pure
+unadulterated joy hadn't been heard on the campus in years. When the
+teams lined up again Kiowa had got thoroughly wise. They had held a
+five-minute session together, had taken off their shin, nose and ear
+guards, had combed their hair and had put on their hats. The result was
+what you might call picturesque. You could hear ripping diaphragms all
+over the stadium when they tripped out on the field. The two teams lined
+up and Rearick kicked off again. This time he had tied a big loop of
+ribbon around the ball; when it landed a Kiowa man stuck his forefinger
+through the loop and began to sidle up toward our goal, holding an
+imaginary skirt. Our team rushed eagerly at him, Billings and his
+umbrella in the lead. On every side the Kiowa players bowed to them and
+shook hands with them. The critical moment arrived. Billings reached the
+runner and promptly raised his umbrella over him and marched placidly on
+toward our goal. Hysterics from the bleachers. The Kiowa man didn't
+propose to be outdone. He stopped, removed his derby and presented the
+ball to Billings. Billings put his hand on his heart and declined. The
+Kiowa man bowed still lower and insisted. Billings bumped the ground
+with his forehead and wouldn't think of it. The Kiowa man offered the
+ball a third time, and we found afterward that he threatened to punch
+Billings' head then and there if he didn't take it. Billings gave in and
+took the ball.
+
+"Siwash's ball!" we yelled joyfully. The two teams lined up for a
+scrimmage. Right here a difficulty arose that threatened to end the
+game. The opposing players insisted on gossiping with their arms around
+each other's necks. They would not get down to business. The referee
+raved--he was an imported product, with no sense of humor, and was
+rapidly getting congestion of the brain. "Don't hit in the clinches!"
+yelled some joker. For five minutes the teams gossiped. Then our quarter
+gave his signal--the first two bars of "Oh Promise Me"--and passed the
+ball to Wilson, who was fullbacking.
+
+It was twice as interesting as an ordinary game because nobody knew what
+Wilson would do; in fact, he didn't seem to know himself. He stood a
+minute dusting off the ball carefully and manicuring his soiled nails.
+The Kiowa team and our boys strolled up, arm in arm. Wilson still
+hesitated. The Kiowa captain offered to send one of his men to carry the
+ball. Wilson wouldn't think of causing so much trouble. Our captain
+suggested that the ball be taken to our goal. The Kiowa captain
+protested that it had been there twice already. Some one suggested that
+they flip for goals. The captains did it. Siwash won. Calling a
+messenger boy, our captain sent him over to Kiowa's goal with the ball,
+while the two teams sat down in the middle of the field and the Kiowa
+captain set 'em up to gum.
+
+By this time people were being removed from the stadium in all
+directions. There was a sort of purple aurora over the Faculty box that
+suggested apoplexy. The learned exponents of revised football looked
+about as comfortable as a collection of expiring beetles mounted on
+large steel pins--that is, all but Professor Sillcocks. He was beaming
+with pleasure. I never saw a man so entirely wrapped up in manly sports
+as he was just then. Evidently the new football suited him right down to
+the ground. He clapped his hands at every new atrocity; and whenever
+some Siwash man put his arm around a Kiowan and helped him tenderly on
+with the ball, he turned around to the populace behind him and nodded
+his head as if to say: "There, I told you so. It can be done. See?"
+
+When the Kiowa center kicked off for the next scrimmage he introduced a
+novelty. He produced a large beanbag, which I presume Rearick had
+slipped him, kicked it about four feet and then hurriedly picked it up
+and presented it to one of our men. All of our boys thanked him
+profoundly and then lined up for the scrimmage. Immediately the Kiowa
+captain put his right hand behind him. Our captain guessed "thumbs up."
+He was right and we took the ball forward five yards. Deafening applause
+from the stadium. Then our captain guessed a number between one and
+three. Another five yards. Shrieks of joy from Siwash and desperate
+cries of "Hold 'em!" from the Kiowa gang. Then the Kiowa captain
+demanded that our captain name the English king who came after Edward
+VI. That was a stonewall defense, because Rearick had flunked two years
+running in English history. Kiowa took the ball, but the umpire butted
+in. It was an offside play, he declared, because it wasn't a king at
+all. It was a queen and it was Siwash's ball and ten yards. That made an
+awful row. The Kiowa captain declared that the whole incident was "very
+regrettable," but the umpire was firm. He gave us the ball; and on the
+very next down Rearick conjugated a French verb perfectly for a
+touchdown.
+
+All of this was duly announced to the stadium and the excitement was
+intense. I guess there were as many as two hundred Chautauqua salutes
+after that touchdown. Both teams had tea together and our rooters'
+chorus sang "Juanita," while old Professor Grubb got up, with rage
+printed all over his face in display type, and went home. He never went
+near the stadium again as long as he lived, I understand.
+
+It was a most successful occasion up to this point, but somehow college
+boys always overdo a thing. The strain was telling on the two teams;
+for, when you come right down to it, no Siwash man loves a Kiowa man
+any more fervently than a bull pup loves a cat. The teams lined up again
+and began playing "ring-around-a-rosy" to find who should make the next
+touchdown, when something happened. Klingel, the
+two-hundred-and-ten-pound Kiowan guard, started it. He was just about as
+good a fellow as a white rhinoceros, and an hour of entire civilization
+was about all he could possibly stand. He had the beanbag and he was
+tired of it. Beanbags meant nothing to him. He couldn't grasp their
+solemn beauty. He offered it to Petey Simmons. Petey declined, with
+profuse thanks. Klingel insisted. Petey bowed very low and swore that
+rather than make another touchdown on Kiowa he would suffer wild horses
+to tear him into little bits. Then Klingel began to get offside.
+
+"You hear what I say, you little shrimp!" he said politely. "If you
+don't take this thing and quit your yawping I'm going to make you do
+it."
+
+"Listen, you overfed mountain of pork!" said Petey, with equal
+cordiality. "If you don't like that beanbag eat it. It would do you
+good. You don't know beans anyway."
+
+Then Klingel, without further argument, hit Petey in the eye and laid
+him out.
+
+[Illustration: "If you don't like that beanbag eat it"
+                    _Page 220_]
+
+Wow! Talk about irritating a hornet convention. Klingel was a great
+little irritator. The whole game had been torture for our real team,
+cooped up among the ruffles in the stadium; and when they saw little
+Petey go down they gave one simultaneous roar and vaulted over the
+railing. It was a close race, but Ole Skjarsen beat Hogboom out by a
+foot. He hit Klingel first. Hogboom hit him second, third, fifth and
+thirty-fourth. Then the two teams closed together and for five minutes a
+cyclone of dust, dirt, sweaters, collars, arms, legs, hair and bright
+red noses swept up and down the field. The grandstand went crazy. The
+five hundred Kiowa rooters grabbed their canes and started in. They met
+about seven hundred Siwash patriots and then the whole universe
+exploded.
+
+The police interfered and about half an hour later the last Siwash
+student was pried off the last Kiowan. It was the most disgraceful riot
+in the history of the college. I don't think there was a whole suit of
+clothes on the field when it was over; and the Siwash man who didn't
+have two or three knobs on his head wasn't considered loyal. The girls
+all cried. The Faculty went home in cabs, the mayor declared martial law
+and the Kiowa gang walked out of town to the crossing and took the train
+there to avoid further hard feelings. We were all ashamed of ourselves
+and I think the two schools liked each other a little better after that.
+Anyway, we regarded the whole affair as only logical.
+
+The Faculty held a meeting that lasted all the next day. Then it
+adjourned and did absolutely nothing at all except to pile upon us more
+theses, themes and special outrages that semester than any body of
+students had ever been inflicted with in a like period. The profs
+wouldn't speak to us. They regarded us as beneath notice. But when the
+real Kiowa game was scheduled by mutual consent, two weeks afterward,
+there wasn't a remark from headquarters. We played Kiowa and spread them
+all over the map--and not a Faculty member was in town that day.
+
+I understand Professor Sillcocks is not yet thoroughly persuaded that
+his style of football wasn't a success. "But for that unfortunate riot,
+which comes from playing with less cultured colleges," he remarked to a
+Senior the next spring, "that would have been the most successful
+exhibition of mental control and inherent gentility ever seen at
+Siwash."
+
+True, very true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CUPID--THAT OLD COLLEGE CHUM
+
+
+Well! Well! Well! Here's another magazine investigator who has made a
+great discovery. Listen to this, Sam: "Co-education, as found in
+American colleges, is amazingly productive of romance, and the great
+number of marriages resulting between the men and women in
+co-educational schools indicates all too plainly that love-making
+occupies an important part of the courses of study."
+
+Those are his very words. Isn't he the Christopher Columbus, though! Who
+would have thought it? Who would have dreamt that there were any mutual
+admiration societies in co-educational colleges? I am amazed. What won't
+these investigators discover next? Why, one of them is just as likely as
+not to get wise to the fact that there is a hired-girl problem. You
+can't keep anything away from these gimlet-eyed scientists.
+
+Oh, sure! I knew it was just about time for some kind of an off-key
+noise from you, you grouchy old leftover. Just because you graduated
+from one of those paradises in pants, where they import a carload of
+girls from all over the country to one dance a year and worry along the
+rest of the time with chorus girls and sweet young town girls who began
+bringing students up by hand about the time Wm. H. Taft was a Freshman,
+you think you are qualified to toss in a few hoots about co-education.
+Back away, Sam! That subject is loaded. I've had palpitations on a
+college campus myself; and I want to tell you right here that it beats
+having them at a stage door, or at a summer resort, or in a parlor just
+around the corner from nine relatives, or in one of those short-story
+conservatories, or in the United States mails, forty ways for Sunday;
+and, besides, it's educational. We co-educationalists get a four years'
+course in close-coupled conversation and girl classification while you
+fellows in the skirtless schools are getting the club habit and are
+saving up for the privilege of dancing with other fellows' fiancées at
+the proms once a year.
+
+Honestly, I never could see just why a fellow should wait until he is
+through college before he begins to study the science of how to make
+some particular girl believe that if Adam came back he would look at him
+and say: "Gee, it swells me all up to think that chap is a descendant of
+mine!"
+
+And I may be thick in my thought dome, but I never could see any
+objection to marrying a classmate, either, even though I didn't do it
+myself. I admit co-educational schools are strong on matrimony. Haven't
+I dug up for thirty-nine wedding presents for old Siwash students
+already? And don't I get a shiver that reaches from my collar-button
+down to my heels every time I get one of those thick, stiff,
+double-barreled envelopes, with "Kindly dig," or words to that effect,
+on the inside? Usually they come in pairs--the bid to the next wedding
+and the bill for the last present. Why, out of sixty-five ninety-umpters
+with whom I graduated, six couples are already holding class reunions
+every evening; and just the other day another of the boys, who thought
+he would look farther, came back after having made a pretty thorough
+inspection all over the civilized world, and camped outside of the home
+of a girl in our class until she admitted that he looked better to her
+than any of the rising young business men who had bisected her orbit in
+the last ten years. They're to be married this spring and I'm going back
+to the wedding. Incidentally I'm going to help pay for three more silver
+cups. We give a silver cup to each class baby and each frat baby, and
+I've been looking around this past year for a place where we can buy
+them by the dozen.
+
+Weddings! Why, man, a co-educational college is a wedding factory. What
+of it? As far as I can see, Old Siwash produces as many governors,
+congressmen and captains of industry to the graduate as any of the
+single-track schools. And I notice one thing more. You don't find any of
+our college couples hanging around the divorce courts. There is a
+peculiar sort of stickiness about college marriages. They are for
+keeps. When a Siwash couple doesn't have anything else agreeable to talk
+about it can sit down and have a lovely three months' conversation on
+the good old times. It takes a mighty acrimonious quarrel to stand a
+college reunion around a breakfast table. Take it from me, you lonesome
+old space-waster, with nothing but a hatrack to give you an affectionate
+welcome when you come home at night, there is no better place on earth
+to find good wife material than a college campus. Of course I don't
+think a man should go to college to find a wife; but if his foot should
+slip, and he should marry a girl whose sofa pillows have the same
+reading matter on them as there is on his, there's nothing to yell for
+help about. Ten to one he's drawn a prize. Girls who go through
+co-educational colleges are extra fine, hand-picked, sun-ripened,
+carefully wrapped-up peaches--and I know what I'm talking about.
+
+How do I know? Heavens, man! didn't I go through the Siwash peach
+orchard for four years? Don't I know the game from candy to carriages?
+Didn't I spend every spring in a light pink haze of perfect bliss? And
+wasn't all the Latin and Greek and trigonometry and athletic junk
+crowded out of my memory at the end of every college year by the face of
+the most utterly, superlatively marvelous girl in the world? And wasn't
+it a different face every spring? Oh, I took the entire course in
+girlology, Sam! I never skipped a single recitation. I got a Summa Cum
+Laudissimus in strolling, losing frat pins, talking futures and
+acquiring hand-made pennants. And the only bitter thought I've got is
+that I can't come back.
+
+You'll never realize, my boy, how old Pa Time roller-skates by until you
+go back to a co-ed college ten years afterward. Here, in the busy mart
+of trade, I'm a promising young infant who has got to "Yes, sir" and
+"No, sir" to the big ones, and be good and get to work on time for
+thirty years before I will be trusted to run a monopoly alone on a quiet
+day; but back on the Siwash Campus, Sam, I'm a patriarch. That's one
+reason why I don't go back. I'm married and I don't care to be madly
+sought after, but also I don't care to make a hit as a fine old antique
+for a while yet, thank you. When I am forty, and have gummed up my
+digestion in the dollar-herding game until I wheeze for breath when I
+run up a column of figures, I'll go back and have a nice comfy time in
+the grandpa class. But not now. The only difference between a
+thirty-year-old alumnus and the mummy of Rameses, to a college girl, is
+in favor of the mummy. It doesn't come around and ask for dances.
+
+I suppose, Sam, you think you've been all lit up under the upper
+left-hand vest pocket over one or two girls in your time, but I don't
+believe a fellow can fall in love so far over his ears anywhere in the
+world as he can in Siwash College. That's only natural, for the finest
+girls in the world go to Siwash--except one girl who went to another
+school by accident and whom I ran across about three years ago wearing
+an Alfalfa Delt pin. I'll take you up to the house to see her some time.
+She was too nice a girl to wear an Alfalfa Delt pin and I just naturally
+had to take it off and put on an Eta Bita Pie pin; and somehow in the
+proceedings we got married--and all I have to say about it is three
+cheers for the universe!
+
+Anyway, as I was saying, it was as easy to fall in love at Siwash as it
+was to forget to go to chapel. We got along all right in the fall. We
+liked the girls enormously and were always smashing up some football
+team just to please them. And, of course, we kept ourselves all stove up
+financially during the winter hauling them to parties and things in
+Jonesville's nine varnished cabs. It took about as much money to support
+those cabs as it does to run a fleet of battleships. But it was in the
+spring that the real fireworks began. Suddenly, about the first
+Wednesday after the third Friday in April, the ordinary Siwash man
+discovers that some girl whom he has known all year isn't a girl at all,
+but a peachblow angel who is just stopping on earth to make a better man
+of him and show him what a dull, pifflish thing Paradise would be
+without her. Life becomes a series of awful blank spots, with walks on
+the campus between them. He can't get his calculus because he is busy
+figuring on a much more difficult problem; he is trying to figure
+whether three dances with some other fellow mean anything more to Her
+than charity. He gets cold chills every time he reflects that at any
+minute a member of some royal family may pass by and notice Her, and
+that he will have to promote international spasms by hashing him. He
+realizes that he has misspent his life; that football is a boy business;
+that frats are foolish, and that there ought to be a law giving every
+college graduate a job paying at least two thousand dollars a year on
+graduation. He is nervous, feverish, depressed, inspired, anxious,
+oblivious, glorified, annihilated, encouraged and all cluttered up with
+emotion. The planet was invented for the purpose of letting Her dig Her
+number three heels into it on spring afternoons. Sunshine is important
+because Her hair looks better with the light on it. Every time She
+frowns the weather bureau hangs out a tornado signal, and every time She
+smiles somebody puts a light-blue sash around the horizon and a double
+row of million-candle-power calcium lights clear down the future, as far
+as he can see.
+
+That's what love does to a college boy in spring. It's a kind of
+rose-colored brainstorm, but it very seldom has complications. By the
+next fall, the ozone is out of the air; and after a couple has gone
+strolling about twice, football and the sorority rushes butt in--and
+it's all over. Freshman girls are a help, too. Beats all how much
+assistance a Freshman girl can be in forgetting a Senior girl who isn't
+on the premises! Even in the spring-fever period we didn't get engaged
+to any extent. The nearest I ever came to it was to ask the light of my
+life for ninety-several if she would wear my frat pin forever and ever
+until next fall. And, let me tell you, there wasn't any local of the
+Handholders' Union on the Siwash Campus. That's another place where you
+soubrette worriers have us figured out wrong. Rushing a Siwash girl was
+about as distant a proposition for us as trying to snuggle up to the
+planets in the telescopic astronomy course. For cool, pleasant and
+skillful unapproachability, a co-ed girl breaks all records. We just
+worshiped them as higher beings, and I find that a lot of Siwash boys
+who have married Siwash girls are still a little bit dazed about the
+whole affair. They can't figure how they ever had the nerve to start
+real businesslike negotiations.
+
+This very high-class insulation in our love affairs caused us fellows a
+lot of woe once in a while. You never could tell whether or not a girl
+was engaged to some fellow back home. We didn't get impertinent enough
+to ask. I think there ought to be a law compelling a girl who comes to
+college engaged to some rising young merchant prince in the country
+store back home to wear an engagement ring around her neck, where it can
+be easily seen. More than once, a Siwash man who had been conservative
+enough to worship the same girl right through his college course and who
+had proposed to her on the last night of school, when the open season
+for thou-beside-me talk began, has found that all the time some chap has
+been writing her a letter a day and that she has only regarded the
+Siwash man as a kind friend, and so on. Never will I forget when
+Frankling got stung that way! Of course we didn't generally know when a
+tragedy of this sort happened, but in his case he brought it on himself.
+If he hadn't made a furry-eared songbird out of himself when Ole
+Skjarsen drew his girl at the Senior class party--
+
+You want to know about this girl lottery business, you say? Well, it's
+plain that I shall have to begin right back at the beginning of the
+Siwash social system and educate you a little at a time. Now this class
+party drawing is an institution which has been handed down at Siwash
+ever since the ancients went to school before the war. You see, at
+Siwash, as at most colleges, there is the fraternity problem. The frat
+men give parties to the sorority girls as often as the Dean of Women
+will stand for it, and every one gets gorgeously acquainted and
+extremely sociable. The non-fratters go to the Y. M. C. A. reception at
+the beginning of each year and to the Commencement exercises, and that's
+about all. Of course they pick up lots of friends among the non-sorority
+girls; and I guess D. Cupid solders up about as many jobs among them as
+he does among the others. But there isn't much chance for these two
+tribes to mix. That was why the class lottery was invented. It has been
+a custom at Siwash, ever since there has been a Siwash, for each class
+to hold a party each year. Now class parties are held in order that pure
+and perfect democracy may be promoted, and it is necessary to take
+violent measures to shuffle up the people and get every one interested.
+So they draw for partners. The class which is about to effervesce
+socially holds a meeting. At this meeting the names of all the men are
+put in one hat and the names of all the girls in another. Then two
+judges of impregnable honesty draw out a name from each hat
+simultaneously and read them to the class.
+
+When I was at Siwash a class party was the most exciting event in
+college. For uncertainty and breath-grabbing anxiety they made the
+football games seem as tame as a church election. Of course everybody
+can't be a Venus de Milo or an Apollo with a Beveled Ear, as Petey
+Simmons used to call him. Every class has its middle-aged young ladies,
+who are attending college to rest up from ten or fifteen years of
+school-teaching, and its tall young agriculturalists with restless
+Adam's apples, whose idea of being socially interesting is to sit all
+evening in the same chair making a noise like one of those $7.78-suit
+dummies. That's what made the class lotteries so interesting. The
+plow-chasers drew the prettiest girls in the class and the most
+accomplished fusser among the fellows usually drew a girl who would make
+the manager of a beauty parlor utter a sad shriek and throw up his job.
+Of course every one was bound in honor to take what came out of the hat.
+Nobody flinched and nobody renigged, but there was a lot of suppressed
+excitement and well-modulated regret.
+
+I have been reasonably wicked since I left college. Once or twice I
+have slapped down a silver dollar or thereabout and have watched the
+little ball roll round and round a pocket that meant a wagon-load of
+tainted tin for me; and once in a while I have placed five dollars on a
+pony of uncertain ability and have watched him go from ninth to second
+before he blew up. But I never got half the heart-ripping suspense out
+of these pastimes that I did out of a certain few party drawings, when I
+waited for my name to come out and wondered, while I looked across the
+hall at the girl section, whether I was going to draw the one girl in
+the world, any one of four or five mighty interesting runners-up, or the
+fat little girl in the corner with ropy hair and the general look of a
+person who had had a bright idea a few years before and had been
+convalescing from it ever since.
+
+Talk about excitement and consequences! Those drawings kept us on the
+jump until the parties were pulled off. Generally the proud beauties who
+had been drawn by the midnight-oil destroyers did not know them, and
+some one had to steer the said destroyers around to be introduced. What
+with dragging bashful young chaps out to call and then seeing that they
+didn't freeze up below the ankles and get sick on the night of the
+party; and what with teaching them the rudiments of waltzing and giving
+them pointers on lawn ties; or how to charter a good seaworthy hack in
+case the girl lived on an unpaved street; and bracing up the fellows who
+had drawn blanks, and going to call on the blanks we had drawn and
+getting gloriously snubbed--give me a wall-flower for thorns!--well, it
+was no cinch to run a class party. But they were grand affairs, just the
+same, and promoted true fellowship, besides furnishing amusement for the
+whole college in the off season. And, besides, I always remember them
+with gratitude for what they did to Frankling.
+
+You know there are two kinds of fussers in college. There is the chap
+like Petey Simmons, for instance, whose heart was a directory of Siwash
+girls; and there is the fellow who grabs one girl and stakes out claim
+boards all around her for the whole four years. That was Frankling's
+style. He was what we always called a married man. He and Pauline
+Spencer were the closest corporation in college. They entered school in
+the same class, and he called on her every Friday night at Browning Hall
+and took her to every party and lecture and entertainment for the next
+three and a half years--except, of course, the class parties. It was one
+of our chief delights to watch Frankling grind his teeth when some
+lowbrow--as he called them--drew her name. She always had rotten
+luck--you never saw such luck! Once Ettleson drew her. He was a tall,
+silent farmer, who wore boots and a look of gloom; and he marched her
+through a mile of mud to the hall without saying a word, handed her to
+the reception committee and went over to a corner, where he sat all
+evening. But that wasn't so bad as the Junior she drew. His name was
+Slaughter. His father had a dairy at the edge of Jonesville and
+Slaughter decided that, as the night was cold and rainy, a carriage
+would be appropriate. So he scrubbed up the milk wagon thoroughly, put a
+lot of nice, clean straw on the floor, hung a lantern from the top for
+heat and drove her down to the party in state. She was game and didn't
+make a murmur, but Frankling made a pale-gray ass of himself. As I said,
+I never liked Frankling. He had a nasty, sneering way of looking at the
+whole school, except his own crowd. His father owned the locomotive
+works and he always went to Europe for his summers. He was one of those
+unnecessary individuals who are solemnly convinced that if you don't do
+things just as they do something is lacking in your mind; and, though he
+was perfectly bred, he was only about half as pleasant to have around as
+a well-behaved hyena.
+
+I never could see what Miss Spencer saw in him, unless it was the
+locomotives. As far as we could tell--we never got much chance to
+judge--she was a real nice girl. She was a little haughty and never had
+much to say, and always acted as if she was a princess temporarily off
+the job. But she was a good scout, and proved it at the class parties by
+making it as pleasant as she could for the nervous nobodies who took
+her; while the yellow streak in Frankling was so broad there wasn't
+enough white in him to look like a collar. That's why the whole college
+went crazy with delight over the Ole Skjarsen affair.--Last station,
+ladies and gents. Story begins here.
+
+When we were Seniors Ole Skjarsen was the chief embarrassment of the
+class. As a football player he was a wonder, but as a society
+fritterling he was one long catastrophe. He just couldn't possibly get
+hep--that was all. He was as companionable and as good-natured as a St.
+Bernard pup and just as inconvenient to have around. He dressed like a
+vaudeville sketch, and the number of things he could do in an hour,
+which are not generally done in low-vest and low-neck circles, was
+appalling. However we all loved Ole because of his grand and historic
+deeds on the team, and we took him to our parties and never so much as
+fell out of our chairs when he took off his coat in order to dance with
+more comfort and energy. The girls were as loyal as we were and danced
+with him as long as their feet held out, and we made them leather hero
+medals and really had a lot of fun out of the whole business--all except
+Frankling. It just about killed him to have to mingle with Ole socially;
+and when the time for the Senior class party drew near he got so nervous
+that he called a meeting of a few of us fellows and made a big kick.
+
+"I tell you, fellows, this has got to stop!" he declared. "We've
+encouraged this lumber-jack until he has gotten too fresh for any use.
+Why, he'll ask any girl in the college to dance with him, and he goes
+and calls on them, too. Now, it's up to us to show him his place. I'm
+dead against putting his name in the hat for the party. He'll be sure to
+draw a girl who will be humiliated by having to go with him; and I have
+a little too much regard for chivalry and courtesy to allow him to do
+it. We'll just have to hint to him that he'd better have another
+engagement the night of the class party, that's all."
+
+Thereupon we all rose joyously up and told Frankling to go jump in the
+creek. And he called us muckers and declared we were ignorant of the
+first principles of social ethics. He said that Skjarsen might be near
+enough our level to be inoffensive, but as for him he declined to have
+anything to do with the class party. Thereupon we gave three cheers, and
+that made him so mad that he left the meeting and fell over three chairs
+trying to do it with speed and dignity. Altogether it was a most
+enjoyable occasion. We'd never gotten quite so much satisfaction out of
+him before.
+
+The drawing took place the next week and, sure enough, Frankling
+declined to allow his name to be put in the hat. We put Ole's name in
+and were prepared to have him draw a Class A girl; but what happened
+knocked the props out from under us. His name came fourth and he drew
+the mortgaged and unapproachable Miss Spencer.
+
+We didn't know whether to celebrate or prepare for trouble. It seemed
+reasonable that Miss Spencer would back up Frankling and reduce Ole to
+an icicle when he asked her to go with him. But the next morning, when
+we saw Frankling, we were so happy that we forgot to worry. He was one
+large paroxysm. I never saw so much righteous indignation done up in one
+bundle. He cornered the class officers and declared in passionate tones
+that they had committed the outrage of the century. They had insulted
+one of the finest young women in the college. They had made it advisable
+for all persons of culture to remain away from Siwash. The disgrace must
+not be allowed. He didn't speak as a friend, but as a disinterested
+party who wanted justice done; and he proposed to secure it.
+
+We took all this quite humbly and asked him why he didn't see Ole
+himself and order him to unhand the lady. From the way he turned pale,
+we guessed he had done that already. Ole weighed two-twenty in his
+summer haircut and was quick-tempered. We then asked him why he didn't
+buy Ole off. We also asked him why he didn't shut down the college, and
+why he didn't have Congress pass a law or something, and if his head had
+ever pained him before. He was tearing off his collar in order to answer
+more calmly and collectedly when Ole came into the room. Ole had combed
+his hair and shined his shoes, and he had on the pink-and-blue necktie
+that he had worn the month before to the annual promenade with a rented
+dress suit. He seemed very cheerful.
+
+"Vell, fallers," says he, "das leetle Spencer gal ban all rite. She say
+she go by me to das party. Ve ban goin' stylish tu, Aye bet yu." Then
+he saw Frankling and went over to him with his hand out. "Don't yu care,
+Master Frankling," he said, with one of his transcontinental smiles.
+"Aye tak yust sum good care by her lak Aye ban her steddy faller." Phew!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ole took Miss Spencer to the party. There isn't a bit of doubt but that
+he took her in style. He put more care and exertion into the job than
+any of the rest of us and he got more impressive results. Ole has his
+ideas about dress. Ordinarily he wore one of those canned suits that you
+buy in the coat-and-pants emporiums, giving your age and waist measure
+in order to get a perfect fit. He wore a celluloid collar with it and a
+necktie that must have been an heirloom in the family; and he wore a
+straw hat most of the year. He wore each one till it blew away and then
+got another. This rig was good enough for Ole in ordinary little social
+affairs, but when it came to dances and receptions he blossomed out in
+evening clothes. He had made a bargain with a second-hand clothes-man
+downtown--split his wood all winter for the use of a dress suit that had
+lost its position in a prominent family and was going downhill fast. You
+know how the tailors work the dress suit racket. They can't exactly
+change the style of a suit--it's got to be open-faced and have
+tails--but they work in some little improvement like a braid on or off,
+or an extra buttonhole, or a flare in the vest each year; so that a
+really bang-up-to-date chap would blush all over if he had to wear a
+last year's model. I notice the automobile makers are doing the same
+stunt. They can't improve their cars any more, so they put four doors on
+one year, cut 'em in two the next and take them off the year after.
+
+This hasn't anything to do with Ole except that that dress suit of his
+was behind the times one hundred and two counts. It had been a fat man's
+suit in the first place. It fitted him magnificently at the shoulders.
+He and the suit began to leave each other from that point down. At the
+waist it looked like a deflated balloon. The top of the trousers fitted
+him about as snugly as a round manhole in the street. The legs flapped
+like the mainsail of a catboat that's coming about. They ended some time
+before his own legs did and there was quite a little stretch of yarn
+sock visible before the big tan shoes began. Ole had two acres of feet
+and he polished his shoes himself, with great care. They were not so
+large as an ordinary ballroom, but somehow he used them so skillfully
+that they gave the effect of covering the entire space. Four times
+around Ole's feet constituted a pretty fair encore at our dances; and
+I've seen him pen up as many as three couples in a corner with them when
+he got those feet tangled.
+
+That was Ole's formal costume. But he didn't regard it with awe. Any one
+could wear a dress suit. It seemed to him that a Senior party to which
+he was to escort Miss Spencer was too important to pass airily off with
+the same old suit. He had another card up his sleeve.
+
+"Aye ent tal yu," he explained when we asked him anxiously what it was
+he proposed to wear. "Yust vait. Aye ban de hull show, Aye tank. Yu
+fallers yust put on your yumpin'-yack suits. Aye mak yu look lak torta
+cent."
+
+Of course we waited. We didn't have anything else to do. We worried a
+little, but we had gotten used to Ole, anyway--and what was the
+difference? It would be a little hard on Miss Spencer, but it would be
+magnificently horrible to Frankling, who considered that a collar of the
+wrong cut might endanger a man's whole future career. So we resigned
+ourselves and attended to our own troubles.
+
+The night of the party was a cold, clear January evening. There was snow
+on the ground and it was packed hard on the sidewalks. This was nuts for
+the oil-burners. They walked their girls to the hall. Four of the
+reckless ones clubbed together and hired a big closed carriage affair
+from the livery stable. It happened to be a pallbearers' carriage during
+the daytime, but they didn't know the difference and the girls didn't
+tell them; and what you don't know will never cause your poor old brain
+to ache. We frat fellows blew our hard-worked allowances for varnished
+cabs and thereby proved ourselves the biggest suckers in the bunch. To
+this day I can't see why a girl who can dance all night, and can stroll
+all afternoon of a winter's day, has to be hauled three blocks in a
+two-horse rig every time she goes to a party. The money we spent on cabs
+while I was at Siwash would have built a new stadium, painted every frat
+house in town and endowed a chair of United States languages. But,
+there!--I'm on my pet hobby again. How it did hurt to pay for those
+hacks!
+
+I got there late with my girl--she was a shy little conservatory
+student, who evidently regarded conversation as against the rules--and I
+found the usual complications that had to be sorted out at the beginning
+of every class party. Stiffy Short was sore. He was short five dances
+for his girl--had been working on her program for a week--and he accused
+the fellows of dodging because she couldn't dance; and was threatening
+to be taken sick and spend the evening in the dressing room smoking
+cigarettes. Miss Worthington, one of our Class A girls, didn't have a
+dance, because Tullings, who had drawn her, had presumed that she was to
+sit and talk with him all evening. Petey Simmons was in even worse. His
+girl couldn't dance, but insisted on doing so. She had done it the year
+before, too. Petey had been training up for two weeks by tugging his
+dresser around the room. Then there was Glenallen. We always had to form
+a committee of national defense against Glenallen. He couldn't dance,
+either, and he would insist on hitching his chair out towards the middle
+of the room. I've seen him throw as many as four couples in a night. And
+there was a telephone call from Miss Morse, class secretary and
+first-magnitude star. Her escort hadn't shown up. He never did show up.
+When we went around to lynch him the next day he explained desperately
+that at the last minute he found he had forgotten to get a lawn necktie.
+You know how a little thing like a lawn necktie that ain't can wreck an
+evening dress, unless you are an old enough head to cut up a
+handkerchief and fold the ends under.
+
+We had gotten things pretty well straightened out before we discovered
+that Ole was missing. That would never do. If Miss Spencer needed
+rescuing we were the boys to do it. Three of us rushed down the stairs
+to send a carriage over to Browning Hall, and that minute Ole arrived at
+the party.
+
+He had worn his very best--the suit he was proudest of and the one he
+knew couldn't be duplicated. It was his lumber-camp rig--corduroy
+trousers, big boots and overshoes, red flannel shirt, canvas pea-jacket
+and fur cap. He came marching up the walk like the hero in a
+moving-picture show and we thought he was alone till he reached the
+door. Then we saw Miss Spencer. She was seated in state behind him on
+one of those hand-sledges the farmers use for hauling cordwood. There
+were evergreen boughs behind her and all around her, and she was so
+wrapped up in a huge camp blanket that all we could see of her was her
+eyes.
+
+We gave Ole three cheers and carried Miss Spencer upstairs on the
+evergreen boughs. The two were the hits of the party. We never had a
+better one. The incident broke more ice than we could have chopped out
+in a month with all the dull-edged talk we had been handing around.
+Every one had a good laugh by way of a general introduction and then we
+all turned in and made things hum. The wall-flowers got plucked.
+Somebody taught the president of the Y. M. C. A. how to waltz and poor
+Henry Boggs forgot for two hours that he had hands and feet, and that
+they were beyond his control. It was a tremendous success; we were so
+enthusiastic by the time things broke up that we told the cabmen to go
+hang and all walked home to the Hall, the men fighting for a chance to
+pull on the sledge-rope with Ole.
+
+Hold on, Sam. Put down your hat. This isn't the end, thank you. It's
+just the prologue. Of course we all expected, when Ole unloaded Miss
+Spencer at the Hall and she bade him good evening, and thanked him for
+her delightful time and so on, that the incident would be closed. Never
+dreamed of anything else. Lumber-jack suits and cordwood sledges are
+fine for novelties, but they can't come back, you know--once is enough.
+And that's why we fell dead in rows when Ole, straw hat and all, walked
+over to Lab. from chapel with Miss Spencer the next day--and she didn't
+call for the police. We couldn't have stared any harder if the college
+chapel had bowed and walked off with her. And we hadn't recovered from
+the blow when Friday night rolled around and those of us who went to
+call at the Hall found Ole seated in Frankling's particular corner,
+entertaining Miss Spencer with an average of one remark a minute, which,
+so far as we could hear, consisted generally of "Aye tank so" and "No,
+ma'am."
+
+By this time we had decided that Frankling was sulking and that Miss
+Spencer was showing him that if she wanted to be friendly with Ole, or
+the town pump, or the plaster statue of Victory in the college library,
+she had a perfect right to. I guess she showed him all right, too, for
+after a couple of weeks he surrendered and then the queerest rivalry
+Siwash had ever seen began. Frankling, son of the locomotive works,
+authority on speckled vests and cotillons, was scrapping with Ole
+Skjarsen, the cuffless wonder from the lumber camps, for the affections
+of the prettiest girl in college. No wonder we got so interested that
+spring that most of us forgot to fall in love ourselves.
+
+I don't to this day believe that Miss Spencer meant a word of it. I
+think that she was simply good-natured, in the first place, and that,
+when Frankling began to bite little semicircular pieces out of the air,
+she began mixing her drinks, so to speak, just for the excitement of the
+thing. Anyway, Frankling walked over to chapel with her and Ole lumbered
+back. Frankling took her to the basket-ball games and Ole took her to
+the Kiowa debate and slept peacefully through most of it. Frankling
+bought a beautiful little trotting horse and sleigh and took Miss
+Spencer on long rides. In Siwash, young people do not have chaperons,
+guards, nurses nor conservators. That was a knockout, we all thought;
+but it never feazed Ole. He invited Miss Spencer to go street-car riding
+with him and she did it. Some of us found them bumping over the line in
+one of the flat-wheeled catastrophes that the Jonesville Company called
+cars--and Miss Spencer didn't even blush. She bowed to us just as
+unconcernedly as if she wasn't breaking all long-distance records for
+eccentricity in Siwash history.
+
+Frankling dodged the whole college and got wild in the eyes. He looked
+like an eminent statesman who was being compelled to act as barker in a
+circus against his will. It must have churned up his vitals to do his
+sketch act with Ole; but when you have had one of those four-year cases,
+and it has gotten tangled up in your past and future, you can't always
+dictate just what you are going to do. It was plain to see that Miss
+Spencer had Frankling hooked, haltered, hobbled, staked out,
+Spanish-bitted, wrapped up and stamped with her name and laid on the
+shelf to be called for; and it was just as evident that she considered
+he would be all the nicer if she walked around on him for a while and
+massaged his disposition a little with her little French heels.
+
+So Frankling continued to divide time with Ole, and all the fellows whom
+he had insulted about their neckties and all the girls whom he had
+forgotten to dance with sat around in perfect content and watched the
+show.
+
+[Illustration: He invited Miss Spencer to go street-car riding with him
+                    _Page 246_]
+
+We all thought it would wear out after a few weeks. But it didn't. The
+semester recess came and, when college assembled again, Ole cut
+Frankling out for the athletic ball as neatly as if he had been in the
+girl game all his life. Frankling countered with the promenade two weeks
+later, but he went clear to the ropes when Miss Spencer came out one
+fine morning at chapel with Ole's football charm--the one he had won the
+year the team had annihilated two universities and seven assorted
+colleges. He came back gamely and decorated her with fraternity hatpins,
+cuff buttons, belt buckles and side combs; and on the strength of it he
+got three Friday evenings in a row. That might have jarred any one but
+Ole. But he came up smiling and took Miss Spencer to a Y. M. C. A.
+social, where he bought her four dishes of ice cream and had to be
+almost violently restrained from offering her the whole freezer.
+
+Winter wore out and spring came. Frankling brought the whole resources
+of the locomotive works into play. He got a private car and took a party
+off to the Kiowa baseball game, with Miss Spencer as guest of honor. He
+bombarded her with imported candy and American beauties, and cluttered
+up the spring with a series of whist parties, which butted into the
+social calendar something frabjous. Ole plowed right along with his own
+peculiar style of argument. He met the private-car business with a straw
+ride and his prize offering was a hunk of spruce gum from his pine
+woods, as big as your two fists; and, so far as we could see, the gum
+got exactly the same warmth of reception as the candy--though it didn't
+disappear with anywhere near the rapidity.
+
+As April went by, we Seniors got busy with the first awful preliminaries
+of Commencement. It began to be considered around college that Senior
+Day would settle the affair one way or the other. Senior Day is the last
+event of Commencement Week at Siwash and more engagements have been
+announced formally or otherwise that day than at any other time. If a
+Senior man and girl, who had been making a rather close study of each
+other, walked out on the campus together after the exercises and took in
+the corporation dinner at noon side by side, no one hesitated about
+offering congratulations. They might not be exactly due, but it was a
+sign that there was going to be an awful lot of nice-looking stationery
+spoiled by the two after the sad partings were said. Now we didn't have
+a doubt that either Frankling or Ole would amble proudly down between
+the lilac rows on Class Day with Miss Spencer, under the good old
+pretense of helping her locate the dinner-tables a hundred yards away;
+and betting on the affair got pretty energetic. Day after day the odds
+varied. When Frankling broke closing-time rules at Browning Hall by a
+good thirty minutes some two-to-one money was placed on him. When Ole
+and Miss Spencer cut chapel the next day the odds promptly switched. You
+could get takers on either side at any time, but I think the odds
+favored Ole a little. You can't help boosting your preferences with
+your good money. It's like betting on your college team.
+
+Commencement Week came and, although we were Seniors, we went through it
+without hardly noticing the scenery. We watched Ole and Frankling all
+through Baccalaureate, and when Ole won a twenty-yard dash across the
+church and over several of us, and marched down the street with Miss
+Spencer, it looked as if all was over but the Mendelssohn business. But
+Frankling had her in a box at the class play the next night. How could
+you pay any attention to the glorious threshold of life and the expiring
+gasps of dear college days with a race like that on!
+
+Commencement was on Wednesday and Senior Day was Thursday. Up to
+Wednesday night it was an even break--steen points all. One of the two
+had won. We hadn't a doubt of it. But, if both men had been born poker
+players, drawing to fill, in a jack-pot that had been sweetened nine
+times, you couldn't have told less to look at them. Frankling was as
+glum as ever and Ole had the same reënforced concrete expression of
+innocence that he used to wear while he was getting off the ball behind
+somebody's goal line, after having carried it the length of the field.
+We were discussing the thing that night on the porch of the Eta Bita Pie
+house and were putting up a few final bets when Ole came up, carpet-bag
+in hand and his diploma under his arm, and bade us good-by. He was going
+out on the midnight train--going away for good.
+
+For a minute you could have heard the grass growing. If Ole was going
+away that night it meant just one thing: the cruel Miss Spencer had
+tossed him over and he was bumping the bumps downward into a cold and
+cheerless future. We were so sorry we could hardly speak for a minute.
+Then Allie Bangs got up and put his arm as far across Ole's shoulder as
+it would go.
+
+"By thunder, I'm sorry, old chap!" he said huskily.
+
+For a man who had just had an air-castle fall on his neck, Ole didn't
+talk very dejectedly. "Vy yu ban sorry?" he demanded. "Aye got gude yob
+St. Paul vay. De boss write me Aye skoll come Friday. Aye ent care to be
+late first t'ing."
+
+"But, Ole--" Bangs began. Then he stopped. You can't bawl out a question
+about another man's love affairs before a whole mob.
+
+"Yu fallers ban fine tu me," Ole began again. "Aye lak yu bully! Ven yu
+come by St. Paul, take Yim Hill's railroad and come to Sven Akerson's
+camp, femt'n mile above Lars Hjellersen's gang. Aye ban boss of Sven's
+camp now. Aye gat yu gude time and plenty flapyack."
+
+He turned to go. Allie and I got up and walked firmly down the walk with
+him. We were going to be relieved of our suspense if we had to buy the
+information.
+
+"Now, Ole," said Allie, grabbing his carpet-bag, "you know we're not
+going to let you go down to the train alone. Besides, we want to know
+if everything is all right with you. You know we love you. We're for
+you, Ole. You--you and Miss Spencer parting good friends?"
+
+"Yu bet!" said Ole enthusiastically. "She ban fine gur'rl, Aye tal yu.
+Sum day Aye ban sending her deerskin from lumber camp."
+
+Bangs braced up again. "Er--you and Miss Spencer--er--not engaged, are
+you?" he said, the way a fellow goes at it when he is diving into cold
+water. Ole looked around in perfect good humor. "Get married by each
+odder?" he said. "Yee whiz! no, Master Bangs. She ban nice gur'rl. It
+ent any nicer in Siwash College. But she kent cook. She kent build fire
+in woodstove. She kent wash. She kent bake flatbrot. She kent make
+close. She yust ban purty, like picture. Vat for Aye vant to marry
+picture gallery? Aye ban tu poor faller fur picture gallery, Aye tank."
+
+"But, Ole," says I, jumping in, "you've been rushing the girl all winter
+as if your life depended on it. What did you mean by that?"
+
+Ole turned around patiently and sat down on the steps of the First
+Methodist Church, which happened to be passing just then. "Vell, Aye tal
+yu," he explained. "Miss Spencer she ban nice tu me. She go tu class
+party 'nd ent give dam vat das Frankling faller say. Aye ent forget dat,
+Aye tal yu; 'nd, by yimminy Christmas! Aye show her gude time all
+right."
+
+We took Ole to the station and sat down to rest three times on the way
+back. So all that terrific performance was a reward for Miss Spencer! "O
+gratitude!" says the poet, "how many crimes are committed in thy name!"
+
+We were so dazed that night that it didn't occur to us to wonder why
+Miss Spencer stood for all the gratitude. But the next day, when the
+exercises were over, that young lady stepped down from the platform and
+was met by a tall chap whom she later introduced to us as a friend of
+the family from her home town. You can always spot these family friends
+by the way the girl blushes when she introduces them. Miss Spencer wore
+a fine new diamond ring and we knew what it meant. It was just another
+case where the girl came to school and the man stayed at home and built
+a seven-room house on a prominent corner four blocks from his hardware
+store and waited--and tried not to get any more jealous than possible. I
+suppose Miss Spencer used Ole as a sort of parachute to let Frankling
+down easily at the last. Anyway, we wiped the whole affair off the slate
+after that. She wasn't one of us, anyway. Made us shiver to think of
+her. What if one of us had sailed in the Freshman year and cut Frankling
+out!
+
+[Illustration: You can always spot these family friends
+                    _Page 252_]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+VOTES FROM WOMEN
+
+
+Do I believe in woman's suffrage? Certainly, if you do, Miss Allstairs.
+As I sit here, where I couldn't help seeing you frown if I didn't please
+you, I favor anything you favor. If you want the women to vote just hand
+me the ax and show me the man who would prevent them. If you think the
+women should play the baseball of our country it's all right with me.
+I'll help pass a law making it illegal for Hans Wagner to hang around a
+ball park except as water-boy. If you believe that women ought to wear
+three-story hats in theaters--
+
+No, I'm not making fun of you. I hope I may never be allowed to lug a
+box of Frangipangi's best up your front steps again if I am. If you want
+the women to vote, Miss Allstairs, just breathe the word, and I'll go
+out and start a suffragette mob as soon as ever I can find a brick. And
+I would be a powerful advocate, too. You can't tell me that women
+wouldn't be able to handle the ballot. You can't tell me they would get
+their party issues mixed up with their party gowns. I've seen them vote
+and I've seen them play politics. And let me tell you, when woman gets
+the vote man will totter right back to the kitchen and prepare the
+asparagus for supper, just to be out of harm's way. His good old
+arguments about the glory of the nation, the rising price of wheat and
+the grand record of those sterling patriots who have succeeded in
+getting their names on the government payroll won't get him to first
+base when women vote. He'll have to learn the game all over again, and
+the first ninety-nine years' course of study will be that famous
+subject, "Woman."
+
+How do I know so much about it? Just as I told you. I've been through
+the mill. I've seen women vote. I've tried to get them to vote my way.
+I've never herded humming birds or drilled goldfishes in close
+formation, but I'd take the job cheerfully. It would be just a rest cure
+after four years' experience in persuading a large voting body of
+beautiful and fascinating young women to vote the ticket straight and to
+let me name the ticket.
+
+Oh, no! I never lived in Colorado, and I never was a polygamist in Utah,
+thank you. I'm nothing but an alumnus of Siwash College, which, as you
+know, is co-educational to a heavenly degree. I'm just a young alumnus
+with about eighty-nine gray hairs scattered around in my thatch. Each
+one of those gray hairs represents a vote gathered by me from some
+Siwash co-ed in the cause of liberty and progress and personal friends.
+Eighty-nine was my total score. Took me four years to get 'em, working
+seven days in the week and forty weeks in the year. I'm no
+brass-finished and splash-lubricated politician, but I'll bet I could
+go out in any election and cord up that many votes with whiskers on them
+in three days. "Votes for Women" is a fine sentiment and very
+appropriate, Miss Allstairs, but "Votes from Women" has always been the
+motto under which I have fought and been bled--I beg your pardon; that
+just slipped out accidentally. Of course there was nothing of the sort
+possible. Now there isn't the slightest use of your getting angry and
+making me feel like an Arctic explorer in a linen suit. If you insist
+I'll go out on the front porch and sit there a few weeks until you
+forgive me, but that's the very best I can do for you. I will positively
+not erase myself from your list of acquaintances. When a man has been
+hanging around the world in a bored way for thirty-two years, just
+waiting for Fate to catch up with its assignments and trundle you along
+within my range in order to give the sun a rest--
+
+Oh, well--if you forgive me of course I'll stop anything you say. Though
+really, now, that wasn't joshing. It came from the depths. Anyway, as I
+was saying, "Votes from Women"--excuse me, please; I fell off there once
+and I'm going to go slow--"Votes from Women" was the burning question
+back at Siwash when I infested the campus. The women had the votes
+already--no use agitating that. The big question was getting 'em back
+when we needed them. You see, the Faculty always insisted on regulating
+athletics more or less and on organizing things for us--didn't believe
+we mere college youths could get an organization together according to
+Hoyle, or whoever drew up the rules of disorder in college societies,
+without the help of some skyscraper-browed professor. So they saw fit to
+organize what they called a general athletic association. Every student
+who paid a dollar was enrolled as a member, with a vote and the
+privilege of blowing a horn in a lady or gentleman like manner at all
+college games. And just to assure a large membership, the faculty made a
+rule that the dollar must be paid by all students with their tuition at
+the beginning of the year. That, of course, enrolled the whole college,
+girls and all, in the Athletic Association. And it was the Athletic
+Association that raised the money to pay for the college teams and hired
+the coaches and greased old Siwash's way to glory every fall during the
+football season.
+
+Now this didn't bother any for a few years. The men went to the meetings
+and voted, and the girls stayed at home and made banners for the games.
+Everything was lovely and comfortable. Then one day, in my Freshman year
+just before the election, there was a crack in the slate and the Shi
+Delts saw a chance to elect one of their men president--it wasn't their
+turn that year, but you never could trust the Shi Delts politically any
+farther than you could kick a steam roller. They put up their man and
+there was a little campaign for about three hours that got up to eleven
+hundred revolutions a minute. We clawed and scratched and dug for votes
+and were still short when Reilly got an idea and rushed over to Browning
+Hall. Five minutes before the polls closed he appeared, leading
+twenty-seven Siwash girls, and the trouble was over. They voted for our
+man and he was elected by four votes. But, incidentally, we tipped over
+a can of--no, wait a minute. I've simply got to be more classical.
+What's the use of a college diploma if you have to tell all you know in
+baseball language? Let's see--you remember that beautiful Greek lady who
+opened a box under the impression that there was a pound of assorted
+chocolate creams in it and let loose a whole international museum of
+trouble? Dora Somebody--eh? Oh, yes, Pandora. I always did fall down on
+that name. Anyway, the box we opened in that election would have made
+Pandora's little grief repository look like a box of pink powder. The
+kind you girls--oh, very well. I take it back. Honestly, Miss Allstairs,
+you'll get me so afraid of the cars in a minute that I'll have to ditch
+this train of thought and talk about art. Ever hear me talk about art?
+Well, it would serve you right if you did. I talked about art with a
+kalsominer once, and he wanted to fight me for the honor of his
+profession.
+
+However, as I was saying, the women voted at Siwash that fall and I
+guess they must have liked the taste, for the first thing we knew we had
+the woman vote to take care of all the time. The next fall pretty nearly
+every girl in the college turned out to class meetings, and the way
+they voted pretty nearly drove us mad. They seemed to regard it as a
+game. They fussed about whether to vote on pink paper or blue paper;
+voted for members of the Faculty for class president; one of them voted
+for the President of the United States for president of the Sophomore
+class; wanted to vote twice; came up to the ballot box and demanded
+their votes back because they had changed their minds; went away before
+election and left word with a friend to vote for them. Took us an hour,
+right in football practice time, to get the ticket through in our class;
+and what with lending pencils and chasing girls who carried their
+ballots away with them, and getting called down for trying to see that
+everything went along proper and shipshape and according to program, we
+boys were half crazy when it was all over.
+
+But the girls liked it enormously. It was a novelty for them, and we saw
+right there that it was a case of organize the female vote or have
+things hopelessly muddled up before the end of the year. In the
+interests of harmony things had to be done in a businesslike manner.
+Certain candidates had to be put through and certain factions had to be
+gently but firmly stepped on. Harmony, you know, Miss Allstairs, is a
+most important thing in politics. Without harmony you can't do a thing.
+Harmony in politics consists of giving the insurgents not what they ask
+for, but something that you don't want. I was a grand little harmonizer
+in my day too. I ran the oratorical league the year before it went
+broke and then traded the presidency to the Chi Yi-Delta Whoop crowd for
+the editorship of the Student Weekly. That's harmony. They were happy
+and so was I. When I saw how hard they had to hustle to pay the
+association debts the next fall I was so happy I could hardly stand it.
+
+No, Miss Allstairs, that was not meanness on my part. It was politics.
+There is a great deal of difference between meanness and politics. One
+is lowdown and contemptible and nasty, and the other is expedient. See?
+Why, some of the most generous men in the world are politicians. Time
+and again I've seen Andy Hoople, the big politician of our town, pay a
+man's fare to Chicago so that he could go up there and rest during the
+last week of a political campaign and not bother himself and get all
+worried over the way things were going--and the man would be on the
+other side too.
+
+Anyway, to--wait a minute; I'm going to hook over some French now. Look
+out, low bridge--to rendezvous to our muttons--how's that? In a good
+many ways there are worse jobs than that of persuading a pretty girl to
+vote the right way. Sometimes I liked the job so well that I was sorry
+when election came. But, on the whole, it was hard, hard work. We tried
+arguments and exhortation and politics, and you might as well have shot
+cheese balls at the moon. Never touched 'em. I talked straight logic to
+a girl for an hour once, showing her conclusively that it was her duty
+as a patriotic Siwash student to vote for a man who could give a strong
+mind and a lot of money to the debating cause; and then she remarked
+quite placidly that she would always vote for the other man for whatever
+office he wanted, because he wore his dress suit with such an air. I had
+to take her clear downtown and buy her ice cream and things before she
+could understand the gravity of the case at all--
+
+No, indeed, Miss Allstairs, I didn't bribe her. You must be very careful
+about charging people with bribery. Bribery is a very serious offense.
+It's so serious that nowadays it's a very grave thing to charge a
+politician with it. I think it will be made a crime soon. I bought ice
+cream for this girl because she could understand things better while she
+was eating ice cream. It made her think better. Of course, you can't do
+that with a man in real politics. You have to give him an office or a
+contract or something in order to get his mind into a cheerful
+condition. You can argue so much better with a man when he is cheerful.
+No, indeed. I wouldn't bribe a fly. Nobody would. There isn't any
+bribing any more anyway. Illinois has taught the world that.
+
+But that was the least of our troubles. After you had persuaded a girl
+to vote right you had to keep her persuaded. Now most any man might be
+able to keep one vote in line, but that wasn't enough. Some of us had to
+keep four or five votes all ready for use, for competition was pretty
+swift and there were a tremendous number of co-eds in school. You never
+saw such a job as it was. No sooner would I have Miss A. entirely
+friendly to my candidate for the editorship of the Weekly than Miss B.
+would flop over and show marked signs of frost--and then I would have to
+drop everything and walk over from chapel with her three mornings
+hand-running, and take her to a play, and make a wild pass about not
+knowing whether any one would go to the prom with me or not. And then
+just as she would begin to smile when she saw me Miss A. would pass me
+on the street and look at me as if I had robbed a hen-roost. And just as
+I was entirely friendly with both of them it would occur to me that I
+hadn't called on Miss C. for three weeks and that Bannister, of the
+Alfalfa Delts, was waiting for Miss D. after chapel every morning and
+would doubtless make a lowdown, underhanded attempt to talk politics to
+her in the spring. For a month before each election I felt like a giddy
+young squirrel running races with myself around a wheel. Some college
+boys can keep on terms of desperate and exclusive friendliness with a
+dozen girls at a time--Petey Simmons got up to eighteen one spring when
+we won the big athletic election--but four or five were as many as I
+could manage by any means, and it kept me busted, conditioned and all
+out of training to accomplish this. And when election-time approached
+and it came to talking real politics, and the girl you had counted on
+all winter to swing her wing of the third floor in Browning Hall for
+your candidate would suddenly remember in the midst of a businesslike
+talk on candidates and things that you had cut two dances with her at
+the prom, and you couldn't explain that you simply had to do it because
+you had to keep your stand-in with a girl on the first floor who had the
+music-club vote in her pocket-book--well, I may get out over Niagara
+Falls some day on a rotten old tight-rope, with a sprained ankle and a
+fellow on my shoulders who is drunk and wants to make a speech, standing
+up--but if I do I won't feel any more wobbly and uncertain about the
+future than I used to feel on those occasions.
+
+Of course it was entirely impossible for the few dozen college
+politicians to make personal friends and supporters of all the girls in
+Siwash. We didn't want to. There are girls and girls at Siwash, just as
+there are everywhere else. Maybe a third of the Siwash girls were pretty
+and fascinating and wise and loyal, and nine or ten other exceedingly
+pleasant adjectives. And perhaps another third were--well, nice enough
+to dance with at a class party and not remember it with terror. And then
+there was another third which--oh, well, you know how it goes
+everywhere. They were grand young women, and they were there for
+educational purposes. They took prizes and learned a lot, and this was
+partly because there were no swarms of bumptious young collegians
+hanging around them and wasting their time. Far be it from me, Miss
+Allstairs, to speak disparagingly of a single member of your sex--you
+are all too good for us--but, if you will force me to admit it, there
+were girls at Siwash--ex-girls--who would have made a true and loyal
+student of art and beauty climb a high board--certainly, I said I wasn't
+going to say anything against them, and I'm not. Anyway, it's no great
+compliment to be admired for your youth and beauty alone. Age has its
+claims to respect too--oh, very well; I'll change the subject.
+
+As I was saying, we couldn't influence all the co-ed vote personally,
+but we handled it very systematically. Every popular girl in the school
+had her following, of course, at Browning Hall. So we just fought it out
+among the popular girls. Before elections they'd line up on their
+respective sides, and then they'd line up the rest of the co-ed vote. On
+a close election we'd get out every vote, and we'd have it accounted
+for, too, beforehand. The real precinct leaders had nothing on us. It
+took a lot of time and worry; but it was all very pleasant at the end.
+The popular girls would each lead over her collection of slaves of
+Horace and Trig, and Counterpoint and Rhetoric, and we'd cheer politely
+while they voted 'em. Then we'd take off our hats and bow low to said
+slaves, and they would go back to their galleys after having done their
+duty as free-born college girls, and that would be over for another
+year. Everything would have continued lovely and comfortable and darned
+expensive if it hadn't been for Mary Jane Hicks, of Carruthers' Corners,
+Missouri.
+
+No, I've never told you of Mary Jane Hicks. Why? The real reason is
+because when we fellows of that period mention her name we usually cuss
+a little in a hopeless and irritable sort of way. It's painful to think
+of her. It's humiliating to think that twenty-five of the case-hardened
+and time-seasoned politicians of Siwash should have been double-crossed,
+checkmated, outwitted, out-generaled, sewed up into sacks and dumped
+into Salt Creek by a red-headed, freckled-nosed exile from a Missouri
+clay farm; and a Sophomore at that--say, what am I telling you this for,
+Miss Allstairs? Honestly, it hurts. It's nice for a woman to hear, I
+know, but I may have to take gas to get through this story.
+
+[Illustration: It was a blow between the eyes
+                    _Page 268_]
+
+This Mary Jane Hicks came to Siwash the year before it all happened and
+was elected to the unnoticeables on the spot. She was a dumpy little
+girl, with about as much style as a cornplanter; and I suspect that she
+bade her pet calf a fond good-by when she left the dear old farm to come
+and play tag with knowledge on the Siwash campus. Nobody saw her in
+particular the first year, except that you couldn't help noticing her
+hair any more than you can help noticing a barn that's burning on a
+damp, dark night. It was explosively red and she didn't seem to care.
+She always had her nose turned up a little--just on principle, I guess.
+And when you see a red-headed girl with a freckled nose that turns up
+just locate the cyclone cellars in your immediate vicinity, say I.
+
+Well, Mary Jane Hicks went through her Freshman year without causing any
+more excitement than you could make by throwing a clamshell into the
+Atlantic Ocean. She drew a couple of classy men for the class parties
+and they reported that she towed unusually hard when dancing. She voted
+in the various elections under the protecting care of Miss Willoughby,
+who was a particular friend of mine just before the Athletic election,
+and that's how I happened to meet her. I was considerably grand at that
+time--being a Junior who had had a rib smashed playing football and was
+going to edit the college paper the next year--but the way she looked at
+me you would have thought that I was the fractional part of a peeled
+cipher. She just nodded at me and said "Howdedo," and then asked if the
+vest-pocket vote was being successfully extracted that day. That was
+nervy of her and I frowned; after which she remarked that she objected
+to voting without being told in advance that the cause of liberty was
+trembling in the voter's palm. I remember wondering at the time where
+she had dug up all that rot.
+
+Miss Hicks voted at all the elections along with the rest of the herd,
+and as far as I know no rude collegian came around and broke into her
+studies by taking her anywhere. Commencement came and we all went home,
+and I forgot all about her. The next fall was a critical time with the
+Eta Bita Pie-Fly Gam-Sigh Whoopsilon combination, because we had
+graduated a large number of men and we had to pull down the fall
+elections with a small voting strength. So I went down to college a day
+early to confer with some of the other patriotic leaders regarding
+slates and other matters concerning the good of the college.
+
+I hadn't more than stepped off the train until I met Frankling, the
+president of the Alfalfa Delts, and Randolph, of the Delta Kappa
+Sonofaguns, and Chickering, of the Mu Kow Moos, in close consultation.
+It was very evident that they were going to do a little high-class
+voting too. And before night I discovered that the Shi Delts and the
+Delta Flushes and the Omega Salves had formed a coalition with the
+independents, and that there was going to be more politics to the square
+inch in old Siwash that year than there had been since the year of the
+big wind--that's what we called the year when Maxwell was boss of the
+college and swept every election with his eloquence.
+
+There were any number of important elections coming off that fall. There
+were all the class elections, of course, and the Oratorical election,
+and a couple of vacancies to fill in the Athletic Association, and a
+college marshal to elect, and goodness knows what all else to nail down
+and tuck away before we could get down to the serious job of fighting
+conditions that fall. I was so busy for the first three days, wiring up
+the new students and putting through a trade on the Athletic
+secretaryship with the Delta Kap gang, that I couldn't pay any attention
+to the class elections. But they were pretty safe anyway. It was only
+about a day's job to put through a class slate. The Junior election came
+first, and we had arranged to give it to Miss Willoughby. We always
+elected women presidents of the Junior class at Siwash. Little
+Willoughby had a cinch because, of course, our crowd backed her
+hard--and we were strong in Juniors--and, besides she had a good
+following among the girls. So we just turned the whole thing over to the
+girls to manage and thought no more about it, being mighty hard pressed
+by the miserable and un-American bipartisan combination on the Athletic
+offices.
+
+School opened on Tuesday. The Junior class election came off on Thursday
+afternoon and a Miss Hamthrick was elected president. I would have bet
+on the college bell against her. It was the shockingest thing that had
+happened in politics for five years. Miss Hamthrick was a conservatory
+student. Even when you shut your eyes and listened to her singing she
+didn't sound good-looking. Davis drew her for the Sophomore class party
+the year before and exposed himself to the mumps to get out of going.
+Not only was she elected president, but the rest of the offices went
+to--no, I'll not describe them. I'm sort of prejudiced anyway. They made
+Miss Hamthrick seem beautiful and clever by comparison.
+
+It was a blow between the eyes. The worst of it was we couldn't
+understand it. I went over to see Miss Willoughby about it, and she came
+down all powdery and beautiful about the eyes and nose and talked to me
+as haughtily as if I had done it myself. She said she had trusted us,
+but it was evident that all a woman could hope for in politics was the
+privilege of being fooled by a man. She even accused me of helping elect
+the Hamthrick lady, said she wished me joy, and asked if it had been a
+pretty romance. That made me tired, and I said--oh, well, no use
+remembering what I said. It was the last thing I ever had a chance to
+say to Miss Willoughby anyway. I was pretty miserable over
+it--politically, of course, I mean, Miss Allstairs. You understand. Now
+there's no use saying that. It wasn't so. College girls are all very
+well, and one must be entertained while getting gorged with knowledge;
+but really, when it comes to more serious things, I never--
+
+All right, I'll go on with my story. The next day we got a harder blow
+than ever. The Freshman class election came off on a snap call, and
+about half the class, mostly girls, elected a lean young lady with
+spectacles and a wasp-like conversation to the presidency. We raised a
+storm of indignation, but they blandly told us to go hence. There was
+nothing in the Constitution of the United States to prevent a woman
+from being president of the Freshman class, and there didn't seem to be
+any other laws on the subject. Besides, the Freshman class was a
+brand-new republic and didn't need the advice of such an effete monarchy
+as the Senior class. While we were talking it all over the next day the
+Sophomores met, and after a terrific struggle between the Eta Bita Pies,
+the Alfalfa Delts and the Shi Delts, Miss Hicks was elected president by
+what Shorty Gamble was pleased to term "the gargoyle vote." I wouldn't
+say that myself of any girl, but Shorty had been working for the place
+for a year, and when the twenty girls who had never known what it was to
+have a sassy cab rumble up to Browning Hall and wait for them cast their
+votes solidly and elected the Missouri Prairie Fire he felt justified in
+making comments.
+
+By this time it was a case of save the pieces. The whole thing had been
+as mysterious as the plague. We were getting mortal blows, we couldn't
+tell from whom. All political signs were failing. The game was going
+backward. A lot of the leaders got together and held a meeting, and some
+of them were for declaring a constitutional monarchy and then losing the
+constitution. My! But they were bitter. Everybody accused everybody else
+of double-crossing, underhandedness, gum-shoeing, back-biting, trading,
+pilfering and horse-stealing. I think there was a window or two broken
+during the discussion. But we didn't get anywhere. The next day the
+Senior class elected officers, and every frat went out with a knife for
+its neighbor. A quiet lady by the name of Simpkins, who was one of the
+finest old wartime relics in school, was elected president.
+
+That night I began putting two and two and fractional numbers together
+and called in calculus and second sight on the problem. I remembered
+what the Hicks girl had said to me the year before. That was more than
+the ordinary girl ought to know about politics. I remembered seeing her
+doing more or less close-harmony work with the other midnight-oil
+consumers--and the upshot was I went over to Browning Hall that night
+and called on her.
+
+She came down in due time--kept me waiting as long as if she had been
+the belle of the prom--and she shook hands all over me.
+
+"My dear boy," she said, sitting down on the sofa with me, "I'm so
+delighted to renew our old friendship."
+
+Now, I don't like to be "my dear boyed" by a Sophomore, and there never
+had been any old friendship. I started to stiffen up--and then didn't. I
+didn't because I didn't know what she would do if I did.
+
+"How are all the other good old chaps?" she said as cordially as could
+be. "My, but those were grand days."
+
+[Illustration: "How are all the other good old chaps?" she said
+                    _Page 270_]
+
+I didn't see any terminus in that conversation. Besides, she looked
+like one of those most uncomfortable girls who can guy you in such an
+innocent and friendly manner that you don't know what to say back. So I
+brushed the preliminaries aside and jumped right into the middle of
+things. "Miss Hicks," says I, "why are you doing all this?"
+
+"Singular or plural you?" she asked. "And why am I or are we doing what,
+and why shouldn't we?"
+
+"Help," said I, feeling that way. "Do you deny that you haven't been
+instrumental in upsetting the whole college with those fool elections?"
+
+"I am a modest young lady," said she, "so, of course, I deny it.
+Besides, this college isn't upset at all. I went over this morning and
+every professor was right side up with care where he belonged. And,
+moreover, you must not call an election a fool because it doesn't do
+what you want it to. It can't help itself."
+
+"Miss Hicks," says I, feeling like a fly in an acre of web, "I am a
+plain and simple man and not handy with my tongue. What I mean is this,
+and I hope you'll excuse me for living--do you admit that you had a hand
+in those class elections?"
+
+Miss Hicks looked at me in the friendliest way possible. "It is more
+modest to admit it than to declare it, isn't it?" she asked.
+
+"Certainly," says I; "and this leads right back to question Number
+One--Why did you do it?"
+
+"And this leads back to answer Number One--Why shouldn't I?" she asked
+again.
+
+"Why, don't you see, Miss Hicks," says I, "that you've elected a lot of
+girls that never have been active in college work, and that don't
+represent the student body, and--"
+
+"Don't go to the proms?" she suggested.
+
+"I didn't say it and I'd die before I did," said I virtuously. "But
+what's your object?"
+
+"Education," said Miss Hicks mildly. "I'm paying full tuition and I want
+to get all there is out of college. I think politics is a fascinating
+study. I didn't get a chance to do much at it last year, but I'm
+learning something about it every day now."
+
+"But what's the good of it all?" I protested. "You'll just get the
+college affairs hopelessly mixed up--"
+
+"Like the Oratorical Association was last year?" she inquired gently.
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" said I, getting entirely red. "Let's not get personal. What
+can we do to satisfy you?"
+
+"You've been satisfying us beautifully so far," said Miss Hicks.
+
+"Who's us?" I asked.
+
+"I don't in the least mind telling you," said Miss Hicks. "It's the
+Blanks."
+
+"The Blanks!" I repeated fretfully. "Never heard of 'em."
+
+"I know it," said Miss Hicks, "but you named them yourselves. What do
+you say you've drawn when you draw a homely girl's name out of the hat
+as a partner for a class party?"
+
+"Oh!" said I.
+
+"We're the Blanks," said Miss Hicks, "and we feel that we haven't been
+getting our full share of college atmosphere. So we're going into
+politics. In this way we can mingle with the students and help run
+things and have a very enjoyable time. It's most fascinating. All of us
+are dippy over it."
+
+"Oh," said I again. "You mean you're going to ruin things for your own
+selfish interests?"
+
+"My dear boy," said Miss Hicks--my, but that grated--"we're not going to
+ruin anything. And we may build up the Oratorical Association."
+
+That was too much. I got up and stood as nearly ten feet as I could.
+"Very well," said I. "If there's no use of arguing on a reasonable basis
+we may as well terminate this interview. But I'll just tell you there's
+no use of your going any further. Now we know what we have to fight,
+we'll take precious good care that you do not do any more mischief."
+
+"Oh, very well," said Miss Hicks--she was infuriatingly
+good-natured--"but I might as well tell you that we're going to get the
+Athletic offices, the prom committee, the Oratorical offices and the
+Athletic election next spring."
+
+"Ha, ha!" said I loudly and rudely. Then I took my hat and went away.
+Miss Hicks asked me very eagerly to drop in again. Me? I'd as soon have
+dropped on a Mexican cactus. It couldn't be any more uncomfortable.
+
+I went away and called our gang together and we seethed over the
+situation most all night. They voted me campaign leader on the strength
+of my service, and the next day we got the rest of the frats together,
+buried the hatchet and doped out the campaign. It was the pride and
+strength of Siwash against a red-headed Missouri girl, weight about
+ninety-five pounds; and we couldn't help feeling sorry for her. But she
+had brought it on herself. Insurgency, Miss Allstairs, is a very wicked
+thing. It's a despicable attempt on the part of the minority to become
+the majority, and no true patriot will desert the majority in his time
+of need.
+
+I'm not going to linger over the next month. I'll get it over in a few
+words. We started out to exterminate Miss Hicks. We put up our candidate
+for the Oratorical Association presidency. The hall was jammed when the
+time came, and before anything could be done Miss Hicks demanded that no
+one be allowed to vote who hadn't paid his or her dues. Half the fellows
+we had there never had any intention of getting that far into Oratorical
+work, and backed out; but the rest of us paid up. There had never been
+so much money in the treasury since the association began. Then the
+Blanks nominated a candidate and skinned us by three votes. When we
+thought of all that money gone to waste we almost went crazy.
+
+But that was just a starter. We were determined to have our own way
+about the Junior prom. What do wall-flowers know about running a prom?
+We worked up an absolute majority in the Junior class, only to have a
+snap meeting called on us over in Browning Hall, in which three
+middle-aged young ladies who had never danced a step were named. The
+roar we raised was terrific, but the president sweetly informed us that
+they had only followed precedent--we'd had to do the same thing the year
+before to keep out the Mu Kow Moos. We appealed to the Faculty, and it
+laughed at us. Unfortunately, we didn't stand any too well there anyway,
+while most of the Blanks were the pride and joy of the professors.
+Anyway, they told us to fight our own battles and they'd see that there
+was fair play. Oh, yes. They saw it. They passed a rule that no student
+who was conditioned in any study could vote in any college election.
+That disenfranchised about half of us right on the spot. If ever anarchy
+breaks out in this country, Miss Allstairs, it will be because of
+college Faculties.
+
+We made a last stand on the Athletic Association treasurership. It
+looked for a while as if it was going to be easy. We threw all the rules
+away and gave a magnificent party for all the girls we thought we could
+count on. It was the most gorgeous affair on record, and half the dress
+suits in college went into hock afterward for the whole semester. The
+result was most encouraging. The girls were delighted. They pledged
+their votes and support and we counted up that we had a clear majority.
+We went to bed that night happy and woke up to find that Miss Hicks had
+entertained the non-fraternity men in the gymnasium that night and had
+served lemonade and wafers. She had alluded to them playfully as slaves,
+and they had broken up about fifty chairs demonstrating that they were
+not. When the election came off she had the unattached vote solid, and
+we lost out by a comfortable majority. An estimable lady, who didn't
+know athletics from croquet, was elected. And when the reception
+committee of the prom was announced the next day it was composed
+exclusively of men who would have had to be led through the grand march
+on wheels.
+
+After that we gave up. I tried to resign as campaign manager, but the
+boys wouldn't let me. They admitted that no one else could have done any
+better, and, besides, they wanted me to go over and see Miss Hicks
+again. They wanted me to ask her what her crowd wanted. When I thought
+of her pleasant conversational hatpin work I felt like resigning from
+college; but there always have to be martyrs, and in the end I went.
+
+Miss Hicks received me rapturously. You would have thought we had been
+boy and girl friends. She insisted on asking how all the folks were at
+home, and how my health had been, and hadn't it been a gay winter, and
+was I going to the prom, and how did I like her new gown? While I was at
+it I thought I might as well amuse myself, too, so I asked her to marry
+me. That was the only time I ever got ahead of her. She refused
+indignantly, and I laughed at her for getting so fussed up over a little
+thing.
+
+"Marriage is a sacred subject," she said very soberly.
+
+"So was politics," said I, "until you came along. If you won't talk
+marriage let's talk politics. What do you girls want?"
+
+"Oh, I told you a while ago," she said.
+
+"But, Great Scott!" said I. "Aren't you going to leave a thing for us
+fellows who have done our best for the college?"
+
+"Now you put it that way," she said quite kindly, "I'll think it over.
+We might find something for you to do. There's a couple of janitorships
+loose."
+
+"Hicksey," says I.
+
+"Miss Hicks," says she.
+
+"I beg your pardon--my dear girl, then," said I. "I've come over to the
+bunch to confess. You've busted us. We're on the mat nine points down
+and yelling for help. We don't want to run things. We only want to be
+allowed to live. We surrender. We give up. We humbly ask that you
+prepare the crow and let us eat the neck. Isn't there any way by which
+we can get a little something to keep us busy and happy? We're in a
+horrible situation. Aren't you even going to let us have the Athletic
+Association next spring?"
+
+"I was thinking of running that myself," said Miss Hicks thoughtfully.
+
+I let out an impolite groan.
+
+"But I'll tell you what you might do," said Miss Hicks. "You boys might
+try to win my crowd away from me. You see, you've played right into my
+hand so far. You haven't paid any attention to my supporters. Now, if
+you were to go after them the way you do the other girls in the college
+I shudder to think what might happen to me."
+
+"You mean take them to parties and theaters?"
+
+"Why not?" asked Miss Hicks. "You see, they're only human. I'll bet you
+could land every vote in the bunch if you went at it scientifically."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Oh, I know they're not pretty," said Miss Hicks. "But they cast the
+most bee-you-ti-ful votes you ever saw."
+
+"What you mean," I said, "is that if we don't show those girls a
+superlatively good time this winter we won't get a look at the election
+next spring?"
+
+"They'd be awfully shocked if you put it that way," said Miss Hicks;
+"and I wouldn't advise you to talk to them about it. Their notions of
+honor are so high that I had to pay for the lemonade for the independent
+men myself at the last election."
+
+"Oh, very well," says I, taking my hat, "we'll think it over."
+
+"You might wear blinders, you know," she suggested.
+
+"Oh, go to thunder!" said I as earnestly as I could.
+
+"Come again," she said when she closed the door after me. "I do so enjoy
+these little confidences."
+
+Honestly, Miss Allstairs, when I think of that girl I shrink up until
+I'm afraid I'll fall into my own hat. It ought not to be legal for a
+girl to talk to a man like that. It's inhuman.
+
+We thought matters over for two weeks and tried one or two little raids
+on the enemy with most horrible results to ourselves. Then we gave in.
+We put our pride and our devotion to art in cold storage and took up the
+politicians' burden. We gave those girls the time of their
+young-to-middle-aged lives. We got up dances and crokinole parties and
+concerts for them. We took them to see Hamlet. We had sleighing parties.
+We helped every lecture course in the college do a rushing business. We
+just backed into the shafts and took the bit without a murmur. And maybe
+you think those girls didn't drive us. They seemed determined to make up
+for the drought of all the past. They were as coy and uncertain and as
+infernally hard to please as if they'd been used to getting one proposal
+a day and two on Sunday. Let one of us so much as drop over to Browning
+Hall to pass the time of day with one of the real heart-disturbers, and
+the particular vote that he was courting would go off the reservation
+for a week. It would take a pair of theater tickets at the least to
+square things.
+
+We gave dances that winter at which only one in five girls could dance.
+We took moonlight strolls with ladies who could remember the moon of
+seventy-six, and we gave strawrides to girls who insisted on talking
+history of art and missionary work to us all the way. When I think of
+the tons of candy and the mountains of flowers and the wagonloads of
+latest books that we lavished, and of the hard feelings it made in other
+quarters, and of our loneliness amid all this gayety, and of our frantic
+efforts to make the prom a success, with ten couples dancing and the
+rest decorating the walls, I sometimes wonder whether the college was
+worth our great love for it after all.
+
+But we were winning out. By April it was easy to see this. The Blanks
+thawed with the snow-drifts. They got real friendly and sociable, and
+after the warm weather came on we simply had to entertain them all the
+time, they liked it so. When I think of those beautiful spring days,
+with us sauntering with our political fates about the campus, and the
+nicest girls in the world walking two and two all by themselves--Oh,
+gee! Why, they even made us cut chapel to go walking with them, just as
+if it was a genuine case of "Oh, those eyes!" and "Shut up, you thumping
+heart."
+
+[Illustration: Why, they even made us cut chapel to go walking with them
+                    _Page 280_]
+
+All this time Miss Hicks wouldn't accept any invitation at all. She just
+flocked by herself as usual, and watched us taking her votes away from
+her without any concern apparently. I always felt that she had something
+saved up for us, but I couldn't tell what it was; and anyway, we had
+those votes. By the time the Athletic election came around there wasn't
+a doubt of it.
+
+I must say the women did pretty well during the year. They'd cleaned up
+the Oratorical debt, and somehow there was about three times as much
+money in the Athletic treasury after the football season as there had
+ever been before. But they'd raised a lot of trouble too. No passes.
+Dues had to be paid up. Nobody got any fun out of the class affairs.
+They got up lectures and teas and made the class pay for them. And,
+anyway, we wanted to run things again. We'd felt all year like a bunch
+of last year's sunflowers. Besides, we'd earned it. We'd earned a starry
+crown as a matter of fact, but all we asked was that they give our
+little old Athletic Association back and let us run it once more.
+
+Miss Hicks announced herself as a candidate, and we felt sorry for her.
+Not one of her gang was with her. They were enthusiastically for us.
+We'd planned the biggest party of the year right after the election in
+celebration, and had invited them already. Election day came and we
+hardly worried a bit. The result was 189 to 197 in favor of Miss Hicks.
+Every independent man and every bang-up-to-date girl in college voted
+for her.
+
+Of course it looks simple enough now, but why couldn't we see it then?
+We supposed the real girls knew that it was a case of college
+patriotism. And, of course, it was a low-lived trick for Miss Hicks to
+float around the last day and spread the impression that we'd never
+loved them except for their votes. She simply traded constituencies with
+us, that's all. Take it coming or going, year in or year out, you
+couldn't beat that girl. I'll bet she goes out to Washington state and
+gets elected governor some day.
+
+I went over to Browning Hall the night after the election, ready to tell
+Miss Hicks just what everybody thought of her. I was prepared to tell
+her that every athletic team in college was going to disband and that
+anarchy would be declared in the morning. She came down as pleasant as
+ever and held out her hand.
+
+"Don't say it, please," she said, "because I'm going to tell you
+something. I'm not coming back next year."
+
+"Not coming back!" said I, gulping down a piece of relief as big as an
+apple.
+
+"No," she said, "I'm--I'm going to be married this summer. I've--I've
+been engaged all this year to a man back home, but I wanted to come back
+and learn something about politics. He's a lawyer."
+
+"Well, you learned enough to suit you, didn't you?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, yes," she said with a giggle. "Wasn't it fun, though! My father
+will be so pleased. He's the chairman of the congressional committee out
+at home and he's always told me an awful lot about politics. I've
+enjoyed this year so much."
+
+"Well, I haven't," I said; "but I hope to enjoy next year." And then I
+took half an hour to tell her that, in spite of the fact that she was
+the most arrant, deceitful, unreliable, two-faced and scuttling
+politician in the world, she was almost incredibly nice. She listened
+quite patiently, and at the end she held up her fingers. They'd been
+crossed all the time.
+
+No, that's the last I ever saw of her, Miss Allstairs. She left before
+Commencement. She sent me an invitation to the wedding. I'll bet she
+didn't quite get the significance of the magnificent silver set we
+Siwash boys sent. We sent it to the groom.
+
+That was the end of women dominion at Siwash. There wasn't a rag of the
+movement left next fall. But we boys never entirely forgot what happened
+to us, and it's still the custom to elect a co-ed to some Athletic
+office. They do say that the only way to teach a politician what the
+people want is to bore a shaft in his head and shout it in, but our
+experience ought to be proof to the contrary. Why, all we needed was the
+gentle little hint that Mary Jane Hicks gave us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+SIC TRANSIT GLORIA ALL-AMERICA
+
+
+How did the Siwash game come out Saturday? Forget it, my boy. You'll
+never know in this oversized, ingrowing, fenced-off, insulated
+metropolis till some one writes and tells you. Every fall I ask myself
+that same question all day Saturday and Sunday, and do you suppose I
+ever find a Siwash score in one of those muddy-faced, red-headed,
+ward-gossip parties that they call newspapers in New York? Never, not at
+all, you hopeful tenderfoot from the unimportant West. After you've
+existed in this secluded portion of the universe a few years you'll get
+over trying to find anything that looks like news from home in the daily
+disturbances here. And I don't care whether your home is in Buffalo,
+Chicago or Strawberry Point, Iowa, either. Go down on the East Side and
+beat up a policeman, and you'll get immortalized in ten-inch type. Go
+back West and get elected governor, and ten to one if you're mentioned
+at all they'll slip you the wrong state to preside over.
+
+Excuse me, but I'm considerably sore, just as I am every Sunday during
+the football season. Here I am, eating my heart out with longing to know
+whether good old Siwash has dusted off half a township with
+Muggledorfer again, and what do I get to read? Four yards of Gale; five
+yards of Jarhard; two yards of Ohell; and a page of Quincetown,
+Hardmouth, Jamhurst, Saint Mikes, Holy Moses College and the Connecticut
+Institute of Etymology. Nice fodder for a loyal alumnus eleven hundred
+and then some miles from home, isn't it? Honest, when I first hit this
+seething burg I used to go down to the Grand Central station on Sunday
+afternoon and look at the people coming in from the trains, just because
+some of them were from the West. Once I took a New Yorker up to
+Riverside Park, pointed him west and asked him what he saw. He said he
+saw a ferryboat coming to New York. That was all he had ever seen of the
+other shore. He called it Hinterland. That made me mad and I called him
+an electric-light bug. We had a lovely row.
+
+But we're blasting out a corner for the old coll., even back here. We've
+got things fixed pretty nicely here now, we Siwash men. Down near
+Gramercy Park there's an old-fashioned city dwelling house, four stories
+high and elbow-room wide. It's the Siwash Alumni Club. There are half a
+hundred Siwash men in New York, gradually getting into the king row in
+various lines of business, and we pay enough rent each year for that
+house to buy a pretty fair little cottage out in Jonesville. Whenever a
+Siwash man drops in there he's pretty sure to find another Siwash man
+who smokes the same brand of tobacco and knows the same brand of
+college songs. We've got one legislator, four magazine publishers, two
+railroad officials, a city prosecutor and three bankers on the
+membership roll, and maybe some day we'll have a mayor. Then we'll pass
+a law requiring the boys and girls of New York to spend at least one
+hour a day learning about Siwash College, Jonesville, the big team of
+naughty-nix and the formula for getting credit at the Horseshoe Café.
+We'll make it obligatory for every newspaper to publish a full page
+about each Siwash game in the fall, with pictures of the captain, the
+coach and the fullback's right leg. Hurrah for revenge! I see it coming.
+
+Join the club? Why, you don't have to ask to join it. You've got to join
+it. Ten dollars, please, and sign here. When we get a little huskier
+financially we won't charge new-fledged graduates anything for a year or
+two, but we've got to now. The soulless landlord wants his rent in
+advance. You'll find the whole gang there Saturday nights. Just butt
+right in if I'm not around. You're a Siwash man, and if you want to
+borrow the doorknob to throw at a hackman you've a perfect right to do
+it.
+
+I'll tell you, old man, you don't know how nice it is to have a hole
+that you can hunt in this hurricane town, when you're a bright young
+chap with a glorious college past and a business future that you can't
+hock for a plate of beans a day! Leaving college and going into business
+in a big city is like taking a high dive from the hall of fame into an
+ice-water tank. Think of that and be cheerful. You've got a nice time
+coming. Just now you're Rudolph Weedon Burlingame, Siwash
+Naughty-several, late captain of the baseball team, prize orator,
+manager of two proms and president of the Senior class. To-morrow you'll
+be a nameless cumberer of busy streets, useful only to the street-car
+companies to shake down for nickels. To-morrow you're going around to
+the manager of some firm or other with a letter from some customer of
+his, and you're going to put your hand on your college diploma so as to
+have it handy, and you're going to hand him the letter and prepare to
+tell the story of your strong young life. But just before you begin
+you'll go away, because the manager will tell you he's sorry, but he's
+busy, and there are fourteen applicants ahead of you, and anyway he'll
+not be hiring any more men until 1918, and will you please come around
+then, and shut the door behind you, if you don't mind.
+
+Yep, that's what will happen to you. You'll spend your first three days
+trying to haul that diploma out. The fourth day you'll put it in your
+trunk. I've known men to cut 'em up for shaving paper. You'll stop
+trying to tell the story of your life and in about a week you'll be
+wondering why you have been allowed to live so long. In two weeks a
+clerk will look as big as a senator to you and you'll begin to get
+bashful before elevator men. You'll get off the sidewalk when you see a
+man who looks as if he had a job and was in a hurry. You'll envy a
+messenger boy with a job and a future; you'll wonder if managers are
+really carnivorous or only pretend to be. You feel as tall as the Singer
+Building to-day, but you'll shrink before long. You'll shrink until,
+after a long, hard day, with about nine turndowns in it, you'll have to
+climb up on top of the dresser to look at yourself in the glass.
+
+That's what you're going up against. Then the Siwash Club will be your
+hole and you'll hunt it every evening. You'll be a big man there, for we
+judge our members not by what they are, but by what they were at school.
+You'll sit around with the boys after dinner, and the man on your right,
+who is running a railroad, will be interested in that home run you made
+against Muggledorfer, and the man on your left, who won't touch a law
+case for less than five thousand dollars, will tell you that he, too,
+won the Perkins debate once. And he'll treat you as if you were a real
+life-sized human being instead of a job hunter, knee high to a copying
+clerk. You'll be back in the old college atmosphere, as big as the best
+of 'em, and after you've swapped yarns all evening you'll go to bed full
+of tabasco and pepper and you'll tackle the first manager the next
+morning as if he were a Kiowa man and had the ball. And sooner or later
+you'll get old Mr. Opportunity where he can't give you the straight arm,
+and if you don't put a knee in his chest and tame him for life you
+haven't got the real Siwash spirit, that's all.
+
+Funny thing about college. It isn't merely an education. It's a whole
+life in itself. You enter it unknown and tiny--just a Freshman with no
+rights on earth. You work and toil and suffer--and fall in love--and
+climb and rise to fame. When you are a Senior, if you have good luck,
+you are one of the biggest things in the whole world--for there isn't
+any world but the campus at college. Freshmen look up to you and admire
+men who are big enough to talk with you. The Sophomores may sneer at
+faculties and kings, but they wouldn't think of sassing you. The papers
+publish your picture in your football clothes. You dine with the
+professors, and prominent alumni come back and shake you by the hand. Of
+course, you know that somewhere in the dim nebulous outside there is a
+President of the United States who is quite a party in his way, but none
+of the girls mention it when they tell you how grand you looked after
+they had hauled the other team off of you and sewed on your ear. They
+talk about you exclusively because you're really the only thing worth
+talking about, you know.
+
+When Commencement comes you move about the campus like some tall
+mountain peak on legs. The students bring their young brothers up to
+meet you and you try to be kind and approachable. They give you a
+tremendous cheer when you go down the aisle in the chapel to get your
+prizes. You are referred to on all sides as one of the reasons why
+America is great. The professors when they bid you good-by ask you
+anxiously not to forget them. Then Commencement is over and college life
+is past, and there is nothing left in life but to become a senator or
+run a darned old trust. You leave the campus, taking care not to step on
+any of the buildings, and go out into the world pretty blue because
+you're through with about everything worth while; and you wonder if you
+can stand it to toil away making history eleven months in the year with
+only time to hang around college a few weeks in spring or fall. You're
+done with the real life. You're an old man, you've seen it all; and it
+sometimes takes you two weeks or more to recover and decide that after
+all a great career may be almost as interesting in a way as college
+itself. So you buck up and decide to accept the career--and that's where
+you begin to catch on to the general drift of the universe in dead
+earnest.
+
+Take a man of sixty, with a permanent place in Who's Who and a large
+circle of people who believe that he has some influence with the sunrise
+and sunset. Then let him suddenly find himself a ten-year-old boy with
+two empty pockets and an appetite for assets, and let him learn that it
+isn't considered even an impertinence to spank him whenever he tries to
+mix in and air his opinions. I don't believe he would be much more
+shocked than the college man who finds, at the conclusion of a glorious
+four-year slosh in fame, that he is really just about to begin life, and
+that the first thing he must learn is to keep out from under foot and
+say "Yes, sir," when the boss barks at him. It's a painful thing,
+Burlingame. Took me about a year to think of it without saying "ouch."
+
+The saddest thing about it all is that the two careers don't always
+mesh. The college athlete may discover that the only use the world has
+for talented shoulder muscles is for hod-carrying purposes. The society
+fashion plate may never get the hang of how to earn anything but last
+year's model pants; and the fishy-eyed nonentity, who never did anything
+more glorious in college than pay his class tax, may be doing a
+brokerage business in skyscrapers within ten years.
+
+When I left Siwash and came to New York I guess I was as big as the next
+graduate. Of course I hadn't been the one best bet on the campus, but I
+knew all the college celebrities well enough to slap them on the backs
+and call them by pet names and lend them money. That of course should be
+a great assistance in knowing just how to approach the president of a
+big city bank and touch him for a cigar in a red-and-gold corset, while
+he is telling you to make yourself at home around the place until a job
+turns up. Allie Bangs, my chum, went on East with me. We had decided to
+rise side by side and to buy the same make of yachts. Of course we were
+sensible. We didn't expect to crowd out any magnates the first week or
+two. We intended to rise by honest worth, if it took a whole year. All
+we asked was that the fellows ahead should take care of themselves and
+not hold it against us if we ran over them from behind. We didn't think
+we were the biggest men on earth--not yet. That's where we fell down.
+We've never had a chance to since. You've got to seize the opportunity
+for having a swelled head just as you have for everything else.
+
+It took us just six weeks to get a toe-hold on the earth and establish
+our right to breathe our fair share of New York air. At the end of that
+time neither one of us would have been surprised if we had been charged
+rent while waiting in the ante-rooms of New York offices to be told that
+no one had time to tell us that there was no use of our waiting to get a
+chance to ask for anything. Talk about a come-down! It was worse than
+coming down a bump-the-bumps with nails in it. It was three months
+before we got jobs. They were microscopic jobs in the same company, with
+wages that were so small that it seemed a shame to make out our weekly
+checks on nice engraved bank paper--jobs where any one from the
+proprietor down could yell "Here, you!" and the office boy could have
+fired us and got away with it. If I had been hanging on to a rope
+trailing behind a fifty-thousand-ton ocean liner I don't believe I
+should have felt more inconsequential and totally superfluous.
+
+But they were jobs just the same and we were game. I think most college
+graduates are after they get their feelings reduced to normal size. We
+hung on and dug in, and sneaked more work into our positions, and
+didn't quarrel with any one except the window-washer's little boy who
+brought meat for the cats in the basement. We drew the line at letting
+him boss us. And how we did enjoy being part of the big rumpus on
+Manhattan Island. We had a room--it wasn't so much of a room as it was a
+sort of stationary vest--and we ate at those hunger cures where a girl
+punches out your bill on a little ticket and you don't dare eat up above
+the third figure from the bottom or you'll go broke on Friday. By hook
+or crook we always managed to save a dollar from the wreckage each week
+for Sunday, and say, did you ever conduct a scientific investigation
+into just how far a dollar will go providing a day's pleasure in a big
+city? We did that for six months, and if I do say it myself we stretched
+some of those dollars until the eagle's neck reached from Tarrytown to
+Coney Island. We saw New York from roof garden to sub-cellar. We even
+got to doing fancy stunts. We'd dig out our dress suits, go over to one
+of those cafés where you begin owing money as soon as you see the head
+waiter, and put on a bored and haughty front for two hours on a dollar
+and twenty cents, including tips. And what we didn't know about the
+Subway, the Snubway and the Grubway, the Clubway, and the various
+Dubways of New York wasn't worth discovering or even imagining.
+
+We hadn't been conducting our explorations for more than a week when a
+most tremendous thing happened to us. You know how you are always
+running up against mastodons in the big town. You see about every one
+who is big enough to die in scare-heads. Taking a stroll down Fifth
+Avenue with an old residenter and having him tell about the people you
+pass is like having the hall of fame directory read off to you. Well,
+one Sunday night when we were blowing in our little fifty cents apiece
+on one of those Italian table d'hôte dinners with red varnish free,
+Allie looked across the room and began to tremble. "Look at that chap,"
+says he.
+
+"Who is he?" I asked, getting interested. "Roosevelt?"
+
+"Roosevelt nothing," he says scornfully. "Man alive, that's Jarvis!"
+
+I just dropped my jaw and stared. Of course you remember Jarvis, the
+great football player. At that time I guess most of the college boys in
+America said their prayers to him. Out West we students used to read of
+his terrific line plunges on the eastern fields and of his titanic
+defense when his team was hard pushed, and wonder if any of us would
+ever become great enough to meet him and shake him by the hand. What did
+we care for the achievements of Achilles and Hector and Hercules and
+other eminent hasbeens, which we had to soak up at the rate of forty
+lines of Greek a day? They had old Homer to write them up--the best man
+ever in the business. But they were too tame for us. I've caught myself
+speculating more than once on what Achilles would have done if Jarvis
+had tried to make a gain through him. Achilles was probably a pretty
+good spear artist, and all that, but if Jarvis had put his
+leather-helmeted head down and hit the line low--about two points south
+of the solar plexus--they would have carted Ac. away in a cab right
+there, invulnerability and all.
+
+That's about what we thought of Jarvis. We had his pictures pasted all
+over our training quarters along with those of the other
+super-dreadnoughts from the colleges that break into literature, and I
+imagine that if he had suddenly appeared back in Jonesville we should
+have put our heads right down and kow-towed until he gave us permission
+to get up. And here we were, sitting in the same café with him. I'll
+tell you, I had never felt the glory of living in the metropolis and
+prowling around the ankles of the big chiefs more vividly than right
+there in that room the night we first saw him.
+
+We sat and watched Jarvis while our meat course got cold. There was no
+mistaking him--some people have their looks copyrighted and Jarvis was
+one of them. We would have known it was he if we had seen him in a Roman
+mob. After a while Bangs, who always did have a triple reënforced
+Harveyized steel cheek, straightened up. "I'm going over to speak to
+him," he said.
+
+"Sit still, you fool," says I; "don't annoy him."
+
+"Watch me," says Bangs; "I'm going over to introduce myself. He can't
+any more than freeze me. And after I've spoken to him they can take my
+little old job away from me and ship me back to the hayfields whenever
+they please. I'll be satisfied."
+
+"You ought to bottle that nerve of yours and sell it to the
+lightning-rod pedlers," says I, getting all sweaty. "Just because you
+introduced yourself to a governor once you think you can go as far as
+you like. You stay right here--" But Bangs had gone over to Jarvis.
+
+I sat there and blushed for him, and suffered the tortures of a man who
+is watching his friend making a furry-eared nuisance of himself. There
+was the greatest football player in the world being pestered by a
+frying-sized sprig of a ninth assistant shipping clerk. It was
+preposterous. I waited to see Bangs wilt and come slinking back. Then I
+was going to put on my hat and walk out as if I didn't belong with him
+at all. But instead of that Bangs shook hands with Jarvis, talked a
+minute and then sat down with him. When Bangs is routed out by the Angel
+Gabriel he'll sit down on the edge of his grave and delay the whole
+procession, trying to find a mutual acquaintance or two. That's the kind
+of a leather-skin he is.
+
+Presently Bangs turned around and beckoned to me to come over. More
+colossal impudence. I wasn't going to do it, but Jarvis turned, too, and
+smiled at me. Like a hypnotized man I went over to their table. "I want
+you to meet Mr. Jarvis," said Bangs, with the air of a man who is giving
+away his aeroplane to a personal friend.
+
+"Glad to meet you," said Jarvis kindly.
+
+"M-m-m-mrugh," says I easily and naturally. Then I sat down on the edge
+of a chair.
+
+Well, sir, Jarvis--it was the real Jarvis all right--was as pleasant a
+fellow as you would ever care to meet. There he was talking away to us
+fishworms just as cordially as if he enjoyed it. He didn't seem to be a
+bit better than we were. I've often noticed that when you meet the very
+greatest people they are that way. It's only the fellows who aren't sure
+they're great and who are pretty sure you aren't sure either, who have
+to put up a haughty front. Jarvis offered us cigarettes and put us so
+much at our ease that we stayed there an hour. It was a dazzling
+experience. He told us a lot about the city, and asked us about
+ourselves and laughed at our experiences. And he told us that he often
+dined there and hoped to see us again. When we got safely outside, after
+having bade him good-by without any sort of a break, I mopped my
+forehead. Then I took off my hat. "Bangs," said I, "you're the world's
+champion. Some day you'll get killed for impudence in the first degree,
+but just now I've got ten cents and I'm going to buy you a big cigar and
+walk home to pay for it."
+
+Incredible as it may sound, that was the beginning of a real friendship
+between the three of us. Jarvis seemed to take a positive pleasure in
+being democratic. And he was wonderfully thoughtful, too. He realized
+instinctively that we had about nine cents apiece in our clothes as a
+rule, and he didn't offer to be gorgeous and buy things we couldn't buy
+back. We got to dropping in at the café once a week or so and eating at
+the same table with him. Why on earth he fancied eating around with
+grubs like us, when he could have been tucking away classy fare up on
+Fifth Avenue, we couldn't imagine. Some people are naturally Bohemian,
+however. It seemed to delight Jarvis to hear us tell about our team, and
+our college, and our prospects, and how lucky we had been up to date,
+not getting stepped on by any financial magnate or other tall city
+monument. He wasn't a talkative man himself. It was especially hard to
+pry any football talk out of him, probably because he was so modest.
+When we insisted he would finally open up, and tell us the inside facts
+about some great college game that we knew by heart from the newspaper
+accounts. And he would mention all the famous players by their first
+names--you can't imagine how much more alarming it sounded than calling
+a president "Teddy"--and we would just sit there and drink it in, and
+watch history from behind the scenes until suddenly he would stop, look
+absent and shut up like a clam. No use trying to turn him on again.
+Presently he would bid us good night and go away. The first time we
+thought we had offended him and we were miserable for a week. But when
+we ran across him again he seemed as pleased as ever to see us. It was
+just moods, after all, we finally decided, and thought no more about
+it. Great men have a right to have moods if they want to. We admired his
+moods as much as the rest of him, and were only glad they weren't
+violent.
+
+It was a couple of months before we got up courage enough to ask him to
+drop in at our room. Even Allie got timid. He explained that he didn't
+want to break the spell. But finally I braced up myself and invited him
+to drop around with us, and he consented as kindly as you please. Came
+right up to our little three by twice and wouldn't even sit in the one
+chair. Sat on the bed and looked over our college pictures, and chatted
+until Allie asked him if he was going back for the big game that fall.
+Then he said sort of abruptly that he couldn't get away, and a few
+minutes afterward he went home. We thought we'd offended him again, but
+a week afterward he turned up and called on us--we'd asked him to drop
+in any time. We decided that he didn't like to have too much familiarity
+about his football career and we respected him for it. It's all right
+for a man like that to be affable and democratic, but he mustn't let you
+crawl all over him. He's got his dignity to maintain.
+
+As the winter came on Jarvis dropped up to see us quite frequently. He
+never asked us to come and see him and we were really a little
+grateful--for I don't believe I should have had the nerve to go bouncing
+into the apartments of a national hero and hobnob with the mile-a-minute
+class. Anyway we didn't expect it or dream of it. And we didn't ask him
+any more questions about himself. We didn't care to try to elbow into
+his circle. If he chose to come slumming and sit around with us, we were
+more than content. We had seen enough of him already to keep us busy
+paralyzing Siwash fellows for a week when we went back to Commencement.
+"Jarvis? Oh, yes. Fact is, he's a friend of ours. Comes up to our rooms
+right along. We happened to meet him in a café. And say, he tells us
+that when he made that fifty-yard run--and so on." We used to practise
+saying things like this naturally and easily. We could just see the
+undergrads at the frat house sitting around in circles and lapping it
+up.
+
+All this time we were plugging away down at the plant, early and late,
+with every ounce of steam we had. There's one good thing about business
+in this Bedlam--when you break in you keep right on going. By the time
+Commencement rolled around we were getting checks with two figures on
+them, and had a better job treed and ready to drop. Ask for a vacation?
+Why, we wouldn't have asked for four days off to go home and help bury
+our worst enemy. That's what business does to the dear old college days
+when it gets a good bite at them. There we were, one year out of Siwash,
+breaking forty-five reunion dates, and never even sitting around with
+our heads in our hands over it. This business bug is a bad, bad biter
+all right. Just let it get its tooth into you, and what do you care if
+some other fellow is smoking your two-quart pipe back in the old chapter
+house? And for that matter, what do you care about anything else until
+you get up far enough to take breath and look around? Sometimes, after a
+couple of weeks of extra hard work, I've taken my mind off invoices long
+enough to wag it around a bit and I've felt like a swimmer coming up
+after a long dive.
+
+We landed those promotions in July and went right after another pair. I
+got mine in August--Allie in September. And along in December they
+called us both up in the office, where the big crash was. He said nice
+things to us about getting a chance to fire our own chauffeurs if we
+kept on tending to business, and first thing we knew we had offices of
+our own in the back of the building, with our names painted on the
+doors, and call-bells that brought stenographers and the same old brand
+of office boys that used to blow us out of the other offices along with
+their cigarette smoke. And we realized then that if we worked like
+thunder for thirty years more and saved our money and made it earn one
+hundred per cent, perhaps some of the real business kings would notice
+us on the street some day. That's about the way the college swelling
+goes down.
+
+All this time we hadn't seen much of Jarvis. He'd stopped coming to the
+café and we'd really been so busy that we almost forgot about him. It's
+simply wonderful the things business will drive out of your mind. It
+wasn't until late in the winter that we realized that we'd probably lost
+track of Jarvis for good--that is, until we climbed up into his set and
+discovered him at some dinner that was a page out of the social
+register. We mixed around a lot more now. We went to the
+million-candle-power restaurants every now and then, and ate a good deal
+more than sixty-five cents' worth apiece without batting an eye; and we
+went to see a play occasionally and didn't climb up into the rarefied
+atmosphere to find our seats, either. And whenever we broke in with the
+limousine crowd we kept a bright lookout for Jarvis. We wanted to see
+him and show him that we were coming along. We wanted him to be proud of
+us. I'd have given all my small bank balance to hear him say: "Fine
+work, old man; keep it up." I'll tell you when a big chap like that
+takes an interest in you, it's just as bracing as a hypodermic of
+ginger. Baccalaureates and inspirational editorials can't touch it.
+
+I was holding down the proud position of shipping clerk and Allie was my
+assistant the next spring, and it seemed as if we had to empty that
+warehouse every twenty-four hours and find the men to load the stuff
+with search-warrants. Help was scandalously scarce. We couldn't have
+worked harder if we had been standing off grizzly bears with brickbats.
+I'd just fired the fourth loafer in one day for trying to roll barrels
+by mental suggestion, when the boss came into my office.
+
+"Can you use an extra man?" he asked me.
+
+"Use him?" says I, swabbing off my forehead--I'd been hustling a few
+barrels myself. "Use him? Say, I'll give him a whole car to load all by
+himself, and if he can get the job finished by yesterday he can have
+another to load for to-day."
+
+"Now, see here," said the boss, sitting down; "this is a peculiar case.
+This chap's been at me for a job for months. There's nothing in the
+office. He's a fine fellow and well educated, but he's on his uppers. He
+can't seem to land anywhere. I'm sorry for him. He looks as if he was
+headed for the bread line. He's too good to roll barrels, but it won't
+hurt him. If you'll take him in and use him I'll give him a place as
+soon as I get it; let me know how he pans out."
+
+"Just ask him to run all the way here," I said, and put my nose down in
+a bill of lading. After a while the door opened and some one said, "Is
+this the shipping clerk?" It was the ghost of a voice I used to know and
+I turned around in a hurry. It was Jarvis.
+
+I don't suppose it is strictly business to cry while you are shaking
+hands with a husky you're just putting into harness at one-fifty per. I
+didn't intend to do it, but somehow when your whole conception of fame
+and glory comes clattering down about your ears, and you find you've got
+to order your star and idol to get a hustle on him and load the car at
+door four damquick, you are likely to do something foolish. I just
+stood and sniveled and let my mouth hang open. Neither of us said a
+word, but presently I put my arm around his shoulders and led him out
+into the shipping room. "There's the foreman," I said, in a voice like a
+wet sponge. "And you report here at six o'clock sharp." Then I went and
+hunted up Allie and for once we let business go hang in business hours.
+We couldn't work. We kept clawing for the solid ground and trying to
+readjust society and the universe and the beacon lights of progress all
+afternoon.
+
+When quitting time came we waited for Jarvis. We didn't say anything,
+but we loaded him into a cab and took him up to the old café. Then he
+told us his story, while we learned a lot of things about glory we
+hadn't even vaguely suspected before. He was one of the greatest
+football players who ever carried a ball, Jarvis was. Of that there was
+no doubt. He admitted it himself then. I might say he confessed it. He'd
+come to his university without any real preparation--you know even in
+the best regulated institutions of learning they sometimes get your
+marks on tackling mixed with your grades on entrance algebra. He'd spent
+two hours a day on football and the rest of his time being a college
+hero. He'd had to work at it like a dog, he said. How he got by the
+exams, he never knew. It seemed to him as if he must have studied in his
+sleep. By the time he graduated he'd had about every honor that has been
+invented for campus consumption. He belonged to the exclusive
+societies. All kinds of big people had shaken hands with him--asked for
+the privilege. He had a scrapbook of newspaper stories about his career
+that weighed four pounds. He knew the differences between eight kinds of
+wine by the taste and he had a perfect education in forkology,
+waltzology, necktiematics, and all the other branches of social science.
+
+He would never forget, he said, how he felt when he was graduated and
+the university moved off behind him and left him alone. It was up to him
+to keep on being a famous character, he felt. His college demanded it.
+He had to make good. But there he was with a magnificent football
+education and no more football to play. His financial training consisted
+in knowing when his bank account was overdrawn. His folks had pretty
+nearly paralyzed themselves putting him through and he wasn't going to
+draw on them any further. He went to New York because it seemed to be
+almost as big as the university, and he started all alone on the job of
+shouldering his way past the captains of finance up to the place where
+his college mates might feel proud of him some more.
+
+The result was so ridiculous that he had to laugh at it himself. He lost
+five yards every time he bucked an office boy. His college friends kept
+inviting him out and he went until they began offering him help. Then he
+cut the whole bunch. He didn't care to have them watch the struggle.
+He'd been in New York two years when he met us, he said, and he hadn't
+earned enough money to pay his room-rent in that time. There were times
+when he might have got a decent little job at twelve dollars per, or so,
+but he would have had to meet the boys who had looked up to him as a
+world-beater and somehow he just couldn't tackle it. When we had come
+over and paid homage to him he saw we had taken him for a successful man
+of the world, as well as a member of the All-America team, and he hadn't
+been able to resist the desire to let two human beings look up to him
+again. He hadn't invited us to his room, he said, because part of the
+time he didn't have a room; and he even confessed that once or twice
+he'd walked up to our rooms from downtown because he was crazy for a
+smoke and didn't have the price.
+
+I guess there never was a more peculiar dinner party in New York. Part
+of the time I sniveled and part of the time Allie sniveled, and once or
+twice we were all three all balled up in our throats. But after a while
+we braced up and I told Jarvis what the Boss had told me, and we drank a
+toast to the glad new days, and another to success, and another to
+Jarvis, the coming business pillar, and some more to our private yachts
+and country homes, and to Commencement reunions, and this and that. Then
+we chartered a sea-going cab and took Jarvis home with us. We made him
+sleep in the bed while we slept on the floor, and the next morning we
+loaned him a pair of overalls that we had honorably retired and we all
+went down to work together.
+
+The next three months were perfectly ridiculous. We simply couldn't
+order Jarvis around. Suppose you had to ask the Statue of Liberty to get
+a move on and scrub the floors? We couldn't get our ingrained awe of
+that freight hustler out of our systems. Of course when any one was
+around we had to keep up appearances, but when I was alone and I had
+something for Jarvis to do I'd call him in and get at it about this way:
+"Er--say, Jarvis, could you help me out on a little matter, if you have
+the time? You know there's a shipment for Pittsburgh that's got to go
+out by noon. I think the car is at door 6. Those barrels ought to be put
+into the car right away, and if you'd see that they get in there I'd be
+very much obliged to you. I'd attend to it myself, but they've given me
+a lot of stuff to go over here."
+
+Then Jarvis would grin cheerfully and hustle those barrels in before I
+could get over blushing. If you don't believe football has its
+advantages in after life you ought to watch a prize tackle waltzing a
+three-hundred-pound barrel through a car door.
+
+By day we ordered Jarvis about in this fashion, and made him earn his
+one-fifty with the rest of the red-shirted gang. But at six o'clock we
+dropped all that like a hot poker. Nights we were his adoring young
+friends again. We sat together in restaurants and said "sir" to him to
+his infinite disgust, and made him tell over and over again the stories
+of the big games and the grand doings of the old days. When his
+promotion came, three months later, and he went into a small job in the
+office, with a traveling job looming up in the offing, we held a
+celebration that set us back about half the price of a railroad ticket
+home. It meant more to us than it did to him. To him it was three
+dollars more a week, congenial work and a chance. But to us it was the
+release of a great man from grinding captivity--a racehorse rescued from
+the shafts of a garbage cart; a Richard the Lion-hearted hauled from the
+gloomy dungeon, where he had had to peel his own potatoes, and set on
+the road to kingly pomp and circumstance again. Excuse me for this
+frightful mess of language. I can't help getting a little squashy with
+my adjectives when I think of that glorious banquet night.
+
+I'm glad to say that Jarvis kept coming along after that. He developed
+into a first-class salesman, and in a couple of years he came in from
+the road and took a desk in the house with his name on the side in gilt
+letters. When this happened we made him look up every one of his old
+college friends again. He hesitated a little, but we got behind him and
+pushed. We pushed him into his college club and back to Commencement,
+and we really pushed him out of our life--for every one was glad to see
+him, of course, and to his amazement he found that he was still a grand
+old college institution among the alumni. So he trained with his own
+crowd after that, but even now we go over to his club and dine with him
+at least once a year--always on some anniversary or other. And for the
+last two years he has been sending his machine around for us.
+
+Oh, no, you don't! I'm paying for this lunch, young fellow. Don't fight
+any one about paying for your lunch just because you still have the
+price. It's a privilege we older chaps insist on with you newcomers
+anyway. And remember, there is always a bunch of us before the fire at
+the club Saturday evenings, and we don't talk business. While you're
+waiting for that job, don't you dare miss a meeting. And say--one thing
+more. Don't be afraid of those blamed office boys. They're all a bluff.
+I'm getting so I can fire them without even getting pale.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+Minor changes have been made to make punctuation and spelling
+consistent; every other effort has been made to remain true to the
+original book.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of At Good Old Siwash, by George Fitch
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of At Good Old Siwash, by George Fitch.
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of At Good Old Siwash, by George Fitch
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: At Good Old Siwash
+
+Author: George Fitch
+
+Release Date: April 25, 2008 [EBook #25163]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AT GOOD OLD SIWASH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Janet Keller, D. Alexander and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
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+
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+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>AT<br />
+
+GOOD OLD SIWASH</h1>
+
+<p class="gap">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>BY GEORGE FITCH</h2>
+
+<p class="gap">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>ILLUSTRATED</h3>
+
+<p class="gap">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>BOSTON<br />
+LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY<br />
+1916</h3>
+
+<p class="smallgap">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h3><i>Copyright, 1910, 1911,</i></h3>
+<h3><span class="smcap">By the Curtis Publishing Company.</span></h3>
+
+<h3><i>Copyright, 1911,</i></h3>
+<h3><span class="smcap">By Little, Brown, and Company.</span></h3>
+
+<h3><i>All rights reserved</i></h3>
+
+<h3>Printers</h3>
+<h4><span class="smcap">S. J. Parkhill &amp; Co., Boston, U.S.A.</span></h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><a name="illo_1" id="illo_1"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 352px;">
+<img src="images/i003.jpg" class="ispace" width="352" height="500" alt="Twenty-five yards with four Muggledorfer men hanging on
+his legs
+Frontispiece. See page 19" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Twenty-five yards with four Muggledorfer men hanging on
+his legs<br />
+
+Frontispiece. <i>Page <a href="#Page_19">19</a></i></span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>AT GOOD OLD SIWASH</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h3>
+
+<p>Little did I think, during the countless occasions on which I have
+skipped blithely over the preface of a book in order to plunge into the
+plot, that I should be called upon to write a preface myself some day.
+And little have I realized until just now the extreme importance to the
+author of having his preface read.</p>
+
+<p>I want this preface to be read, though I have an uneasy premonition that
+it is going to be skipped as joyously as ever I skipped a preface
+myself. I want the reader to toil through my preface in order to save
+him the task of trying to follow a plot through this book. For if he
+attempts to do this he will most certainly dislocate something about
+himself very seriously. I have found it impossible, in writing of
+college days which are just one deep-laid scheme after another, to
+confine myself to one plot. How could I describe in one plot the life of
+the student who carries out an average of three plots a day? It is
+unreasonable. So I have done the next best thing. There is a plot in
+every chapter. This requires the use of upwards of a dozen villains, an
+almost equal number of heroes, and a whole bouquet of heroines. But I
+do not begrudge this extravagance. It is necessary, and that settles it.</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, I want to answer in this preface a number of questions by
+readers who kindly consented to become interested in the stories when
+they appeared in the <i>Saturday Evening Post</i>. Siwash isn't Michigan in
+disguise. It isn't Kansas. It isn't Knox. It isn't Minnesota. It isn't
+Tuskegee, Texas, or Tufts. It is just Siwash College. I built it myself
+with a typewriter out of memories, legends, and contributed tales from a
+score of colleges. I have tried to locate it myself a dozen times, but I
+can't. I have tried to place my thumb on it firmly and say, "There, darn
+you, stay put." But no halfback was ever so elusive as this infernal
+college. Just as I have it definitely located on the Knox College
+campus, which I myself once infested, I look up to find it on the Kansas
+prairies. I surround it with infinite caution and attempt to nail it
+down there. Instead, I find it in Minnesota with a strong Norwegian
+accent running through the course of study. Worse than that, I often
+find it in two or three places at once. It is harder to corner than a
+flea. I never saw such a peripatetic school.</p>
+
+<p>That is only the least of my troubles, too. The college itself is never
+twice the same. Sometimes I am amazed at its size and perfection, by the
+grandeur of its gymnasium and the colossal lines of its stadium. But at
+other times I cannot find the stadium at all, and the gymnasium has
+shrunk until it looks amazingly like the old wooden barn in which we
+once built up Sandow biceps at Knox. I never saw such a college to get
+lost in, either. I know as well as anything that to get to the Eta Bita
+Pie house, you go north from the old bricks, past the new science hall
+and past Browning Hall. But often when I start north from the campus, I
+find my way blocked by the stadium, and when I try to dodge it, I run
+into the Alfalfa Delt House, and the Eatemalive boarding club, and other
+places which belong properly to the south. And when I go south I
+frequently lose sight of the college altogether, and can't for the life
+of me remember what the library tower looks like or whether the
+theological school is just falling down, or is to be built next year; or
+whether I ought to turn to my right, and ask for directions at Prexie's
+house, or turn to my left and crawl under a freight train which blocks a
+crossing on the Hither, Yonder and Elsewhere Railroad. If you think it
+is an easy task to carry a whole college in your head without getting it
+jumbled, just try it a while.</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, the Siwash people puzzle me. Professor Grubb is always a
+trial. That man alternates a smooth-shaven face with a full beard in the
+most startling manner. Petey Simmons is short and flaxen-haired, long
+and black-haired, and wide and hatchet-faced in turns, depending on the
+illustrator. I never know Ole Skjarsen when I see him for the same
+reason. As for Prince Hogboom, Allie Bangs, Keg Rearick and the rest of
+them, nobody knows how they look but the artists who illustrated the
+stories; and as I read each number and viewed the smiling faces of
+these students, I murmured, "Goodness, how you have changed!"</p>
+
+<p>So I have struggled along as best I could to administer the affairs of a
+college which is located nowhere, has no student body, has no endowment,
+never looks the same twice, and cannot be reached by any reliable route.
+The situation is impossible. I must locate it somewhere. If you are
+interested in the college when you have read these few stories, suppose
+you hunt for it wherever college boys are full of applied deviltry and
+college girls are distractingly fair; where it is necessary to win
+football games in order to be half-way contented with the universe;
+where the spring weather is too wonderful to be wasted on College
+Algebra or History of Art; and where, whatever you do, or whoever you
+like, or however you live, you can't forget it, no matter how long you
+work or worry afterward.</p>
+
+<p>There! I can't mark it on the map, but if you have ever worried a
+college faculty you'll know the way.</p>
+
+<p class="smcap right">George Fitch.</p>
+
+<p class="left">July, 1911.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" width="70%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="10" summary="CONTENTS">
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td>
+<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="right"><span class="smcap">Page</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">I</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Ole Skjarsen's First Touchdown</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#AT_GOOD_OLD_SIWASH">1</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">II</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Initiating Ole</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">28</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">III</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">When Greek meets Grouch</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">50</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">IV</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Funeral that Flashed in the Pan</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">78</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">V</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Colleges While You Wait</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">105</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VI</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Greek Double Cross</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">135</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VII</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Taking Pace from Father Time</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">169</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">IX</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Cupid&mdash;that Old College Chum</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">223</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">X</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Votes from Women</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">253</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XI</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Sic Transit Gloria All-America</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">284</a></td></tr>
+
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" width="70%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="10" summary="ILLUSTRATIONS">
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="right"><span class="smcap">Page</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Twenty-five yards with four Muggledorfer<br />
+men hanging on his legs</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_1"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">"Aye ent care to stop," he said. "Aye kent suit<br />
+you, Master Bost"</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_2">20</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">He pulled himself together and touched Ole gently</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_3">26</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">There wasn't a college anywhere around us that<br />
+didn't have Ole's hoofmarks all over its pride</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_4">33</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Martha caused some mild sensation</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_5">63</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">My, but that girl was a wonder!</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_6">74</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">"Har's das spy!" he yelled. "Kill him, fallers;<br />
+he ban a spy!"</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_7">120</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">We spent another five minutes hoisting him aboard<br />
+a prehistoric plug</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_8">125</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">He may have been fat, but how he could run!</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_9">132</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Naturally I was somewhat dazzled</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_10">147</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">He was so bashful that his voice blushed when he<br />
+used it</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_11">151</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">With our colors on and four particularly wicked-looking<br />
+chair legs in our hands</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_12">167</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Our peculiar style of pushing a football right<br />
+through the thorax of the whole middle west</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_13">205</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">"If you don't like that beanbag, eat it"</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_14">220</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">He invited Miss Spencer to go street-car riding<br />
+with him</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_15">246</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">You can always spot these family friends</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_16">252</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">It was a blow between the eyes</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_17">264</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">"How are all the other good old chaps?" she said</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_18">270</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Why, they even made us cut chapel to go walking<br />
+with them</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illo_19">280</a></td></tr>
+
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="AT_GOOD_OLD_SIWASH" id="AT_GOOD_OLD_SIWASH" />AT GOOD OLD SIWASH</h2>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>OLE SKJARSEN'S FIRST TOUCHDOWN</h3>
+
+<p>Am I going to the game Saturday? Am I? Me? Am I going to eat some more
+food this year? Am I going to draw my pay this month? Am I going to do
+any more breathing after I get this lungful used up? All foolish
+questions, pal. Very silly conversation. Pshaw!</p>
+
+<p>Am I going to the game, you ask me? Is the sun going to get up
+to-morrow? You couldn't keep me away from that game if you put a
+protective tariff of seventy-eight per cent ad valorem, whatever that
+means, on the front gate. I came out to this town on business, and I'll
+have to take an extra fare train home to make up the time; but what of
+that? I'm going to the game, and when the Siwash team comes out I'm
+going to get up and give as near a correct imitation of a Roman mob and
+a Polish riot as my throat will stand; and if we put a crimp in the
+large-footed, humpy-shouldered behemoths we're going up against this
+afternoon, I'm going out to-night and burn the City Hall. Any Siwash man
+who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>is a gentleman would do it. I'll probably have to run like thunder
+to beat some of them to it.</p>
+
+<p>You know how it is, old man. Or maybe you don't, because you made all
+your end runs on the Glee Club. But I played football all through my
+college course and the microbe is still there. In the fall I think
+football, talk football, dream football, even though I haven't had a
+suit on for six years. And when I go out to the field and see little old
+Siwash lining up against a bunch of overgrown hippos from a university
+with a catalogue as thick as a city directory, the old
+mud-and-perspiration smell gets in my nostrils, and the desire to get
+under the bunch and feel the feet jabbing into my ribs boils up so
+strong that I have to hold on to myself with both hands. If you've never
+sat on a hard board and wanted to be between two halfbacks with your
+hands on their shoulders, and the quarter ready to sock a ball into your
+solar plexus, and eleven men daring you to dodge 'em, and nine thousand
+friends and enemies raising Cain and keeping him well propped up in the
+grandstands&mdash;if you haven't had that want you wouldn't know a healthy,
+able-bodied want if you ran into it on the street.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I never got any further along than a scrub. But what's the
+odds? A broken bone feels just as grand to a scrub as to a star. I
+sometimes think a scrub gets more real football knowledge than a varsity
+man, because he doesn't have to addle his brain by worrying about
+holding his job and keeping <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>his wind, and by dreaming that he has
+fumbled a punt and presented ninety-five yards to the hereditary enemies
+of his college. I played scrub football five years, four of 'em under
+Bost, the greatest coach who ever put wings on the heels of a
+two-hundred-pound hunk of meat; and while my ribs never lasted long
+enough to put me on the team, what I didn't learn about the game you
+could put in the other fellow's eye.</p>
+
+<p>Say, but it's great, learning football under a good coach. It's the
+finest training a man can get anywhere on this old globule. Football is
+only the smallest thing you learn. You learn how to be patient when what
+you want to do is to chew somebody up and spit him into the gutter. You
+learn to control your temper when it is on the high speed, with the
+throttle jerked wide open and buzzing like a hornet convention. You
+learn, by having it told you, just how small and foolish and
+insignificant you are, and how well this earth could stagger along
+without you if some one were to take a fly-killer and mash you with it.
+And you learn all this at the time of life when your head is swelling up
+until you mistake it for a planet, and regard whatever you say as a
+volcanic disturbance.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose you think, like the rest of the chaps who never came out to
+practice but observed the game from the dollar-and-a-half seats, that
+being coached in football is like being instructed in German or
+calculus. You are told what to do and how to do <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>it, and then you
+recite. Far from it, my boy! They don't bother telling you what to do
+and how to do it on a big football field. Mostly they tell you what to
+do and how you do it. And they do it artistically, too. They use plenty
+of language. A football coach is picked out for his ready tongue. He
+must be a conversationalist. He must be able to talk to a greenhorn,
+with fine shoulders and a needle-shaped head, until that greenhorn would
+pick up the ball and take it through a Sioux war dance to get away from
+the conversation. You can't reason with football men. They're not
+logical, most of them. They are selected for their heels and shoulders
+and their leg muscles, and not for their ability to look at you with
+luminous eyes and say: "Yes, Professor, I think I understand." The way
+to make 'em understand is to talk about them. Any man can understand you
+while you are telling him that if he were just a little bit slower he
+would have to be tied to the earth to keep up with it. That hurts his
+pride. And when you hurt his pride he takes it out on whatever is in
+front of him&mdash;which is the other team. Never get in front of a football
+player when you are coaching him.</p>
+
+<p>But this brings me to the subject of Bost again. Bost is still coaching
+Siwash. This makes his 'steenth year. I guess he can stay there forever.
+He's coached all these years and has never used the same adjective to
+the same man twice. There's a record for you! He's a little man, Bost
+is. He played end <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>on some Western team when he only weighed one hundred
+and forty. Got his football knowledge there. But where he got his
+vocabulary is still a mystery. He has a way of convincing a man that a
+dill pickle would make a better guard than he is, and of making that man
+so jealous of the pickle that he will perform perfectly unreasonable
+feats for a week to beat it out for the place. He has a way of saying
+"Hurry up," with a few descriptive adjectives tacked on, that makes a
+man rub himself in the stung place for an hour; and oh, how mad he can
+make you while he is telling you pleasantly that while the little fellow
+playing against you is only a prep and has sloping shoulders and weighs
+one hundred and eleven stripped, he is making you look like a bale of
+hay that has been dumped by mistake on an athletic field. And when he
+gets a team in the gymnasium between halves, with the game going wrong,
+and stands up before them and sizes up their insect nerve and rubber
+backbone and hereditary awkwardness and incredible talent in doing the
+wrong thing, to say nothing of describing each individual blunder in
+that queer nasal clack of his&mdash;well, I'd rather be tied up in a great
+big frying-pan over a good hot stove for the same length of time, any
+day in the week. The reason Bost is a great coach is because his men
+don't dare play poorly. When they do he talks to them. If he would only
+hit them, or skin them by inches, or shoot at them, they wouldn't mind
+it so much; but when you get <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>on the field with him and realize that if
+you miss a tackle he is going to get you out before the whole gang and
+tell you what a great mistake the Creator made when He put joints in
+your arms instead of letting them stick out stiff as they do any other
+signpost, you're not going to miss that tackle, that's all.</p>
+
+<p>When Bost came to Siwash he succeeded a line of coaches who had been
+telling the fellows to get down low and hit the line hard, and had been
+showing them how to do it very patiently. Nice fellows, those coaches.
+Perfect gentlemen. Make you proud to associate with them. They could
+take a herd of green farmer boys, with wrists like mules' ankles, and by
+Thanksgiving they would have them familiar with all the rudiments of the
+game. By that time the season would be over and all the schools in the
+vicinity would have beaten us by big scores. The next year the last
+year's crop of big farmer boys would stay at home to husk corn, and the
+coach would begin all over on a new crop. The result was, we were a dub
+school at football. Any school that could scare up a good rangy halfback
+and a line that could hold sheep could get up an adding festival at our
+expense any time. We lived in a perpetual state of fear. Some day we
+felt that the normal school would come down and beat us. That would be
+the limit of disgrace. After that there would be nothing left to do but
+disband the college and take to drink to forget the past.</p>
+
+<p>But Bost changed all that in one year. He didn't <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>care to show any one
+how to play football. He was just interested in making the player afraid
+not to play it. When you went down the field on a punt you knew that if
+you missed your man he would tell you when you came back that two stone
+hitching-posts out of three could get past you in a six-foot alley. If
+you missed a punt you could expect to be told that you might catch a
+haystack by running with your arms wide open, but that was no way to
+catch a football. Maybe things like that don't sound jabby when two
+dozen men hear them! They kept us catching punts between classes, and
+tackling each other all the way to our rooms and back. We simply had to
+play football to keep from being bawled out. It's an awful thing to have
+a coach with a tongue like a cheese knife swinging away at you, and to
+know that if you get mad and quit, no one but the dear old Coll. will
+suffer&mdash;but it gets the results. They use the same system in the East,
+but there they only swear at a man, I believe. Siwash is a mighty proper
+college and you can't swear on its campus, whatever else you do.
+Swearing is only a lazy man's substitute for thinking, anyway; and Bost
+wasn't lazy. He preferred the descriptive; he sat up nights thinking it
+out.</p>
+
+<p>We began to see the results before Bost had been tracing our pedigrees
+for two weeks. First game of the season was with that little old dinky
+Normal School which had been scaring us so for the past five years. We
+had been satisfied to push some awkward <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>halfback over the line once,
+and then hold on to the enemy so tight he couldn't run; and we started
+out that year in the same old way. First half ended 0 to 0, with our
+boys pretty satisfied because they had kept the ball in Normal's
+territory. Bost led the team and the substitutes into the overgrown barn
+we used for a gymnasium, and while we were still patting ourselves
+approvingly in our minds he cut loose:</p>
+
+<p>"You pasty-faced, overfed, white-livered beanbag experts, what do you
+mean by running a beauty show instead of a football game?" he yelled.
+"Do you suppose I came out here to be art director of a statuary
+exhibit? Does any one of you imagine for a holy minute that he knows the
+difference between a football game and ushering in a church? Don't fool
+yourselves. You don't; you don't know anything. All you ever knew about
+football I could carve on granite and put in my eye and never feel it.
+Nothing to nothing against a crowd of farmer boys who haven't known a
+football from a duck's egg for more than a week! Bah! If I ever turned
+the Old Folks' Home loose on you doll babies they'd run up a century
+while you were hunting for your handkerchiefs. Jackson, what do you
+suppose a halfback is for? I don't want cloak models. I want a man who
+can stick his head down and run. Don't be afraid of that bean of yours;
+it hasn't got anything worth saving in it. When you get the ball you're
+supposed to run with it and not sit around trying to hatch it. You,
+Saunders! You held that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>other guard just like a sweet-pea vine. Where
+did you ever learn that sweet, lovely way of falling down on your nose
+when a real man sneezes at you? Did you ever hear of sand? Eat it! Eat
+it! Fill yourself up with it. I want you to get in that line this half
+and stop something or I'll make you play left end in a fancy-work club.
+Johnson, the only way to get you around the field is to put you on
+wheels and haul you. Next time you grow fast to the ground I'm going to
+violate some forestry regulations and take an axe to you. Same to you,
+Briggs. You'd make the All-American boundary posts, but that's all.
+Vance, I picked you for a quarterback, but I made a mistake; you ought
+to be sorting eggs. That ball isn't red hot. You don't have to let go of
+it as soon as you get it. Don't be afraid, nobody will step on you. This
+isn't a rude game. It's only a game of post-office. You needn't act so
+nervous about it. Maybe some of the big girls will kiss you, but it
+won't hurt."</p>
+
+<p>Bost stopped for breath and eyed us. We were a sick-looking crowd. You
+could almost see the remarks sticking into us and quivering. We had come
+in feeling pretty virtuous, and what we were getting was a hideous
+surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I want to tell this tea-party something," continued Bost. "Either
+you're going out on that field and score thirty points this last half or
+I'm going to let the girls of Siwash play your football for you. I'm
+tired of coaching men that aren't good <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>at anything but falling down
+scientifically when they're tackled. There isn't a broken nose among
+you. Every one of you will run back five yards to pick out a soft spot
+to fall on. It's got to stop. You're going to hold on to that ball this
+half and take it places. If some little fellow from Normal crosses his
+fingers and says 'naughty, naughty,' don't fall on the ball and yell
+'down' until they can hear it uptown. Thirty points is what I want out
+of you this half, and if you don't get 'em&mdash;well, you just dare to come
+back here without them, that's all. Now get out on that field and jostle
+somebody. Git!"</p>
+
+<p>Did we git? Well, rather. We were so mad our clothes smoked. We would
+have quit the game right there and resigned from the team, but we didn't
+dare to. Bost would have talked to us some more. And we didn't dare not
+to make those thirty points, either. It was an awful tough job, but we
+did it with a couple over. We raged like wild beasts. We scared those
+gentle Normalites out of their boots. I can't imagine how we ever got it
+into our heads that they could play football, anyway. When it was all
+over we went back to the gymnasium feeling righteously triumphant, and
+had another hour with Bost in which he took us all apart without
+an&aelig;sthetics, and showed us how Nature would have done a better job if
+she had used a better grade of lumber in our composition.</p>
+
+<p>That day made the Siwash team. The school went wild over the score. Bost
+rounded up two or three <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>more good players, and every afternoon he
+lashed us around the field with that wire-edged tongue of his. On
+Saturdays we played, and oh, how we worked! In the first half we were
+afraid of what Bost would say to us when we came off the field. In the
+second half we were mad at what he had said. And how he did drive us
+down the field in practice! I can remember whole cross sections of his
+talk yet:</p>
+
+<p>"Faster, faster, you scows. Line up. Quick! Johnson, are you waiting for
+a stone-mason to set you? Snap the ball. Tear into them. Low! Low! Hi-i!
+You end, do you think you're the quarter pole in a horse race? Nine men
+went past you that time. If you can't touch 'em drop 'em a souvenir
+card. Line up. Faster, faster! Oh, thunder, hurry up! If you ran a
+funeral, center, the corpse would spoil on your hands. Wow! Fumble! Drop
+on that ball. Drop on it! Hogboom, you'd fumble a loving-cup. Use your
+hand instead of your jaw to catch that ball. It isn't good to eat.
+That's four chances you've had. I could lose two games a day if I had
+you all the time. Now try that signal again&mdash;low, you linemen; there's
+no girls watching you. Snap it; snap it. Great Scott! Say, Hogboom, come
+here. When you get that ball, don't think we gave it to you to nurse.
+You're supposed to start the same day with the line. We give you that
+ball to take forward. Have you got to get a legal permit to start those
+legs of yours? You'd make a good vault to store footballs in, but you're
+too stationary <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>for a fullback. Now I'll give you one more chance&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And maybe Hogboom wouldn't go some with that chance!</p>
+
+<p>In a month we had a team that wouldn't have used past Siwash teams to
+hold its sweaters. It was mad all the time, and it played the game
+carnivorously. Siwash was delirious with joy. The whole school turned
+out for practice, and to see those eleven men snapping through signals
+up and down the field as fast as an ordinary man could run just
+congested us with happiness. You've no idea what a lovely time of the
+year autumn is when you can go out after classes and sit on a pine seat
+in the soft dusk and watch your college team pulling off end runs in as
+pretty formation as if they were chorus girls, while you discuss lazily
+with your friends just how many points it is going to run up on the
+neighboring schools. I never expect to be a Captain of Industry, but it
+couldn't make me feel any more contented or powerful or complacent than
+to be a busted-up scrub in Siwash, with a team like that to watch. I'm
+pretty sure of that.</p>
+
+<p>But, happy as we were, Bost wasn't nearly content. He had ideals. I
+believe one of them must have been to run that team through a couple of
+brick flats without spoiling the formation. Nothing satisfied him. He
+was particularly distressed about the fullback. Hogboom was a good
+fellow and took signal practice perfectly, but he was no fiend. He
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>lacked the vivacity of a real, first-class Bengal tiger. He wouldn't
+eat any one alive. He'd run until he was pulled down, but you never
+expected him to explode in the midst of seven hostiles and ricochet down
+the field for forty yards. He never jumped over two men and on to
+another, and he never dodged two ways at once and laid out three men
+with stiff arms on his way to the goal. It wasn't his style. He was good
+for two and a half yards every time, but that didn't suit Bost. He was
+after statistics, and what does a three-yard buck amount to when you
+want 70 to 0 scores?</p>
+
+<p>The result of this dissatisfaction was Ole Skjarsen. Late in September
+Bost disappeared for three days and came back leading Ole by a rope&mdash;at
+least, he was towing him by an old carpet-bag when we sighted him. Bost
+found him in a lumber camp, he afterward told us, and had to explain to
+him what a college was before he would quit his job. He thought it was
+something good to eat at first, I believe. Ole was a timid young
+Norwegian giant, with a rick of white hair and a re&euml;nforced concrete
+physique. He escaped from his clothes in all directions, and was so
+green and bashful that you would have thought we were cannibals from the
+way he shied at us&mdash;though, as that was the year the bright hat-ribbons
+came in, I can't blame him. He wasn't like anything we had ever seen
+before in college. He was as big as a carthorse, as graceful as a dray
+and as meek as a missionary. He had a double width smile and a thin
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>little old faded voice that made you think you could tip him over and
+shine your shoes on him with impunity. But I wouldn't have tried it for
+a month's allowance. His voice and his arms didn't harmonize worth a
+cent. They were as big as ordinary legs&mdash;those arms, and they ended in
+hands that could have picked up a football and mislaid it among their
+fingers.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder Ole was a sensation. He didn't look exactly like football
+material to us, I'll admit. He seemed more especially designed for light
+derrick work. But we trusted Bost implicitly by that time and we gave
+him a royal reception. We crowded around him as if he had been a T. R.
+capture straight from Africa. Everybody helped him register third prep,
+with business-college extras. Then we took him out, harnessed him in
+football armor, and set to work to teach him the game.</p>
+
+<p>Bost went right to work on Ole in a businesslike manner. He tossed him
+the football and said: "Catch it." Ole watched it sail past and then
+tore after it like a pup retrieving a stick. He got it in a few minutes
+and brought it back to where Bost was raving.</p>
+
+<p>"See here, you overgrown fox terrier," he shouted, "catch it on the fly.
+Here!" He hurled it at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Aye ent seen no fly," said Ole, allowing the ball to pass on as he
+conversed.</p>
+
+<p>"You cotton-headed Scandinavian cattleship ballast, catch that ball in
+your arms when I throw it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>to you, and don't let go of it!" shrieked
+Bost, shooting it at him again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oll right," said Ole patiently. He cornered the ball after a short
+struggle and stood hugging it faithfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Toss it back, toss it back!" howled Bost, jumping up and down.</p>
+
+<p>"Yu tal me to hold it," said Ole reproachfully, hugging it tighter than
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>"Drop it, you Mammoth Cave of ignorance!" yelled Bost. "If I had your
+head I'd sell it for cordwood. Drop it!"</p>
+
+<p>Ole dropped the ball placidly. "Das ban fule game," he smiled dazedly.
+"Aye ent care for it. Eny faller got a Yewsharp?"</p>
+
+<p>That was the opening chapter of Ole's instruction. The rest were just
+like it. You had to tell him to do a thing. You then had to show him how
+to do it. You then had to tell him how to stop doing it. After that you
+had to explain that he wasn't to refrain forever&mdash;just until he had to
+do it again. Then you had to persuade him to do it again. He was as
+good-natured as a lost puppy, and just as hard to reason with. In three
+nights Bost was so hoarse that he couldn't talk. He had called Ole
+everything in the dictionary that is fit to print; and the knowledge
+that Ole didn't understand more than a hundredth part of it, and didn't
+mind that, was wormwood to his soul.</p>
+
+<p>For all that, we could see that if any one could <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>teach Ole the game he
+would make a fine player. He was as hard as flint and so fast on his
+feet that we couldn't tackle him any more than we could have tackled a
+jack-rabbit. He learned to catch the ball in a night, and as for
+defense&mdash;his one-handed catches of flying players would have made a
+National League fielder envious. But with all of it he was perfectly
+useless. You had to start him, stop him, back him, speed him up,
+throttle him down and run him off the field just as if he had been a
+close-coupled, next year's model scootcart. If we could have rigged up a
+driver's seat and chauffeured Ole, it would have been all right. But
+every other method of trying to get him to understand what he was
+expected to do was a failure. He just grinned, took orders, executed
+them, and waited for more. When a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound man takes
+a football, wades through eleven frantic scrubs, shakes them all off,
+and then stops dead with a clear field to the goal before him&mdash;because
+his instructions ran out when he shook the last scrub&mdash;you can be
+pardoned for feeling hopeless about him.</p>
+
+<p>That was what happened the day before the Muggledorfer game. Bost had
+been working Ole at fullback all evening. He and the captain had steered
+him up and down the field as carefully as if he had been a sea-going
+yacht. It was a wonderful sight. Ole was under perfect control. He
+advanced the ball five yards, ten yards, or twenty at command. Nothing
+could stop him. The scrubs represented only so <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>many doormats to him.
+Every time he made a play he stopped at the latter end of it for
+instructions.</p>
+
+<p>When he stopped the last time, with nothing before him but the goal, and
+asked placidly, "Vere skoll I take das ball now, Master Bost?" I thought
+the coach would expire of the heat. He positively steamed with
+suppressed emotion. He swelled and got purple about the face. We were
+alarmed and were getting ready to hoop him like a barrel when he found
+his tongue at last.</p>
+
+<p>"You pale-eyed, prehistoric mudhead," he spluttered, "I've spent a week
+trying to get through that skull lining of yours. It's no use, you field
+boulder. Where do you keep your brains? Give me a chance at them. I just
+want to get into them one minute and stir them up with my finger. To
+think that I have to use you to play football when they are paying five
+dollars and a half for ox meat in Kansas City. Skjarsen, do you know
+anything at all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aye ban getting gude eddication," said Ole serenely. "Aye tank I ban
+college faller purty sune, I don't know. I like I skoll understand all
+das har big vorts yu make."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll understand them, I don't think," moaned Bost. "You couldn't
+understand a swift kick in the ribs. You are a fool. Understand that,
+muttonhead?"</p>
+
+<p>Ole understood. "Vy for yu call me fule?" he said indignantly. "Aye du
+yust vat you say."</p>
+
+<p>"Ar-r-r-r!" bubbled Bost, walking around himself <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>three or four times.
+"You do just what I say! Of course you do. Did I tell you to stop in the
+middle of the field? What would Muggledorfer do to you if you stopped
+there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yu ent tal me to go on," said Ole sullenly. "Aye go on, Aye gass, pooty
+qveek den."</p>
+
+<p>"You bet you'll go on," said Bost. "Now, look here, you sausage
+material, to-morrow you play fullback. You stop everything that comes at
+you from the other side. Hear? You catch the ball when it comes to you.
+Hear? And when they give you the ball you take it, and don't you dare to
+stop with it. Get that? Can I get that into your head without a drill
+and a blast? If you dare to stop with that ball I'll ship you back to
+the lumber camp in a cattle car. Stop in the middle of the field&mdash;Ow!"</p>
+
+<p>But at this point we took Bost away.</p>
+
+<p>The next afternoon we dressed Ole up in his armor&mdash;he invariably got it
+on wrong side out if we didn't help him&mdash;and took him out to the field.
+We confidently expected to promenade all over Muggledorfer&mdash;their coach
+was an innocent child beside Bost&mdash;and that was the reason why Ole was
+going to play. It didn't matter much what he did.</p>
+
+<p>Ole was just coming to a boil when we got him into his clothes. Bost's
+remarks had gotten through his hide at last. He was pretty slow, Ole
+was, but he had begun getting mad the night before and had kept at the
+job all night and all morning. By afternoon he was seething, mostly in
+Norwegian. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>injustice of being called a muttonhead all week for not
+obeying orders, and then being called a mudhead for stopping for orders,
+churned his soul, to say nothing of his language. He only averaged one
+English word in three, as he told us on the way out that to-day he was
+going to do exactly as he had been told or fill a martyr's grave&mdash;only
+that wasn't the way he put it.</p>
+
+<p>The Muggledorfers were a pruny-looking lot. We had the game won when our
+team came out and glared at them. Bost had filled most of the positions
+with regular young mammoths, and when you dressed them up in football
+armor they were enough to make a Dreadnought a little nervous. The
+Muggleses kicked off to our team, and for a few plays we plowed along
+five or ten yards at a time. Then Ole was given the ball. He went
+twenty-five yards. Any other man would have been crushed to earth in
+five. He just waded through the middle of the line and went down the
+field, a moving mass of wriggling men. It was a wonderful play. They
+disinterred him at last and he started straight across the field for
+Bost.</p>
+
+<p>"Aye ent mean to stop, Master Bost," he shouted. "Dese fallers har, dey
+squash me down&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>We hauled him into line and went to work again. Ole had performed so
+well that the captain called his signal again. This time I hope I may be
+roasted in a subway in July if Ole didn't run twenty-five yards with
+four Muggledorfer men hanging on his legs. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>We stood up and yelled until
+our teeth ached. It took about five minutes to get Ole dug out, and then
+he started for Bost again.</p>
+
+<p>"Honest, Master Bost, Aye ent mean to stop," he said imploringly. "Aye
+yust tal you, dese fallers ban devils. Aye fule dem naxt time&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Line up and shut up," the captain shouted. The ball wasn't over twenty
+yards from the line, and as a matter of course the quarter shot it back
+to Ole. He put his head down, gave one mad-bull plunge, laid a windrow
+of Muggledorfer players out on either side, and shot over the goal line
+like a locomotive.</p>
+
+<p>We rose up to cheer a few lines, but stopped to stare. Ole didn't stop
+at the goal line. He didn't stop at the fence. He put up one hand,
+hurdled it, and disappeared across the campus like a young whirlwind.</p>
+
+<p>"He doesn't know enough to stop!" yelled Bost, rushing up to the fence.
+"Hustle up, you fellows, and bring him back!"</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_2" id="illo_2" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i032.jpg" class="ispace" width="500" height="339" alt="&quot;&quot;Aye ent care to stop,&quot; he said &quot;Aye kent suit you,
+Master Bost&quot;
+
+See page 24" title="" />
+
+<span class="caption">&quot;Aye ent care to stop,&quot; he said &quot;Aye kent suit you,
+Master Bost&quot;<br />
+
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_24">24</a></i></span></div>
+
+<p>Three or four of us jumped the fence, but it was a hopeless game. Ole
+was disappearing up the campus and across the street. The Muggledorfer
+team was nonplussed and sort of indignant. To be bowled over by a
+cyclone, and then to have said cyclone break up the game by running away
+with the ball was to them a new idea in football. It wasn't to those of
+us who knew Ole, however. One of us telephoned down to the <i>Leader</i>
+office where Hinckley, an old team man, worked, and asked him to head
+off Ole and send him <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>back. Muggledorfer kindly consented to call time, and we started after
+the fugitive ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later we met Hinckley downtown. He looked as if he had had a
+slight argument with a thirteen-inch shell. He was also mad.</p>
+
+<p>"What was that you asked me to stop?" he snorted, pinning himself
+together. "Was it a gorilla or a high explosive? When did you fellows
+begin importing steam rollers for the team? I asked him to stop. I
+ordered him to stop. Then I went around in front of him to stop him&mdash;and
+he ran right over me. I held on for thirty yards, but that's no way to
+travel. I could have gone to the next town just as well, though. What
+sort of a game is this, and where is that tow-headed holy terror bound
+for?"</p>
+
+<p>We gave the answer up, but we couldn't give up Ole. He was too valuable
+to lose. How to catch him was the sticker. An awful uproar in the street
+gave us an idea. It was Ted Harris in the only auto in town&mdash;one of the
+earliest brands of sneeze vehicles. In a minute more four of us were in,
+and Ted was chiveying the thing up the street.</p>
+
+<p>If you've never chased an escaping fullback in one of those pioneer
+automobiles you've got something coming. Take it all around, a good,
+swift man, running all the time, could almost keep ahead of one. We
+pumped up a tire, fixed a wire or two, and cranked up a few times; and
+the upshot of it was we were two miles out on the state road before we
+caught sight of Ole.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>He was trotting briskly when we caught up with him, the ball under his
+arm, and that patient, resigned expression on his face that he always
+had when Bost cussed him. "Stop, Ole," I yelled; "this is no Marathon.
+Come back. Climb in here with us."</p>
+
+<p>Ole shook his head and let out a notch of speed.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, you mullethead," yelled Simpson above the roar of the auto&mdash;those
+old machines could roar some, too. "What do you mean by running off with
+our ball? You're not supposed to do hare-and-hounds in football."</p>
+
+<p>Ole kept on running. We drove the car on ahead, stopped it across the
+road, and jumped out to stop him. When the attempt was over three of us
+picked up the fourth and put him aboard. Ole had tramped on us and had
+climbed over the auto.</p>
+
+<p>Force wouldn't do, that was plain. "Where are you going, Ole?" we
+pleaded as we tore along beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"Aye ent know," he panted, laboring up a hill; "das ban fule game, Aye
+tenk."</p>
+
+<p>"Come on back and play some more," we urged. "Bost won't like it, your
+running all over the country this way."</p>
+
+<p>"Das ban my orders," panted Ole. "Aye ent no fule, yentlemen; Aye know
+ven Aye ban doing right teng. Master Bost he say 'Keep on running!' Aye
+gass I run till hal freeze on top. Aye ent know why. Master Bost he
+know, I tenk."</p>
+
+<p>"This is awful," said Lambert, the manager of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>the team. "He's taken
+Bost literally again&mdash;the chump. He'll run till he lands up in those
+pine woods again. And that ball cost the association five dollars.
+Besides, we want him. What are we going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know," I said. "We're going back to get Bost. I guess the man who
+started him can stop him."</p>
+
+<p>We left Ole still plugging north and ran back to town. The game was
+still hanging fire. Bost was tearing his hair. Of course, the
+Muggledorfer fellows could have insisted on playing, but they weren't
+anxious. Ole or no Ole, we could have walked all over them, and they
+knew it. Besides, they were having too much fun with Bost. They were
+sitting around, Indian-like, in their blankets, and every three minutes
+their captain would go and ask Bost with perfect politeness whether he
+thought they had better continue the game there or move it on to the
+next town in time to catch his fullback as he came through.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, we are in no hurry," he would explain pleasantly; "we're
+just here for amusement, anyway; and it's as much fun watching you try
+to catch your players as it is to get scored on. Why don't you hobble
+them, Mr. Bost? A fifty-yard rope wouldn't interfere much with that gay
+young Percheron of yours, and it would save you lots of time rounding
+him up. Do you have to use a lariat when you put his harness on?"</p>
+
+<p>Fancy Bost having to take all that conversation, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>with no adequate reply
+to make. When I got there he was blue in the face. It didn't take him
+half a second to decide what to do. Telling the captain of the Siwash
+team to go ahead and play if Muggledorfer insisted, and on no account to
+use that 32 double-X play except on first downs, he jumped into the
+machine and we started for Ole.</p>
+
+<p>There were no speed records in those days. Wouldn't have made any
+difference if there were. Harris just turned on all the juice his old
+double-opposed motor could soak up, and when we hit the wooden crossings
+on the outskirts of town we fellows in the tonneau went up so high that
+we changed sides coming down. It wasn't over twenty minutes till we
+sighted a little cloud of dust just beyond a little town to the north.
+Pretty soon we saw it was Ole. He was still doing his six miles per. We
+caught up and Bost hopped out, still mad.</p>
+
+<p>"Where in Billy-be-blamed are you going, you human trolley car?" he
+spluttered, sprinting along beside Skjarsen. "What do you mean by
+breaking up a game in the middle and vamoosing with the ball? Do you
+think we're going to win this game on mileage? Turn around, you chump,
+and climb into this car."</p>
+
+<p>Ole looked around him sadly. He kept on running as he did. "Aye ent care
+to stop," he said. "Aye kent suit you, Master Bost. You tal me Aye skoll
+du a teng, den you cuss me for duing et. You tal me not to du a teng and
+you cuss <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>me some more den. Aye tenk I yust keep on a-running, lak yu
+tal me tu last night. Et ent so hard bein' cussed ven yu ban running."</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you to stop, you potato-top," gasped Bost. By this time he was
+fifteen yards behind and losing at every step. He had wasted too much
+breath on oratory. We picked him up in the car and set him alongside of
+Ole again.</p>
+
+<p>"See here, Ole, I'm tired of this," he said, sprinting up by him again.
+"The game's waiting. Come on back. You're making a fool of yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Eny teng Aye du Aye ban beeg fule," said Ole gloomily. "Aye yust keep
+on runnin'. Fallers ent got breath to call me fule ven Aye run. Aye tenk
+das best vay."</p>
+
+<p>We picked Bost up again thirty yards behind. Maybe he would have run
+better if he hadn't choked so in his conversation. In another minute we
+landed him abreast of Ole again. He got out and sprinted for the third
+time. He wabbled as he did it.</p>
+
+<p>"Ole," he panted, "I've been mistaken in you. You are all right, Ole. I
+never saw a more intelligent fellow. I won't cuss you any more, Ole. If
+you'll stop now we'll take you back in an automobile&mdash;hold on there a
+minute; can't you see I'm all out of breath?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aye ban gude faller, den?" asked Ole, letting out another link of
+speed.</p>
+
+<p>"You are a"&mdash;puff-puff&mdash;"peach, Ole," gasped Bost.
+"I'll"&mdash;puff-puff&mdash;"never cuss you again. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>Please"&mdash;puff-puff&mdash;"stop!
+Oh, hang it, I'm all in." And Bost sat down in the road.</p>
+
+<p>A hundred yards on we noticed Ole slacken speed. "It's sinking through
+his skull," said Harris eagerly. In another minute he had stopped. We
+picked up Bost again and ran up to him. He surveyed us long and
+critically.</p>
+
+<p>"Das ban qveer masheen," he said finally. "Aye tenk Aye lak Aye skoll be
+riding back in it. Aye ent care for das futball game, Aye gass. It ban
+tu much running in it."</p>
+
+<p>We took Ole back to town in twenty-two minutes, three chickens, a dog
+and a back spring. It was close to five o'clock when he ran out on the
+field again. The Muggledorfer team was still waiting. Time was no object
+to them. They would only play ten minutes, but in that ten minutes Ole
+made three scores. Five substitutes stood back of either goal and asked
+him with great politeness to stop as he tore over the line. And he did
+it. If any one else had run six miles between halves he would have
+stopped a good deal short of the line. But as far as we could see, it
+hadn't winded Ole.</p>
+
+<p>Bost went home by himself that night after the game, not stopping even
+to assure us that as a team we were beneath his contempt. The next
+afternoon he was, if anything, a little more vitriolic than ever&mdash;but
+not with Ole. Toward the middle of the signal practice he pulled himself
+together and touched Ole gently.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_3" id="illo_3" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 249px;">
+<img src="images/i039.jpg" class="ispace" width="249" height="500" alt="He pulled himself together and touched Ole gently
+
+Page 26" title="" />
+<span class="caption">He pulled himself together and touched Ole gently<br />
+
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_26">26</a></i></span></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>"My dear Mr. Skjarsen," he said apologetically, "if it will not annoy
+you too much, would you mind running the same way the rest of the team
+does? I don't insist on it, mind you, but it looks so much better to the
+audience, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Jas," said Ole; "Aye ban fule, Aye gass, but yu ban tu polite to say
+it."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>INITIATING OLE</h3>
+
+<p>Were you ever Hamburgered by a real, live college fraternity? I mean,
+were you ever initiated into full brotherhood by a Greek-letter society
+with the aid of a baseball bat, a sausage-making machine, a stick of
+dynamite and a corn-sheller? What's that? You say you belong to the
+Up-to-Date Wood-choppers and have taken the josh degree in the Noble
+Order of Prong-Horned Wapiti? Forget it. Those aren't initiations. They
+are rest cures. I went into one of those societies which give horse-play
+initiations for middle-aged daredevils last year and was bored to death
+because I forgot to bring my knitting. They are stiff enough for fat
+business men who never do anything more exciting than to fall over the
+lawn mower in the cellar once a year; but, compared with a genuine,
+eighteen-donkey-power college frat initiation with a Spanish Inquisition
+attachment, the little degree teams, made up of grandfathers, feel like
+a slap on the wrist delivered by a young lady in frail health.</p>
+
+<p>Mind you, I'm not talking about the baby-ribbon affairs that the college
+boys use nowadays. It doesn't <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>seem to be the fashion to grease the
+landscape with freshmen any more. Initiations are getting to be as safe
+and sane as an ice-cream festival in a village church. When a frat wants
+to submit a neophyte to a trying ordeal it sends him out on the campus
+to climb a tree, or makes him go to a dance in evening clothes with a
+red necktie on. A boy who can roll a peanut half a mile with a
+toothpick, or can fish all morning in a pail of water in front of the
+college chapel without getting mad and trying to thrash any one is
+considered to be lion-hearted enough to ornament any frat. These are
+mollycoddle times in all departments. I'm glad I'm out of college and am
+catching street cars in the rush hours. That is about the only job left
+that feels like the good old times in college when muscles were made to
+jar some one else with.</p>
+
+<p>Eight or ten years ago, when a college fraternity absorbed a freshman,
+the job was worth talking about. There was no half-way business about
+it. The freshman could tell at any stage of the game that something was
+being done to him. They just ate him alive, that was all. Why, at
+Siwash, where I was lap-welded into the Eta Bita Pies, any fraternity
+which initiated a candidate and left enough of him to appear in chapel
+the next morning was the joke of the school. Even the girls'
+fraternities gave it the laugh. The girls used to do a little quiet
+initiating themselves, and when they received a sister into membership
+you could generally follow her mad <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>career over the town by a trail of
+hairpins, "rats" and little fragments of dressgoods.</p>
+
+<p>Those were the days when the pledgling of a good high-pressure frat
+wrote to his mother the night before he was taken in and telegraphed her
+when he found himself alive in the morning. There used to be
+considerable rivalry between the frats at Siwash in the matter of giving
+a freshman a good, hospitable time. I remember when the Sigh Whoopsilons
+hung young Allen from the girder of an overhead railroad crossing, and
+let the switch engines smoke him up for two hours as they passed
+underneath, there was a good deal of jealousy among the rest of us who
+hadn't thought of it. The Alfalfa Delts went them one better by tying
+roller skates to the shoulders and hips of a big freshman football star
+and hauling him through the main streets of Jonesville on his back,
+behind an automobile, and the Chi Yi's covered a candidate with plaster
+of Paris, with blow-holes for his nose, sculptured him artistically, and
+left him before the college chapel on a pedestal all night. The Delta
+Kappa Sonofaguns set fire to their house once by shooting Roman candles
+at a row of neophytes in the cellar, and we had to turn out at one <span class="smcap">A. M.</span>
+one winter morning to help the Delta Flushes dig a freshman out of their
+chimney. They had been trying to let him down into the fireplace, and
+when he got stuck they had poked at him with a clothes pole until they
+had mussed him up considerably. This just shows you what a gay life the
+young scholar led in the days <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>when every ritual had claws on, and there
+was no such thing as soothing syrup in the equipment of a college.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the frats at Siwash the Eta Bita Pies, when I was in college,
+were pre&euml;minent in the art of near-killing freshmen. We used to call our
+initiation "A little journey to the pearly gates," and once or twice it
+looked for a short time as if the victim had mislaid his return ticket.
+Treat yourself to an election riot, a railway collision and a subway
+explosion, all in one evening, and you will get a rather sketchy idea of
+what we aimed at. I don't mean, of course, that we ever killed any one.
+There is no real danger in an initiation, you know, if the initiate does
+exactly as he is told and the members don't get careless and something
+that wasn't expected doesn't happen&mdash;as did when we tied Tudor Snyder to
+the south track while an express went by on the north track, and then
+had the time of our young lives getting him off ahead of a wild freight
+which we hadn't counted on. All we ever aimed at was to make the
+initiate so thankful to get through alive that he would love Eta Bita
+Pie forever, and I must say we usually succeeded. It is wonderful what a
+young fellow will endure cheerfully for the sake of passing it on to
+some one else the next year. I remember I was pretty mad when my Eta
+Bita Pie brethren headed me up in a barrel and rolled me downhill into a
+creek without taking the trouble to remove all the nails. It seemed like
+wanton carelessness. But long before my nose was out of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>splints and my
+hide would hold water I was perfecting our famous "Lover's Leap" for the
+next year's bunch. That was our greatest triumph. There was an abandoned
+rock quarry north of town with thirty feet of water in the bottom and a
+fifty-foot drop to the water. By means of a long beam and a system of
+pulleys we could make a freshman walk the plank and drop off into the
+water in almost perfect safety, providing the ropes didn't break. It
+created a sensation, and the other frats were mad with jealousy. We took
+every man we wanted the next fall before the authorities put a stop to
+the scheme. That shows you just how repugnant the idea of being
+initiated is to the green young collegian.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, fraternity initiations are supposed to be conducted for the
+amusement of the chapter and not of the candidate. But you can't always
+entirely tell what will happen, especially if the victim is husky and
+unimpressionable. Sometimes he does a little initiating himself. And
+that reminds me that I started out to tell a story and not to give a
+lecture on the polite art of making veal salad. Did I ever tell you of
+the time when we initiated Ole Skjarsen into Eta Bita Pie, and how the
+ceremony backfired and very nearly blew us all into the discard? No?
+Well, don't get impatient and look in the back of the book. I'll tell it
+now and cut as many corners as I can.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_4" id="illo_4" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 374px;">
+<img src="images/i046.jpg" width="374" class="ispace" height="500" alt="There wasn&#39;t a college anywhere around us that didn&#39;t
+have Ole&#39;s hoofmarks all over its pride
+
+Page 33" title="" />
+<span class="caption">There wasn&#39;t a college anywhere around us that didn&#39;t
+have Ole&#39;s hoofmarks all over its pride<br />
+
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_33">33</a></i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>As I have told you before, Ole Skjarsen was a little slow in grasping
+the real beauties of football science. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>It took him some time to uncoil his
+mind from the principles of woodchopping and concentrate it on the full
+duty of man in a fullback's position. He nearly drove us to a sanitarium
+during the process, but when he once took hold, mercy me, how he did
+progress from hither to yon over the opposition! He was the wonder
+fullback of those times, and at the end of three years there wasn't a
+college anywhere that didn't have Ole's hoofmarks all over its pride.
+Oh, he was a darling. To see him jumping sideways down a football field
+with the ball under his arm, landing on some one of the opposition at
+every jump and romping over the goal line with tacklers hanging to him
+like streamers would have made you want to vote for him for Governor.
+Ole was the greatest man who ever came to Siwash. Prexy had always been
+considered some personage by the outside world, but he was only a bump
+in the background when Ole was around.</p>
+
+<p>Of course we all loved Ole madly, but for all that he didn't make a
+frat. He didn't, for the same reason that a rhinoceros doesn't get
+invited to garden parties. He didn't seem to fit the part. Not only his
+clothes, but also his haircuts were hand-me-down. He regarded a fork as
+a curiosity. His language was a sort of a head-on collision between
+Norwegian and English in which very few words had come out undamaged. In
+social conversation he was out of bounds nine minutes out of ten, and it
+kept three men busy changing the subject when he was in full <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>swing. He
+could dodge eleven men and a referee on the football field without
+trying, but put him in a forty by fifty room with one vase in it, and he
+couldn't dodge it to save his life.</p>
+
+<p>No, he just naturally didn't fit the part, and up to his senior year no
+fraternity had bid him. This grieved Ole so that he retired from
+football just before the Kiowa game on which all our young hearts were
+set, and before he would consent to go back and leave some more of his
+priceless foot-tracks on the opposition we had to pledge him to three of
+our proudest fraternities. Talk of wedding a favorite daughter to the
+greasy villain in the melodrama in order to save the homestead! No
+crushed father, with a mortgage hanging over him in the third act, could
+have felt one-half so badly as we Eta Bita Pies did when we had pledged
+Ole and realized that all the rest of the year we would have to climb
+over him in our beautiful, beamed-ceiling lounging-room and parade him
+before the world as a much-loved brother.</p>
+
+<p>But the job had to be done, and all three frats took a melancholy
+pleasure in arranging the details of the initiation. We decided to make
+it a three-night demonstration of all that the Siwash frats had learned
+in the art of imitating dynamite and other disintegrants. The Alfalfa
+Delts were to get first crack at him. They were to be followed on the
+second night by the Chi Yi Sighs, who were to make him a brother, dead
+or alive. On the third night we of Eta Bita Pie were to take the remains
+and decorate them with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>our fraternity pin after ceremonies in which
+being kicked by a mule would only be considered a two-minute recess.</p>
+
+<p>We fellows knew that when it came to initiating Ole we would have to do
+the real work. The other frats couldn't touch it. They might scratch him
+up a bit, but they lacked the ingenuity, the enthusiasm&mdash;I might say the
+poetic temperament&mdash;to make a good job of it. We determined to put on an
+initiation which would make our past efforts seem like the effort of an
+old ladies' home to start a rough-house. It was a great pleasure, I
+assure you, to plan that initiation. We revised our floor work and added
+some cellar and garret and ceiling and second-story work to it. We began
+the program with the celebrated third degree and worked gradually from
+that up to the twenty-third degree, with a few intervals of simple
+assault and battery for breathing spells. When we had finished doping
+out the program we shook hands all around. It was a masterpiece. It
+would have made Battenberg lace out of a steam boiler.</p>
+
+<p>Ole was initiated into the Alfalfa Delts on a Wednesday night. We heard
+echoes of it from our front porch. The next morning only three of the
+Alfalfa Delts appeared at chapel, while Ole was out at six <span class="smcap">A. M.</span>,
+roaming about the campus with the Alfalfa Delt pin on his necktie. The
+next night the Chi Yi Sighs took him on for one hundred and seventeen
+rounds in their brand new lodge, which had a sheet-iron initiation den.
+The whole thing was a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>fizzle. When we looked Ole over the next morning
+we couldn't find so much as a scratch on him. He was wearing the Chi Yi
+pin beside the Alfalfa Delt pin, and he was as happy as a baby with a
+bottle of ink. There were nine broken window-lights in the Chi Yi lodge,
+and we heard in a roundabout way that they called in the police about
+three <span class="smcap">A. M.</span> to help them explain to Ole that the initiation was over.
+That's the kind of a trembling neophyte Ole was. But we just giggled to
+ourselves. Anybody could break up a Chi Yi initiation, and the Alfalfa
+Delts were a set of narrow-chested snobs with automobile callouses
+instead of muscles. We ate a hasty dinner on Friday evening and set all
+the scenery for the big scrunch. Then we put on our old clothes and
+waited for Ole to walk into our parlor.</p>
+
+<p>He wasn't due until nine, but about eight o'clock he came creaking up
+the steps and dented the door with his large knuckles in a bashful way.
+He looked larger and knobbier than ever and, if anything, more
+embarrassed. We led him into the lounging-room in silence, and he sat
+down twirling his straw hat. It was October, and he had worn the thing
+ever since school opened. Other people who wore straw hats in October
+get removed from under them more or less violently; but, somehow, no one
+had felt called upon to maltreat Ole. We hated that hat, however, and
+decided to begin the evening's work on it.</p>
+
+<p>"Your hat, Mr. Skjarsen," said Bugs Wilbur in majestic tones.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>Ole reached the old ruin out. Wilbur took it and tossed it into the
+grate. Ole upset four or five of us who couldn't get out of the way and
+rescued the hat, which was blazing merrily.</p>
+
+<p>"Ent yu gat no sanse?" he roared angrily. "Das ban a gude hat." He
+looked at it gloomily. "Et ban spoiled now," he growled, tossing the
+remains into a waste-paper basket. "Yu ban purty fallers. Vat for yu do
+dat?"</p>
+
+<p>The basket was full of papers and things. In about four seconds it was
+all ablaze. Wilbur tried to go over and choke it off, but Ole pushed him
+back with one forefinger.</p>
+
+<p>"Yust stay avay," he growled. "Das basket ent costing some more as my
+hat, I gass."</p>
+
+<p>We stood around and watched the basket burn. We also watched a curtain
+blaze up and the finish on a nice mahogany desk crack and blister. It
+was all very humorous. The fire kindly went out of its own accord, and
+some one tiptoed around and opened the windows in a timid sort of way.
+It was a very successful initiation so far&mdash;only we were the neophytes.</p>
+
+<p>"This won't do," muttered "Allie" Bangs, our president. He got up and
+went over to Ole. "Mr. Skjarsen," he said severely, "you are here to be
+initiated into the awful mysteries of Eta Bita Pie. It is not fitting
+that you should enter her sacred boundaries in an unfettered condition.
+Submit to the brethren, that they may blindfold you and bind you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>for
+the ordeals to come." Gee, but we used to use hand-picked language when
+we were unsheathing our claws!</p>
+
+<p>Ole growled. "Ol rite," he said. "But Aye tal yu ef yu fallers burn das
+har west lak yu burn ma hat I skoll raise ruffhaus like deekins!"</p>
+
+<p>We tied his hands behind him with several feet of good stout rope and
+hobbled him about the ankles with a dog chain. Then we blindfolded him
+and put a pillowslip over his head for good measure. Things began to
+look brighter. Even a demon fullback has to have one or two limbs
+working in order to accomplish anything. When all was fast Bangs gave
+Ole a preliminary kick. "Now, brethren," he roared, "bring on the
+Macedonian guards and give them the neophyte!"</p>
+
+<p>Now I'm not revealing any real initiation secrets, mind you, and maybe
+what I'm telling you didn't exactly happen. But you can be perfectly
+sure that something just as bad did happen every time. For an hour we
+abused that two hundred and twenty pounds of gristle and hide. It was as
+much fun as roughhousing a two-ton safe. We rolled him downstairs. He
+broke out sixty dollars' worth of balustrade on the way and he didn't
+seem to mind it at all. We tried to toss him in a blanket. Ever have a
+two-hundred-and-twenty-pound man land on you coming down from the
+ceiling? We got tired of that. We made him play automobile. Ever play
+automobile? They tie roller skates and an automobile <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>horn on you and
+push you around into the furniture, just the way a real automobile runs
+into things. We broke a table, five chairs, a French window, a
+one-hundred-dollar vase and seven shins. We didn't even interest Ole.
+When a man has plowed through leather-covered football players for three
+years his head gets used to hitting things. Also his heels will fly out
+no matter how careful you are. We took him into the basement and
+performed our famous trick of boiling the candidate in oil. Of course we
+wanted to scare him. He accommodated us. He broke away and hopped
+stiff-legged all over the room. That wasn't so bad, but, confound it, he
+hopped on us most of the time! How would you like to initiate a bronze
+statue that got scared and hopped on you?</p>
+
+<p>We got desperate. We threw aside the formality of explaining the deep
+significance of each action and just assaulted Ole with everything in
+the house. We prodded him with furnace tools and thumped him with
+cordwood and rolling-pins and barrel-staves and shovels. We walked over
+him, a dozen at a time. And all the time we were getting it worse than
+he was. He didn't exactly fight, but whenever his elbows twitched some
+fellow's face would happen to be in the way, and he couldn't move his
+knee without getting it tangled in some one's ribs. You could hear the
+thunders of the assault and the shrieks of the wounded for a block.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of an hour we were positively all in. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>There weren't three of
+us unwounded. The house was a wreck. Wilbur had a broken nose. "Chick"
+Struthers' kneecap hurt. "Lima" Bean's ribs were telescoped, and there
+wasn't a good shin in the house. We quit in disgust and sat around
+looking at Ole. He was sitting around, too. He happened to be sitting on
+Bangs, who was yelling for help. But we didn't feel like starting any
+relief expedition.</p>
+
+<p>Ole was some rumpled, and his clothes looked as if they had been fed
+into a separator. But he was intact, as far as we could see. He was
+still tied and blindfolded, and I hope to be buried alive in a
+branch-line town if he wasn't getting bored.</p>
+
+<p>"Vat fur yu qvit?" he asked. "It ent fun setting around har."</p>
+
+<p>Then Petey Simmons, who had been taking a minor part in the assault in
+order to give his wheels full play, rose and beckoned the crowd outside.
+We left Ole and clustered around him.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, this won't do at all," he said. "Are we going to let Eta Bita Pie
+be made the laughing-stock of the college? If we can't initiate that
+human quartz mill by force let's do it by strategy. I've got a plan. You
+just let me have Ole and one man for an hour and I'll make him so glad
+to get back to the house that he'll eat out of our hands."</p>
+
+<p>We were dead ready to turn the job over to Petey, though we hated to see
+him put his head in the lion's mouth, so to speak. I hated it worse than
+any of the others because he picked me for his assistant. We <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>went in
+and found Ole dozing in the corner. Petey prodded him. "Get up!" he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>Ole got up cheerfully. Petey took the dog chain off of his legs. Then he
+threw his sub-cellar voice into gear.</p>
+
+<p>"Skjarsen," he rumbled, "you have passed right well the first test of
+our noble order. You have faced the hideous dangers which were in
+reality but shams to prove your faith, and you have borne your
+sufferings patiently, thus proving your meekness."</p>
+
+<p>I let a couple of grins escape into my sweater-sleeve. Oh, yes, Ole had
+been meek all right.</p>
+
+<p>"It remains for you to prove your desire," said Petey in curdled tones.
+"Listen!" He gave the Eta Bita Pie whistle. We had the best whistle in
+college. It was six notes&mdash;a sort of insidious, inviting thing that you
+could slide across two blocks, past all manner of barbarians, and into a
+frat brother's ear without disturbing any one at all. Petey gave it
+several times. "Now, Skjarsen," he said, "you are to follow that
+whistle. Let no obstacle discourage you. Let no barrier stop you. If you
+can prove your loyalty by following that whistle through the outside
+world and back to the altar of Eta Bita Pie we will ask no more of you.
+Come on!"</p>
+
+<p>We tiptoed out of the cellar and whistled. Ole followed us up the steps.
+That is, he did on the second attempt. On the first he fell down with
+melodious thumps. We hugged each other, slipped behind a tree and
+whistled again.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>Ole charged across the yard and into the tree. The line held. I heard
+him say something in Norwegian that sounded secular. By that time we
+were across the street. There was a low railing around the parking, and
+when we whistled again Ole walked right into the railing. The line held
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, I'll tell you that Petey boy was a wonder at getting up ideas. Think
+of it! Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Christopher Columbus, old Bill
+Archimedes and all the rest of the wise guys had overlooked this simple
+little discovery of how to make a neophyte initiate himself. It was too
+good to be true. We held a war dance of pure delight, and we whistled
+some more. We got behind stone walls, and whistled. We climbed
+embankments, and whistled. We slid behind blackberry bushes and ash
+piles and across ditches and over hedge fences, and whistled. We were so
+happy we could hardly pucker. Think of it! There was Ole Skjarsen, the
+most uncontrollable force in Nature, following us like a yellow pup with
+his dinner three days overdue. It was as fascinating as guiding a
+battleship by wireless.</p>
+
+<p>We slipped across a footbridge over Cedar Creek, and whistled. Ole
+missed the bridge by nine yards. There isn't much water in Cedar Creek,
+but what there is is strong. It took Ole fifteen minutes to climb the
+other bank, owing to a beautiful collection of old barrel-hoops,
+corsets, crockery and empty tomato cans which decorated the spot. Did
+you ever see a blindfolded man, with his hands tied behind his back,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>trying to climb over a city dump? No? Of course not, any more than you
+have seen a green elephant. But it's a fine sight, I assure you. When
+Ole got out of the creek we whistled him dexterously into a barnyard and
+right into the maw of a brindle bull-pup with a capacity of one small
+man in two bites&mdash;we being safe on the other side of the fence, beyond
+the reach of the chain. Maybe that was mean, but Eta Bita Pie is not to
+be trifled with when she is aroused. Anyway, the bull got the worst of
+it. He only got one bite. Ole kicked in the barn door on the first try,
+and demolished a corn-sheller on the second; but on the third he hit the
+pup squarely abeam and dropped a beautiful goal with him. We went around
+to see the dog the next day. He looked quite natural. You would almost
+think he was alive.</p>
+
+<p>It was here that we began to smell trouble. I had my suspicions when we
+whistled again. There was a pretty substantial fence around that
+barnyard, but Ole didn't wait to find the gate.</p>
+
+<p>He came through the fence not very far from us. He was conversing under
+that mangled pillowslip, and we heard fragments sounding like this:</p>
+
+<p>"Purty soon Aye gat yu&mdash;yu spindle-shank, vite-face, skagaroot-smokin'
+dudes! Ugh&mdash;ump!"&mdash;here he caromed off a tree. "Ven Aye gat das
+blindfold off, Aye gat yu&mdash;yu Baked-Pie galoots!&mdash;Ugh!
+Wow!"&mdash;barbed-wire fence. "Vistle sum more, yu vide-trousered polekats.
+Aye make yu <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>vistle, Aye bet yu, rite avay! Up&mdash;pllp&mdash;pllp!" That's the
+kind of noise a man makes when he walks into a horse-trough at full
+speed.</p>
+
+<p>"Gee!" said Petey nervously. "I guess we've given him enough. He's
+getting sort of peevish. I don't believe in being too cruel. Let's take
+him back now. You don't suppose he can get his hands loose, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>I didn't know. I wished I did. Of course, when you watch a lion trying
+to get at you from behind a fairly strong cage you feel perfectly safe,
+but you feel safer when you are somewhere else, just the same. We got
+out on the pavement and gave a gentle whistle.</p>
+
+<p>"Aye har yu!" roared Ole, coming through a chicken yard. "Aye har yu,
+you leetle Baked Pies! Aye gat yu purty soon. Yust vait."</p>
+
+<p>We didn't wait. We put on a little more gasoline and started for the
+frat house. We didn't have to whistle any more. Ole was right behind us.
+We could hear him thundering on the pavement and pleading with us in
+that rich, nutty dialect of his to stop and have our heads pounded on
+the bricks.</p>
+
+<p>I shudder yet when I think of all the things he promised to do to us. We
+went down that street like a couple of Roman gladiators pacing a hungry
+bear, and, by tangling Ole up in the parkings again, managed to get home
+a few yards ahead.</p>
+
+<p>There was an atmosphere of arnica and dejection in the house when we got
+there. Ill-health seemed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>to be rampant. "Did you lose him?" asked Bangs
+hopefully from behind a big bandage.</p>
+
+<p>"Lose him?" says I with a snort. "Oh, yes, we lost him all right. He
+loses just like a foxhound. That's him, falling over the front steps
+now. You can stay and entertain him; I'm going upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>Everybody came along. We piled chairs on the stairs and listened while
+Ole felt his way over the porch. In about a minute he found the door.
+Then he came right in. I had locked the door, but I had neglected to
+re&euml;nforce it with concrete and boiler iron. Ole wore part of the frame
+in with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, yu Baked Pies!" he shouted.</p>
+
+<p>"You're in the wrong house," squeaked that little fool, Jimmy Skelton.</p>
+
+<p>"Yu kent fule me!" said Ole, crashing around the loafing-room. "Aye yust
+can tal das haus by har skagaroot smell. Come on, yu leetle fallers! Aye
+bet Aye inittyate yu some, tu!"</p>
+
+<p>By this time he had found the stairs and was plowing through the
+furniture. We retired to the third floor. When twenty-seven fellows go
+up a three-foot stairway at once it necessarily makes some noise. Ole
+heard us and kept right on coming.</p>
+
+<p>We grabbed a bureau and a bed and barricaded the staircase. There was a
+ladder to the attic. I was the last man up and my heart was giving my
+ribs all kinds of massage treatment before I got up. We hauled up the
+ladder just as Ole kicked the bureau downstairs, and then we watched him
+charge <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>over our beautiful third-floor dormitory, leaving ruin in his
+wake.</p>
+
+<p>Maybe he would have been satisfied with breaking the furniture. But, of
+course, a few of us had to sneeze. Ole hunted those sneezes all over the
+third floor. He couldn't reach them, but he sat down on the wreck
+underneath them.</p>
+
+<p>"Aye ent know vere yu fallers ban," he said, "but Aye kin vait. Aye har
+yu, yu Baked Pies! Aye gat yu yet, by yimminy! Yust come on down ven yu
+ban ready."</p>
+
+<p>Oh, yes, we were ready&mdash;I don't think. It was a perfectly lovely
+predicament. Here was the Damma Yappa chapter of Eta Bita Pie penned up
+in a deucedly-cold attic with one lone initiate guarding the trapdoor.
+Nice story for the college to tell when the police rescued us! Nice end
+of our reputation as the best neophyte jugglers in the school! Makes me
+shiver now to think of it.</p>
+
+<p>We sat around in that garret and listened to the clock strike in the
+library tower across the campus. At eleven o'clock Ole promised to kill
+the first man who came down. That bait caught no fish. At twelve he
+begged for the privilege of kicking us out of our own house, one by one.
+At one o'clock he remarked that, while it was pretty cold, it was much
+colder in Norway, where he came from, and that, as we would freeze
+first, we might as well come down.</p>
+
+<p>At two o'clock we were all stiff. At three we were kicking the plaster
+off of the joists, trying to keep <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>from freezing to death. At four a
+bunch of Sophomores were all for throwing Petey Simmons down as a
+sacrifice. Petey talked them out of it. Petey could talk a stone dog
+into wagging its tail.</p>
+
+<p>We sat in that garret from ten <span class="smcap">P. M.</span> until the year after the great
+pyramid wore down to the ground. At least that was the length of time
+that seemed to pass. It must have been about five o'clock when Petey
+stopped kicking his feet on the chimney and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, fellows, I have an idea. It may work or it may not, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up, you mental desert!" some one growled. "Another of your fine
+ideas will wreck this frat."</p>
+
+<p>"As I was saying," continued Petey cheerfully, "it may not succeed, but
+it will not hurt any one but me if it doesn't. I'm going to be the
+Daniel in this den. But first I want the officers of the chapter to come
+up around the scuttle-hole with me."</p>
+
+<p>Five of us crept over to the hole and looked down. "Aye har yu, yu
+leetle Baked Pies!" said Ole, waking in an instant. "Yust come on down.
+Aye ban vaiting long enough to smash yu!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Skjarsen," began Petey in the regular dark-lantern voice that all
+secret societies use&mdash;"Mr. Skjarsen&mdash;for as such we must still call
+you&mdash;the final test is over. You have acquitted yourself nobly. You have
+been faithful to the end. You have stood your vigil unflinchingly. You
+have followed the call of Eta Bita Pie over every obstacle and through
+every suffering."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>"Aye ban following him leetle furder, if Aye had ladder," said Ole in a
+bloodthirsty voice. "Ven Aye ban getting at yu, Aye play hal vid yu
+Baked Pies!"</p>
+
+<p>"And now," said Petey, ignoring the interruption, "the final ceremony is
+at hand. Do not fear. Your trials are over. In the dark recesses of this
+secret chamber above you we have discussed your bearing in the trials
+that have beset you. It has pleased us. You have been found worthy to
+continue toward the high goal. Ole Skjarsen, we are now ready to receive
+you into full membership."</p>
+
+<p>"Come rite on!" snorted Ole. "Aye receeve yu into membership all rite.
+Yust come on down."</p>
+
+<p>"It won't work, Petey," Bangs groaned. Petey kicked his shins as a sign
+to shut up.</p>
+
+<p>"Ole Skjarsen, son of Skjar Oleson, stand up!" he said, sinking his
+voice another story.</p>
+
+<p>Ole got up. It was plain to be seen that he was getting interested.</p>
+
+<p>"The president of this powerful order will now administer the oath,"
+said Petey, shoving Bangs forward.</p>
+
+<p>So there, at five <span class="smcap">A. M.</span>, with the whole chapter treed in a garret, and
+the officers, the leading lights of Siwash, crouching around a scuttle
+and shivering their teeth loose, we initiated Ole Skjarsen. It was
+impressive, I can tell you. When it came to the part where the neophyte
+swears to protect a brother, even if he has to wade in blood up to his
+necktie, Bangs bore down beautifully and added a lot of extra frills.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>The last words were spoken. Ole was an Eta Bita Pie. Still, we weren't
+very sanguine. You might interest a man-eater by initiating him, but
+would you destroy his appetite? There was no grand rush for the ladder.</p>
+
+<p>As Ole stood waiting, however, Petey swung himself down and landed
+beside him. He cut the ropes that bound his wrists, jerked off the
+pillowslip and cut off the blindfold. Then he grabbed Ole's mastodonic
+paw.</p>
+
+<p>"Shake, brother!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody breathed for a few seconds. It was darned terrifying, I can tell
+you. Ole rubbed his eyes with his free hand and looked down at the
+morsel hanging on to the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Shake, Ole!" insisted Petey. "You went through it better than I did
+when I got it."</p>
+
+<p>I saw the rudiments of a smile begin to break out on Ole's face. It grew
+wider. It got to be a grin; then a chasm with a sunrise on either side.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up at us again, then down at Petey. Then he pumped Petey's arm
+until the latter danced like a cork bobber.</p>
+
+<p>"By ying, Aye du et!" he shouted. "Ve ban gude fallers, ve Baked Pies,
+if ve did broke my nose."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with Ole?" some one shouted.</p>
+
+<p>"He's all right!" we yelled. Then we came down out of the garret and
+made a rush for the furnace.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>WHEN GREEK MEETS GROUCH</h3>
+
+<p>It's a cinch that college life would be a whole lot more congested with
+pleasure if it wasn't for the towns that the colleges are in. I don't
+mean that a town around a college hasn't its uses. Wherever you find a
+town you can find lunch counters and theaters with galleries from which
+you can learn the drama at a quarter a throw, and street cars that can
+be tampered with, and wooden sidewalks that burn well on celebration
+nights, and nice girls who began being nice four college generations ago
+and never forgot how. All of these things about a town are mighty handy
+when it comes to getting a higher education in a good, live college
+where you don't have to tunnel through three feet of moss to find the
+college customs. But even all this can't reconcile me to the way a town
+butts into college affairs. It is something disgusting.</p>
+
+<p>You know it yourself, Bill. Didn't you go to Yellagain where the police
+arrested the whole Freshman class for painting the Sophomores green?
+Well, it's the same way all over. No sooner does a college town get big
+enough to support a rudimentary <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>policeman who peddles vegetables when
+he isn't putting down anarchy than it gets busy and begins to regulate
+the college students. And the bigger it gets the more regulating it
+wants to do. Why, they tell me that at the University of Chicago there
+hasn't been a riot for nine years, and that over in Washington Park,
+three blocks away, an eleven-ton statue of old Chris. Columbus has lain
+for ages and no college class has had spirit enough to haul it out on
+the street-car tracks. That's what regulating a college does for it.
+There are more policemen in Chicago than there are students in the
+University. If you give your yell off the campus you have to get a
+permit from the city council. It's worse than that in Philadelphia, they
+tell me. Why, there, if a college student comes downtown with a
+flareback coat and heart-shaped trousers and one of those nifty little
+pompadour hats that are brushed back from the brow to give the brains a
+chance to grow, they arrest him for collecting a crowd and disturbing
+traffic. No, sir, no big-town college for me. Getting college life in
+those places reminds me of trying to get that world-wide feeling on
+ice-cream soda. There's as much chance in one as in the other.</p>
+
+<p>Excuse me for getting sore, but that's the way I do when I begin to talk
+about college towns. They don't know their places. Take Jonesville,
+where Siwash is, for instance. When Siwash College was founded by "that
+noble band of Christian truth seekers," as the catalogue puts it,
+Jonesville was a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>mud-hole freckled with houses. The railroad trains
+whistled "get out of my way" to the town when they whooped through it,
+and when you went into a merchant's store and woke him up he started off
+home to dinner from force of habit. The only thing they ever regulated
+there was the clock. They regulated that once a year and usually found
+that it was two or three days behind time. Hadn't noticed it at all.</p>
+
+<p>That's what Jonesville was when Siwash started. You can bet for the
+first forty years they didn't do much regulating around the college. The
+students just let the town stay there because it was quiet. The citizens
+used to elect town marshals over seventy years old, so their gray hairs
+would protect them from the students, and when the boys had won a debate
+or a ball game and wanted to burn a barn or two to cheer up the
+atmosphere at evening, nothing at all was said&mdash;at least out loud.
+Jonesville was meek enough, you bet. Why, back in the seventies the
+students used to vote at town elections, and once for a joke they all
+voted for old "Apple Sally" for president of the village board. Made her
+serve, too. Talk about regulating! Did you ever see a farmer's dog go
+out and try to regulate a sixty-horse-power automobile? That's about as
+much as Jonesville would have regulated us thirty years ago.</p>
+
+<p>But, of course, having a real peppery college in its midst, Jonesville
+couldn't help but grow. People came and started boarding-houses. There
+had to be restaurants and bookstores and necktie emporiums, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>too, and
+pretty soon the railroad built a couple of branches into town and
+started the division shops. Then Jonesville woke up and walked right
+past old Siwash. In ten years it had street cars, paved streets,
+water-works, a political machine and a city debt, as large as the law
+would allow. And worse than that, it had a police force. It had nine
+officers in uniform, most of whom could read and write and swing big
+clubs with a strictly American accent. Nice sort of a thing to turn
+loose in a quiet college town. This was long before my time, but they
+tell me that the students held indignation meetings for a week after the
+first arrest was made. You see, the students at Siwash always had their
+own rules and lived up to them strictly. The Faculty put them on their
+honor and that honor was never abused. Students were not allowed to burn
+the college buildings nor kill the professors. These rules were never
+broken, and naturally the boys felt rather insulted when the city turned
+loose a horde of blue-coated busybodies to interfere with things that
+didn't concern them.</p>
+
+<p>Still, Siwash got along very well even after the police force was
+organized. You see, after a town has had a college in its middle for
+about fifty years, pretty much everybody in town has attended it at one
+time or another. None of the police had diplomas, but it was no uncommon
+thing to see an ex-member of a college debating society delivering
+groceries, or an ex-president of his class getting up in an engine cab
+to take the flyer into the city. For years every <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>police magistrate was
+an old Siwash man, and, though plenty of the boys would get arrested,
+there were never any thirty-day complications or anything of the sort.
+Two classes would meet on the main street and muss each other up. The
+police would arrest nine or ten of the ringleaders. The next morning the
+prisoners would appear before Squire Jennings, who climbed up on the old
+college building with his class flag in '54 and kept a rival class away
+by tearing down the chimney and throwing the bricks at them. Naturally,
+nothing very deadly happened. The good old fellow would lecture the
+crowd and let them off with a stern warning. Maybe two or three Seniors
+would come home late at night from their frat hall and take a wooden
+Indian cigar sign along with them just for company. One of those Indians
+is such a steady sort of a chap to have along late at night. Of course,
+they would be arrested by old Hank Anderson on the courthouse beat, but
+it wasn't anything serious. They would telephone Frank Hinckley, who was
+editor of the city daily, and just convalescing from four years of
+college life himself, and he would come down and bail them out, and
+Squire Jennings would kick them out of court next morning. Frank was the
+patron saint of the students for years when it came to bail. He used to
+say he had all the fun of being a doctor and getting called out nights
+without having to try to collect any fees. Frank was no Cr&oelig;us those
+days and I've seen him go bail for fifteen students at one hundred
+dollars apiece, when <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>his total assets amounted to a dress suit, three
+hundred and forty-five photographs and his next week's salary.</p>
+
+<p>By the time I had come to college, getting arrested had gotten to be a
+regular formality. A Freshman would go up Main Street at night, trying
+to hide a nine-foot board sign under his spring overcoat. Halvor
+Skoogerson, a pale-eyed guardian of the peace, who was studying up to be
+a naturalized, would arrest him for theft, riot, disorderly conduct,
+suspicious appearance and intoxication, not understanding why any sober
+man would want to carry a young lumber-yard home under his coat at
+night. The prisoner would telephone for Hinckley, who would crawl out of
+bed, come downtown cussing, and bail away in sleepy tones. The next
+morning the freshie would go up before Squire Jennings, who would ask
+him in awful accents if he realized that the state penitentiary was only
+four hours away by fast train, and that many a man was boarding there
+who would blush to be seen in the company of a man who had stolen a
+nine-foot sign and carried it down Main Street, interfering with
+pedestrians, when there was a perfectly good alley which ought to be
+used for such purposes. Then he would warn the culprit that the next
+time he was caught lugging off a billboard or a wooden platform or a
+corncrib he would be compelled to put it back again before he got
+breakfast; after which he would tell him to go along and try studying
+for a change, and the Freshman would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>go back to college and join the
+hero brigade. It was a mighty meek man in Siwash who couldn't get
+arrested those days. Even the hymn singers at the Y. M. C. A. had
+criminal records. It got so, finally, that whenever we had a nightshirt
+parade in honor of any little college victory the line of march would
+lead right through the police station. We knew what was coming and would
+save the cops the trouble of hauling us over in the hustle wagon.</p>
+
+<p>Take it all in all, it was about as much fun to be regulated as it was
+to run the town. But one night Squire Jennings put his other foot into
+the grave and died entirely; and before any of us realized what was
+happening a special election had been held and Malachi Scroggs had been
+elected police magistrate.</p>
+
+<p>Malachi Scroggs was a triple extract of grouch who lived on the north
+side two miles away from college in a big white house with one of those
+old-fashioned dog-house affairs on top of it. He was an acrimonious
+quarrel all by himself. Sunlight soured when it struck him. I have seen
+a fox terrier who had been lying perfectly happy on the sidewalk, get up
+after Scroggs had passed him and go over and bite an automobile tire. He
+lived on gloom and law-suits and the last time he smiled was 1878&mdash;that
+was when a small boy fell nineteen feet out of a tree while robbing his
+orchard, and the doctor said he would never be able to rob any more
+orchards.</p>
+
+<p>This was the kind of mental astringent Malachi <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>was. Naturally, he loved
+the gay and happy little college boys. Oh, how he loved us! He had
+complained to the police regularly during each celebration for twenty
+years and he had expressed the opinion, publicly, that a college boy was
+a cross between a hyena and a grasshopper with a fog-horn attachment
+thrown in free of charge. He wasn't a college man himself, you
+see&mdash;never could find one where the students didn't use slang, probably,
+and he just naturally didn't understand us at all. Of course, we didn't
+mind that. It's no credit to carry an interlinear translation of your
+temperament on your face. So long as he kept in his own yard and
+quarreled with his own dog for not feeding on Freshmen more
+enthusiastically, we got along as nicely as the Egyptian Sphinx and John
+L. Sullivan. Even when he was elected police magistrate we didn't
+object. In fact, we didn't bumpity-bump to the situation until we went
+up against him in court.</p>
+
+<p>Part of the Senior class had been having a little choir practice in one
+of the town restaurants. It was a lovely affair and there wasn't a more
+cheerful crowd of fellows on earth than they were when they marched down
+the street at one <span class="smcap">A. M.</span> eighteen abreast and singing one of the dear old
+songs in a kind of a steam-siren barytone.</p>
+
+<p>Now they had never attempted to regulate mere noise in Jonesville, but
+that night a brand-new policeman had gone on the courthouse beat, and
+blamed if he didn't arrest the whole bunch for disturbing the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>peace&mdash;when they hadn't broken a single thing, mind you. They were
+pretty mad about it at first; but after all it was only a joke, and when
+Hinckley got down to bail them out they were singing with great feeling
+a song which Jenkins, the class poet, had just composed, and which ran
+as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i15">"As we walked along the street</span>
+<span class="i15">Officer Sikes we chanced to meet,</span>
+<span class="i15">And his shoes were full of feet</span>
+<span class="i15">As he prowled along his beat.</span>
+<span class="i15">He took us down and locked us up;</span>
+<span class="i15">Left us in charge of a Norsky Cop,</span>
+<span class="i15">And we didn't get home till early in the morning."</span></div>
+
+<p>Hold that "morning" as long as you can and tonsorialize to beat the
+band. Even the desk sergeant enjoyed it.</p>
+
+<p>When the bunch lined up the next morning in police court there was Judge
+Scroggs. They felt as if they ought to treat him nicely, he being a
+newcomer and all of them being very familiar with the ropes; and Emmons,
+the class president, started explaining to him that it was all a
+mistake. Scroggs bit him off with a voice that sounded like a terrier
+snapping at a fly.</p>
+
+<p>"We're here to correct these mistakes," he said. "You were all singing
+on the public street at one o'clock in the morning, weren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"We were trying to," said Emmons, still friendly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ten days apiece," said the magistrate. "Call the next case."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>If any one had removed the floor from under these Seniors and let them
+drop one thousand and one feet into space they couldn't have felt more
+shocked. Even the clerk and the desk sergeant were amazed. They tried to
+help explain, but the human vinegar-cruet turned around and spat the
+following through his clenched teeth:</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen, I have been appointed to sit on this bench and I don't need
+any help. Any more objections will be in contempt of court. Sergeant,
+remove these young thugs and have them sent to the workhouse at once."</p>
+
+<p>Maybe you don't think the college seethed when the news got out. There
+were the leading lights of the school, including the president of the
+Senior class, the chairman of the Junior promenade, two halfbacks, the
+pitcher on the baseball team and the president of the Y. M. C. A., all
+on the works for ten days, along with as choice an assortment of plain
+drunks and fancy resters as you could find in ninety miles of mainline
+railroad. The students fairly went mad and bit at the air. Even the
+Faculty got busy and Prexy dropped over to the police court to square
+it. He came out a minute later very white around the mouth. I don't know
+what Old Maledictions said to him, but it was a great sufficiency, I
+guess. He seemed as insulted as Lord Tennyson might have been if the
+milkman had pulled his whiskers.</p>
+
+<p>There wasn't a thing to be done. The Faculty appealed to the mayor, but
+old Scroggs had some <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>regular Spanish-bit hold on him in the way of a
+short-time note, I guess, and he washed his hands of the whole affair.
+Our college great men were hauled out to the works and served their
+time. When they got out they were sights. They weren't strong on
+sanitation in workhouses in those days. Even their friends shook hands
+with them with tongs. Think of sixteen proud monarchs of the campus
+making brick in striped suits, with a cross foreman who used to haul
+ashes from the college campus lording it over them and tracing their
+ancestry back through thirty generations of undesirable citizens! Nice,
+wasn't it? Oh, very!</p>
+
+<p>That was the beginning of a sad and serious year for Siwash. For the
+first time Scroggs enjoyed college boys. Soaking students got to be his
+specialty. We did our blamedest to behave, but you can't break off the
+habits of generations in a week or two. Soon after the Seniors got out
+the Mock Turtles, a Sophomore society, capacity thirty thousand quarts,
+absent-mindedly tipped over a street car on their way home and were
+jugged for thirty days. They had to enlarge the workhouse to take care
+of them, and four of our best football players were retired from
+circulation all through October. Think what that meant! The whole
+college went up, just before the game with Hambletonian, and knelt on
+the sidewalk before Judge Scroggs' house. He set the dog on us. Said
+afterwards he wished the dog had been larger and hadn't had his supper.
+A month later four members of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>glee club tried to do our favorite
+stunt of putting the horse in the herdic and hauling him home, and it
+cost them twenty-nine days&mdash;just enough to break up the club. The whole
+basket-ball team got thirty days because they took the bronze statue off
+the fountain in the public square one night, laid him on the car tracks
+in some old clothes, and had the ambulance force trying to resuscitate
+him. Nobody had ever objected to this little joke before, but it cost us
+the state championship and two of the team left school when they got
+out. Said they'd come to Siwash for a college education, not for a
+course of etymology in a workhouse.</p>
+
+<p>It was terrible. We scarcely dared to cut out our mufflers enough to
+whistle to each other on the street. By spring we were desperate. We had
+lost the basket-ball championship. The glee club was ruined.
+Muggledorfer had bumped us in football&mdash;that was the year before Ole
+Skjarsen came to school&mdash;and college spirit at Siwash had been gummed up
+until it could have been successfully imitated by a
+four-thousand-year-old mummy. Our college meetings resembled the
+overflow from a funeral around the front steps. We used to shut down all
+the windows, say "shsh" nine times, and then write out our college yell
+on curl papers and burn the papers. You could have swapped Siwash off
+for a correspondence school without noticing any difference in the
+reverberations. That was Petey Simmons' first year in college&mdash;as a
+matter of fact, he was a Senior prep. I've told <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>you more or less about
+Petey before. He was the only son of one of these country bankers who
+manage to get as much fun out of a half million as a New Yorker could
+out of a whole railroad. Petey was a little chap who had always had what
+he wanted and would cheerfully sit up all night thinking up new things
+to want. He wasn't a Freshman yet, but he could give points to all the
+college in the matter of explosive clothes and nifty ways of being
+expensive to Dad. He couldn't get along without coat-cut underwear long
+before we had heard of it, and you could tell by looking at his shoes
+just what the rest of the school would be wearing in two years. That was
+Petey all the way through. He was first and Father Time was nowhere,
+forty miles back with a busted tire.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_5" id="illo_5" /></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i077.jpg" class="ispace" width="500" height="322" alt="Martha caused some mild sensation
+
+Page 63" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Martha caused some mild sensation<br />
+
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_63">63</a></i></span></div>
+
+<p>Petey took to college life like a kid to candy and just soaked himself
+in college spirit. He proposed his sixty-five-dollar banjo for
+membership in the club and went in with it of course. He was elected
+yell-master before he had been in school two weeks, and if you ever want
+to know how much noise can come out of a comparatively small orifice you
+should have seen him emitting riot and pandemonium in the second half of
+a lively football game. Naturally, it worried Petey almost to death to
+see the dear old Coll. disintegrating under the Scroggs Inquisition, and
+he used to sit around the frat house with his head on his hands for
+hours, smoking his pipe, which had the largest bowl in school, and
+combing his convolutions <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>for a plan. Then, along in March, he electrified the whole school by
+taking Martha Scroggs to the college promenade.</p>
+
+<p>Martha was old Malachi's daughter. We hadn't known it, but she had been
+in school all that year. She was a quiet girl who was designed like a
+tall problem in plane geometry. While it was possible for a clock to run
+in the same room with her, still she was not what you might call a
+picnic to look at. She was the kind of girl a man would look at once and
+then go off and admire the scenery, even if it only consisted of a
+ninety-acre cornfield and a grain elevator. Martha was only about
+eighteen, and I never could understand how she got on to the styles of
+thirty-six years ago and wore them as fluently as she did.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, Martha had gotten along in her studies without being pestered
+by society to any extent. I sometimes think this helped old Scroggs to
+hate us. She was his only child, and he had taken all the affection and
+interest that most people distribute over their entire acquaintanceship
+and concentrated it on her. They had grown up together since she became
+a motherless baby, and they did say that while you could bombard the old
+man with gatling guns without jarring his opinions he would lie down,
+jump through a hoop or play dead whenever Martha wanted him to.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally Martha caused some mild sensation when she appeared at the
+biggest social spasm of the college <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>year, with her sleeves bulging in
+the wrong place, and nothing but her own hair on her head. But what
+caused the real sensation was the fact that Petey had been released from
+the workhouse the day before. Yes, sir&mdash;just turned out with seven more
+days to serve. He had thrown a brick at a Sophomore who was trying to
+catch him and dye his hair the Sophomore colors, and the brick had
+annihilated one of the city's precious thirty-seven-cent street lights.
+Petey had gone to the works for ten days, leaving a new dress suit that
+hadn't been dedicated and unlimited woe among the girls, for he was a
+Class A fusser.</p>
+
+<p>Petey was non-committal about his insanity. He had the best eye for
+beauty in the college, and yet he had been taking Miss Scroggs around to
+church socials and town affairs for two months. But college boys aren't
+slow, whatever you want to say about them. We had faith in Petey and we
+backed up his game. We gave Martha the time of her young life at the
+Prom.&mdash;pulled off three imitation rows over her program&mdash;and then we
+turned in that winter and gave her a good, hot rush&mdash;which is a
+technical college expression for keeping a girl dated up so that she
+doesn't have time to wash the dishes at home once a month.</p>
+
+<p>I must say that it wasn't much of a punishment, either, when we got
+acquainted with Martha. She was a good fellow clear through and had a
+smile that illuminated her plain face like a torchlight parade. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>Of
+course, after you get out of school you learn that beauty is only skin
+deep and seldom affects the brain; but this is a wonderful discovery for
+a college boy to make when there are so many raving beauties about him
+that he has to take a nap in the afternoon in order to dream about all
+of them. At any rate, we took Martha to everything that came along, one
+of us or another, and before a month we didn't have to pretend very much
+to scrap for her dances, even if you did have to lug her around the room
+by main strength&mdash;she was as heavy on her feet as a motor-bus.</p>
+
+<p>April came and the first baseball game with it, and Saunders, our
+pitcher, managed to draw a thirty-day sentence for stealing a steam
+roller one noon and racing off down the avenue with a fat cop in
+pursuit. We nearly fell dead once more when Saunders came walking into
+chapel three days later. He had been released by Judge Scroggs with a
+warning never under any circumstances to do anything of any sort at any
+time any more, and been assured that he was nothing more than hangman's
+meat. But he had been released! That night he took Martha Scroggs to the
+Alfalfa Delt hop. And the next day he held Muggledorfer down to two hits
+and no runs, with Martha waving hurrahs at him from a tally-ho.</p>
+
+<p>We wanted to elect Petey president of the college, for we laid the whole
+affair to him. But he wouldn't talk at all. If anything, he seemed a
+little sore about the whole thing. Martha didn't loosen up, either. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>She
+just smiled and told those of us who knew her well enough to ask
+questions that Saunders was a lovely boy and that she had had that date
+with him for ages&mdash;flies' ages, I guess she meant, for Alice Marsters,
+one of the beauties of the school, stayed home from the dance after
+announcing that she was going with Saunders, and never seemed able to
+remember him by sight after that.</p>
+
+<p>About a week afterward Maxwell, the college orator, a very solemn member
+of the Siwash brain trust, was arrested for ever so little a thing. I
+believe he so far forgot himself as to help give the college yell on
+Main Street the night his literary society won a debate. Anyway, he got
+ten days, and he was due in three days to orate for Siwash against the
+whole Northwest. It was the biggest event of the school year&mdash;the
+oratorical contest. We'd won seven of them&mdash;more than any other school
+in the sixteen states&mdash;and we stood a good show with Maxwell. We were
+crazy to win. Of course nobody ever goes to the contests; but we all
+stay up all night to hear the results, and when we win, which we do once
+every other college generation, we try to make the celebration bigger
+than the stories of other celebrations that have been handed down. We'd
+been planning this celebration all winter and had everything combustible
+in Jonesville spotted.</p>
+
+<p>Some of us were for going out and burning up the workhouse, but before
+we got around to it Maxwell appeared. It was the day before the contest.
+He'd served only two days, but instead of rushing right off <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>to rehearse
+his oration, which he couldn't do in the workhouse, owing to an
+accountable prejudice the tramps and other prisoners had against
+oratory, he took the evening off and went driving with Martha
+Scroggs&mdash;about as queer a thing for him to do as it would be for the
+Pope to take a young lady to the theatre. But we didn't ask any
+questions. We cheered him off on the midnight train, and the next night,
+when he won and we got the news, we turned out and built a bonfire of
+everything that wasn't nailed down. And when the police got done chasing
+us they had nineteen of the brightest and best sons of Siwash bottled up
+in the booby hatch.</p>
+
+<p>We didn't mind that on general principles. The bonfire was worth it,
+especially since we managed to get a few palings from old Scroggs' fence
+for it&mdash;but, as usual, the wrong men got pinched. There was the
+intercollegiate track meet due in two weeks, and there, in the list of
+felons, were Evans, our crack sprinter, Petersen, our hammer heaver, and
+yours truly, who could pole vault about as high as they run elevators in
+Europe, even if he was only a sub-Freshman with field mice in his hair.</p>
+
+<p>Now, this was really serious. We could afford to lose an oratorical
+contest&mdash;it just meant no bonfire for another year&mdash;but we had our
+hearts set on that track meet. We were up against our lifelong
+rivals&mdash;Muggledorfer, the State Normal, Kiowa, Hambletonian, and all the
+rest of them. We had to win&mdash;I don't know why. Beats all how many things
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>you have to do in college that don't seem so absolutely necessary a few
+years afterward. Anyhow, if we three point-gobblers had to spend the
+next ten days in the works instead of rounding into form, the points
+Siwash would win in that meet could be added up by a three-year-old boy
+who was a bad scholar. It was so desperate that we hired a lawyer and
+laid the case before him that night as we sat in our horrid cells&mdash;they
+wouldn't take Hinckley for bail any more.</p>
+
+<p>"Get a continuance," said he. And the next morning he appeared with us
+before the awful presence and demanded the continuance on the score of
+important evidence, lack of time to perfect a defense, other
+engagements, poor crops, Presidential election, and goodness knows
+what&mdash;regular lawyer style, you know.</p>
+
+<p>Old Scroggs glared at us the way an unusually hungry tiger might look at
+a lamb that was being taken away to get a little riper. "I cannot object
+to a reasonable continuance," he said sourly. "And I don't deny that you
+will need all the defense you can get. The case is an atrocious one, and
+I propose to do my small part toward putting down arson and riot in this
+unhappy town. You will appear two weeks from this morning."</p>
+
+<p>The field meet was two weeks from that afternoon! And we didn't have a
+ghost of a defense!</p>
+
+<p>We three scraped up the required bail and went back to college feeling
+cheerful as a man who has <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>been told that his hanging has been postponed
+until his wedding morning. Of course we sent for Petey Simmons. He
+arrived dejected. "No use, fellows," he remarked as he came in the door.
+"I know what you all want. You all want engagements with Martha Scroggs.
+It's no go. I've been over to see her and she's afraid to tackle it. The
+old man's told her that if she runs around with any more of this
+disgraceful, disgusting and nine other epitheted college bunch he'll
+show her the door. Says he's been worked and he's through. Says he's
+going to give you the limit and, if possible, he's going to give you
+enough to keep you in all vacation instead of letting you loose on a
+defenseless world all summer. That's how strong you are up at the
+Scroggs house."</p>
+
+<p>There you were! Siwash College, the pride of six decades, mollycoddled
+by an old parody on a gorilla with a grouch against the solar system! We
+trained these two weeks in hopes that a chariot of fire would come up
+and take the old man down, but there was nothing doing. He remained
+abnormally healthy and supernaturally mad. On the morning before the
+fatal day we all wrote letters home, explaining that we had secured
+elegant jobs in various emporiums over the city and wouldn't be home
+until late in the summer. Then we shivered a shake or two apiece and got
+ready to retire from this vain world for somewhere between thirty and
+ninety days. Just about that time Petey Simmons blew down to the
+college, bursting with information. He demanded a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>meeting of the
+Athletic Council at once and of us three sterling athletes as well. We
+were all in order in ten minutes.</p>
+
+<p>"Fellows, it's this way," said Petey. "Martha Scroggs is very loyal to
+the college, as you all know. She has done her very best with old
+Fireworks, but it hasn't made a dent in him. No little old party or
+buggy ride is going to get any one out this time. There's just one
+chance, she says, and she's taken it. This morning she confessed to her
+father that she is engaged to one of the men who is to come up for trial
+to-morrow morning. They think the old man will be well enough to
+unmuzzle before noon, but he's been acting like a bad case of dog-days
+all morning. He's given her twenty-four hours to name the man&mdash;and
+Martha thinks that by night he'll be resting comfortably enough to
+promise to let him off to-morrow. And she has given us the privilege of
+choosing the man she's engaged to. Now, it's up to this council to pick
+out the lucky chap. It's our only hope, fellows. We'll have one
+point-winner anyway&mdash;unless the old man eats him alive to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>Evans and Petersen turned pale&mdash;they had real fianc&eacute;es in college. But
+each stepped forward nobly and offered himself for the sacrifice. I
+stepped out, too, though I was so young at that time that I didn't know
+any more how to go about being engaged to a girl than I did about my
+Greek lessons. Then the council began to discuss the choice. And just
+there the trouble began.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>It all came about through the frats, of course. Frats are a good thing
+all right, but they stir up more trouble in a college than a Turk's nine
+wives can make for him. Ashcroft was president of the council. He was an
+Alfalfa Delt. So was Evans. Ashcroft hung out for Evans like a bulldog
+hanging to a tramp. Beeman, a council member, was a Sigh Whoop and so
+was Petersen. Beeman argued that Petersen could win more points than the
+rest of the school put together and that it would be unpatriotic,
+unmanly, disgraceful and un-Siwash-like not to select him. Bailey, the
+third member, was an Eta Bita Pie, and while sub-Freshmen are not
+supposed to be anything with Greek letters on, we understood each other,
+and I was to be initiated the next fall. Bailey pointed out caustically
+that to imprison a sub-Freshman would be to ruin his reputation, break
+his spirit and disgrace the school&mdash;that one world's record was worth
+fifty points, and that, if allowed to, I would pole-vault so high the
+next day that I would have to come down in a parachute. The result was
+the council broke up in one big row and Martha Scroggs spent the
+afternoon unengaged.</p>
+
+<p>About five o'clock Bailey came over to the track, where we were going
+through the last sad rites, and hauled me aside.</p>
+
+<p>"Take off those togs, kid," he said. "I've got a stunt. These yaps are
+going to hold another meeting to-night to decide on Martha Scroggs'
+fianc&eacute;. In the meantime you're going out to ask the old man for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>her.
+Understand? You're going to ask him and take what he gives you like a
+little man and beg off for to-day, and then you're going to break the
+pole-vault record. See?"</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, I did. I liked the job just as well as I would like
+getting boiled in oil. But one must stand by one's frat, you know&mdash;Gee,
+how proud I felt when I said that! I didn't have any idea how an engaged
+man ought to look or act, but I went home, put on the happiest duds I
+had, and shinned up the street about eight o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>The man-eating dog of the Scroggses was somewhere else, gorging himself
+on another unfortunate, and I got to the front door all right. I rang
+the bell. Some one opened the door. It was Judge Scroggs. He looked at
+me as one might look at a bug which had wandered on to the table and was
+trying to climb over a fork.</p>
+
+<p>"Young man," he said, "what do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>Did you ever have your voice slink around behind your larynx and refuse
+to come out? Mine did. I only wish I could have slunk with it. I started
+talking twice. My tongue went all right, but I couldn't slip in the
+clutch and make any sound.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," roared Scroggs, "what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>That jarred me loose. "Mr. Scroggs," I sputtered, "I am engaged to your
+daughter. I want to marry her. I want your permission. I&mdash;I'll be good
+to her, sir."</p>
+
+<p>He glared at me for a minute. "Oh!" he said <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>with a queer look. "Well,
+come on in with the rest of them."</p>
+
+<p>I followed him into the parlor. There sat Evans and Petersen. They were
+older than I, but if I looked as scared as they did I wish somebody had
+shot me. In the corner was another student. His name was Driggs. His
+specialty was cotillons.</p>
+
+<p>We four sat and looked at each other with awful suspicions. Something
+was excessively wrong. I felt indignant. Can't a fellow go to see his
+fianc&eacute;e without being annoyed by a Roman mob? I noticed Petersen and
+Evans looked indignant, too. We took it out by staring Driggs almost
+into the collywobbles. Who was he anyway, and why was he billy-goating
+around?</p>
+
+<p>Old Scroggs had called Martha. He sat and looked at us so peculiarly
+that I got gooseflesh all over. Here I was, a Freshman so green that the
+cows looked longingly at me, and up against the job of saving the
+college, winning out for the frat and becoming engaged to a girl I
+didn't know before a whole roomful of rivals. I wasn't up to the job. If
+only I had gone to the works! They seemed a haven of sweet peace just
+then.</p>
+
+<p>Martha Scroggs came into the room. She looked at the quartet. We looked
+at her with hunted looks. Scroggs looked at all of us.</p>
+
+<p>"Martha," he said at last, "each one of these four young idiots says he
+is engaged to you. Which of them shall I throw out?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>The jig was up! The college was ruined! Each one of us had the same
+bright thought!</p>
+
+<p>For a moment I thought Martha was going to faint. She looked at the mob
+with a dazed expression. You could almost see her brain grabbing for
+some explanation. It was just for a moment, though. My, but that girl
+was a wonder! She gulped once or twice. Then she smiled in an inspired
+sort of way.</p>
+
+<p>"None of them, Papa," she said ever so sweetly. "I am engaged to all of
+them."</p>
+
+<p>The eruption of Vesuvius was only a little sputter to what followed. For
+a moment we had hopes that old Scroggs would explode. I think if he had
+had us there alone he would have tried to hang us. But every tyrant has
+his master, so before long we began to see the halter on old Scroggs.
+And his daughter held the leading rope. She let him rave about so long
+and then she retired into her pocket-handkerchief and turned on a
+regular equinoctial. Scroggs looked more uncomfortable than we felt. He
+took her in his arms and there was a family reconciliation. Every little
+while Martha would look over his shoulder at us four hopefuls sitting up
+against the wall as lively as wooden Indians, and then she would bury
+her face in her handkerchief again and shake her shoulders and writhe
+with grief&mdash;or maybe it was something else. Martha always did have a
+pretty keen sense of humor.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_6" id="illo_6" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i090.jpg" class="ispace" width="500" height="293" alt="My, but that girl was a wonder!
+
+Page 74" title="" />
+<span class="caption">My, but that girl was a wonder!<br />
+
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_74">74</a></i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Suddenly Scroggs remembered us and we went out of the house like
+projectiles fired from a very loud <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>gun. We cussed each other all the way home&mdash;we three athletes. We would
+have cussed Driggs, but he sneaked the other way and we lost him.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning we went up to police court in our old clothes. Judge
+Scroggs looked at us sourly when our turn came.</p>
+
+<p>"Young men," he said, "my daughter has admitted that she has been
+foolish enough to engage herself provisionally to all of you, with the
+idea of choosing the hero in this afternoon's games. I do not admire her
+taste. I think she is indeed reckless to fall in love with collegians
+when there are so many honest cab drivers and grocery boys to choose
+from. But I have, in the interests of peace, consented to allow you to
+compete this afternoon. You are discharged. I do this the more willingly
+because I have seen you here before and shall again. You may go."</p>
+
+<p>We did go, and when we got through that afternoon the knobby-legged
+athletes from our rival schools looked like quarter horses plowing home
+just ahead of the next race. Siwash won by an enormous lead and we three
+were the stars of the meet. Why shouldn't we be when our fianc&eacute;e sat in
+a box in the grandstand and cheered us impartially? More than that, old
+Scroggs sat with her and I have an idea that he got excited, too, in the
+breath-catching parts.</p>
+
+<p>I think that engagement business must have broken the old man's spirit,
+or else so much association with college people began to waken dormant
+brain cells in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>his head. The rest of the rioters got out of the
+workhouse right away, and that fall he retired from the bench, declaring
+that if he was to have a college student for a son-in-law, as looked
+extremely likely, he needed to put in all of his time at home protecting
+his property. In honor of his retirement we had a pajama parade which
+was nine blocks long and forty-two blocks loud, and a platoon of six
+policemen led the way.</p>
+
+<p>Of course that engagement business left all sorts of complications.
+Scroggs pestered his daughter for about a month to make her decision. He
+seemed somewhat relieved when she finally announced that she couldn't;
+but it wasn't much relief, after all, for by this time he couldn't walk
+around his own house without falling over Petey Simmons. Just two years
+ago I got cards to Petey's wedding. He and Martha are living in Chicago
+in one of those flats where you have seven hundred and eighty-nine
+dollars' worth of bath-room, and eighty-nine cents' worth of living
+room, and which you have to lease by measure just as you would buy a
+vest. If Petey hangs on long enough he is going to be a big man in the
+banking business, too.</p>
+
+<p>I forgot to clear up this Driggs mystery. The evening after the races,
+Martha called up Petey Simmons. "Petey," said she, "I wish you would
+tell me who this fourth man is that I'm engaged to. He doesn't seem to
+be on the track team and I didn't catch his name. I don't mind having to
+make up an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>excuse for being engaged to four men right on the spur of
+the moment if it is necessary, but I'd at least like to know their
+names."</p>
+
+<p>Petey was as puzzled as she was and lit out to find Driggs. He was gone,
+but the next day he turned up and confessed all. He had a terrible
+affair with a girl in the next town, it seems, and had a date to bring
+her to the games. He was one of the nineteen criminals, and was so
+terror-stricken at the idea of being compelled to desert his hypnotizer
+that when the news of the engagement business leaked out he took a long
+chance and went up and announced himself. It worked, but we caught him
+two nights later and shaved his hair on one side as a gentle warning not
+to do it again.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>A FUNERAL THAT FLASHED IN THE PAN</h3>
+
+<p>Honest, Bill, sometimes when I sit down in these sober, plug-away
+days&mdash;when we are kind to the poor dumb policemen and don't dare wear
+straw hats after the first of September&mdash;and think about the good old
+college times, I wonder how we ever had the nerve to imitate insanity
+the way we did. Here I am, rubbing noses with thirty, outgrowing my
+belts every year, and sitting eight hours at a desk without exploding.
+Am I the chap who climbed up sixty feet of waterspout a few short years
+ago and persuaded the clapper of the college bell to come down with me?
+Here you are all worn smooth on top and proprietor of an overflow
+meeting in a nursery. In about ten minutes you'll be tearing your
+coat-tails out of my hands because you have to go back home before the
+eldest kid asks for a story. Are you the loafer who spent all one night
+getting a profane parrot into the cold-air pipes of the college chapel?
+Maybe you think you are, but I don't believe it. If I were to tip this
+table over on you now you'd get mad and go home instead of handing me a
+volume of George Barr McCutcheon in the watch-pocket. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>You're not the
+good old lunatic you used to be, and neither am I.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, times have changed. I don't feel as unfettered as I used to. There
+are a few things nowadays that I don't care to do. When I come home at
+night I take my shoes off and tiptoe to my room instead of standing
+outside and trying to persuade my landlady that the house is on fire.
+When I visit a friend in his apartments I do not, as a bit of repartee,
+throw all of his clothes out of the window while he is out of the room,
+and it has been a long time since I last hung a basket out of my window
+on Saturday night, expecting some early-rising friend to put a pocketful
+of breakfast in it as he came past from boarding-club. I am a slave to
+conventions and so are you, you slant-shouldered, hollow-chested,
+four-eyed, flabby-spirited pill-roller, you! The city makes more mummies
+out of live ones than old Rameses ever did out of his obituary crop.</p>
+
+<p>And yet it's no time at all since you and I were back at Siwash College,
+making a dear playmate out of trouble from morning till night. I wonder
+what it is in college that makes a fellow want to stick his finger into
+conventions and customs and manners, to say nothing of the revised
+statutes, and stir the whole mess 'round and 'round! When you're in
+college, college life seems big and all the rest of the world so small
+that what you want to do as a student seems to be the only important
+thing in life&mdash;no matter if what you want to do is only to put a
+free-lunch sign <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>over the First Methodist Church. What does the college
+student care for the U. S. A., the planet or the solar system? Why, at
+Siwash, I remember the biggest man in the world was Ole Skjarsen. Next
+to him was Coach Bost, then Rogers, captain of the football team, and
+then Jensen, the quarter. After him came Frankling, of the Alfalfa
+Delts, whose father picked up bargains in railroads instead of gloves;
+then came Prexy, and after him the President of the United States and a
+few scattered celebrities, tailing down to the Mayor of Jonesville and
+its leading citizens&mdash;mere nobodies.</p>
+
+<p>That's how important the outside world seemed to us. Is it any wonder
+that when we wanted to go downtown in pajamas and plug hats we paddled
+right along? Or that when we wanted to steal a couple of actors and tie
+them in a barn, while two of us took their places, we did not hesitate
+to do so? We felt perfectly free to do just what we pleased. The college
+understood us, and what the world thought never entered our heads.</p>
+
+<p>Those were certainly nightmarish times for the Faculty of a small but
+husky college filled with live wires who specialized in applied
+mischief. It beats all what peculiar things college students can do and
+not think anything of it at all; and it's funny how closely wisdom and
+blame foolishness seem to be related. I remember after I had spent two
+hours putting my Polykon down on a concrete foundation so that I could
+recite John Stuart Mill by the ream, it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>seemed as if I couldn't live
+half an hour longer without a certain kind of pie that was kept in
+captivity a mile away downtown at a lunch-counter. And, moreover, I
+couldn't eat that pie alone. A college student doesn't know how to
+masticate without an assistant or two. When I think of the hours and
+hours I have spent traveling around at midnight and battering on the
+doors of perfectly respectable houses, trying to drag some student out
+and take him a mile or two away downtown after pie, I am struck with
+awe. When I came to this town I walked two days for a job and then sat
+around with my feet on a sofa cushion for three days. I'll bet I've
+walked twice as far hunting up some devoted friend to help me go
+downtown and eat a piece of pie. And that pie seemed three times as
+important as the easy lessons for beginners in running the earth that I
+had been absorbing all the evening.</p>
+
+<p>You needn't grin, Bill. You were just as bad. I remember you were the
+biggest math. shark in college. You could do calculus problems that took
+all the English letters from A to Z and then slopped over into the Greek
+alphabet; and everybody predicted that you would be a great man if
+anybody ever found any use for calculus. And yet the chief ambition of
+your life was to find a way of tampering with the college clock so that
+it would run twice as fast as its schedule. You used to sit around and
+figure all evening over it and declare that if you could only do it once
+and watch the profs. letting out classes early and going <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>home to supper
+at one <span class="smcap">P. M.</span> you would consider your life well spent. Sounds fiddling
+now, doesn't it? But I admired you for it then. I really looked up to
+you, Bill, as a man with a firm, fixed purpose, while I was just a
+trifler who would be satisfied to steal the hands of the clock or jolly
+it into striking two hundred times in a row.</p>
+
+<p>There was Rearick, for instance. He was the smartest man in our class.
+Took scholarship prizes as carelessly as a policeman takes peanuts from
+a Dago stand. Since then he's gone up so fast that every time I see him
+I insult him by congratulating him on getting the place he's just been
+promoted from. But what was Rearick's hobby at Siwash? Stealing hatpins.
+He had four hundred hatpins when he graduated, and he never could see
+anything wrong in it. Guess he's got them yet. Perkins is in Congress
+already. He out-debated the whole Northwest and wrote pieces on subjects
+so heavy that you could break up coal with them. But I never saw him so
+earnest in debate as he was the night he talked old Bill Morrison into
+letting him drive his hack for him all evening. He told me he had driven
+every hack in town but Bill's, and that Bill had baffled him for two
+years. It cost him four dollars to turn the trick, but he was happier
+after it than he was when he won the Siwash-Muggledorfer debate. Said he
+was ready to graduate now&mdash;college held nothing further for him.
+Perkins' brains weren't addled, because he has been working them double
+shift ever <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>since. He just had the college microbe, that's all. It gets
+into your gray matter and makes you enjoy things turned inside out. You
+remember "Prince" Hogboom's funeral, don't you?</p>
+
+<p>What year was it? Why, ninety-ump-teen. What? That's right, you got out
+the year before. I remember they held your diploma until you paid for
+the library cornerstone that your class stole and cut up into
+paper-weights. Well, by not staying the next year you missed the most
+unsuccessful funeral that was ever held in the history of Siwash or
+anywhere else. It was one of the very few funerals on record in which
+the corpse succeeded in licking the mourners. I've got a small scar from
+it now. You may think you're going home to that valuable baby of yours,
+but you are not. You'll hear me out. I haven't talked with a Siwash man
+for a month, and all of these Hale and Jarhard and Stencilmania fellows
+give me an ashy taste in my mouth when I talk with them. It's about as
+much fun talking college days with a fellow from another school as it is
+to talk ranching with a New England old maid; and when I get hold of a
+Siwash man you can bet I hang on to him as long as my talons will stick.
+You just sit right there and start another Wheeling conflagration while
+I tell you how we killed Hogboom to make a Siwash holiday.</p>
+
+<p>I helped kill him myself. It was my first murder. It was an awful thing
+to do, but we were desperate men. It was spring&mdash;in May&mdash;and not one of
+us <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>had a cut left. You know how unimportant your cuts are in the fall
+when you know that you can skip classes ten times that year without
+getting called up on the green carpet and gimleted by the Faculty. Ten
+cuts seem an awful lot when you begin. You throw 'em away for anything.
+You cut class to go downtown and buy a cigarette. You cut class to see a
+dog fight. I've even known a fellow to cut a class in the fall because
+he had to go back to the room and put on a clean collar. But, oh, how
+different it is in May, when you haven't a cut left to your name and the
+Faculty has been holding meetings on you, anyway; when classroom is a
+jail and the campus just outside the window is a paradise, green and
+sunshiny and fanned by warm breezes&mdash;excuse these poetries. And you can
+sit in your class in Evidences of Christianity&mdash;of which you knew as
+much as a Chinese laundryman does of force-feed lubrication&mdash;and look
+out of the window and see your best girl sitting on the grass with some
+smug oyster who has saved up his cuts. How I used to hate these chaps
+who saved up their cuts till spring and then took my girl out walking
+while I went to classes! Is there anything more maddening, I'd like to
+know, than to sit before a big, low window trying to follow a psychology
+recitation closely enough to get up when called on, and at the same time
+watch five girls, with all of whom you are dead in love, strolling
+slowly off into the bright distance with five job-lot male beings who
+are dull and uninteresting <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>and just cold-blooded enough to save their
+cuts until the springtime? If there is I've never had it.</p>
+
+<p>In this spring of umpty-steen it seemed as if only one ambition in the
+world was worth achieving&mdash;that was to get out of classes. Most of us
+had used up our cuts long ago. The Faculty is never any too patient in
+the spring, anyhow, and a lot of us were on the ragged edge. I remember
+feeling very confidently that if I went up before that brain trust in
+the Faculty room once more and tried to explain how it was that I was
+giving absent treatment to my beloved studies, said Faculty would take
+the college away from me and wouldn't let me play with it never no more.
+And that's an awful distressing fear to hang over a man who loves and
+enjoys everything connected with a college except the few trifling
+recitations which take up his time and interfere with his plans. It hung
+over five of us who were trying to plan some way of going over to
+Hambletonian College to see our baseball team wear deep paths around
+their diamond. We were certain to win, and as the Hambletonians hadn't
+found this out there was a legitimate profit to be made from our
+knowledge&mdash;profit we yearned for and needed frightfully. I wonder if
+these Wall Street financiers and Western railroad men really think they
+know anything about hard times? Why, I've known times to be so hard in
+May that three men would pool all their available funds and then toss up
+to see which one of them <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>would eat the piece of pie the total sum
+bought. I've known Seniors to begin selling their personal effects in
+April&mdash;a pair of shoes for a dime, a dress suit for five dollars&mdash;and to
+go home in June with a trunk full of flags and dance programs and
+nothing else. I've known students to buy velveteen pants in the spring
+and go around with big slouch hats and very long hair&mdash;not because they
+were really artistic and Bohemian, but because it was easier to buy the
+trousers and have them charged than it was to find a quarter for a
+haircut.</p>
+
+<p>That's how busted live college students with unappreciative dads can get
+in the spring. That's how busted we were; and there was Hambletonian,
+twenty miles away, full of money and misguided faith in their team. If
+we could scrape up a little cash we could ride over on our bicycles and
+transfer the financial stringency to the other college with no trouble
+at all. But it was a midweek game and not one of us had a cut left. That
+was why we murdered Hogboom.</p>
+
+<p>It happened one evening when we were sitting on the front porch of the
+Eta Bita Pie house. That was the least expensive thing we could do. We
+had been discussing girls and baseball and spring suits, and the
+comparative excellence of the wheat cakes at the Union Lunch Counter and
+Jim's place. But whatever we talked about ran into money in the end and
+we had to change the subject. There's mighty little a poor man can talk
+about in spring in college, I can <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>tell you. We discussed around for an
+hour or two, bumping into the dollar mark in every direction, and
+finally got so depressed that we shut up and sat around with our heads
+in our hands. That seemed to be about the only thing to do that didn't
+require money.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have to do something desperate to get to that game," said Hogboom
+at last. Hogboom was a Senior. He ranked "sublime" in football,
+"excellent" in baseball, "good" in mandolin, "fair" in dancing, and from
+there down in Greek, Latin and Mathematics.</p>
+
+<p>"Intelligent boy," said Bunk Bailey pleasantly; "tell us what it must
+be. Desperate things done to order, day or night, with care and
+thoroughness. Trot out your desperate thing and get me an axe. I'll do
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Hogboom, "I don't know, but it seems to me that if one of
+us was to die maybe the Faculty would take a day off and we could go
+over to Hambletonian without getting cuts."</p>
+
+<p>"Fine scheme; get me a gun, Hogboom." "Do you prefer drowning or
+lynching?" "Kill him quick, somebody." "Look pleasant, please, while the
+operator is working." "What do you charge for dying?" Oh, we guyed him
+good and plenty, which is a way they have at old Harvard and middle-aged
+Siwash and Infant South Dakota University and wherever two students are
+gathered together anywhere in the U. S. A.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>Hogboom only grinned. "Prattle away all you please," he said, "but I
+mean it. I've got magnificent facilities for dying just now. I'll
+consider a proposition to die for the benefit of the cause if you
+fellows will agree to keep me in cigarettes and pie while I'm dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Done," says I, "and in embalming fluid, too. But just demonstrate this
+theorem, Hoggy, old boy. How extensively are you going to die?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just enough to get a holiday," said Hogboom. "You see, I happen to have
+a chum in the telegraph office in Weeping Water, where I live. Now if I
+were to go home to spend Sunday and you fellows were to receive a
+telegram that I had been kicked to death by an automobile, would you
+have sense enough to show it to Prexy?"</p>
+
+<p>"We would," we remarked, beginning to get intelligent.</p>
+
+<p>"And, after he had confirmed the sad news by telegram, would you have
+sense enough left to suggest that college dismiss on Tuesday and hold a
+memorial meeting?"</p>
+
+<p>"We would," we chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>"And would you have foresight enough to suggest that it be held in the
+morning so that you could rush away to Weeping Water in the afternoon to
+attend the funeral?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed," we said, so mildly that the cop two blocks away strolled
+down to see what was up.</p>
+
+<p>"And then would you be diplomatic enough to produce <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>a telegram saying
+that the report was false, just too late to start the afternoon
+classes?"</p>
+
+<p>"You bet!" we whooped, pounding Hogboom with great joy. Then we sat down
+as unconcernedly as if we were planning to go to the vaudeville the next
+afternoon and arranged the details of Hogboom's assassination. As I was
+remarking, positively nothing looks serious to a college boy until after
+he has done it.</p>
+
+<p>That was on Friday night. On Saturday we killed Hogboom. That is, he
+killed himself. He got permission to go home over Sunday and retired to
+an upper back room in our house, very unostentatiously. He had already
+written to his operator chum, who had attended college just long enough
+to take away his respect for death, the integrity of the telegraph
+service and practically everything else. The result was that at nine
+o'clock that evening a messenger boy rang our bell and handed in a
+telegram. It was brief and terrible. Wilbur Hogboom had been submerged
+in the Weeping Water River while trying to abduct a catfish from his
+happy home and had only just been hauled out entirely extinct.</p>
+
+<p>It was an awful shock to us. We had expected him to be shot. We read it
+solemnly and then tiptoed up to Hogboom with it. He turned pale when he
+saw the yellow slip.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" he asked hurriedly. "How did it happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"You were drowned, Hoggy, old boy," Wilkins <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>said. "Drowned in your
+little old Weeping Water River. They have got you now and you're all
+damp and drippy, and your best girl is having one hysteric after
+another. Don't you think you ought to throw that cigarette away and show
+some respect to yourself? We've all quit playing cards and are going to
+bed early in your honor."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm not," said Hogboom. "It's the first time I have ever been
+dead, and I'm going to stay up all night and see how I feel. Another
+thing, I'm going down and telephone the news to Prexy myself. I've had
+nothing but hard words out of him all my college course, and if he can't
+think up something nice to say on an occasion like this I'm going to
+give him up."</p>
+
+<p>Hogboom called up Prexy and in a shaking voice read him the telegram. We
+sat around, choking each other to preserve the peace, and listened to
+the following cross section of a dialogue&mdash;telephone talk is so
+interesting when you just get one hemisphere of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello! That you, Doctor? This is the Eta Bita Pie House. I've some very
+sad news to tell you. Hogboom was drowned to-day in the Weeping Water
+River. We've just had a telegram&mdash;Yes, quite dead&mdash;No chance of a
+mistake, I'm afraid&mdash;Yes, they recovered him&mdash;We're all broken up&mdash;Oh,
+yes, he was a fine fellow&mdash;We loved him deeply&mdash;I'm glad you thought so
+much of him&mdash;He was always so frank in his admiration of you&mdash;Yes, he
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>was honorable&mdash;Yes, and brilliant, too&mdash;Of course, we valued him for
+his good fellowship, but, as you say, he was also an earnest boy&mdash;It's
+awful&mdash;Yes, a fine athlete&mdash;I wish he could hear you say that,
+Doctor&mdash;No, I'm afraid we can't fill his place&mdash;Yes, it is a loss to the
+college&mdash;I guess you just address telegram to his folks at Weeping
+Water&mdash;That's how we're sending ours&mdash;Good-night&mdash;Yes, a fine
+fellow&mdash;Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>Hogboom hung up the 'phone and went upstairs, where he lay for an hour
+or two with his face full of pillows. The rest of us weren't so gay. We
+could see the humor of the thing all right, but the awful fact that we
+were murderers was beginning to hang over our heads. It was easy enough
+to kill Hogboom, but now that he was dead the future looked tolerably
+complicated. Suppose something happened? Suppose he didn't stay dead?
+There's no peace for a murderer, anyway. We didn't sleep much that
+night.</p>
+
+<p>The next day it was worse. We sat around and entertained callers all
+day. Half a hundred students called and brought enough woe to fit out a
+Democratic headquarters on Presidential election night. They all had
+something nice to say of Hoggy. We sat around and mourned and gloomed
+and agreed with them until we were ready to yell with disgust.</p>
+
+<p>Hogboom was the most disgracefully lively corpse I ever saw. He insisted
+on sitting at the head of the stairs where he could hear every good word
+that was said of him, and the things he demanded of us <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>during the day
+would have driven a stone saint to crime. Four times we went downtown
+for pie; three times for cigarettes; once for all the Sunday newspapers,
+and once for ice cream. As I told you, it was May, the time of the year
+when street-car fare is a problem of financial magnitude. We had to
+borrow money from the cook before night. Hoggy had us helpless, and he
+was taking a mean and contemptible advantage of the fact that he was a
+corpse. Half a dozen times we were on the verge of letting him come to
+life. It would have served him right.</p>
+
+<p>Old Siwash was just naturally submerged in sorrow when Monday morning
+came. The campus dripped with sadness. The Faculty oozed regret at every
+pore. We loyal friends of Hogboom were looked on as the chief mourners
+and it was up to us to fill the part. We did our best. We talked with
+the soft pedal on. We went without cigarettes. We wiped our eyes
+whenever we got an audience. Time after time we told the sad story and
+exhibited the telegram. By noon more particulars began to come in. Prexy
+got an answer to his telegram of condolence. The funeral, the telegram
+said, would be on Tuesday afternoon. There was great and universal grief
+in Weeping Water, where Hogboom had been held in reverent esteem.
+Hoggy's chum in the telegraph office simply laid himself out on that
+telegram. Prexy read it to me himself and wiped his eyes while he did
+it. He was a nice, sympathetic man, Prexy was, when he wasn't discussing
+cuts or scholarship.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>Getting the memorial meeting was so easy we hated to take it. The
+Faculty met to pass resolutions Monday afternoon, and when our
+delegation arrived they treated us like brothers. It was just like
+entering the camp of the enemy under a flag of truce. Many a time I've
+gone in on that same carpet, but never with such a feeling of holy calm.
+"They would, of course, hold the memorial meeting," said Prexy. They had
+in fact decided on this already. They would, of course, dismiss college
+all day. It was, perhaps, best to hold the memorial in the morning if so
+many of us were going out to Weeping Water. It was nice so many of us
+could go. Prexy was going. So was the mathematics professor, old
+"Ichthyosaurus" James, a very fine old ruin, whom Hogboom hated with a
+frenzy worthy of a better cause, but who, it seemed, had worked up a
+great regard for Hogboom through having him for three years in the same
+trigonometry class.</p>
+
+<p>We went out of Faculty meeting men and equals with the professors. They
+walked down to the corner with us, I remember, and I talked with Cander,
+the Polykon professor, who had always seemed to me to be the embodiment
+of Comanche cruelty and cunning. We talked of Hogboom all the way to the
+corner. Wonderful how deeply the Faculty loved the boy; and with what
+Spartan firmness they had concealed all indications of it through his
+career!</p>
+
+<p>When Monday night came we began to breathe more easily. Of course there
+was some kind of a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>deluge coming when Hogboom appeared, but that was
+his affair. We didn't propose to monkey with the resurrection at all. He
+could do his own explaining. To tell the truth, we were pretty sore at
+Hogboom. He was making a regular Roman holiday out of his demise. It
+kept four men busy running errands for him. We had to retail him every
+compliment that we had heard during the day, especially if it came from
+the Faculty. We had to describe in detail the effect of the news upon
+six or seven girls, for all of whom Hogboom had a tender regard. He
+insisted upon arranging the funeral and vetoed our plans as fast as we
+made them. He was as domineering and ugly as if he was the only man who
+had ever met a tragic end. He acted as if he had a monopoly. We hated
+him cordially by Monday night, but we were helpless. Hoggy claimed that
+being dead was a nerve-wearing and exhausting business, and that if he
+didn't get the respect due to him as a corpse he would put on his plug
+hat and a plush curtain and walk up the main street of Jonesville. And
+as he was a football man and a blamed fool combined we didn't see any
+way of preventing him.</p>
+
+<p>However, everything looked promising. We had made all the necessary
+arrangements. The students were to meet in chapel at nine o'clock in the
+morning and eulogize Hogboom for an hour, after which college was to be
+dismissed for the day in order that unlimited mourning could be indulged
+in. There were to be speeches by the Faculty and by students. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>Maxfield,
+the human textbook, was to make the address for the Senior class. We
+chuckled when we thought how he was toiling over it. Noddy Pierce, of
+our crowd, was to talk about Hogboom as a brother; Rogers, of the
+football team, was to make a few grief-saturated remarks. So was
+Perkins. Every one was confidently expecting Perkins to make the effort
+of his life and swamp the chapel in sorrow. He was in the secret and he
+afterward said that he would rather try to write a Shakespearean tragedy
+offhand than to write another funeral oration about a man who he knew
+was at that moment sitting in a pair of pajamas in an upper room half a
+mile away and yelling for pie.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, there were so many in the secret that we were dead
+afraid that it would explode. We had to put the baseball team on so that
+they would be prepared to go over to Hambletonian at noon. The game had
+been called off, of course, and Hambletonian had been telegraphed. But I
+was secretary of the Athletic Club and had done the telegraphing. So I
+addressed the telegram to my aunt in New Jersey. It puzzled the dear old
+lady for months, I guess, because she kept writing to me about it. We
+had to tell all the fellows in the frat house and every one of the
+conspirators let in a friend or two. There were about fifty students who
+weren't as soggy with grief as they should have been by Monday night.</p>
+
+<p>I blame Hogboom entirely for what happened. He <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>started it when he
+insisted that he be smuggled into the chapel to hear his own funeral
+orations. We argued half the Monday night with him, but it was no use.
+He simply demanded it. If all dead men are as disagreeable as Hogboom
+was, no undertaker's job for me. He was the limit. He put on a blue
+bath-robe and got as far as the door on his promenade downtown before we
+gave in and promised to do anything he wanted. We had to break into the
+chapel and stow him away in a little grilled alcove in the attic on the
+side of the auditorium where he could hear everything. Sounds
+uncomfortable, but don't imagine it was. That nervy slavedriver made us
+lug over two dozen sofa pillows, a rug or two, a bottle of moisture and
+three pies to while away the time with. That was where we first began to
+think of revenge. We got it, too&mdash;only we got it the way Samson did when
+he jerked the columns out from under the roof and furnished the material
+for a general funeral, with himself in the leading r&ocirc;le.</p>
+
+<p>By the time we got Hogboom planted in his luxurious nest, about three <span class="smcap">A.
+M.</span>, we were ready to do anything. Some of us were for giving the whole
+snap away, but Pierce and Perkins and Rogers objected. They wanted to
+deliver their speeches at the meeting. If we would leave it to them,
+they said, they would see that justice was ladled out.</p>
+
+<p>The whole college and most of the town were at the memorial meeting. It
+was a grand and tear-spangled occasion. There were three grades of
+emotion <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>plainly visible. There was the resigned and almost pleased
+expression of the students who weren't in on the deal and who saw a
+vacation looming up for that afternoon; the grieved and sympathetic
+sorrow of the Faculty who were attempting to mourn for what they had
+always called a general school nuisance; and there was the phenomenally
+solemn woe of the conspirators, who were spreading it on good and thick.</p>
+
+<p>The Faculty spoke first. Beats all how much of a hypocrite a good man
+can be when he feels it to be his duty. There was Bates, the Latin prof.
+He had struggled with Hogboom three years and had often expressed the
+firm opinion that, if Hoggy were removed from this world by a
+masterpiece of justice of some sort, the general tone of civilization
+would go up fifty per cent. Yet Bates got up that morning and
+cried&mdash;yes, sir, actually cried. Cried into a large pocket handkerchief
+that wasn't water-tight, either. That's more than Hoggy would ever have
+done for him. And Prexy was so sympathetic and spoke so beautifully of
+young soldiers getting drawn aside by Fate on their way to the battle,
+and all that sort of thing, that you would have thought he had spent the
+last three years loving Hogboom&mdash;whereas he had spent most of the time
+trying to get some good excuse for rooting him out of school. You know
+how Faculties always dislike a good football player. I think, myself,
+they are jealous of his fame.</p>
+
+<p>Maxfield made a telling address for the Senior <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>class. He and Hoggy had
+always disagreed, but it was all over now; and the way he laid it on was
+simply wonderful. I thought of Hoggy up there behind the grilling,
+swelling with pride and satisfaction as Maxfield told how brave, how
+tender, how affectionate and how honorable he was, and I wished I was
+dead, too. Being dead with a string to it is one of the finest things
+that can happen to a man if he can just hang around and listen to
+people.</p>
+
+<p>Pierce got up. He was the college silver-tongue, and we settled back to
+listen to him. Previous speakers had made Hoggy out about as fine as Sir
+Philip Sidney, but they were amateurs. Here was where Hoggy went up
+beside A. Lincoln and Alexander if Pierce was anywhere near himself.</p>
+
+<p>There is no denying that Pierce started out magnificently. But pretty
+soon I began to have an uneasy feeling that something was wrong. He was
+eloquent enough, but it seemed to me that he was handling the deceased a
+little too strenuously. You know how you can damn a man in nine ways and
+then pull all the stingers out with a "but" at the end of it. That was
+what Pierce was doing. "What if Hogboom was, in a way, fond of his
+ease?" he thundered. "What if the spirit of good fellowship linked arms
+with him when lessons were waiting, and led him to the pool hall? He may
+have been dilatory in his college duties; he may have wasted his
+allowance on billiards instead of in missionary contributions. He may
+have owed money&mdash;yes, a lot of money. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>He may, indeed, have been a
+little selfish&mdash;which one of us isn't? He may have frittered away time
+for which his parents were spending the fruit of their early toil&mdash;but
+youth, friends, is a golden age when life runs riot, and he is only half
+a man who stops to think of petty prudence."</p>
+
+<p>That was all very well to say about Rameses or Julius C&aelig;sar or some
+other deceased who is pretty well seasoned, but I'll tell you it made
+the college gasp, coming when it did. It sounded sacrilegious and to me
+it sounded as if some one who was noted as an orator was going to get
+thumped by the late Mr. Hogboom about the next day. I perspired a lot
+from nervousness as Pierce rumbled on, first praising the departed and
+then landing on him with both oratorical feet. When he finally sat down
+and mopped his forehead the whole school gave one of those long breaths
+that you let go of when you have just come up from a dive under cold
+water.</p>
+
+<p>Rogers followed Pierce. Rogers wasn't much of a talker, but he surpassed
+even his own record that day in falling over himself. When he tried to
+illustrate how thoughtful and generous Hogboom was he blundered into the
+story of the time Hoggy bet all of his money on a baseball game at
+Muggledorfer, and of how he walked home with his chum and carried the
+latter's coat and grip all the way. That made the Faculty wriggle, I can
+tell you. He illustrated the pluck of the deceased by telling how
+Hogboom, as a Freshman, dug all night alone to rescue <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>a man imprisoned
+in a sewer, spurred on by his cries&mdash;though Rogers explained in his
+halting way, it afterward turned out that this was only the famous
+"sewer racket" which is worked on every green Freshman, and that the
+cries for help came from a Sophomore who was alternately smoking a pipe
+and yelling into a drain across the road. Still, Rogers said, it
+illustrated Hogboom's nobility of spirit. In his blundering fashion he
+went on to explain some more of Hoggy's good points, and by the time he
+sat down there wasn't a shred of the latter's reputation left intact.
+The whole school was grinning uncomfortably, and the Faculty was acting
+as if it was sitting, individually and collectively, on seventeen great
+gross of red-hot pins.</p>
+
+<p>By this time we conspirators were divided between holy joy and a fear
+that the thing was going to be overdone. It was plain to be seen that
+the Faculty wasn't going to stand for much more loving frankness. Pierce
+whispered to Tad Perkins, Hogboom's chum, and the worst victim of his
+posthumous whims, to draw it mild and go slow. Perkins was to make the
+last talk, and we trembled in our shoes when he got up.</p>
+
+<p>We needn't have feared for Perkins. He was as smooth as a Tammany
+orator. He praised Hogboom so pathetically that the chapel began to show
+acres of white handkerchiefs again. Very gently he talked over his
+career, his bravery and his achievements. Then just as poetically and
+gently he glided <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>on into the biggest lie that has been told since
+Ananias short-circuited retribution with his unholy tale.</p>
+
+<p>"What fills up the heart and the throat, fellows," he swung along, "is
+not the loss we have sustained; not the irreparable injury to all our
+college activities; not even the vacant chair that must sit mutely
+eloquent beside us this year. It's something worse than that. Perhaps I
+should not be telling this. It's known to but a few of his most intimate
+friends. The saddest thing of all is the fact that back in Weeping Water
+there is a girl&mdash;a lovely girl&mdash;who will never smile again."</p>
+
+<p>Phew! You could just feel the feminine side of the chapel
+stiffen&mdash;Hogboom was the worst fusser in college. He was chronically in
+love with no less than four girls and was devoted to dozens at a time.
+We had reason to believe that he was at that time engaged to two, and
+spring was only half over at that. This was the best of all; our revenge
+was complete.</p>
+
+<p>"A girl," Perkins purred on, "who has grown up with him from childhood;
+who whispered her promise to him while yet in short dresses; who sat at
+home and waited and dreamed while her knight fought his way to glory in
+college; who treasured his vows and wore his ring and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"'Tain't so, you blamed idiot!" came a hoarse voice from above. If the
+chapel had been stormed by Comanches there couldn't have been more of a
+commotion. A thousand pairs of eyes focused themselves <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>on the grill. It
+sagged in and then disappeared with a crash. The towsled head of Hogboom
+came out of the opening.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll fix you for that, Tad Perkins!" he yelled. "I'll get even with you
+if it takes me the rest of my life. I ain't engaged to any Weeping Water
+girl. You know it, you liar! I've had enough of this&mdash;" You couldn't
+hear any more for the shrieks. When a supposedly dead man sticks his
+head out of a jog in the ceiling and offers to fight his Mark Antony it
+is bound to create some commotion. Even the professors turned white. As
+for the girls&mdash;great smelling salts, what a cinch! They fainted in
+windrows. Some of us carried out as many as six, and you had better
+believe we were fastidious in our choice, too.</p>
+
+<p>There had never been such a sensation since Siwash was invented. Between
+the panic-stricken, the dazed, the hilarious, the indignant and the
+guilty wretches like myself, who were wondering how in thunder there was
+going to be any explaining done, that chapel was just as coherent as a
+madhouse. And then Hogboom himself burst in a side door, and it took
+seven of us to prevent him from reducing Perkins to a paste and
+frescoing him all over the chapel walls. Everybody was rattled but
+Prexy. I think Prexy's circulation was principally ice water. When the
+row was over he got up and blandly announced that classes would take up
+immediately and that the Faculty would meet in extraordinary session
+that noon.</p>
+
+<p>How did we get out of it? Well, if you want to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>catch the last car, old
+man, I'll have to hit the high spots on the sequel. Of course, it was a
+tremendous scandal&mdash;a memorial meeting breaking up in a fight. We all
+stood to be expelled, and some of the Faculty were sorry they couldn't
+hang us, I guess, from the way they talked. But in the end it blew over
+because there wasn't much of anything to hang on any one. The telegrams
+were all traced to the agent at Weeping Water, and he identified the
+sender as a long, short, thick, stout, agricultural-looking man in a
+plug hat, or words to that effect. What's more, he declared it wasn't
+his duty to chase around town confirming messages&mdash;he was paid to send
+them. Hogboom had a harder time, but he, too, explained that he had come
+home from Weeping Water a day late, owing to a slight attack of
+appendicitis, and that when he found himself late for chapel he had
+climbed up into the balcony through a side door to hear the chapel talk,
+of which he was very fond, and had found, to his amazement, that he was
+being reviled by his friends under the supposition that he was dead and
+unable to defend himself. Nobody believed Hogboom, but nobody could
+suggest any proof of his villainy&mdash;so the Faculty gave him an extra
+five-thousand-word oration by way of punishment, and Hogboom made
+Perkins write it in two nights by threats of making a clean breast. Poor
+Hoggy came out of it pretty badly. I think it broke both of his
+engagements, and what between explaining to the Faculty and studying to
+make a good showing and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>redeem himself, he didn't have time to work up
+another before Commencement&mdash;while the rest of us lived in mortal terror
+of exposure and didn't enjoy ourselves a bit all through May, though it
+was some comfort to reflect on what would have happened if the scheme
+had worked&mdash;for Hambletonian beat us to a frazzle that afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>That's what we got for monkeying with a solemn subject. But, pshaw! Who
+cares in college? What a student can do is limited only by what he can
+think up. Did I ever tell you what we did to the English Explorer? Take
+another cigar. It isn't late yet.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>COLLEGES WHILE YOU WAIT</h3>
+
+<p>Mind you, old head, I'm not saying that a little education isn't a good
+thing in a college course. I learned a lot of real knowledge in school
+myself that I wouldn't have missed for anything, though I have forgotten
+it now. But what irritate me are the people who think that the education
+you get in a modern American super-heated, cross-compound college comes
+to you already canned in neat little textbooks sold by the trust at one
+hundred per cent profit, and that all you have to do is to go to your
+room with them, fill up a student lamp with essence of General Education
+and take the lid off.</p>
+
+<p>Honest, lots of them think that. It might have been so, too, in the good
+old days when there was only one college graduate for each town and he
+had to do the heavy thinking for the whole community. But, pshaw! the
+easiest job in the world nowadays is to stuff your storage battery full
+of Greek verbs and obituaries in English literature, and the hardest job
+is to get it hitched up to something that will bring in the yellowbacks,
+the chopped-wood furniture, the automobile tires and the large
+majorities in the fall <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>elections. I've seen brilliant boys at old
+Siwash go out of college knowing everything that had ever happened in
+the world up to one hundred years ago, and try to peddle hexameters in
+the wholesale district in Chicago. And I've seen boys who slid through
+the course just half a hair's breadth ahead of the Faculty boot, go out
+and do the bossing for a whole Congressional district in five years.
+They hadn't learned the exact chemical formula of the universe, but they
+had learned how to run the blamed thing from practicing on the college
+during study hours.</p>
+
+<p>Not that I 'm knocking on knowledge, you understand. Knowledge is, of
+course, a grand thing to have around the house. But nowadays knowledge
+alone isn't worth as much as it used to be, seems to me. A man has to
+mix it up with imagination, and ingenuity, and hustle, and nerve, and
+the science of getting mad at the right time, and a fourteen-year course
+of study in understanding the other fellow. The college professors lump
+all this in one course and call it applied deviltry. They don't put it
+down in the catalogue and they encourage you to cut classes in it. But,
+honestly, I wouldn't trade what I learned under Professor Petey Simmons,
+warm boy and official gadfly to the Faculty, for all the Lat. and Greek
+and Analit. and Diffy. Cal., and the other studies&mdash;whatever they
+were&mdash;that I took in good old Siwash.</p>
+
+<p>You remember Petey, of course. He went through Siwash in four years and
+eight suspensions, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>came out fresh&mdash;as fresh as when he went in,
+which is saying a good deal. Every summer during his career the Faculty
+went to a rest cure and tried to forget him. He was as handy to have
+around school as a fox terrier in a cat show. There are two varieties of
+college students&mdash;the midnight-oil and the natural-gas kind; and Petey
+was a whole gas well in himself. Not that he didn't study. He was the
+hardest student in the college, but he didn't recite much in classes.
+Sometimes he recited in the police court, sometimes to his Pa back home,
+and sometimes the whole college took a hand in looking over his
+examination papers. He used to pass medium fair in Horace; sub-passable
+in Trig., and extraordinary mediocre in Polikon. But his marks in
+Imagination, the Psychological Moment and Dodging Consequences were plus
+perfect, extra magnificent, and superlatively some, respectively.</p>
+
+<p>I saw Petey last year. He is in Chicago now. You have to bribe a
+doorkeeper and bluff a secretary to get to him&mdash;that is, you do if you
+are an ordinary mortal. But if you give the Siwash yell or the Eta Bita
+Pie whistle in the outside office he will emerge from his office out
+over the railing in one joyous jump. He came to Chicago ten years ago
+equipped with a diploma and a two-year tailor-bill back at Jonesville
+that he had been afraid to tell his folks about. If he had been a
+midnight-oil graduate he would have worn out three pairs of shoes
+hunting for a business house which was willing to let an earnest <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>young
+scholar enter its employ at the bottom and rise gradually to the top as
+the century went by. But Petey wasn't that kind. He had been used to
+running the whole college and messing up the universe as far as one
+could see from the Siwash belfry if things didn't suit him. So he picked
+out the likeliest-looking institution on Dearborn Street and offered it
+a position as his employer. He was on the payroll before the president
+got over his daze. Two weeks later he promoted the firm to a more
+responsible job&mdash;that of paying him a bigger salary&mdash;and a year ago the
+general manager gave up and went to Europe for two years; said he would
+take a positive pleasure in coming back and looking at the map of
+Chicago after Petey had done it over to suit himself.</p>
+
+<p>Imagination was what did it. You can't take Imagination in any college
+classroom, but you can get more of it on the campus in four years than
+you can anywhere else in the world. You've got to have a mighty good
+imagination to get into any real warm trouble&mdash;and by the time you have
+gotten out of it again you have had to double its horse-power. That was
+Petey's daily recreation. In the morning he would think up an absolutely
+air-tight reason for being expelled from Siwash as a disturber, an
+anarchist, a superfluosity and a malefactor of great stealth. That night
+he would go to his room and figure out an equally good proof that
+nothing had happened or that whatever had happened was an act <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>of
+Providence and not traceable to any student. Figuring out ways for
+selling bonds in carload lots was just recreation to him after a
+four-year course of this sort.</p>
+
+<p>But to back in on the main track. I whistled outside of Petey's office
+the other day and went in with him past two magnates, three salesmen and
+a bank president. I sat with my feet on a mahogany table&mdash;I wanted to
+put them on an oak desk, but Petey declared mahogany was none too good
+for a Siwash man&mdash;and we spent an hour talking over the time when Petey
+manufactured excitement in wholesale lots at Siwash, with me for his
+first assistant and favorite apprentice. Those are my proudest memories.
+I won my track S. and got honorably mentioned in three Commencement
+exercises; but when I want to brag of my college career do I mention
+these things? Not unless I have a lot of time. When I want to paralyze
+an alumnus of some rival college with admiration and envy, I tell him
+how Petey and I manufactured a real Wild West college&mdash;buildings,
+Faculty, bad men and all&mdash;for one day only, for the benefit of an
+Englishman who had gotten fifteen hundred miles inland without noticing
+the general color scheme of the inhabitants.</p>
+
+<p>We met this chap accidentally&mdash;a little favor of Providence, which had a
+special pigeonhole for us in those days. Our team had been using the
+Kiowa football team as a running track on their own field that
+afternoon, and the score was about 105 to 0 when the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>timekeeper turned
+off the massacre. Naturally all Siwash was happy. I will admit we were
+too happy to be careful. About two hundred of us made the hundred-mile
+trip home by local train that night, and I remember wondering, when the
+boys dumped the stove off the rear platform and tied up the conductor in
+his own bell-rope, if we weren't getting just a little bit indiscreet;
+and when a college boy really wonders if he is getting indiscreet he is
+generally doing something that will keep the grand jury busy for the
+next few months.</p>
+
+<p>I was in the last car, and had just finished telling "Prince" Hogboom
+that if he poked any more window-lights out with his cane he would have
+to finish the year under an assumed name, when Petey crawled over two
+mobs of rough-housers and came up to me. He was seething with
+indignation. It was breaking out all over him like a rash. Petey was
+excitable anyway.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you suppose I've found in the next car?" he said, fizzing like
+an escape valve.</p>
+
+<p>"Prof?" said I, getting alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>"Naw," said Petey; "worse than that. A chap that has never heard of
+Siwash. Asked me if it was a breakfast food. He's an Englishman. I'm
+ag'in' the English." He stopped and began kicking a water tank around to
+relieve himself.</p>
+
+<p>"How did he get this far away from home?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He's traveling," snorted Petey; "traveling to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>improve his mind.
+Hopeless job. He's one of those quarter-sawed old beef-eaters who stop
+thinking as soon as they've got their education. He's the editor of a
+missionary publication, he told me, and he is writing some articles on
+Heathen America. Honest, it almost made me boil over when he asked me if
+anything was being done to educate the aborigines out here."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Do?" said Petey. "Why, I answered his question, of course. I told him
+he wasn't fifty miles from a college this minute, and he said, 'Oh, I
+say now! Are you spoofing me?' What's 'spoofing'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Kidding, stringing, stuffing, jollying along, blowing east wind,
+turning on the gas," says I. "'Spoofing' is University English. They
+don't use slang over there, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, I spoofed him," said Petey, grinning. "He said it was
+remarkable how very few revolvers he had seen, and then he wanted to
+know why there was no shooting on the train with so much disorder. He's
+pretty well posted now. I'd go a mile out of my way to help a poor dumb
+chap like him. I told him this was the Y. M. C. A. section of Siwash and
+that the real rough students were coming along on horseback. I said they
+weren't allowed on the trains because they were so fatal to passengers.
+I informed him that all the profs at Siwash went armed, and that the
+course of study consisted of mining, draw poker, shooting from the hip,
+broncho-busting, sheep-shearing, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>History of Art, bread-making and
+Evidences of Christianity."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he admit by that time that you were a good, free-handed liar?" I
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Admit nothing," said Petey; "he took it all down in his notebook and
+remarked that in a wild country like this, remote from civilization, a
+knowledge of bread-making would undoubtedly be invaluable to a man."</p>
+
+<p>"He was spoofing you," says I.</p>
+
+<p>"He wasn't," said Petey; "he thinks he's a thousand miles from a plug
+hat this minute. He's so interested he is going to stop over for a day
+or two and write up the college for his magazine. I've invited him to
+stay at the Eta Bita Pie House with us, and we're going to show him a
+real Wild West school if we have to shoot blank cartridges at the cook
+to do it."</p>
+
+<p>"Petey," said I solemnly, "some day you'll bump an asteroid when you go
+up in the air like this. This friend of yours will take one look at
+Siwash and ask you if Sapphira is feeling well these days."</p>
+
+<p>"Bet you five, my opera hat, a good mandolin and a meal ticket on Jim's
+place against your dress suit," said Petey promptly. "And you better not
+take it, either."</p>
+
+<p>"Done!" says I. "I bet you my hunting-case suit against your earthly
+possessions that you can't tow old Britannia-rules-the-waves around
+Siwash for a day without disclosing the fact that you are the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>best
+catch-as-catch-can liar in this section of the solar system."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said Petey. "But you've got to help me win the stuff. This
+is a great big contract. It's going to be my masterpiece, and I need
+help."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm with you clear to Faculty meeting, as usual," says I. "But what's
+the use? He'll catch on."</p>
+
+<p>"Leave that to me," said Petey. "Anyway, he won't catch on. When I told
+him we had a checkroom for pappooses in the Siwash chapel he wrote it
+down and asked if the Indians ever massacred the professors. He wouldn't
+catch on if we fed him dog for dinner. Just come and see for yourself."</p>
+
+<p>I agreed with Petey when I took a good look at the victim a minute
+later. We found him in the car ahead, sitting on the edge of the seat
+and looking as if he expected to be eaten alive, without salt, any
+minute. You could have told that he was from extremely elsewhere at
+first glance. He was as different as if he had worn tattoo-marks for
+trousers. He was a stout party with black-rimmed eyeglasses, side
+whiskers that you wouldn't have believed even if you had seen them, and
+slabs of iron-gray hair with a pepper-and-salt traveling cap stuck on
+top of his head like a cupola. He was beautifully curved and his black
+preacher uniform looked as if it had been put on him by a paperhanger. I
+forgot to tell you that his name was the Reverend Ponsonby Diggs. He had
+to tell it to me four times and then write it down, for the way he
+handled his words was positively heartless. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>He clipped them, beheaded
+them, disemboweled them and warped them all out of shape. Have you ever
+heard a real ingrowing Englishman start a word in the roof of his mouth
+and then back away from it as if it was red-hot and had prickles on it?
+It's interesting. They seem to think it is indecent to come brazenly out
+and sound a vowel.</p>
+
+<p>The Reverend Ponsonby Diggs&mdash;as near as I could get it he called himself
+"Pubby Daggs"&mdash;greeted Petey with great relief. He seemed to regard us
+as a rescue brigade. "Reahly, you know, this is extraordinary," he
+sputtered. "I have never seen such disorder. What will the authorities
+do?"</p>
+
+<p>That touched my pride. "Pshaw, man!" I says; "we're only warming up.
+Pretty soon we'll take this train out in the woods and lose it."</p>
+
+<p>I meant it for a joke. But the Reverend Mr. Diggs hadn't specialized in
+American jokes. "You don't mean to say they will derail the train!" he
+said anxiously. Then I knew that Petey was going to win my dress suit.</p>
+
+<p>I assured the Reverend&mdash;pshaw, I'm tired of saying all that! I'm going
+to save breath. I assured Diggsey that derailing was the kindest thing
+ever done to trains by Siwash students, but that as his hosts we would
+stand by him, whatever happened. Then Petey slipped away to arrange the
+cast and I kept on answering questions. Say! that man was a regular
+magazine gun, loaded with interrogation points. Was there any danger to
+life on these trains? <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>Would it be possible for him to take a ride in a
+stage-coach? Were train robbers still plentiful? Had gold ever been
+found around Siwash? Were the Indians troublesome? Did we have regular
+school buildings or did we live in tents? Had not the railroad had a
+distinctly&mdash;er&mdash;civilizing influence in this region? Was it not, after
+all, remarkable that the thirst for learning could be found even in this
+wild and desolate country?</p>
+
+<p>And Siwash is only half a day from Chicago by parlor car!</p>
+
+<p>I answered his questions as well as I could. I told him how hard it was
+to find professors who wouldn't get drunk, and how we had to let the men
+and women recite on alternate days after a few of the hen students had
+been winged by stray bullets. I had never heard of Greek, I said, but I
+assured him that we studied Latin and that we had a professor to whom
+C&aelig;sar was as easy as print. I told him how hard we worked to get a
+little culture and how many of the boys gave up their ponies altogether,
+wore store clothes and took 'em off when they went to bed all the time
+they were in college; but, try as I would, I couldn't make the answers
+as ridiculous as his questions. He had me on the mat, two points down
+and fighting for wind all the time. His thirst for knowledge was
+wonderful and his objection to believing what his eyes must have told
+him was still more wonderful. There he was, half-way across the country
+from New York, and he must have looked out <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>of the car windows on the
+way; but he hadn't seen a thing. I suppose it was because he wasn't
+looking for anything but Indians.</p>
+
+<p>All this time Petey was circulating about the car, taking aside members
+of the Rep Rho Betas and talking to them earnestly. The Rep Rho Betas
+were the Sophomore fraternity and were the real demons of the college.
+Each year the outgoing Sophomore class initiated the twenty Freshmen who
+were most likely to meet the hangman on professional business and passed
+on the duties of the fraternity to them. The fraternity spent its time
+in pleasure and was suspected of anything violent which happened in the
+county. Petey was highbinder of the gang that year and was very far gone
+in crime.</p>
+
+<p>We were due home about ten <span class="smcap">P. M.</span>, and just before they untied the
+conductor Petey hauled me off to one side.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all fixed," he said; "it's glorious. We'll just make Siwash into a
+Wild West show for his benefit. The Rep Rho Betas will entertain him
+days and he'll stay at the Eta Pie House nights. I'm putting the Eta
+Bites on now. You've got to get him off this train before we get to the
+station and keep him busy while I arrange the program. Just give me an
+hour before you get him there. That's all I ask."</p>
+
+<p>Now I never was a diplomat, and the job of lugging a fat old foreigner
+around a dead college town at night and trying to make him think he was
+in peril <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>of his life every minute was about three numbers larger than
+my size. I couldn't think of anything else, so I slipped the word to Ole
+Skjarsen that Diggs was a Kiowa professor who was coming over to get
+notes on our team and tip them off to Muggledorfer College. I judged
+this would create some hostility and I wasn't mistaken. Ole began to
+climb over his fellow-students and I was just able to beat him to his
+prey.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on," I whispered. "Skjarsen's on the warpath. He says he wants to
+bite up a stranger and he thinks you'll do."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear sir," said the Reverend Ponsonby, jumping up and grabbing a
+hatbox, "you don't mean to tell me that he will use violence?"</p>
+
+<p>"Violence nothing!" I yelled, picking up four pieces of baggage. "He
+won't use violence. He'll just eat you alive, that's all. He's awful
+that way. Come, quick!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my word!" said Diggsey, grabbing his other five bundles and piling
+out of the car after me.</p>
+
+<p>The train was slowing down for the crossing west of Jonesville, and I
+judged it wouldn't hurt the great collector of Western local color to
+roll a little. So I yelled, "Jump for your life!" He jumped. I swung off
+and went back till I met him coming along on his shoulder-blades, with a
+procession of baggage following him. He wasn't hurt a bit, but he looked
+interesting. I brushed him off, cached the baggage&mdash;all but a suitcase
+and the hatbox which he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>hadn't dropped for a minute&mdash;and we began to
+edge unostentatiously into Jonesville.</p>
+
+<p>For an hour or more we dodged around in alleys and behind barns, while
+up on the campus the boys burned a woodshed, an old fruit-stand, half a
+hundred drygoods boxes and half a mile of wooden sidewalk by way of
+celebration. The glare in the sky was wild enough to satisfy any one,
+and when some of the boys got the old army muskets that the cadets
+drilled with out of the armory and banged away, I was happy. But how I
+did long to be close up to that fire! It was a cold night in early
+November, and as I lay behind woodsheds, with my teeth wearing
+themselves out on each other, I felt like an early Christian
+martyr&mdash;though it wasn't cold they suffered from as a rule. As for the
+Reverend Pubby, he wanted to creep away to the next town and then start
+for England disguised as a chorus girl, or anything; but I wouldn't let
+him. We sneaked around till nearly midnight and then crept up the alley
+to the Eta Bita Pie House, wondering if we would ever get warm again.</p>
+
+<p>I've seen some grand transformation scenes, but I never saw anything
+more impressive than the way the Eta Bita Pie House had been done over
+in two hours. We always prided ourselves on our house. It cost fifteen
+thousand dollars, exclusive of the plumber's little hold-up and the
+Oriental rugs, and it was full of polished floors and monogram
+silverware and fancy pottery and framed prints, and other
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>bang-up-to-date incumbrances. But in two hours thirty boys can change a
+whole lot of scenery. They had spread dirt and sand over the floor, had
+ripped out the curtains and chased the pictures. They had poked out a
+window-light or two, had unhung a few doors, and had filled the corners
+with saddles, old clothes, flour barrels and dogs. You never saw so many
+dogs. The whole neighborhood had been raided. They were hanging round
+everywhere, homesick and miserable; and one of the Freshmen had been
+given the job of cruising around and kicking them just to keep them
+tuned up.</p>
+
+<p>A dozen of the fellows were playing poker on an old board table in the
+middle of the big living-hall when we came in. Their clothes were
+hand-me-downs from Noah's time, and every one of them was outraging some
+convention or other. Our boys always did go in for amateur theatricals
+pretty strongly, and the way our most talented members abused the
+English language that night when they welcomed the Reverend Pubby was as
+good as a book.</p>
+
+<p>"Proud ter meet you," roared Allie Bangs, our president, taking off his
+hat and making a low bow. "Set right in and enjoy yourself. White chips
+is a dime, limit is a dollar and no gunplay goes."</p>
+
+<p>When Pubby had explained for the third time that he had never had the
+pleasure of playing the game, Bangs finally got on to the curves in his
+pronunciation and understood him.</p>
+
+<p>"What! Never played poker!" he whooped. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>"Hell a humpin', where was you
+raised? You sure ain't a college man? Any lop-eared galoot that didn't
+play poker in Siwash would get run out by the Faculty. You ought to see
+our president put up his pile and draw to a pair of deuces. What!&mdash;a
+Reverend! I beg your pardon, friend. 'S all right. Jest name the game
+you're strong at and we'll try to accommodate you later on. Here, you
+fellows, watch my chips while I show the Reverend around our diggin's.
+You nip one like you did last time, Turk Bowman, and there'll be the
+all-firedest row that this shack has ever seed. Come right along,
+Reverend."</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_7" id="illo_7" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 391px;">
+<img src="images/i137.jpg" class="ispace" width="391" height="500" alt="&quot;Har&#39;s das spy&#39;&quot; he yelled &quot;Kill him, fallers, he ban a
+spy!&quot;
+
+See page 132" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Har&#39;s das spy&#39;&quot; he yelled &quot;Kill him, fallers, he ban a
+spy!&quot;<br />
+
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_132">132</a></i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>That tour was a great triumph for Bangs. We always did admire his
+acting, but he outdid himself that night. The rest of us just kept quiet
+and let him handle the conversation, and I must say it sounded desperate
+enough to be convincing. Of course he slipped up occasionally and stuck
+in words that would have choked an ordinary cow-gentleman, but Diggsey
+was that dazed he wouldn't have suspected if they had been Latin. I
+thought it would be more or less of a job to explain how we were living
+in a fifteen-thousand-dollar house instead of dugouts, but Bangs never
+hesitated a minute. He explained that the house belonged to a
+millionaire cattle-owner who had built it from reading a society novel,
+and that he let us live in it because he preferred to live in the barn
+with the horses. The boys had filled their rooms full of junk and one of
+them <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>had even tied a pig to his bed&mdash;while the way Bangs cleared rubbish out
+of the bathtub and promised to have some water heated in the morning was
+convincingly artless. He had just finished explaining that, owing to the
+boiler-plate in the walls, the house was practically Indian proof, when
+an awful fusillade of shots broke out from the kitchen. Bangs
+disappeared for a moment, gun in hand, and I watched our guest trying to
+make himself six inches narrower and three feet shorter. I don't know
+when I ever saw a chap so anxious to melt right down into a corner and
+be mistaken for a carpet tack.</p>
+
+<p>"'S all right," said Bangs, clumping in cheerfully. "Jest the cook
+having another fit. We've got a cook," he explained, "who gets loaded up
+'bout oncet a month so full that he cries pure alcohol, and when he gits
+that way he insists on trying to shoot cockroaches with his gun. He
+ain't never killed one, but he's gotten two Chinamen and a mule, and
+we've got to put a stop to it. He's tied up in the cellar a-swearin'
+that if he gits loose he'll come upstairs and furnish material for
+nineteen fancy funerals with silver name-plates. But, don't you worry,
+Reverend. He can't hurt a fly 'less he gits loose. Here's your room.
+That hoss blanket on the cot's brand new; towel's in the hall and you'll
+find a comb somewheres round. Just you turn in if you feel like it, and
+when you hear Wall-Eye Denton and Pete Pearsall trying to massacre each
+other in the next room it's time to git up."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>Pubby said he would retire at once, and we left him looking scared but
+relieved. I'll bet he sat up all night taking notes and expecting things
+to happen. We sat up, too, but for a different reason. You can't imagine
+how much work it took to get that house running backward. And it was an
+awful job to do the Wild West stunt, too. We sat and criticised each
+other's dialect and actions until there were as many as three free
+fights going on at once. One man favored the Bret Harte style of bad
+man; another adhered to the Henry Wallace Phillips brand; while still
+another insisted on following the Remington school. We compromised on a
+mixture and then spent the rest of the night learning how to forget our
+table manners.</p>
+
+<p>The result was magnificent. I shall never forget the Reverend Pubby's
+pained but fascinated expression as he sat at breakfast the next morning
+and watched thirty hungry savages shoveling plain, unvarnished grub into
+their faces. The breakfast couldn't have gone better if we had had a
+dress rehearsal. Our guest couldn't eat. He was afraid to talk. He just
+held on to his chair, and we could see him stiffen with horror every
+time some eater would rise up so as to increase his reach and spear a
+piece of bread six feet away with his fork. The breakfast was a
+disgusting display of Poland-China manners and was successful in every
+particular.</p>
+
+<p>We confidently expected Petey Simmons to turn up during the meal and
+tell us what to do next. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>He had spent the night with his odoriferous
+Rep Rho Beta brothers cooking up the rest of the plot and had promised
+to run up at breakfast. But no Petey appeared. We strung the meal along
+as far as we could toward dinner and then took up the job of keeping the
+Reverend Pubby contented and in the house until the life-saving crew
+arrived. Did you ever try to lie all morning with a slow-speed
+imagination? That's what we had to do. We explained to Pubby that the
+students caroused all night and never came to college in the morning; we
+told him it was against the rules for strangers to go on the campus in
+the morning; we told him it was dangerous to go out-of-doors because of
+the Alfalfa Delta, who were suspected of being cannibals; we told him
+forty thousand things, most of which contradicted each other. If it
+hadn't been for the boys who kindly started a fight whenever his
+reverence had tangled Bangs and me up hopelessly on some question we
+couldn't have survived the inquisition. As it was, I perspired about a
+barrel and my brain ached for a week.</p>
+
+<p>We went to lunch and put on another exhibition of free-hand feeding,
+getting more grumpy and disgusted every minute. We were all ready to
+yell for mercy and put on our civilized clothes when we heard a terrific
+riot from outside. Then Petey came in.</p>
+
+<p>If there ever was a sure-enough Wild Westerner it was Petey that
+afternoon. He had on the whole works&mdash;two-acre hat, red woolen shirt,
+spurs, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>even chaps&mdash;nice hairy ones. I discovered next day that he
+had swiped my fine bearskin rug and cut it up to make them. In his belt
+he had a revolver which couldn't have been less than two feet long.
+Petey was a little fellow, with one of those nineteen-sizes-too-large
+voices, and when he turned the full organ on you would have thought old
+Mount Vesuvius had wakened up and rumbled into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy, Reverend," he thundered. "We jest come along to take you on a
+little ride over to college. Got a nice gentle cow-pony out here. She
+bucks as easy as a rockin'-horse. Don't mind about your clothes. Just
+hop right on. The boys is some anxious to get along, it being most
+classtime."</p>
+
+<p>We followed the two of them out to the back yard. There were seven Rep
+Rho Betas on seven moth-eaten ponies which they had dug up from goodness
+knows where. The rigs they had on represented each fellow's idea of what
+a cowboy looked like, and would have made a real cowpuncher hang himself
+for shame. Petey confessed afterward that, of all the Rep Rho Betas,
+only seven had ever been on a horse, and, of these, three kept him in
+agony for fear they would fall off and compel him to explain that they
+were on the verge of delirium tremens. They were a weird-looking bunch,
+but, gee! they were fierce. Pirates would have been kittens beside them.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_8" id="illo_8" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i142.jpg" class="ispace" width="500" height="369" alt="We spent another five minutes hoisting him aboard a
+prehistoric plug
+
+Page 125" title="" />
+<span class="caption">We spent another five minutes hoisting him aboard a
+prehistoric plug<br />
+
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_125">125</a></i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>I guess the Reverend Pubby had never done much in the Centaur line, for
+he came very near balking entirely right there. It took us five minutes
+to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>explain that there was no other way of getting out to Siwash and that
+the Faculty would take it as a personal insult if he didn't come. We
+also had to explain how disagreeable the Faculty was when it was
+insulted. And then after he had consented we spent another five minutes
+hoisting him aboard a prehistoric plug and telling him how to stick on.
+Then the line filed out through the alley with a regular ghost-dance
+yell, while we detained Petey. We were about to massacre him for leaving
+us to sweat all morning, but we forgot all about it when Petey told us
+what he had been doing. He admitted that, in order not to annoy the
+profs and cause unnecessary questions, he had taken the liberty to build
+a temporary Siwash College for this special occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, sir; nothing less than that. You remember Dillpickle Academy, the
+extinct college in the west part of town? It had been closed for years
+because the only remaining student had gotten lonesome. But most of the
+equipment was still there, and Petey had borrowed it of the caretaker
+for one day only, promising to give it back as good as new in the
+morning. Petey could have borrowed the great seal away from the
+Department of State. He and his Rep Rho Betas had let a lot of students
+into the deal, had been working all morning, and Siwash was ready for
+business at the new stand.</p>
+
+<p>We wanted to measure Petey for a medal then and there, but he refused,
+being needed on the firing-line. He rode off and we made a grand rush
+for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>the new Siwash College&mdash;special one-day stand, benefit performance.
+We got there before the escorting committee and had a fine view of the
+grand entry. The Reverend Pubby had fallen off four times, and the last
+mile he had led his horse. It was a sagacious scheme bringing him along,
+as none of the others had a chance to exhibit their extremely sketchy
+horsemanship in anything better than a mile-an-hour gait.</p>
+
+<p>Old Dillpickle Academy was busier than it had ever been in real life
+when we got there. Fully fifty students were on the scene. They were
+decked out in cowboy clothes, hand-me-downs, big straw hats,
+blankets&mdash;any old thing. One thing that impressed me was the number of
+books they were carrying. At Siwash we always refused to carry books
+except when absolutely necessary. It seemed too affected&mdash;as if you were
+trying to learn something. But out there at near-Siwash every man had at
+least six books. I saw geographies, spellers, Ella Wheeler Wilcox's
+poems, Science and Health, and the Congressional Record. Learning was
+just naturally rampant out there. Students were studying on the fence.
+They were walking up and down the campus "boning" furiously. They were
+even studying in the trees. You get fifty college boys to turn actors
+for a day and you will see some mighty mixed results. There was "Bay"
+Sanderson, for instance. "Bay's" idea of being a wild and Western
+student was to sit on the front gate with a long knife stuck <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>in his
+belt and read detective stories. He did it all through the performance,
+and whenever the guest was led past him he would turn the book down
+carefully, pull the knife out of his belt and whoop three times as
+solemn as a judge.</p>
+
+<p>You never saw any one so interested as the Reverend Ponsonby Diggs. His
+eyes stuck out like incandescent globes. He had been pretty well jolted
+up, and he yelled in a low, polite way every time he made a quick
+movement, but his thirst for information was still vigorous. As head
+host Petey was pumpee, and he was always four laps ahead of the job.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, I say," said Pubby, after surveying the scene for a few minutes.
+"This is all very interesting, you know. But what a little place!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hell, Reverend," said Petey emphatically, "she's the biggest school in
+the world."</p>
+
+<p>The Reverend was a man of guile. He didn't bat an eye.</p>
+
+<p>"How many students has the college?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"We've got a hundred, all studying books and learning things," said
+Petey proudly.</p>
+
+<p>"Reahly, now?" said the Reverend; "I say, reahly? And these cows! Might
+I ask if these cows are a part of the college?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure thing," said Petey. "Sophomore roping class uses 'em. Great class
+to watch."</p>
+
+<p>"I say now, this is extraordinary," said the Reverend. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>"You don't mean
+to tell me you tie up cows?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rope 'em and tie 'em and brand 'em," said Petey. "What's college for if
+it ain't to learn you things?"</p>
+
+<p>"I say now, this is extraordinary," said the Reverend. I gave him four
+more "extraordinaries" before I did something violent. He'd used two
+hundred that morning. "Might I see the class at work?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>Petey didn't even hesitate. "Sorry, Reverend," says he. "But the
+Professor of Roping and Branding has been drunk for a week. Class ain't
+working now."</p>
+
+<p>The college bell tapped three times. "That's cleaning-up bell," said
+Petey.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I say now," said the Reverend, hauling out his notebook. "What's
+cleaning-up bell?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, to clean up the college," said Petey. "We clean it up once a week.
+With the fellows riding their horses into class and tracking mud and
+clay in, and eating lunches and stuff around, it gets pretty messy
+before the end of the week. We make the Freshmen clean it out. There
+they go now."</p>
+
+<p>A dozen "supes" filed slowly into the building with brooms and shovels.
+Pubby couldn't have looked more interested if they had been crowned
+heads of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Just then a fine assortment of sounds broke out in the old building. The
+doors burst open and a young <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>red-headed Mick from the seventh ward near
+by rode a pony down the steps and away for dear life. Behind him came a
+double-sized gent with yard-wide mustaches. He was dressed in a red
+shirt, overalls and firearms. He was a walking museum of weapons. Petey
+told me afterward that he had borrowed him from the roundhouse near by,
+and that for a box of cigars he had kindly consented to play the part of
+an irritable arsenal for one afternoon only.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the janitor," said Petey in an awestruck whisper. "Get behind a
+tree, quick. He's sure some vexed. He hates to have the boys ride their
+ponies into classroom."</p>
+
+<p>We got a fine view of the janitor as he swept past. He was a regular
+volcano in pants. Never have I heard the English language more richly
+embossed with profanity. Firing a fat locomotive up the grades around
+Siwash with bad coal gives a man great talent in expression. We listened
+to him with awe. Pubby was entranced. He asked me if it would be safe to
+take anything down in his notebook, and when I promised to protect him
+he wrote three pages.</p>
+
+<p>By this time the campus was filling up. Word had gotten around the real
+college that the big show of the season was being pulled off up at
+Dillpickle, and the students were arriving by the dozen. We were getting
+pretty nervous. The new arrivals weren't coached, and sooner or later
+they were bound to give the snap away. We decided to introduce our guest
+to the president. If we could keep things <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>quiet another half hour all
+would be safe, Petey assured us.</p>
+
+<p>We took the Reverend up to the main entrance, Petey's thinker working
+like a well-oiled machine all the way. He pointed out the tree where
+they hanged a horse thief, and Pubby made us wait till he had gotten a
+leaf from it. The Senior classes at Dillpickle had had the custom of
+hauling boulders on to the campus as graduation presents. Petey
+explained that each boulder marked the resting place of some student
+whose career had been foreshortened accidentally, and he described
+several of the tragedies&mdash;invented them right off the reel. Pubby was so
+interested he didn't care who saw his notebook. When Petey told him how
+a pack of timber wolves had besieged the school for nine days and
+nights, four years before, he almost cried because there was no
+photograph of the scene handy. We had to promise him a wolf skin to
+comfort him.</p>
+
+<p>Dillpickle Academy was a plain old brick building, with one of those
+cupolas which were so popular among schools and colleges forty years
+ago. I don't know just what mysterious effect a cupola has on education,
+but it was considered necessary at that time. In front of the building
+was a wide stone porch. Inside we could see half a dozen dogs and a
+horse. Pubby looked a bushel of exclamation points when Petey explained
+that they belonged to the president. He looked a lot more when he saw a
+counter with a fine assortment of chewing tobacco <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>and pipes on it.
+That, Petey whispered to me, was his masterpiece. He had borrowed the
+whole thing from a corner grocery store.</p>
+
+<p>Petey had just put his eye to the window of the president's room,
+ostensibly to find out whether Prexy was in a good humor and in reality
+to find out whether Kennedy, an old grad who had consented to play the
+part, was on duty, when one of the boys hurried up and grabbed me.</p>
+
+<p>"Just evaporate as fast as you can," he whispered; "there are six cops
+on the way out. They're going to pinch the whole bunch of us."</p>
+
+<p>Now this was a fine predicament for a young and promising college&mdash;to be
+arrested by six lowly cops on its own campus, in the act of showing a
+distinguished visitor how it ran the earth, and was particular Hades
+with the trigger-finger! Bangs was showing Pubby the window through
+which the Professor of Arithmetic had thrown him the term before, and I
+told Petey. He sat down and cried.</p>
+
+<p>"After all this work and just as we had it cinched!" he moaned. "I'll
+quit school to-morrow and devote my life to poisoning policemen. This
+has made an anarchist of me."</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing to do. We couldn't very well explain that the college
+would now have to run away and hide because some enthusiastic Freshman
+had fired a horse-pistol on the streets of Jonesville. I looked at the
+crowd of fantastic students getting ready to bolt for the fence. I
+looked at our victim, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>fairly punching words into his notebook. It was
+the brightest young dream that was ever busted by a fat loafer in brass
+buttons. Then I saw Ole Skjarsen and had my one big inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me," I said, rushing over to Pubby, "but you'll have to mosey
+right out of here. There's Ole Skjarsen, and he looks ugly."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my word!" said Pubby; he remembered Ole from the night before.</p>
+
+<p>"Right around the building!" yelled Petey, grabbing the cue. Naturally
+Ole heard him and saw those whiskers. "Har's das spy!" he yelled. "Kill
+him, fallers; he ban a spy!" We dashed around the building, Ole
+following us. And then, because the cops had arrived at the front gate,
+the whole mob thundered after us.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_9" id="illo_9" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i151.jpg" class="ispace" width="500" height="318" alt="He may have been fat, but how he could run!
+
+Page 132" title="" />
+<span class="caption">He may have been fat, but how he could run!<br />
+
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_132">132</a></i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Well, sir, you never saw a more successful race in your life. There were
+no less than a hundred Siwash students behind us, and, though no one but
+Ole Skjarsen had any interest in us, they were all trying to break the
+sprint record in our direction, it being the line of least resistance.
+And, say! We certainly had misjudged the Reverend Ponsonby Diggs. He may
+have been fat, but how he could run! His work was phenomenal. I think he
+must have been on a track team himself at some earlier part of his
+career, for the way he steamed away from the gang would have reminded
+you of the <i>Lusitania</i> racing the Statue of Liberty. He lost his cap. He
+shed his long black coat. He rolled over the fence <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>at the rear
+of the campus without even hesitating, and the last we saw of him he was
+going down the road out of Jonesville into the west, his legs revolving
+in a blue haze. Even if we had wanted to stop him, we couldn't have
+caught him. And besides, Ole caught Petey and me just outside of the
+campus and we had to do some twenty-nine-story-tall explaining to keep
+from getting punched for harboring spies. No one had thought to put him
+next to the game.</p>
+
+<p>That all? Goodness, no! We cleaned up for a week and had been so good
+that the Faculty had about decided that nothing had happened when the
+Reverend Ponsonby Diggs appeared in Jonesville again. He came with a
+United States marshal for a bodyguard, too. He had footed it to the next
+town, it seems, and had wired the nearest British consul that he had
+been attacked by savages at Siwash College and robbed of all his
+baggage. They say he demanded battleships or a Hague conference, or
+something of the sort, and that the consul's office asked a Government
+officer to go out and pacify him. They stepped off the train at the
+Union Station and went right up to college&mdash;only four blocks away.</p>
+
+<p>Petey and I remained considerably invisible, but the boys tell me that
+the look on the Reverend's face when he arrived at the real Siwash was
+worth perpetuating in bronze. He went up the fine old avenue, past the
+fine new buildings, in a daze; and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>when our good old Prexy, who had him
+skinned forty ways for dignity, shook hands with him and handed him a
+little talk that was a saturated solution of Latin, he couldn't even say
+"most extraordinary." You can realize how far gone he was.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the boys got hold of the marshal that day and told him the
+story. He laughed from four <span class="smcap">P. M.</span> until midnight, with only three stops
+for refreshments. The Reverend Pubby Diggs stayed three days as the
+guest of the Faculty and he didn't get up nerve enough in all that time
+to talk business. We saw him at chapel where he couldn't see us, and he
+looked like a man who had suddenly discovered, while falling out of his
+aeroplane, that somebody had removed the earth and had left no address
+behind. His baggage mysteriously appeared at his room in the hotel on
+the first night, and when he left he hadn't recovered consciousness
+sufficiently to inquire where it came from. I think he went right back
+to England when he left Siwash, and I'll bet that by now he has almost
+concluded that some one had been playing a joke on him. You give those
+Englishmen time and they will catch on to almost anything.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GREEK DOUBLE CROSS</h3>
+
+<p>Suffering bear-cats! Say! excuse me while I take a long rest, Jim. I
+need it. I've just read a piece of information in this letter that makes
+me tired all over.</p>
+
+<p>What is it? Oh, just another variety of competition smothered with a
+gentlemanly agreement&mdash;that's all; another bright-eyed little trust
+formed and another readjustment of affairs on a business basis. We old
+fellows needn't break our necks to get back to Siwash and the frat this
+fall, they write me. Of course they'll be delighted to see us and all
+that; but there's no burning need for us and we needn't jump any jobs to
+report in time to put the brands on the Freshmen and rescue them from
+the noisome Alfalfa Delts and Sigh Whoops&mdash;because there isn't going to
+be any rescuing this fall.</p>
+
+<p>They've had an agreement at Siwash. They're going to approach the
+Freshies under strict rules. No parties. No dinners at the houses. No
+abductions. No big, tall talk about pledging to-night or staggering
+through a twilight life to a frowzy-headed and unimportant old age in
+some bum bunch. All <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>done away with. Everything nice and orderly.
+Freshman arrives. You take his name and address. Call on him, attended
+by referees. Maintain a general temperature of not more than sixty-five
+when you meet him on the campus. Buy him one ten-cent cigar during the
+fall and introduce him to one girl&mdash;age, complexion and hypnotic power
+to be carefully regulated by the rushing committee. Then you send him a
+little engraved invitation to amalgamate with you; and when he answers,
+per the self-addressed envelope inclosed, you are to love him like a
+brother for the next three and a half years. Gee! how that makes me
+ache!</p>
+
+<p>Think of it! And at old Siwash, too!&mdash;Siwash, where we never considered
+a pledge safe until we had him tied up in a back room, with our colors
+on him and a guard around the house! That settles me. I've always
+yearned to go back and cavort over the campus in the fall when college
+opened; but not for me no more! Why, if I went back there and got into
+the rushing game, first thing I knew they'd have me run up before a
+pan-Hellenic council, charged with giving an eligible Freshman more than
+two fingers when I shook hands with him; and I'd be ridden out of town
+on a rail for rushing in an undignified manner.</p>
+
+<p>Rushing? What's rushing? Oh, yes; I forgot that you never participated
+in that delicious form of insanity known as a fall term in college.
+Rushing is a cross between proposing to a girl and abducting <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>a coyote.
+Rushing a man for a frat is trying to make him believe that to belong to
+it is joy and inspiration, and to belong to any other means misery and
+an early tomb; that all the best men in college either belong to your
+frat or couldn't get in; that you're the best fellows on earth, and that
+you're crazy to have him, and that he is a coming Senator; that you
+can't live without him; that the other gang can't appreciate him; that
+you never ask men twice; that you don't care much for him anyway, and
+that you are just as likely as not to withdraw the spike any minute if
+you should happen to get tired of the cut of his trousers; that your
+crowd can make him class president and the other crowds can make him
+fine mausoleums; that you love him like real brothers and that he has
+already bound himself in honor to pledge&mdash;and that if he doesn't he will
+regret it all his life; and, besides, you will punch his head if he
+doesn't put on the colors. That's rushing for you.</p>
+
+<p>What's my crowd? Why, the Eta Bita Pie, of course. Couldn't you tell
+that from my skyscraper brow? We Eta Bites are so much better than any
+other frat that we break down and cry now and then when we think of the
+poor chaps who can't belong to us. We're bigger, grander, nobler and
+tighter about the chest than any other gang. We've turned out more
+Senators, Congressmen, Supreme Justices, near-Presidents, captains of
+industry, foreign ambassadors and football captains than any two <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>of
+them. We own more frat houses, win more college elections, know more
+about neckties and girls, wear louder vests and put more cross-hatch
+effects on our neophytes than any three of them. We're so immeasurably
+ahead of everything with a Greek-letter name that every Freshman of
+taste and discrimination turns down everything else and waits until we
+crook our little finger at him. Of course, sometimes we make a mistake
+and ask some fellow that isn't a man of taste and discrimination; he
+proves it by going into some other frat; and that, of course, keeps all
+the men of poor judgment out of our gang and puts them in the others.
+Regular automatic dispensation of Providence, isn't it?</p>
+
+<p>It's been a long time since I had a chance to gather with the brethren
+back at Siwash and agree with them how glorious we are, but this note
+brings it all back. My! how I'd like this minute to go back about ten
+years and cluster around our big grate fire, which used to make the
+Delta Kaps so crazy with envy. Those were the good old days when we came
+back to college in the fall, looked over the haycrop in the Freshman
+class, picked out the likeliest seed repositories, and then proceeded to
+carve them out from the clutches of a round dozen rival frats, each one
+crazy to get a spike into every new student who looked as if he might be
+president of the Senior class and an authority on cotillons some day. No
+namby-pamby, drop-three-and-carry-one crochet effects about our rushing
+those days! <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>We just stood up on our hind legs and scrapped it out. For
+concentrated, triple-distilled, double-X excitement, the first three
+weeks of college, with every frat breaking its collective neck to get a
+habeas corpus on the same six or eight men, had a suffragette riot in
+the House of Parliament beaten down to a dove-coo.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing that made us love a Freshman so hard as to have about
+six other frats after him. I've seen women buy hats the same way.
+They've got to beat some other woman to a hat before they can really
+appreciate it. And when we could swat half a dozen rival frats over the
+heart by waltzing a good-looking young chap down the walk to chapel with
+our colors on his coat, and could watch them turning green and purple
+and clawing for air&mdash;well, I guess it beat getting elected to Congress
+or marrying an heiress-apparent for pure, unadulterated, unspeckled joy!</p>
+
+<p>Competition was getting mighty scarce in the country even then. There
+were understandings between railroad magnates and beef kings and biscuit
+makers&mdash;and even the ministers had a scale of wedding fees. But
+competition had a happy home on our campus. About the best we had been
+able to do had been to agree not to burn down each other's frat houses
+while we were haltering the Freshmen. I've seen nine frats, with a total
+of one hundred and fifty members, sitting up nights for a week at a time
+working out plans to despoil each other of a runty <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>little fellow in a
+pancake hat, whose only accomplishment was playing the piano with his
+feet. One frat wanted him and that started the others.</p>
+
+<p>Of course we'd have got along better if we'd put the whole Freshman
+class in cold storage until we could have found out who the good men
+were and who the spoiled fruit might be. We were just as likely to fall
+in love with a suit of clothes as with a future class orator. We took in
+one man once because he bought a pair of patent-leather tan shoes in his
+Junior year. We argued that, if he had the nerve to wear the things to
+his Y. M. C. A. meetings, there must be some originality in him after
+all&mdash;and we took a chance. We won. But it's a risky business. Once five
+frats rushed a fellow for a month because of the beautiful clothes he
+wore&mdash;and just after the victorious bunch had initiated him a clothing
+house came down on the young man and took the whole outfit. You can't
+always tell at first sight. But then, I don't know but that college
+fraternities exercise as much care and judgment in picking brothers as
+women do in picking husbands. Many a woman has married a fine mustache
+or a bunch of noble clothes and has taken the thing that wore them on
+spec. That's one more than we ever did. You could fool us with clothes;
+but the man who came to Siwash with a mustache had to flock by himself.
+He and his whiskers were considered to be enough company for each other.</p>
+
+<p>There were plenty of frats in Siwash to make <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>things interesting in the
+fall. There were the Alfalfa Delts, who had a house in the same block
+with us and were snobbish just because they had initiated a locomotive
+works, two railroads and a pickle factory. Then there were the Sigh
+Whoopsilons, who got to Siwash first and who regarded the rest of us
+with the same kindly tolerance with which the Indians regarded Daniel
+Boone. And there were the Chi Yis, who fought society hard and always
+had their picture taken for the college annual in dress suits. Many's
+the time I've loaned my dress suit to drape over some green young Chi
+Yi, so that the annual picture could show an unbroken row of open-faced
+vests. And there were the Shi Delts, who were a bold, bad bunch; and the
+Fli Gammas, who were good, pious boys, about as exciting as a
+smooth-running prayer-meeting; and the Delta Kappa Sonofaguns, who got
+every political office either by electing a member or initiating one;
+and the Delta Flushes; and the Mu Kow Moos; the Sigma Numerous; and two
+or three others that we didn't lie awake nights worrying about. Every
+one of these bunches had one burning ambition&mdash;that was to initiate the
+very best men in the Freshman class every fall. That made it necessary
+for us, in order to maintain our proud position, to disappoint each one
+of them every year and to make ourselves about as popular as the
+directors of a fresh-air and drinking-water trust.</p>
+
+<p>Of course we always disappointed them. Wouldn't <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>admit it if we didn't.
+But, holy mackerel! what a job it was! Herding a bunch of green and
+timid and nervous and contrary youngsters past all the temptations and
+pitfalls and confidence games and blarneyfests put up by a dozen frats,
+and landing the bunch in a crowd that it had never heard of two weeks
+before, is as bad as trying to herd a bunch of whales into a fishpond
+with nothing but hot air for gads. It took diplomacy, pugnacity and
+psychological moments, I tell you; and it took more: it took ingenuity
+and inventiveness and cheek and second sight and cool heads in time of
+trouble and long heads on the job, from daybreak to daybreak. I'd rather
+go out and sell battleships to farmers, so far as the toughness of the
+job is concerned, than to tackle the job of persuading a wise young
+high-school product with two chums in another frat that my bunch and he
+were made for each other. What did he care for our glorious history? We
+had to use other means of getting him. We had to hypnotize him, daze
+him, waft him off his feet; and if necessary we had to get the other
+frats to help us. How? Oh, you never know just how until you have to;
+and then you slip your scheme wheels into gear and do it. You just have
+to; that's all. It's like running away from a bear. You know you can't,
+but you've got to; and so you do.</p>
+
+<p>Makes me smile now when I think of some of the desperate crises that
+used to roll up around old Eta Bita Pie like a tornado convention and
+threaten to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>engulf the bright, beautiful world and turn it into a
+howling desert, peopled only by Delta Kappa Whoops and other
+undesirables. I'm far enough away, now, to forget the heart-bursting
+suspense and to see only the humor of it. Once I remember the Shi Delts,
+in spite of everything we could do, managed so to befog the brain of the
+Freshman class president that he cut a date with us and sequestered
+himself in the Shi Delt house in an upper back room, with the horrible
+intention of pledging himself the next morning. Four of the largest Shi
+Delts sat on the front porch that evening and the telephone got
+paralysis right after supper. They had told the boy that if he joined
+them he would probably have to leave school in his Junior year to become
+governor; and he didn't want to see any of us for fear we would wake him
+up. I chuckle yet when I think of those four big bruisers sitting on the
+front porch and guarding their property while I was shinning up the
+corner post of the back porch, leaving a part of my trousers fluttering
+on a nail and ordering the youngster in a blood-curdling whisper to hand
+down his coat, unless he wanted to lose forever his chance of being
+captain of the football team in his Sophomore year. He weighed the
+governorship against the captaincy for a minute, but the right triumphed
+and he handed down his coat. I sewed a big bunch of our colors on it,
+discoursed with him fraternally while balancing on the slanting roof,
+shook hands with him in a solemn, ritualistic way and bade him <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>be firm
+the next morning. When the Shi Delts came in and found that Freshman
+pledged to another gang they had a convulsion that lasted a week; and to
+this day they don't know how the crime was committed.</p>
+
+<p>There was another Freshman, I remember, who was led violently astray by
+the Chi Yis and was about to pledge to them under the belief that their
+gang contained every man of note in the United States. We had to get him
+over to the house and palm off a lot of our alumni as leading actors and
+authors, who had dropped in to dinner, before he was sufficiently
+impressed to reason with us. Of course this is not what the English
+would call "rully sporting, don't you know!" but in our consciences it
+was all classified as revenge. We got the same doses. Pillings, of the
+Mu Kow Moos, pulled one of our spikes out in beautiful fashion once by
+impersonating our landlord. He rushed up the steps just as a Freshman
+rushee was starting down all alone and demanded the rent for six months
+on the spot, threatening to throw us out into the street that minute.
+The Freshman hesitated just long enough to get his clothes out of the
+house, and we didn't know for a month what had frozen his feet.</p>
+
+<p>The Fli Gams weren't so slow, either. They found out once that one of
+the men we were just about to land had a great disgust for two of our
+men. What did one of their alumni do but happen craftily over our way
+and mention in the most <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>casual manner the undying admiration that the
+boy had for those two? Of course we sandwiched him between them for a
+week&mdash;and of course we were pained and grieved when he tossed us into
+the discard; but we got even with them the next year. We picked up an
+eminent young pugilist, who made his headquarters in the next town, and
+for a little consideration and a suit of clothes that was a regular
+college yell we got him to hang around the campus for a week. We rushed
+him terrifically for a day and then managed to let the Fli Gams get him.
+They rushed him for a week in spite of our carefully regulated
+indignation and then proposed to him. When he told them that he might
+consider coming to school&mdash;as soon as he had gone South and had cleaned
+up a couple of good scraps&mdash;they let out an awful shriek and fumigated
+the house. They were nice young chaps, but no judge of a pugilist. They
+expected to be able to see his hoofs.</p>
+
+<p>Well, it was this way every year all fall. Ding-dong, bing-bang, give
+and take, no quarter and pretty nearly everything fair. As I said, it
+wasn't considered exactly proper to burn a rival frat house in order to
+distract the attention of the occupants while they were entertaining a
+Freshman, but otherwise we did pretty nearly what we pleased to each
+other&mdash;only being careful to do it first. Of course a lot of things are
+fair in love and war that would not be considered strictly ethical in a
+game of croquet. And rushing a Freshman is as near like love <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>as
+anything I know of. It isn't that we love the Freshman so much. When I
+think of some of the trash we fought over and lost I have to laugh. But
+we couldn't bear the idea of losing him. To sit by and watch another
+gang win the affections of a young fellow who you know is designed by
+Nature for your frat and the football team; to note him gradually
+breaking off the desperate chumminess that has grown up between you in
+the last forty-eight hours; to think that in another day he will have on
+the pledge colors of another fraternity and will be lost to you forever
+and ever and ever, and then some&mdash;what is losing a mere girl to some
+other fellow compared with that? Of course I realize now that, even if a
+Freshman does join another frat, you can eventually get chummy with him
+again after college days are over if you find him worth crossing the
+street to see; and I find myself lending money to Shi Delts and
+borrowing it from Delta Whoops just as freely as if they were Eta Bites.
+But somehow you don't learn these things in time to save your poor old
+nerves in college.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_10" id="illo_10" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 299px;">
+<img src="images/i166.jpg" class="ispace" width="299" height="500" alt="Naturally I was somewhat dazzled
+
+Page 147" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Naturally I was somewhat dazzled<br />
+
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_147">147</a></i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>When I was in school the Alfalfa Delts, the Sigh Whoopsilons and the Chi
+Yis were giving us a horrible race. I'm willing to admit it now, though
+I'd have fought Jeffries before doing it ten years ago. Each fall was
+one long whirlwind. The President of the United States in an
+office-seekers' convention would have had a placid time compared with
+the Freshmen. We didn't exactly use real axes on each <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>other and we didn't actually tear
+any Freshman in two pieces, but we came as near the limit as was
+comfortable. No frat was safe for a minute with its guests. If you tried
+to feed 'em there was kerosene in the ice cream. If you entertained them
+some frat with a better quartet worked outside the house. If you took
+them out to call the parlor would fill up with riffraff in no time; and
+if you took your eye off your victim for a minute he was gone&mdash;some
+other gang had got him. I sometimes think some of the crowds knew how to
+palm Freshmen the way magicians do, from the way they disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Even the girls took a hand in it. When I was a Sophomore I was intrusted
+with the task of leading a Freshman three blocks down to Browning Hall
+to call on one of our solid girls, and before I had gone a block two
+Senior girls met us. They were bare acquaintances of mine, being strong
+Delta Kap. allies, and they usually managed to see me only after a
+severe effort; but this time you'd have thought I was a whole regiment
+of fianc&eacute;s. They literally fell on my neck. It was cruel of me, they
+declared, to be so unsociable. There I was, a football hero&mdash;I'd just
+broken my rib on the scrub team&mdash;and every girl in school was dying to
+tell me how grand it was to suffer for one's college; and yet I wouldn't
+so much as hint that I wanted to come to the sorority parties&mdash;and lots
+more talk of the same kind. Naturally I was somewhat dazzled and I'd
+walked about half a block with the prettiest one before I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>noticed that
+the other one was steering Freshie the other way. I turned around and
+never even said "Good day" to that girl; but it was too late. About a
+dozen Delta Kaps appeared out of the ground and tried to look surprised
+as they gathered around that scared little Freshman and engulfed him. We
+never saw him again&mdash;that is, in his innocent condition&mdash;and the boys
+wouldn't even trust me with the pledges we were rushing around for bait
+the rest of the fall term. Bait? Oh, yes. Sometimes we'd pledge a man on
+the quiet and leave him out a week or two, so that plenty of frats could
+bid him&mdash;made them appreciate his worth, you know, and got every one
+well acquainted.</p>
+
+<p>By the time I was a Senior the competition was desperate. We spent the
+summers scouring the country for prospects and we spent the first week
+of school smuggling our trophies into our houses and pledging them,
+without giving the other fellow a look in&mdash;that is, we tried to. We came
+back fairly strong in my Senior year, with a good bunch of prospects;
+but the one that excited us most was a telegram from Snooty Vincent in
+Chicago. It was brief and erratic, like Snooty himself, and read as
+follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Freshman named Smith will register from Chicago. Son of old man
+Smith, multimillionaire. Kid's a comer. Get him sure! <span class="smcap">Snooty.</span></p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+That was all. One of the half million Smiths of Chicago was coming to
+college&mdash;age, weight, complexion, habits and time of arrival unknown.
+That telegram qualified Snooty for the paresis ward. We didn't even know
+what Smith his millionaire father was. The world is full of Smiths who
+are pestered by automobile agents. All we knew was the fact that we had
+to find him, grab him, sequester him where no meddling Alfalfa Delt or
+Chi Yi could find him, and make him fall in love with us inside of
+forty-eight hours. Then we could lead him forth, with the colors and his
+<i>art-nouveau</i> clothes on, spread the glad news&mdash;and there wouldn't have
+to be any more rushing that fall. We'd just sit back and take our pick.</p>
+
+<p>We sat back and built brains full of air-castles for about three
+minutes&mdash;and then got busy. It was matriculation day. There were half a
+dozen trains to come yet from Chicago on various roads. We had to meet
+them all, pick out the right man by his aura or by the way the porter
+looked when he tipped him, and grab him out from under the ravenous foe.
+The next train was due in ten minutes and the depot was a mile away. We
+sent Crawford down. He was trying for the distance runs anyway.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of us went out to show a couple of classy boys from a big prep
+school how to register and find a room, and pick out textbooks; and
+incidentally how to distinguish a crowd of magnificent young student
+leaders from eleven wrangling bunches of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>miscellaneous thickheads, who
+wouldn't like anything better than to rope in a couple of good men to
+teach them the ways of the world. We were succeeding in this to the
+queen's taste, having accidentally dropped in on our porch with the
+pair, when young Crawford rushed up green with despair and took the
+rushing committee inside. He almost cried when he told us. He'd watched
+the train as carefully as he could, he said, but he couldn't be
+everywhere at once; and so a couple of Mu Kow Moos had got Smith. He
+knew it because he had heard them ask what his name was and he had told
+them Smith. He'd pretty nearly wrecked his brain trying to think of an
+excuse to butt in, but they had taken the boy away and he'd run all the
+way to the house to see if something couldn't be done.</p>
+
+<p>Petey Simmons had listened, sitting crosslegged on the windowseat, which
+was a habit of his. Petey was a Senior and his deep studies in rhetoric
+during his four years in the frat had given him a great power of
+expression. He turned to the despairing Crawford and reduced him to a
+cinder with one look.</p>
+
+<p>"So you couldn't think of any excuse to butt in!" he remarked slowly,
+"Say, Crawford, if you saw a young lady falling through the ice you'd
+write to her mother for permission to cheer her up. Which way did they
+go?"</p>
+
+<p>"They're coming this way," said what was left of Crawford.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_11" id="illo_11" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 312px;">
+<img src="images/i171.jpg" class="ispace" width="312" height="500" alt="He was so bashful that his voice blushed when he used it
+
+Page 151" title="" />
+<span class="caption">He was so bashful that his voice blushed when he used it<br />
+
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_151">151</a></i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+Petey grabbed his hat and discharged himself toward the depot. We
+brought in those big prep school boys and tried to give them the time of
+their lives, but our hearts weren't in it. We were thinking of those Mu
+Kow Moos&mdash;that frat of all others&mdash;blissfully towing home a prize they'd
+stumbled onto and didn't know anything about! We thought of those
+beautifully designed air-castles we were hoping to move into and we got
+pumpkins in our throats. Stung on the first day of school by a bunch
+that had to wear their pins on their neckties to keep from being
+mistaken for a literary society! Oh, thunder! We went in to dinner all
+smeared up with gloom. Then the door opened and Petey came in. He was
+five feet five, Petey was, but he stooped when he came under the
+chandelier. He had a suitcase in one hand and a stranger in the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Boys," he said, "I want you to meet Mr. Smith, of Chicago."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>At first glance you wouldn't have taken Smith for a perambulating
+national bank, with a wheelbarrow of spending-money every month. He was
+well-enough dressed and all that, but he didn't loom up in any
+mountainous fashion as to looks. He was runty and his hair was a kind of
+discouraged red. He had freckles, too, and he was so bashful that his
+voice blushed when he used it. He didn't have a word to say until
+dinner, when he said "thank you" <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>to Sam, the waiter. Altogether he was
+so meek that he had us worried; but then, as Allie Bangs said, you can't
+always tell about these multimillionaires. Some of them didn't have the
+nerve of a mouse. He'd seen millionaires in New York, he said, who were
+afraid of cab drivers.</p>
+
+<p>"And besides," said Petey, when a few of us were talking it over after
+dinner, "I'd never have got him if he hadn't been so meek. I was
+determined that no Mu Kow Moo was going to hang anything on us; and when
+I saw the three of them coming I waded right in. Allison and Briggs,
+those two dumb Juniors, were doing the steering. It was like taking
+candy from the baby. I just fell right into them and took about five
+minutes to tell those two how glad I was to see them back. I introduced
+myself to Smith; and&mdash;would you believe it?&mdash;he was still carrying his
+suitcase! I grabbed it and apologized for not having carried it all the
+way up from the station. You should have seen those yaps scowl. They
+wanted to shred me up, but I never noticed them again. I pointed out all
+the sights to Smith and told him his friends had written me about him.
+There was so little room on the sidewalk that I suggested we two walk
+ahead; and I shoved him right into the middle of the walk and made
+Allison and Briggs fall behind. I had a piece of luck just then. Old
+Pete and his sawed-off cab came by and I flagged him in a minute. I
+shoved Smith in and got in after him. Then I told the two babes that I
+could take care of Smith all right and that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>there was no need of their
+walking clear up to the house. After that I shut the door and we came
+away. If looks could kill I'd be tuning up my harp this minute. Say, if
+I didn't have any more nerve than those two I'd get a permit from the
+city to live. And all the time Smith never made a kick. I had him
+hypnotized. Now I'm going in and make him jump through a hoop."</p>
+
+<p>We should have been very happy&mdash;and we would have been, but just then
+Symington came in with some astounding news. The Alfalfa Delts had a man
+named Smith, of Chicago, over at their house. He was on the front porch,
+with the whole gang around him; and from the looks of things they'd have
+him benevolently assimilated before twenty-four hours. Naturally this
+created a tremendous lot of emotion around our house. It was a serious
+situation. We might have the right Smith and then again we might have a
+Smith who would be borrowing money for car fare inside of ten minutes.
+We had to find out which Smith it was before we tampered with his young
+affections.</p>
+
+<p>Did you ever snuggle up to a young captain of industry and ask him who
+his father was and whether he was important enough in the business world
+to be indicted by the Government for anything? That was the job we
+tackled that night. Smith was meek enough, but somehow even Petey's
+nerve had its limits. We approached the subject from every corner of the
+compass. We led up to it, we beat around <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>it&mdash;and finally we got
+desperate and led the boy up to it. But he was too shy to come down with
+the information. Yes, he lived in Chicago. Oh, on the North Side. Yes,
+he guessed the stock market was stronger. Yes, the Annex was a great
+hotel. No, he didn't know whether they were going to put a tower on the
+Board of Trade or not. Yes, the lake Shore Drive was dusty in
+summer.&mdash;[Good!]&mdash;He wouldn't care to live on it.&mdash;[Bah!]&mdash;Altogether he
+was as unsatisfactory to pump as a well full of dusty old brickbats.
+Just then Rawlins, who had been scouting around seeing what he could run
+against in the dark of the moon, arrived with the stunning information
+that the Chi Yis had a man named Smith, of Oak Park, at their house and
+that every corner of the lawn was guarded by picked men!</p>
+
+<p>When we got this news most of us went upstairs and bathed our heads in
+cold water. Oak Park sounded even more suspicious than Chicago. It's a
+solid mahogany suburb and everybody there is somebody or other. You have
+to get initiated into the place just as if it were a secret society,
+it's so exclusive. That meant there were three Smiths from Chicago in
+school. We had only one Smith. We had a one-in-three shot.</p>
+
+<p>We stuck the colors on the boys from the big prep school just to keep
+our hands in and went to bed so nervous that we only slept in patches.
+Still, two Chicago Smiths in other frat houses were better than <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>one. It
+meant that at least one frat wasn't sure of its man. Maybe neither one
+was. Our scouts had reported that, from what they could pick up, neither
+Smith had it on our Smith much in looks. That could only mean one thing:
+there had been a leak in the telegraph office again. What show has a
+guileless sixty-five-dollar-a-month operator against a bunch of crafty
+young diplomatists? They had read our telegram and were after the same
+Smith that we were.</p>
+
+<p>By morning the suspense around the house could have been shoveled out
+with a pitchfork. If one of the other frats had the right Smith and knew
+it, and had pledged him during the night, there was positively no use in
+living any longer. Petey, who had shared his room with our Smith,
+reported that he was now like wax in our hands. But that didn't comfort
+us much. It was too confoundedly puzzling. Maybe we had the heir to a
+subtreasury panting to join us and maybe his freckles were his fortune.
+All Petey had gouged out of him during the night was the fact that his
+father wanted him to come to Siwash because it was a nice, quiet place.
+Oh, yes; it was deadly calm!</p>
+
+<p>It couldn't have been more than seven o'clock when the telephone rang.
+Petey answered it. A relative of Smith's was at the hotel and had heard
+the boy was at our house. Would we please tell him to come right down?
+Petey said he would and then rang off. Then he grabbed the 'phone again
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>and asked Central excitedly why she had cut him off. Central said she
+hadn't, but of course she rang the other line again.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" said Petey blandly. "This is the Alfalfa Delt house?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; it's the Chi Yi house," was the answer. Petey put the receiver up
+contentedly and we all turned handsprings over the library table. Fifty
+per cent safe, anyway. The Chi Yis were trying to sort out the Smiths,
+too.</p>
+
+<p>It was an hour before anything else happened. Then Matheson of the
+Alfalfa Delts, a ponderous personage, who wore a silk hat on Sunday and
+did instructing, came over and asked if we had a man named Smith with
+us. He was to be a pupil of his, he said, and he wanted to arrange his
+work. Of course Matheson was hoping to get a green man at the door, but
+he didn't have any luck. Bangs himself let him in and let him read two
+or three magazines through in the library while we turned some more
+handsprings&mdash;in the dining room this time. The Alfalfa Delts were
+fishing, too. It was a fair field and no favors.</p>
+
+<p>After a while Bangs told Matheson that the man named Smith presented his
+compliments and said it was all a mistake. His tutor's name was not
+Matheson, but Muttonhead. That sent Matheson away as pleasant as you
+please.</p>
+
+<p>All that day we sat around and beat off the enemy and got beaten off
+ourselves. Our Smith got a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>Faculty notice to appear at once and
+register&mdash;that is, it got as far as the door. We sent it back to the Chi
+Yi house. We sent the Alfalfa Delt Smith a telegram from Chicago,
+reading: "Father ill. Come at once." That only got as far as a door,
+too. Some Alfalfa Delt got it and sent the boy back with the answer: "So
+careless of father!" Blanchard called up the fire department and sent it
+over to the Chi Yi house, hoping to be able to slip over and cut out
+Smith in the confusion that followed; but the game was too old. The Chi
+Yis had played it themselves the year before and refused to bite.
+Meantime we had found a Chi Yi alumnus in the kitchen trying to sell a
+book to the cook; and in the proceedings that followed we discovered
+that the book had a ten-dollar bill in it. All around, it was an
+entertaining but profitless day. By night, there wasn't another idea
+left in the three camps. We sat exhausted, each clutching its Smith and
+glaring at the other two.</p>
+
+<p>As far as our Smith was concerned we almost wished some one would steal
+him. He was about as interesting as a pound of baking powder. What with
+fishing for his Bradstreet rating, and inventing lies to keep him from
+going out and seeing the town, and watching the horizon for predatory
+Alfalfa Delts and Chi Yis, we were plumb worn out. We were so skittish
+that, when the bell rang about eight o'clock, we let it ring four times
+more before we answered it; and when the ringer claimed to be an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>Eta
+Bita Pie from Muggledorfer who had come over to attend Siwash, we made
+him repeat pretty nearly the whole ritual before we would consider his
+credentials good.</p>
+
+<p>He got in at last, slightly peevish at our unbrotherly welcome, and took
+his place in the library circle. We were explaining the whole situation
+to him, when Allie Bangs gave an earnest yell and stood on his head in
+the corner.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you say your name was?" he asked the visitor after he had been
+set right side up again.</p>
+
+<p>"Maxwell, of Fella Kappa chapter," said the latter.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it isn't," said Bangs earnestly. "You ought to know your own name!"
+he went on severely. "It's Smith&mdash;and you're a barb from the cornfield!
+You've come to Siwash to forget how to plow and to-morrow you're going
+to organize a Smith Club. Do you hear? Don't let me catch you forgetting
+your name now&mdash;and listen closely."</p>
+
+<p>It was all as simple as beating a standpat Congressman. Maxwell was a
+stranger, of course. He was to pin his Eta Bita Pie pin on his
+undershirt and go forth in the morning a brand-new Smith, green and
+guileless. It was to occur to him just before chapel that a Smith Club
+ought to be formed and he was to post a notice to that effect. He would
+get a couple of well-known non-fraternity Smiths interested and have
+them visit the houses and see the Chicago Smiths. With all the Smiths in
+session <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>that night he ought to have no difficulty in finding out which
+was the son of old man Smith. He could be lowdown and vulgar enough to
+ask right out if he wished. If he found out he was to cut out that Smith
+and bring him to our house&mdash;if he had to bind and gag him. If he didn't
+he was to bring all three&mdash;if he could.</p>
+
+<p>There was a quiet and most reassuring tone in Maxwell's voice as he
+said: "I can." They evidently had their little troubles at Muggledorfer,
+too.</p>
+
+<p>"After we get them here," said Bangs earnestly, "we'll just pledge all
+three. We'll surely get the right one that way and perhaps the other two
+will not be so bad."</p>
+
+<p>Upstairs, Petey Simmons was wearily explaining to our Smith for the
+ninth time that Freshmen were not allowed to appear on the campus for
+the first three days; and that it was considered good form to keep
+indoors until the Sophomore rush; and that there wasn't a room left in
+town anyway, and he might as well stay with us a while; and that the
+police were looking for college students downtown and locking them up,
+as they did each fall, to show their authority. Blanchard relieved him
+of his task and he came downstairs mopping his brow. Then we went to
+work and planned details until midnight. It was to be the plot of the
+century and every wheel had to mesh.</p>
+
+<p>We spent the next day in a cold perspiration. Neither Alfalfa Delt nor
+Chi Yi paraded any <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>pledged Freshmen. They were still hunting for the
+right Smith, too&mdash;evidently. They fell for the Smith Club plan with such
+suspicious eagerness that it was plain each bunch had some nasty,
+low-lived scheme up its sleeves. We were righteously indignant. It was
+our game and they ought not to butt in. But Maxwell only smiled. He was
+a Napoleon, that boy was. He just waved us aside. "I'll run this little
+thing the way we do at Muggledorfer," he explained. "You fellows can
+play a few lines of football pretty well, but when it comes to
+surrounding a Freshman and making a Greek out of him, I wouldn't take
+lessons from old Ulysses himself." And so we left him alone and held
+each other's hands and smoked and cussed&mdash;and hoped and hoped and hoped.</p>
+
+<p>Maxwell went after the three Smiths himself that night. He had taken a
+room in an out-of-the-way part of town and his plan was to take them
+over there after the meeting to discuss the future good of the Smith
+Club. Then about a dozen of us would slide gently over there&mdash;and a
+curtain would have to be drawn over the woe that would ensue for the
+other gangs. Meanwhile, all we had to do was to sit around the house and
+gnaw our fingers. Maxwell called for our Smith last and he had the other
+two in tow. Oh, no; we didn't invite them in. Two Alfalfa Delts and
+three Chi Yis were sitting on our porch, visiting us. Three Chi Yis and
+two Eta Bita Pies were sitting on the Alfalfa Delt porch. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>Four Eta
+Bites and two Alfalfa Delts were calling on the Chi Yi house. It was a
+critical moment and none of us was taking chances. We couldn't keep our
+Smiths from wandering, but we could make sure they didn't wander into
+the wrong place.</p>
+
+<p>Maxwell led his flock of Smiths away and we all sat and talked to each
+other in little short bites. The Chi Yis were nervous as rabbits. They
+looked at their watches every five minutes. The Alfalfa Delts listened
+to us with one ear and swept the other around the gloom. The night was
+charged with plots. Innumerable things seemed trembling in the immediate
+future. When the visitors excused themselves a little later, and went
+away very hurriedly, we learned with pleasure from one of our boys, who
+had been wandering around to break in a new pair of shoes or something,
+that the Smith meeting, which had been called for the Erosophian Hall,
+had been attended by four nondescript and unknown Smiths and fourteen
+Chi Yis, who had dropped in casually. First blood for us! Maxwell had
+evidently succeeded in segregating his Smiths. We expected a telephone
+call from his room at any minute.</p>
+
+<p>We kept on expecting it until midnight and then strolled down that way.
+The house was dark. A very mad landlady came down in response to our
+earnest request and informed us that the young carouser who had rented
+her room had not been there that evening; and that if we were his rowdy
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>friends we could tell him that he would find his trunk in the alley.
+Then we went home and our brains throbbed and gummed up all night long.</p>
+
+<p>We went to chapel the next morning to keep from going insane outright.
+The Chi Yis were there looking perfectly sour. The Alfalfa Delts on the
+other hand were riotous. Every one of them had a pleasant greeting for
+us. They slapped us on the back and asked us how we were coming on in
+our rushing. Matheson was particularly vicious. He came over to Bangs
+and put his arm around him in a friendly way. "I am going to have dinner
+with my pupil to-night," he said triumphantly. "He wants me to come over
+and get his trunk. Says he's got a good room now and he's much obliged
+to you fellows for your trouble. Have you heard that there's another
+Smith in school&mdash;son of a big Chicago man? There's some great material
+here this fall, don't you think?"</p>
+
+<p>Bangs tripped on Matheson's pet toe and went away. Something horrible
+had happened. How we hated those Alfalfa Delts! They had stung us
+before, but this was a triple-expansion, double-back-action,
+high-explosive sting, with a dum dum point. We hurt all over; and the
+worst of it was, we hadn't really been stung yet and didn't know where
+it was going to hit us. Did you ever wait perfectly helpless while a
+large, taciturn wasp with a red-hot tail was looking you over?</p>
+
+<p>The Alfalfa Delts frolicked up and down college <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>that day, Smithless but
+blissful. We consoled ourselves with a couple of corking chaps whom the
+Delta Flushes had been cultivating, and put the ribbons on them in
+record time. Ordinarily we would have been perfectly happy about this,
+but instead we were perfectly miserable. We detailed four men at a time
+to be gay and carefree with our pledges; and the rest of us sat around
+and listened to our bursting hearts. Of all the all-gone and utterly
+hopeless feelings, there is nothing to compare with the one you have
+when your frat&mdash;the pride of the nation&mdash;has just been tossed into the
+discard by some hollow-headed Freshman.</p>
+
+<p>I took my head out of my hands just before dinner and went down the
+street to keep a rushing engagement. I had to pass the Alfalfa Delt
+house. It hurt like barbed wire, but I had to look. I was that miserable
+that it couldn't have bothered me much more, anyway, to see that wildly
+happy bunch. But I didn't see it. I saw instead a crowd of fellows on
+the porch who made our dejection look like disorderly conduct. There was
+enough gloom there to fit out a dozen funerals, and then there would
+have been enough left for a book of German philosophy. The crowd looked
+at me and I fancied I heard a slight gnashing of teeth. I didn't
+hesitate. I just walked right up to the porch and said: "Howdedo? Lovely
+evening!" says I. "How many Smiths have you pledged to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>The gang turned a dark crimson. Then Matheson <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>got up and came down to
+me. He was as safe-looking as somebody else's bull terrier.</p>
+
+<p>"We don't care to hear any more from you," he said, clenching his words;
+"and it would be safer for you to get out of here. We're done with your
+whole crowd. You're lowdown skates&mdash;that's what you are. You're
+dishonorable and sneaky. You're cads! We'll get even. I give you
+warning. We'll get even if it takes a hundred years."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks!" says I. "Hope it takes twice as long." Then I went back home
+and let my date take care of itself.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>We went through dinner in a daze and sat around, that night, like a
+bunch of vacant grins on legs. Our grins were vacant because we didn't
+know why we were grinning. We'd stung the Alfalfa Delts. We didn't know
+why or how or when. But we'd stung them! We had their word for it.
+Sooner or later something would turn up in the shape of particulars;
+only we wished it would hurry. If it didn't turn up sooner we were
+extremely likely to burst at the seams.</p>
+
+<p>It turned up about nine o'clock. There was a commotion at the front door
+and Maxwell came in. He was followed by an avalanche of Smiths. There
+was our Smith, and a tall, lean Smith, and a Smith who waddled when he
+walked. They were all dirty and dusty; they all wore our pink-and-blue
+pledge <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>ribbons on their coat lapels and when they got in the house they
+gave the Eta Bita Pie yell and sang about half of the songbook. Maxwell
+had not only pledged them, but he had educated them.</p>
+
+<p>After we had stopped carrying the bunch about on our shoulders, and had
+put the roof of the house back, and had righted the billiard table, and
+persuaded the cook to come down out of a tree in the back yard, we
+allowed Maxwell to tell his story.</p>
+
+<p>"It was perfectly simple," he said. "Didn't expect to be kidnapped, of
+course; but it's all in the day's work. You've no idea what a job I had
+getting colors to pin on these chumps. If it hadn't been for my pink
+garters and a blue union suit I'd put on yesterday&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>We stopped Maxwell and backed him up to the starting pole again. But he
+was no story-teller. He skipped like a cheap gas engine. We had to take
+the story away from him piece by piece. He'd dodged his Smiths down a
+side street, it seems, on the plea that there weren't any more Smiths
+coming&mdash;and they might as well go over to his room. All would have been
+well if one Smith hadn't got an awful thirst. There was a corner drug
+store on the way to the room and while the quartet were insulting their
+digestions with raspberry ice-cream soda a college man with a wicked eye
+came by. A few minutes later, just as they were crossing the railroad
+viaduct near Smith's home, two closed carriages drove up and six husky
+villains fell upon them, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>shouting: "Chi Yi forever!" And after dumping
+them in the carriages, they sat on them while the teams went off.</p>
+
+<p>"After I'd got my man's knee out of my neck," said Maxwell, "I didn't
+seem to care much whether I was kidnapped or not. It would bind us four
+closer together after we escaped; and, besides, I have never found
+kidnapping to pay&mdash;too much risk. Anyway, they drove us nothing less
+than twenty miles and bundled us into an old deserted house. The leader
+told us, with a whole lot of unnecessary embroidery, that we were to
+stay there until we pledged to Chi Yi if we rotted in our shoes. Then,
+of course, I saw through the whole thing. It was an Alfalfa Delt gang
+disguised as Chi Yis. The Alfalfa Delts would send another gang out the
+next day, rout the bogus Chi Yis and allow the poor Freshies to fall on
+their necks and pledge up. That used to be popular at Muggledorfer.</p>
+
+<p>"I did the talking and let my knees knock together considerably. I told
+them that we'd been too badly shaken up to think, but if they would let
+us alone that night we'd try to learn to love them by morning. So they
+put us upstairs and warned us that every window was guarded; then we lay
+down together and I began at the first chapter and pumped those chaps
+full of Eta Bita Pie all night.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_12" id="illo_12" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i188.jpg" class="ispace" width="500" height="354" alt="With our colors on and four particularly wicked-looking
+chair legs in our hands
+
+Page 167" title="" />
+<span class="caption">With our colors on and four particularly wicked-looking
+chair legs in our hands<br />
+
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_167">167</a></i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"It was six o'clock when they finally pledged. When the gang came up
+they found us adamant. 'Never!' said I. 'We'll pledge Alfalfa Delt or
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>die martyrs to a holy cause!' Of course they didn't dare give themselves
+away. They couldn't even shout for joy. All they could do was to wait
+for the rescuing party. I spent the day teaching the boys the songs and
+the yell in whispers; and about three o'clock I got my grand inspiration
+about the colors and rigged them out. Then I dug my own pin out and put
+on my vest and about four o'clock the rescuing party drove up. Say,
+you'd have laughed to see that fight! Ham-actors in Richard the Third
+would have made it look tame. The Chi Yis put up a fist or two, threw a
+brick and then cut for the timber; and the noble Alfalfa Delts burst
+open the door just as I got the chorus going on that grand old song:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i15">"<i>'Oh, you've got to be an Eta Bita Pie</i></span>
+<span class="i15"><i>Or you won't get a scarehead when you die!</i>'</span></div>
+
+<p>"When they saw us there, with our colors on and four particularly
+wicked-looking chair legs in our hands, they gave one simultaneous
+gasp&mdash;and say, boys, I don't believe in ghosts, but I don't see yet how
+they disappeared so instantaneously! And anyway, for Heaven's sake,
+bring out the prog. We drilled eight miles to a railroad station and my
+vest buttons are tickling my backbone."</p>
+
+<p>Just then a telegram arrived.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">"Don't look for Smith. Changed his mind and went to Jarhard!</div>
+
+<p class="right">"<span class="smcap">Snooty</span>."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>No wonder we couldn't blast any information out of our Smiths! Oh, they
+were our Smiths all right&mdash;and they weren't such a bad bunch at that.
+The fat one turned out to be the champion mandolin teaser in school and
+the lean one made the debating team; while our own particular first
+edition Smith won the catch-as-catch-can chess championship of the
+college three years later.</p>
+
+<p>Just the same, I'd like to get one fair crack at that Smith who went to
+Jarhard. I'd get even for those three days, I'll bet a few!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>TAKING PACE FROM FATHER TIME</h3>
+
+<p>Honestly, Bill, it's so hard to keep up to date these days, that
+sometimes I'm afraid to go to sleep at night for fear I'll find myself
+in an ethnological museum when I wake up the next morning, with people
+making funny cracks about the strange clothes I was wearing when they
+caught me.</p>
+
+<p>I'm not constitutionally a back number myself either. I come as near
+wearing next year's styles as most fellows, and I had my wrist broken
+cranking an automobile before most Americans believed the things would
+go. I was tired of this hand-chopped furniture fad years ago, and if you
+hand me any slang that I can't catch on the fly you'll have to make it
+up right now. But there's no use talking. No one man can keep up with
+this world all by himself. Sometimes I get to thinking I'm so far ahead
+that I can afford to sit down and get a breath or two, and when I get up
+I have to eat dust for the next year trying to catch up.</p>
+
+<p>Take colleges, for instance. I've been conceited enough to think that
+these flappy little college boys, with their front hair brushed back
+down on their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>necks, couldn't show me anything that I wasn't tired of.
+I've kept up to date on college things, I've always flattered myself.
+You might lose me now and then on some new way of abusing lettuce during
+a salad course, perhaps, but as far as looking startled at anything that
+might be said or done around a college campus goes, I've had a notion
+that I wasn't in the learning class&mdash;which shows how much I knew about
+it. This morning a gosling from the old school&mdash;a Sophomore&mdash;came in and
+visited with me for a few minutes, on the strength of the fact that he
+knew my baby brother in high school. We hadn't talked a minute before he
+handed me "pragmatism" and "zing-slingers." While I was rolling my eyes
+and clawing for a foothold he confessed that he was the best glider in
+college. When I remarked that I had been somewhat of a glider myself,
+but that I had preferred the twostep, he laughed and explained that he
+was captain of the aviation team&mdash;that they had three gliders and were
+finishing a monoplane that had a home-made engine with concentric
+cylinders.</p>
+
+<p>Can you beat it? There I was, Petey Simmons' best friend, and personally
+acquainted with eleven thousand forms of college excitement, listening
+to an infant with my mouth open and stopping him every few words to say
+"land sakes," "dew tell" and "what d'ye mean by that?" I never was so
+humiliated in my life, but there's no getting around the truth. I've
+been ten years out of college, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>when I go back they'll pull the
+grandfather clause on me and wheel me in early nights. I'm a back number
+and I know the symptoms. When that young Sophomore told me the boys of
+Eta Bita Pie had just spent twenty dollars apiece on a formal dance and
+house party, I put up the same kind of a lecture to him that my father
+gave me when I explained that we simply had to spend five dollars apiece
+on our party, or belong in the fag end of things. And I suppose when my
+father's crowd blew in a couple of dollars for a load of wood, his
+father reminded him that when HE went to college they didn't coddle
+themselves with fires in their dormitories. And I suppose that some day
+this Sophomore will be telling his son that when he was in college a
+simple little home-made aeroplane furnished amusement for twenty
+fellows, and that they never dreamed of dropping over to the coast on
+Saturdays for a dip in the surf in their private monoplanes. Oh, well,
+it's human nature and natural law, I suppose. No use trying to put a
+rock on the wheels of progress&mdash;and there's no use trying to ride the
+darned thing either. It'll throw you every time.</p>
+
+<p>When I went to college, Billy&mdash;loud pedal on that "I"&mdash;things were
+different. We didn't spend our time fooling with gliders or blow
+ourselves up monkeying with pragmatism. We attended strictly to
+business. We were there for educational purposes and we had no time to
+chase humming birds and chicken hawks. Why, the gasoline money of a
+young <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>collegian to-day would have paid my board bills then! We didn't
+go to Japan on baseball tours, or lug telescopes around South America
+when we ought to have been studying ethics. We lived simply and plainly.
+There wasn't an automatic piano in a single frat house when I was in
+college, and as for wasting our money on motion-picture shows and
+taxi-cabs&mdash;nonsense. We'd have died first.</p>
+
+<p>You see I'm getting into practice. Some day I'll have a son, I hope, and
+he'll go back to Siwash. Just wait till he comes home at the end of the
+first semester and tries to put across any bills for radium stickpins
+and lookophonic conversations with the co-eds at Kiowa. I'll pull a
+When-I-was-at-Siwash lecture on him that will make him feel like a
+spider on a hot stove. If I've got to be a back number I want to romp
+right back far enough to have some fun out of it. I'll make him sweat as
+much lugging me up to date as I had to perspire in the old days to
+illuminate things for Pa.</p>
+
+<p>After all, there is no question at college more serious than the Pa
+question, anyway, Bill. It was always butting into our youthful
+ambitions and tying pig iron to our coat-tails when we wanted to soar.
+It's simply marvelous how hard it is to educate a Pa a hundred miles or
+more away into the supreme importance of certain college necessities. It
+isn't because they forget, either. It's because they don't realize that
+the world is roaring along.</p>
+
+<p>I can see it all since this morning. Take my <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>father, for instance.
+There was no more generous or liberal a Pa up to a certain point. He
+wanted me to have a comfortable room and vast quantities of good food,
+and he was glad to pay literary society dues, and he would stand for
+frat dues; but when it came to paying cab hire, you could jam an
+appropriation for a post-office in an enemy's district past Joe Cannon
+in Congress more easily than you could put a carriage bill through him.
+He just said "no" in nine languages; said that when he went to
+Siwash&mdash;"and it turned out good men then, too, young fellow"&mdash;the girls
+were glad to walk to entertainments through the mud; and when it was
+unusually muddy they weren't averse to being carried a short distance. I
+believe I would have had to lead disgusted co-eds to parties on foot
+through my whole college course if I hadn't happened across an old
+college picture of father in a two-gallon plug hat. That gave me an
+idea. I put in a bill for a plug hat twice a year and he paid it without
+a murmur. Then I paid my carriage bills with the money. Plug hats had
+been the peculiar form of insanity prevalent at Siwash in his day and he
+thought they were still part of the course of study.</p>
+
+<p>I got along much easier than many of the boys, too. Allie Bangs' Pa made
+him buy all his clothes at home, for fear he'd get to looking like some
+of the cartoons he'd seen in the funny papers. "Prince" Hogboom was a
+wonder of a fullback, and his favorite amusement was to get out at night
+and try to pull <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>gas lamps up by the roots. He was a natural born holy
+terror, but his father thought he was fitted by nature to be a
+missionary, and so Hoggie had to harness himself up in meek and
+long-suffering clothes and attend Bible-study class twice a week. The
+crimes he committed by way of relieving himself after each class were
+shocking. Then there was Petey Simmons, who was a perpetual sunbeam and
+greatly beloved because it was so easy to catch happiness from him. And
+yet Petey went through school with a cloud over his young life, in the
+shape of a Pa who gave him a thousand dollars a year for expenses and
+wouldn't allow a single cent of it to be spent for frivolity. And he had
+a blanket definition for frivolity that covered everything from dancing
+parties to pie at an all-night lunch counter. By hard work Petey could
+spend about four hundred dollars on necessary expenses, and that left
+him six hundred dollars a year to blow in on illuminated manuscripts,
+student lamps, debating club dues and prints of the old masters. He had
+to borrow money from us all through the year, and then hold a great
+auction of his art trophies and student lamps, before vacation came, in
+order to pay us back.</p>
+
+<p>But all of these troubles weren't even annoyances beside what Keg
+Rearick had to endure. Keg was an affectionate contraction of his real
+nickname&mdash;"Keghead." He had the worst case of "Pa" I ever heard of. He
+was a regular high explosive&mdash;one of these fine, old, hair-triggered
+gentlemen, who consider <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>that they have done all the thinking that the
+world needs and refuse to have any of their ideas altered or edited in
+any particular. Keg had had his life laid out for him since the day of
+his birth, and when he left for Siwash&mdash;on the precise day announced by
+his father eighteen years before&mdash;the old man stood him up and
+discoursed with him as follows:</p>
+
+<p>"My son, I am about to give you the finest education obtainable. You are
+to go down to Siwash and learn how to be a credit to me. Let me impress
+it on you that that is your only duty. You will meet there companions
+who will try to persuade you that there are other things to be done in
+college besides becoming a scholar. You will pay no attention to them.
+You are to spend your time at your books. You are to lead your class in
+Latin and Greek. Mathematics I am not so particular about. You are to
+waste no time on athletics and other modern curses of college. I shall
+pay your expenses and I shall come down occasionally to see how you are
+progressing. And you know me well enough to know that if I find you
+deviating from the course I have laid out in any particular, you will
+return home and go into the store at six dollars a week."</p>
+
+<p>That's the way Keg always repeated it to us. With that affectionate
+farewell ringing in his ears he came on down to Jonesville; and when the
+Eta Bita Pies saw his honest features and his particularly likable
+smile, they surrounded and assimilated him in something less than
+fifteen minutes by the clock. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>And then his troubles began. Keg's father
+had come down the week before school and had selected a quiet place
+about three miles from the college&mdash;out beyond the cemetery in a nice
+lonely neighborhood, where there was just about enough company to keep
+the telephone poles from getting despondent. Moreover, he hadn't given
+Keg any spending money.</p>
+
+<p>"Education is the cheapest thing in the world," he roared. "You don't
+have to keep your pockets full of dollars to live in the times of Homer
+and Horace. I've told them to let you have what you need at the
+bookstore. For the rest, the college library should be your haunt and
+the debating society your recreation." If ever any one was getting
+knowledge put down his throat with a hydraulic ram, it certainly was Keg
+Rearick.</p>
+
+<p>It isn't hard to imagine the result. Keg toiled away three miles from
+anything interesting and got bluer and gloomier and more anarchistic
+every day. Wouldn't have been so bad if nobody had loved him. Lots of
+fellows go through college with no particular friends and emerge in good
+health and spirits. But we had courted Keg and had tried to make it
+impossible for him to live without us. We liked him and we hankered for
+his company. We wanted to parade him around the campus and confer him
+upon the prettiest co-ed in his boarding hall, and teach him to sing a
+great variety of interesting songs, with no particular sense to them,
+and snatch off two or three important offices around school. Instead of
+that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>he only got to say "howdy" to us between classes, and the rest of
+his time he spent Edward Payson Westoning back and forth from his
+suburban lair, without a cent in his pockets and the street-car
+motor-men giving him the bell to get off of the track into the mud every
+other block.</p>
+
+<p>We very soon found this wasn't going to do. Keg's spirits were down
+about two notches below the absolute zero. If this was college life, he
+said, would somebody kindly take a pair of forceps and remove it. It
+ached. The upshot was we made Keg steward of the frat-house table, which
+paid his board and room and moved him into the chapter house. He
+objected at first, because of what his father would say when he heard of
+it. But he finally concluded that anything he might say would be
+pleasanter than going all day without hearing anything, so he
+surrendered and came along.</p>
+
+<p>The first night at dinner, when we pushed back our chairs and sang a few
+lines by way of getting ready to go upstairs and chink a little assorted
+learning into our headpieces, Keg cried for pure joy. He buckled down to
+work the way a dog takes hold of a root, and inside of a week he
+couldn't remember a time in his young existence when he had been
+unhappy. He was tossing out Greek declensions to the prof. like a
+geyser, and Conny Matthews, our champion Livy unraveler, had shown him
+how to hold a Latin verb in his teeth while he broke open the rest of
+the sentence. And, besides that, we had introduced <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>him to all the
+nicest girls in the college and had assisted the glee club coach to
+discover that he had a fine tenor voice. He was a sure-enough find, and
+fitted into college life as if it had been made to measure for him.</p>
+
+<p>Of course all this pleasantness had to have a gloom spot in it
+somewhere. Rearick's father furnished the gloom. He was certainly the
+most rambunctious, most unreconstructed and most egregious Pa that ever
+tried to turn the sunshine off of a bright young college career.
+Regularly once a week a letter would come to Keg from him. It always
+began "When I was in college," and it always wound up by ordering Keg to
+eat a few assorted lemons for the good of his future. He was to go to
+morning prayer, regularly&mdash;there hadn't been any for twenty years. He
+was to become as well acquainted as possible with his professors,
+because of the inspiration it would give him&mdash;fancy snuggling up to old
+Grubb. He was to take a Sunday-school class at once. He was to remember
+above all things that though it was a disgrace to waste a minute of the
+precious college years it was equally a disgrace to go through college
+without being self-supporting. He should by all means learn to milk at
+once. He, Keg's father, had been valet to a couple of very fine Holstein
+cows while he was in college, and he attributed much of his success to
+this fact. He would of course pay Keg's expenses while he had to, but he
+would hold it to his discredit. He must at once begin to find work.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>This last command impressed Keg deeply, for he had been sailing along
+with us without a cent. He'd been earning his board and room, of course,
+but that was already paid for for a month out on the edge of the planet;
+and as it was the first time the family that owned the house had ever
+got a student boarder they firmly declined to rebate. It's pretty hard
+to butterfly joyously along with the fancy-vest gang without any other
+assets than unlimited credit at the bookstore, so Keg began to prowl for
+a job. Presently he picked up a laundry route. The laundry wagon was a
+favorite vehicle on which to ride to fame and knowledge in those days.
+By getting up early two mornings a week and working late nights, Keg
+managed to put away about six dollars and forty-five cents a week,
+providing every one paid his laundry bill. He was so pleased and tickled
+over the idea that he wrote to his father at once explaining that he now
+had plenty of work, but had had to move downtown in order to do it.</p>
+
+<p>Did this please old pain-in-the-face? Not noticeably. There had been no
+such things as laundry wagons in his day. Students were lucky if they
+had a shirt to wear and one to have washed at the same time. He wrote a
+letter back to Keg that bit him in every paragraph. He was to give up
+the frivolous laundry job and get some wood to saw. That and tending
+cows were the only real methods of toiling through college. He, Keg's
+father, had received his board and room for milking cows and doing
+chores, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>and he had sometimes earned as much as three dollars a week
+after school hours and before breakfast sawing cordwood at seventy-five
+cents a cord. It was healthful and classic. He would send his old saw by
+express. And he was further to remember&mdash;there were about four more
+pages to memorize, a headache in every page.</p>
+
+<p>Good old Keg did his best to be obedient, but he had no chance. In the
+first place, cordwood was phenomenally scarce in Jonesville, and anyway,
+people had a vicious habit of hindering the cause of education by sawing
+it at the wood-yards with a steam saw. There were plenty of cows in the
+outskirts, but they were either well provided with companions for their
+leisure hours, or their owners declined to allow Keg to practice on
+them&mdash;he knowing about as much about a cow as he did about a locomotive.
+And so he dawdled on with us at the chapter house, gulping down Livy,
+getting a strangle hold on Homer, and pulling in six or seven dollars a
+week at his frivolous laundry job, some of which cash he was saving up
+for a dress suit. And then, one day, Pa Rearick blew in for another
+visit and caught his son playing a mandolin in our lounging room&mdash;far,
+far from the nearest cyclone cellar.</p>
+
+<p>To judge from the conversation that followed&mdash;we couldn't help hearing
+it, although we went out-of-doors at once&mdash;one might have thought that
+Keg had been caught in a gilded den of sin, playing poker with
+body-snatchers. Pa Rearick simply cut loose <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>and bombarded the
+neighborhood with red-hot adjectives. That he should have brought up a
+son to do him honor and should have found him dawdling his college
+moments away with loafers; fawning on the idle sons of the rich;
+tinkling a mandolin instead of walking with Homer; wasting time and
+money instead of trying to earn his way to success&mdash;"Bah," likewise
+"Faugh," to say nothing of other picturesque expressions of entire
+disgust&mdash;from all of which one would judge almost without effort that
+Keg was in bad, and in all over.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose Keg attempted to explain. Possibly some people try to argue
+with a funnel-shaped cloud while it is juggling the house and the barn
+and the piano. Anyway the explanations weren't audible. Presently Pa
+Rearick announced, for most of the world to hear, that he was going to
+take his idle, worthless, disgraced and unspeakable nincompoop of a son
+back to his home and set him to weighing out dried apples for the rest
+of his life. Then up rose Keg and spoke quite clearly and distinctly as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p>"No, you're not, Dad."</p>
+
+<p>"Wh-wh-wh-whowhowwy not!" said Pa Rearick, with perfect self-possession
+but some difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I like this college and I'm going to stay here," said Keg. "I'm
+standing well in my studies and I'm learning a lot all around."</p>
+
+<p>"All I have to say is this," said Pa Rearick. I really haven't time to
+repeat all of those few words, but the ukase, when it was completely
+out, was the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>following: Keg was to have a chance to ride home in the
+cars if he packed up within ten minutes. After that he could walk home
+or dance home or play his way home with his mandolin. And he was given
+to understand that, when he finally arrived, the nearest substitute to a
+fatted calf that would be prepared for dinner would be a plate of cold
+beans in the kitchen with the hired man.</p>
+
+<p>"You may stay here and dawdle with your worthless companions if you
+desire," shouted Pa Rearick to a man in an adjoining county. "The lesson
+may be a good one for you. I wash my hands of the whole matter. But
+understand. Don't write to me for a cent. Not one cent. You've made your
+bed. Now lie on it."</p>
+
+<p>With which he went away, and we tiptoed carefully in to rearrange the
+shattered atmosphere and comfort Keg. We found him looking thoughtfully
+at nothing, with his hands deep in his pockets, from which about six
+dollars and seventy-five cents' worth of jingle sounded now and then. We
+waited patiently for him to speak. At last he turned on us and grinned
+pensively.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, boys," he said, "as a bed-maker I can beat the owner of
+that prehistoric old corn-husk mattress out in the suburbs with one hand
+tied behind me."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Of course it is a sad thing to be regarded with indignation and disgust
+by one's only paternal parent, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>but Keg bore up under it pretty
+manfully. He dug into his work harder than ever&mdash;and he was a good
+student. Latin words stuck to him like sandburrs. That wasn't his fault,
+of course. Some men are born with a natural magnetism for Latin words;
+and others, like myself, have to look up <i>quoque</i> as many as nine times
+in a page of Mr. Horace's celebrated metrical salve-slinging. Keg went
+into a literary society, too, and developed such an unholy genius at
+wadding up the other fellow's words and feeding them back to him that he
+made the Kiowa debate in his Freshman year. He also chased locals for
+the college paper, made his class football team, got on the track squad
+and won the Freshman essay prize. In fact, he killed it all year long
+and likewise he trained all year long with his idle and vicious
+companions&mdash;meaning us.</p>
+
+<p>It beats all how much benefit you can get from training with idle and
+vicious companions, if you are built that way. Of course we taught him
+how to play a mandolin, and how to twostep on his own feet exclusively,
+and how to roll a cigarette without carpeting the floor with tobacco,
+and how to make a pretty girl wonder if she is as beautiful as all that,
+without really saying it himself, and dozens of other pretty and
+harmless little tricks. But that wasn't half he picked up while he was
+loafing away the golden hours of his college course in our chapter
+house. Conny Matthews, whose hobby was Latin verse, plugged him up to
+sending in translated sonnets from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>Horace for Freshman themes. Noddy
+Pierce showed him how to grab the weak point in the other fellow's
+debate and hang on to it through the rebuttal, while the enemy
+floundered and struggled and splattered disjointed premises all over the
+hall. Allie Bangs had a bug on fencing, and because he and Keg used to
+tip over everything in the basement trying to skewer each other, they
+got to reading up on old French customs of producing artistic
+conversations and deaths and other things, and eventually they wrote one
+of those "Ha" and "Zounds" plays for the Dramatic Club. In fact, there's
+no limit to what you can absorb from idle and vicious companions. In one
+term alone I myself picked up banjo playing, pole vaulting, a little
+Spanish, a bad case of mumps, and two flunks, simply by associating with
+the Eta Bita Pie gang twenty-seven hours a day.</p>
+
+<p>But nobody had to show Keg how to get jobs after his first experience.
+He had a knack of scenting a soft financial snap a mile away to leeward,
+and working his way through college was the least of his troubles. It
+used to make me tired to see the nonchalance with which he would sleuth
+up to a nice fat thing like a baseball season program, and put away a
+couple of hundred with a single turn of the wrist and about four days'
+hard soliciting among the long-suffering Jonesville merchants. I never
+could do it myself. I had the popular desire to work my way through
+school when I entered Siwash, and I pictured myself at the end of my
+college career receiving <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>my diploma in my toil-scarred fist, without
+having had a cent from home. But pshaw! I was a joke. I mowed one lawn
+in my Freshman year, after hunting for work for three weeks; and I lost
+that engagement because the family decided the hired girl could do it
+better. After that I gave up and took my checks from home like a little
+man. In Siwash it is all right to get sent through school, and nobody
+looks down on you for it. The boys who make their own way are very kind
+and never taunt you if you have to lean on Pa. But all the same, you
+feel a little bit disgraced. Why, I've seen a cotillon leader run all
+the way home from a downtown store where he clerked after school hours,
+in order to get into his society harness on time; and when the winner of
+the Interstate Oratorical in my Freshman year had received his laurel
+wreath and three times three times three times three from the crazy
+student body, he excused himself and went off to the house where he
+lived, to fill up the hard-coal heater and pump the water for the next
+day's washing.</p>
+
+<p>As I started to say, some time ago, Keg proved to be a positive genius
+in nailing down jobs. He hadn't been with us three months until he had
+presented his laundry route to one of the boys. He didn't have time to
+attend to it. He had hauled down a chapel monitorship that paid his
+tuition. He got his board and room from us for being steward, and how he
+ever got the fancy eats he gave us out of four dollars per week per
+appetite is an unsolved wonder. He <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>made twenty-five dollars in one week
+by introducing a new brand of canned beans among the hash clubs. He took
+orders for bookbinding on Saturdays, and sold advertising programs for
+the college functions after school hours. More than once I borrowed ten
+dollars from him that year, while I was living on hope and meeting the
+mailman half-way down the block each morning just before the first of
+the month. And I wasn't the only man who did it, either.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps you wonder how he had time to do all this and to mix up in all
+the various departments of student bumptiousness, besides absorbing
+enough information laid down and prescribed by the curriculum to batter
+an "A" out of old Grubb, who hated to give a top mark worse than most
+men hate to take quinine. That's one of the mysteries of college life.
+No one has time to do anything but the busy man. In every school there
+are a few hundred joyous loafers who hold down an office or two, and
+make one team, and then have only time to take a few hasty peeps at a
+book while running for chapel; and there are a dozen men who do the
+debating and the heavy thinking for half a dozen societies, and make
+some athletic team, and get their lessons and make their own living on
+the side&mdash;and who always have time, somehow, to pick up some new and
+pleasant pastime, like reading up for an oration on John Randolph, of
+Roanoke, or some other eminent has-been. When I think of my wasted years
+in college and of how I was always going to take hold of Psych. and
+Polykon and Advanced <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>German, and shake them as a terrier does a rat,
+just as soon as I had finished about three more hands of whist&mdash;oh,
+well, there's no use of crying about it now. What makes me the maddest
+is that my wife says I'm an imposingly poor whist player at that.</p>
+
+<p>Keg went home with one of us for the semester holidays. And at
+commencement time he wrote an affectionate letter home to his volcanic
+old sire, and told him that he was going to stride forth into the
+unappreciative world and yank a living away from it that summer. That
+was the great ambition of almost every Siwash boy. When we weren't
+thinking of girls and exams in the blissful spring days, we were
+stalking some summer job to its lair and sitting down to wait for it.
+There wasn't anything that a Siwash boy wouldn't tackle in the summer
+vacation. The farmer boys had a cinch, of course. They were skilled
+laborers; and, besides, they came back in the fall in perfect condition
+for the football squad. Some of the town boys became street-car
+conductors. The new railroad that was built into Jonesville about that
+time was a bonanza for us. It was no uncommon thing, the summer of my
+Sophomore year, to find a dozen muddy society leaders shoveling dirt in
+a construction crew and singing that grand old hymn composed by Petey
+Simmons, which ran as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i15"><i>I've a blister on me heel, and me beak's begun to peel;</i></span>
+<span class="i16"><i>I've an ache for every bone that's in me back.</i></span>
+<span class="i15"><i>I've a feeling I could eat rubber hose and call it sweet,</i></span>
+<span class="i16"><i>And me hands is warped from lugging bits of track.</i></span></div>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i15"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span><i>Oh, me closes they are tore, and me shoulders they are sore,</i></span>
+<span class="i16"><i>And I sometimes wish that I had died a 'borning';</i></span>
+<span class="i15"><i>And me eye is full of dirt, and there's gravel in me shirt,</i></span>
+<span class="i16"><i>But I'm going back to Siwash in the mor-r-r-r-r-r-r-rning.</i></span></div>
+
+<p>One of our own boys is a division superintendent on one of the big
+western roads to-day, and he caught the railroad microbe in the shovel
+gang.</p>
+
+<p>The boys got newspaper positions and clerked in the stores, and one or
+two of them tooted cornets or other disturbances at summer-resort
+hotels. One junior, during my time, aroused the envy of the whole
+college by painting the steeple of the First Baptist Church during
+vacation; and when he finished the job his class numerals were painted
+in big letters on top of the ornamental knob that tipped the spire. At
+least, so he announced, and no rival class had the nerve to investigate.</p>
+
+<p>But the most popular road to prosperity during the summer was the
+canvassing route. About the last of April various smooth young college
+chaps from other schools would drift into Siwash and begin to sign up
+agents for the summer. There were three favorite lines&mdash;books,
+stereopticon slides and a patent combination desk, blackboard,
+sewing-table, snow-shovel, trundle-bed and ironing-board&mdash;which was sold
+in vast numbers at that time by students all over the country. All
+through May the agents fished for victims. They signed them up with
+contracts guaranteeing them back-breaking profits, and then instructed
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>them with great care in a variety of speeches. Speech No. 1,
+introductory. Speech No. 2, to women. Speech No. 3, clinching talk for
+waverers. Speech No. 4, to parents. Speech No. 5, rebuttal to argument
+that victim already has enough reading matter. Speech No. 6, general
+appeal to patriotism and love of progress. Then on Commencement day the
+hopeful young collegians would go forth to argue with the calm and
+unresponsive farmer's wife and sell her something that she had never
+needed and had never wanted, until hypnotized by the classic eloquence
+of a bright-eyed young man with his foot in the crack of the half-opened
+door.</p>
+
+<p>I chose the book game one summer, and went out with about thirty others.
+Twenty-five of them quit at the end of the first week. That was about
+the usual proportion&mdash;but the rest of us stuck. I devastated a swath of
+territory fifty miles wide and a hundred miles long. I talked, argued,
+persuaded, plead, threatened and mesmerized. I sold books to men on
+twine binders, to women with their hands in the bread dough, and once,
+after a farmer had come grudgingly out to rescue me from his dog, I sold
+a book to him from a tree. I worked two months, tramped four hundred
+miles, told the same story of impassioned praise for and confidence in
+my book eleven hundred times, and sold sixty-five volumes at a gross
+profit of seventy-nine dollars&mdash;my expenses being eighty dollars even.
+But it was worth the effort. I was a shy young thing at the beginning
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>of the summer, who believed that strangers would invariably bite when
+spoken to. When school began I was a tanned pirate who believed the
+world belonged to him who could grab it, and who would have walked up to
+a duke and sold him a book on practical farming with as much assurance
+as if it were a subp&oelig;na I was serving.</p>
+
+<p>Keg went out with the desk crowd, and it was evident from the first
+minute that he was going to return a plutocrat. He sold a desk to the
+train brakeman on his way to his field, and another to a kind old
+gentleman who incautiously got into conversation with him. He raged
+through four counties like a plague, selling desks in farmhouses, public
+libraries, harness stores, banks and old folks' homes. He was the
+season's sensation and won a prize every month from the proud and happy
+company. When he had finished collecting he took a hasty run to Denver
+on a sight-seeing trip, and came back to Siwash that fall in a parlor
+car, with something over four hundred dollars in his jeans.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally we would have ceased worrying about the probability of keeping
+Keg with us then if we had not done so long before. As a matter of fact,
+he was more prosperous than any of us. He had made his own money and he
+drew his own checks when he pleased, instead of taking them the first of
+the month wrapped up in a cayenne coating composed of parental remarks
+on extravagance and laziness. He gave away all of his little jobs to the
+rest of us <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>first thing, and said he was content with what he had; but,
+pshaw!&mdash;when a man has the gift he can't dodge prosperity. Keg had to
+manage the college paper that year because no one else could do it quite
+so well; and it netted him about fifty dollars a month. When the
+glee-club manager got cold feet over the poor prospects, Keg backed a
+trip himself&mdash;and I hate to say how much he cleared from it. That was
+the first year we swept the West with our famous football team of
+trained mastodons; and at the earnest solicitation of about a dozen
+daily papers here and there, Keg dashed off something like one hundred
+yards of football dope at five dollars a column&mdash;sort of a literary
+hundred-yard dash. He used to write it between bites at the dinner
+table. And then to top off everything, his precious desk company came
+along and stole him from us early in April. It considered him too
+valuable a man to tramp the country selling desks, while there were
+other young collegians who only needed the touch of a magic tongue to
+get them into the great calling. So Keg made a tour of Kiowa and
+Muggledorfer and Hambletonian and Ogallala colleges, lining up
+canvassers at a net profit of something like fifty dollars per
+head&mdash;full or empty. When he blew in at the end of the year to spend
+Commencement week with us he was nothing short of an amateur Cr&oelig;sus.
+He bulged with wealth. I remember yet the awe with which the rest of us,
+hoarding our last nickels at the end of the long and billful year, took
+a peep at the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>balance in his checkbook and touched him humbly for
+advances, great and small.</p>
+
+<p>Keg had gone out the second evening of Commencement week to bring a
+little pleasure into the barren life of a girl who hadn't been shown any
+attention by any one for upward of four hours. The rest of the boys were
+also away scattering seeds of kindness in a similar manner, and so I was
+alone when Pa Rearick stumped up the walk to the chapter-house porch and
+glared at me.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to see my boy," he said, out of the corner of his beard. He
+seemed to suspect that I had made him into a meat pie or otherwise done
+away with him.</p>
+
+<p>"He's out," I said, not very scared; "but if you want to wait for him,
+won't you make yourself quite at home?"</p>
+
+<p>He took a seat on the porch without a word. I went on smoking a
+cigarette in my most abandoned style and saying all I had to say, which
+was nothing. After a while Pa Rearick glared over at me again in a most
+belligerent manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he well?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Finer'n silk," I answered, most disrespectfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" said he; which, being freely translated, seemed to mean: "If I
+had an impudent, lazy, immoral, shiftless, unlicked cub like you, I'd
+grind him up for hen feed."</p>
+
+<p>Much more silence. I lit another cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>"Does he get enough to eat?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>"When he has time," I said. "He's generally pretty busy."</p>
+
+<p>"Playing the mandolin, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Most of the time," said I. "He runs the college in his odd moments."</p>
+
+<p>"He wouldn't have run the Siwash I went to," said Pa Rearick grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said I, "you egregious timber-head, he'd have spent his time
+limping after Homer." But as I said it only to myself, no one was
+insulted.</p>
+
+<p>"Has he learned anything?" said old Hostilities, after some more
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Took the Sophomore Greek prize this year," I said, blowing one of the
+most perfect smoke rings I had ever achieved.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it," said Pa Rearick deliberately.</p>
+
+<p>I blew another ring that was very fair, but it lacked the perfect double
+whirl of the first one. And presently the neatest spider phaeton that
+was owned by a Jonesville livery stable drew up before the house and Keg
+jumped out, telling a delicious chiffon vision to hold old Bucephalus
+until he got his topcoat. Keg was a good dresser, but I never saw him
+quite as letter-perfect and wholly immaculate as he was just then. He
+hurried up the steps, took one look, and yelled "Dad," then made a rush;
+and I went inside to see if I couldn't beat that smoke ring where there
+was not so much atmospheric disturbance.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>Pa Rearick stayed the rest of the week, and after he had interviewed
+certain professors the next day he moved over to the house and stayed
+with us. Mrs. Rearick came down, too, and on this account we didn't see
+quite as much of Keg as we had hoped to. The girl in chiffon didn't,
+either, but that's neither here nor there. She was only a passing fancy,
+anyway. By successive degrees Keg's father viewed the rest of us with
+disapproval, suspicion, tolerance, benevolence, interest and
+friendliness. But I am convinced that it was only on Keg's account. He
+gave us credit for exercising unexpected good taste in liking him. And
+maybe it wasn't interesting to see him thaw and melt and struggle with a
+stiff, wintry smile, as a young man does with his first mustache, and
+finally give himself up unreservedly to fatherly pride. When a father
+has religiously put away these things all his life for fear of spoiling
+a son, and finally finds that that son is unspoilable, even by
+friendliness and parental tenderness, he has a lot of pleasure to
+indulge himself in during his remaining years.</p>
+
+<p>It was like the old fire-eater to call us together before he went and
+punished himself. I suppose it was his sense of justice which was too
+keen for any good use. "I've misjudged my son," he said to us; "and I
+want to make public admission of it. I am perhaps a little out of
+date&mdash;a little old-fashioned. The world didn't move so fast when I was a
+boy here. When I was in school we saved our money and studied. My son
+tells me he can't afford to save <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>money&mdash;that time is too precious. I
+don't pretend to understand all your ways, but he seems to think you
+have been good to him and I want to thank you for it. My son has made
+his way alone these two years. I threw him out to support himself. When
+I casually mentioned yesterday that times were very hard in the business
+just now, he wanted to put five hundred dollars into it. I want you to
+know I'm proud of him. I hope you young gentlemen will feel free to stop
+and visit us when you come through our town. I must say, times seem to
+have changed."</p>
+
+<p>Right he was. Times have changed. And here I have been dunderheading
+along in just his way, imagining that I was pacing them, instead of
+sitting on the fence and watching them go by. If I can find that little
+Sophomore who insulted me this morning, I'm going to make him come to
+dinner and tell me some more about the way they do things this
+afternoon. As for to-morrow&mdash;what does he or any one else know about it?</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>FRAPP&Eacute;D FOOTBALL</h3>
+
+<p>As a rule there is only about one thing to mar the joy of college days
+and nights and early mornings. That is the Faculty. Honestly, I used to
+sit up until long after bedtime every little while trying to figure out
+some real reason for a college Faculty. They interfere so. They are so
+inappropriate. Moreover, they are so confoundedly ignorant of college
+life.</p>
+
+<p>How a professor can go through an assorted collection of brain
+stufferies, get so many college degrees that his name looks like
+Halley's Comet with an alphabet tail, and then teach college students
+for forty years without even taking one of them apart to find out what
+he is made of, beats my time! That's a college professor for you, right
+through. He thinks of a college student only as something to
+teach&mdash;whereas, of all the nineteen hundred and eighty-seven things a
+college student is, that is about the least important to his notion. A
+boy might be a cipher message on an early Assyrian brick and stand a far
+better chance of being understood by his professor.</p>
+
+<p>A college Faculty is a collection of brains tied <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>together by a firm
+resolve&mdash;said resolve being to find out what miscreant put plaster of
+Paris in the keyhole of the president's door. It is a wet blanket on a
+joyous life; it is a sort of penance provided by Providence to make a
+college boy forget that he's glad he's alive. It's a hypodermic syringe
+through which the student is supposed to get wisdom. It takes the place
+of conscience after you've been destroying college property. When I sum
+it all up it seems to me that a college Faculty is a dark, rainy cloud
+in the middle of a beautiful May morning&mdash;at least that's the way the
+Faculty looked to me when I was a humble seeker after the truth in
+Siwash College.</p>
+
+<p>The Faculty was to boys in Siwash what indigestion is to a jolly good
+fellow in the restaurant district. It was always either among us or
+getting ready to land on us. Our Faculty had thirty-two profs and
+thirty-three pairs of spectacles. It also had two good average heads of
+hair and considerable whiskers. It could figure out a perihelion or a
+Latin bill-of-fare in a minute, but you ought to hear it stutter when it
+tried to map out the daily relaxations of a college full of husky young
+hurricanes, who had come to school to learn what life looks like from
+the inside. Fairy tales in the German and tea and wafers with quotations
+looked like a jolly good time to the Faculty; and it couldn't understand
+why some of us liked to put gunpowder in the tea.</p>
+
+<p>Now don't understand me to say that there isn't <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>anything good about a
+college professor. Bless you, no! There's a lot of it. A Faculty is a
+lot of college profs in a state of inflammation, but individually most
+of the Siwash profs were nearly human at times. I look back at some of
+them now with awe. They really knew a lot. They knew so much that most
+of them are there yet; and I go back and look at them with a good deal
+more respect than I used to have. I'll tell you it fills a chap with awe
+to see a man teaching along for twenty years at eighteen hundred dollars
+per, and raising children, and buying books, and going off to Europe now
+and then on that princely sum&mdash;and coming through it all happy and
+content with life. I go around them nowadays with my hat off and try to
+persuade them that if it wasn't for my sprained arm I could quote Latin
+almost as well as the stone dog in front of Prexy's house.</p>
+
+<p>And some of them are bully good fellows, too. Nowadays they take me into
+their studies at Commencement and give me good cigars, making sure first
+that there are no undergraduates around. Why, one of the profs I worried
+the most, when I was a cross between a Sophomore and a spotted hyena, is
+as glad to see me nowadays as though I owed him money. He runs a little
+automobile, and I hope I may get laid out in the subway if I haven't
+heard him cuss in real United States when the clutch slipped. And he was
+the chap who used to pick out the passages in Livy that had inflammatory
+rheumatism and make me recite on them, and who always told <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>me that a
+student who smoked cigarettes would be making a wise business move if he
+brought his hat to recitation and left the less important part of his
+head at home.</p>
+
+<p>But, as I was saying, the Faculty at Siwash, like all other Faculties,
+didn't know its place. It wasn't satisfied with teaching us Greek and
+Latin and Evidences of Christianity and tall-brow twaddle of all sorts.
+It had to butt into our athletics and regulate them. Did you ever see a
+farmer regulate a weed patch with a hoe? You know how unhealthy it is
+for the weeds. Well, that was the way the Faculty regulated our
+athletics. It didn't believe in athletics anyway. They were too
+interesting. They might not have been sinful, but they were not literary
+and they were uneconomic. Of course all the professors admitted that
+good outdoor exercise was healthy for college boys, but most of them
+believed that you ought to get it in the college library out of Nature
+books. And so the way they went at the real athletics, to keep them pure
+and healthful, almost drove us into the violent ward.</p>
+
+<p>Those were the days at Siwash when our football team could start out for
+a pleasant stroll through any teams in our section and wonder after it
+had passed the goal line, why those undersized fellows had been jogging
+their elbows all the way down the field. That was the kind of a team we
+built up every fall; and it wasn't half so much trouble to keep other
+teams from beating it as it was to keep <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>the Faculty from blowing it to
+pieces with non-eligibility notices. There was something diabolical
+about that Faculty when it was wrestling with the athletic problem. It
+wasn't human. It was like Mount Etna. You never could tell just when it
+would stop being lovely and quiet, and scatter ruin all over the
+vicinity.</p>
+
+<p>Its idea of regulating athletics at Siwash was to think up excuses for
+flunking every man who weighed over one hundred and fifty-five and could
+have his toes stepped on without saying "Ouch!" And it never got the
+excuses thought up until the night before the most important games. The
+Faculty pretended to be as bland and innocent as Mary's lamb, but no one
+can ever tell me it didn't know what it was about. Men have to have real
+genius to think up the things it did. You couldn't do it accidentally.
+When a Siwash Faculty could moon along happily all fall until
+twenty-four hours before the Kiowa game and then discover with regret
+that our two-hundred-and-twenty-pound center had misspelled three words
+in an examination paper the year before; that our two-hundred-pound
+backs didn't put enough rear-end collisions into their words when they
+read French; and that Ole Skjarsen read Latin with a Norwegian accent
+and was therefore too big an ignoramus to play football, I decline to be
+fooled. I never was fooled. Neither was Keg Rearick. But that is
+hurdling about three chapters.</p>
+
+<p>Honestly, we used to spend one day out of six <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>building up our football
+team and the other five defending it from the Faculty. It positively
+hungered for a bite out of the line-up. It had us helpless. If we didn't
+like the way it ran things we could take our happy young college life up
+by the roots and transplant it to some other school, where the football
+team moved around the field like a parade. Theoretically the Faculty
+could sit around and take our best players off the team, as fast as we
+developed them, for non-attention to studies. But, as a matter of fact,
+it wasn't an easy matter. It beats all how early in the morning you have
+to get up to get ahead of college lads who have got it into their heads
+that the world will gum up on its axle and stop dead still if their
+innocent little pleasures are interfered with.</p>
+
+<p>I remember the fall that the Faculty decided Miller couldn't play
+because he hadn't attended chapel quite persistently enough the spring
+before. Miller was our center and as important to the team that year as
+the mainspring of a watch. The ponderous brain trust that sat on this
+case didn't decide it until the day before the big game with
+Muggledorfer; then they practically ruled that he would have to go back
+to last spring and take his chapel all over again. It took us all night
+to sidestep that outrage, but we did it. The next morning an indignation
+committee of fifty students met the Faculty and presented alibis that
+were invincible. It was demonstrated by a cloud of witnesses that Miller
+had been absent nine times hand-running because he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>had been sitting up
+nights with a sick chum. The Faculty was inexperienced that year and let
+him play; but, when it found out the next day by consulting the records
+that the chum had attended chapel every one of those nine mornings, it
+got more particular than ever and its heart seemed to harden.</p>
+
+<p>On the day before the Thanksgiving game that year the Faculty held a
+long meeting and decided that our two guards were ineligible. There
+wasn't a word of truth in it. They weighed two hundred and twenty pounds
+apiece and were eligible to the All-American team, but you couldn't make
+the human lexicons look at it that way. They found them deficient in
+trigonometry and canned them off the team. It was an outrage, because
+the two chaps didn't know what trigonometry meant even and couldn't take
+an examination. We had to call the trig. professor out of town by a
+telegram that morning and then have the suspended men demand an
+immediate examination. That worked, too; but every time we managed to
+preserve a glory of old Siwash, the Faculty seemed to get a little more
+crabby and unreasonable and diabolically persisted in its determination
+to regulate athletics.</p>
+
+<p>The next fall it was well understood when football practice began that
+there was going to be war to the knife between the Faculty and the
+football team. We were meek and resigned to trouble, but you can bet we
+were not going to sit around and embrace it. The longest heads in the
+school made themselves into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>a sort of an unofficial sidestepping
+committee; and we decided that if the Faculty succeeded in massacring
+our football team they would have to outpoint, outfoot, outflank and
+outscheme the whole school. Just to draw their fire, we advertised the
+first practice game as a deadly combat, in which the honor of Old Siwash
+was at stake. It was just a little romp with the State Normal, which had
+a team that would have had to use aeroplanes to get past our ends; but
+the Faculty bit. It held a special session that night and declared the
+center, the two backs and the captain ineligible because they had not
+prepared orations the spring before at the request of the rhetoric
+professor. That was first blood for us. We chased the Normalites all
+over the lot with a scrub team and Keg Rearick sat up nights the next
+week writing the orations. The result was we got four fine new
+dry-cleaned records for our four star players and the Faculty was so
+pleased with their fine work on those orations that we could scarcely
+live with it for a week.</p>
+
+<p>That was only a skirmish, however. We knew very well that the sacred
+cause of education would come right back at us and we decided to be
+elsewhere when it struck its next blow for progress. We talked it all
+over with Bost, the coach, and the result was that a week before the
+Muggledorfer game, the last week in September, Bost gave out his line-up
+for the season in chapel. There were a good many surprises in the
+line-up to some of us. It seemed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>funny that Miller shouldn't make the
+team out and that Ole Skjarsen should have been left off; but the best
+of men will slump, as Bost explained, and he had picked the team that he
+thought would do the most good for Siwash. It was a team that I wouldn't
+have hired to chase a Shanghai rooster out of a garden patch, but the
+blind and happy Faculty didn't stop to reason about its excellence. It
+held a meeting the night before the Muggledorfer game and suspended nine
+of the men for inattention to chapel, smoking cigarettes during vacation
+and other high crimes. The whole school roared with indignation. Bost
+appeared before the Faculty meeting and almost shook his fist in Prexy's
+face. He told the Faculty that it was the greatest crime of the
+nineteenth century; and the Faculty told him in very high-class language
+to go chase himself. So Bost went sorrowfully out and put in the regular
+team as substitutes. The next day we whipped Muggledorfer 80 to 0.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_13" id="illo_13" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 352px;">
+<img src="images/i227.jpg" class="ispace" width="352" height="500" alt="Our peculiar style of pushing a football right through
+the thorax of the whole middle west
+
+Page 205" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Our peculiar style of pushing a football right through
+the thorax of the whole middle west<br />
+
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_205">205</a></i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>I think that would have discouraged the Faculty if it hadn't been for
+Professor Sillcocks. Did I ever tell you about Professor Sillcocks? It's
+a shame if I haven't, because every one is the better and nobler for
+hearing about him. He was about a nickel's worth of near-man with
+Persian-lamb whiskers and the disposition of a pint of modified milk.
+Crickets were bold and quarrelsome beside him. He knew more musty
+history than any one in the state and he could without flinching tell
+how Alexander waded over his knees in blood; but rather than take
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>off his coat where the world would have seen him he would have
+died. He was just that modest and conventional. He had to come to his
+classes through the back of the campus up the hill; and they do say that
+one day, when half a dozen of the Kappa Kap Pajama girls were sitting on
+the low stone wall at the foot of the hill swinging their feet, he
+cruised about the horizon for a quarter of an hour waiting for them to
+go away in order that he might go up the hill without scorching his
+collar with blushes. That was the kind of a roaring lion Professor
+Sillcocks was.</p>
+
+<p>Well, to get back from behind Robin Hood's barn, Professor Sillcocks had
+a great hobby. He believed that college boys should indulge in
+athletics, but that they should do it with their fingers crossed. Those
+weren't his exact words, but that was what he meant. It was noble to
+play games, but wicked to want to win. In his eyes a true sport was a
+man who would start in a foot race and come in half a mile behind
+carrying the other fellow's coat. Our peculiar style of pushing a
+football right through the thorax of the whole Middle West nearly made
+him shudder his shoes off and every fall in chapel he delivered a talk
+against the reprehensible state of mind that finds pleasure in the
+defeat of others. We always cheered those talks, which pleased him; but
+he never could understand why we didn't go out afterward and offer
+ourselves up to some high-school team as victims. It pained him greatly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>Naturally Professor Sillcocks participated with great enthusiasm in the
+work of pruning our line-up, and after the Faculty had thrown up its
+hands he climbed right in and led a new campaign. We had to admire the
+scientific way in which he went about it, too. For a man whose most
+violent exercise consisted of lugging books off a top shelf, and who had
+learned all he knew about football from the Literary Pepsin or the
+Bi-Weekly Review, he got onto the game in wonderful style. Somehow he
+managed to learn just who were our star players&mdash;what they played and
+how badly they were needed&mdash;and then he went to work to quarantine these
+players.</p>
+
+<p>First thing we knew the Millersburg game, which was always a fierce
+affair, arrived; and on the morning of the game Bumpus and Van
+Eiswaggon, our two star halfbacks, got notices to forget there was such
+a game as football until they had taken Freshman Greek over again&mdash;they
+being Seniors and remembering about as much Greek as their hats would
+hold on a windy day. I'll tell you that mighty near floored us; but
+virtue will pretty nearly always triumph, and when you mix a little luck
+into it, it is as slippery to corner as a corporation lawyer. We had the
+luck. There were two big boners, Pacey and Driggs, in college who wore
+whiskers. There always are one or two landscape artists in college who
+use their faces as alfalfa farms. We took Bumpus and Van Eiswaggon and
+the leading man of a company that was playing at the opera house that
+night <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>over to these two Napoleons of mattress stuffing and they kindly
+consented to be imitated for one day only. Old Booth and Barrett had a
+tremendous layout of whiskers in his valise and before he got through he
+had produced a couple of mighty close copies of Pacey and Driggs. That
+afternoon the two real whisker kings went out in football suits and ran
+signals with the team until their wind was gone. Then they went back
+into the gym and their improved editions came out. Most of the college
+cried when they found that the two eminent authorities on tonsorial art
+were going to try to interfere with Millersburg's ambition, but those of
+us who were on to the deal simply prayed. We prayed that the whiskers
+wouldn't come off. They didn't, either. It was a grand game. We won, 20
+to 0; and the school went wild over Pacey and Driggs. Even Prexy came
+out of it for a little while and went into the gym to shake hands with
+them. It took lively work to detain him until we could get them stripped
+and laid out on the rubbing boards. They were the heroes of the school
+for the rest of the year and, being honest chaps, they naturally
+objected. But we persuaded them that they had saved the college with
+their whiskers; and before they graduated we begged a bunch from each of
+them to frame and hang up in the gym some day when the incident wasn't
+quite so fresh.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, by this time, we believed that the Faculty ought to consider
+itself lucky to be allowed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>to hang around the college. Professor
+Sillcocks looked rather depressed for a day or two, but he soon cheered
+up and seemed to forget the team's existence. We swam right along,
+beating Pottawattamie, scoring sixty points on Ogallala and getting into
+magnificent condition for the Kiowa game on Thanksgiving. That was the
+game of the year for us. Time was when Kiowa used to beat us and look
+bored about it, but that was all in the misty past. For two years we had
+tramped all the lime off her goal lines; and maybe we weren't crazy to
+do it again! As early as October we used to sit up nights talking over
+our chances, and as November wore along the suspense got as painful as a
+good lively case of too much pie. We watched the team practise all day
+and dreamed of it all night. And then the blow fell.</p>
+
+<p>It wasn't exactly a blow. It was more like a dynamite explosion. School
+let out the day before Thanksgiving, and when announcement time came in
+chapel Professor Sillcocks got up and begged permission to make a few
+remarks. Then this little ninety-eight-pound thinking machine, who
+couldn't have wrestled a kitten successfully, paralyzed half a thousand
+husky young students and a whole team of gladiators with the following
+remarks:</p>
+
+<p>"I have long held, young gentlemen, that the pursuit of athletic
+exercises for the mere lust of winning is one of the evils of college
+life. It does not strengthen the mind or build up one's manhood. It does
+not encourage that sporting spirit which leads <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>a man to smile in defeat
+or to give up his chances of winning rather than take an undue
+advantage. It does not make for gentleness, mildness or generosity. I
+have, young gentlemen, endeavored to make you see this in the past year
+by all the poor means at my disposal. I have not succeeded. But this
+morning I propose to bring it to you in a new way. As chairman of the
+credentials committee which passes upon the eligibility of your football
+players I have decided that the entire team is ineligible. If you ask
+for reasons, I have them. They may not, perhaps, suit you, but they suit
+me. These players are ineligible because they play too well. With them
+you cannot hope to be defeated and I am determined that the Siwash
+football team shall be defeated to-morrow. Your college experience must
+be broadened. Your football team, I understand, has not been defeated in
+three years. This is monstrous. All of you, except the Seniors, are
+totally uneducated in the art of taking defeat. This education I propose
+to open to you to-morrow. I have made it more certain by suspending all
+of what you call your second team and your scrubs&mdash;I believe that is
+correct. And the Faculty joins me, young gentlemen, in assuring you that
+if the game with Kiowa College is abandoned&mdash;abrogated&mdash;called off, I
+believe you express it&mdash;football will cease permanently at Siwash. Young
+gentlemen, accept defeat to-morrow as an opportunity and try to
+appreciate its great benefits. That is all."</p>
+
+<p>That last was pure sarcasm. Imagine an executioner <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>carving off his
+victim's head and murmuring politely, "That is all," to the said victim
+when he had finished! There we were, wiped out, utterly
+extinguished&mdash;legislated into disgrace and defeat&mdash;and all by a smiling
+villain who said "That is all" when he had read the death sentence!</p>
+
+<p>There wasn't a loophole in the decree. Sillcocks had carved the entire
+football talent of the school right out of it with that little list of
+his. We would have to play Kiowa with a bunch of rah-rah boys who had
+never done anything more violent than break a cane on a grandstand seat
+over a touchdown. The chaps who were butchered to make a Roman holiday
+didn't have anything at all on us. We were going to be tramped all over
+by our deadly rival in order to afford pleasure to a fuzzy-faced old
+fossil who had peculiar ideas and had us to try them out on.</p>
+
+<p>I guess, if the students had had a vote on it that day, Professor
+Sillcocks would have been elected resident governor of Vesuvius. We
+seethed all day and all that night. The board of strategy met, of
+course, but it threw up its hands. It didn't have any first aid to the
+annihilated in its chest. Besides, Professor Sillcocks hadn't played the
+game. He had just grabbed the cards. It was about to pass resolutions
+hailing Sillcocks as the modern Nero, when Rearick began to come down
+with an idea. Nowadays people pay him five thousand dollars apiece for
+ideas, but he used to fork them out to us gratis&mdash;and they had twice the
+candle-power. As soon as we saw Rearick <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>begin to perspire we just
+knocked off and sat around, and it wasn't two minutes before he was
+making a speech.</p>
+
+<p>"Fellows," he said, "we're due for a cleaning to-morrow. It's official.
+The Faculty has ordered it. If I had a Faculty I'd put kerosene on it
+and call the health department; but that's neither here nor there. We've
+got to lose. We've got to let Kiowa roll us all over the field; and if
+we back out we've got to give up football. Now some of you want to
+resign from college and some of you want to burn the chapel, but these
+things will not do you any good. Kiowa will beat us just the same.
+Therefore I propose that if we have to be beaten we make it so emphatic
+that no one will ever forget it. Let's make it picturesque and
+instructive. Let's show the Faculty that we can obey orders. Let's play
+a game of football the way Sillcocks and his tools would like to see it.
+You let me pick the team now, and give me to-night and to-morrow morning
+to drill them, and I'll bet Kiowa will never burn any property
+celebrating."</p>
+
+<p>Bost was there with his head down between his knees and he said he
+didn't care&mdash;Rearick or Sillcocks or his satanic majesty could pick the
+team. As for himself, he was going to leave college and go to herding
+hens somewhere over two thousand miles from the Faculty. So we left it
+to Rearick and went home to sleep and dream murderous dreams about
+meeting profs in lonesome places.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>The first thing I saw next morning when I went out of the house was a
+handbill on a telegraph pole. It was printed in red ink. It implored
+every Siwash student to turn out to the game that afternoon. "New
+team&mdash;new rules&mdash;new results!" it read. "The celebrated Sillcocks system
+of football will be played by the Siwash team. Attendance at this game
+counts five chapel cuts after Thanksgiving. Admission free. Tea will be
+served. You are requested to be present."</p>
+
+<p>Were we present? We were&mdash;every one of us that wasn't tied down to a
+bed. There was something promising in that announcement. Besides, the
+greenest of us were taken in by that chapel-cut business. Besides, it
+was free! College students are just like the rest of the world. They'd
+go to their great-grandmother's funeral if the admission was free. Our
+gang put on big cr&ecirc;pe bows, just to be doing something, and marched into
+the stadium that afternoon with hats off. It was packed. Talk about
+promotion work. Rearick had pasted up bills until all Jonesville was red
+in the face. And the Faculty was there, too. Every member was present.
+They sat in a big special box and Sillcocks had the seat of honor. He
+looked as pleased as though he had just reformed a cannibal tribe. I
+suppose the programs did it. They announced once more that the
+celebrated Sillcocks system of football as worked out by the coach and
+Mr. Keg Rearick would be played in this game by the Siwash team. The
+whole town was there too, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>congested with curiosity. In one big bunch
+sat all the Siwash men who had ever played football, in their best
+clothes and with their best girls. They were the guests of honor at
+their own funeral.</p>
+
+<p>The Kiowa team came trotting out&mdash;behemoths, all of them&mdash;ready to get
+revenge for three painful years. They had heard all about the massacre
+and regarded it as the joke of the century on Siwash. They also regarded
+it as their providential duty to emphasize the joke&mdash;to sharpen up the
+point by scoring about a hundred and ten points on the scared young
+greenhorns who would have to play for us. All our ex-players stood up
+and gave them a big cheer when they came. So did everybody else. It's
+always a matter of policy to grin and joke while you're being dissected.
+Nothing like cheerfulness. Cheerfulness saved many a martyr from worry
+while he was being eaten by a lion.</p>
+
+<p>Then our gymnasium doors opened and the brand-new and totally innocent
+Siwash football team came forth. When we saw it we forgot all about
+Kiowa, the Faculty, defeat, dishonor, the black future and the
+disgusting present. We stood up and yelled ourselves hoarse. Then we sat
+down and prepared to enjoy ourselves something frabjous.</p>
+
+<p>Rearick had used nothing less than genius in picking that team. First in
+line came Blakely, a mandolin and girl specialist, who had never done
+anything more daring than buck the line at a soda fountain. He had on
+football armor and a baseball <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>mask. Then came Andrews. Andrews
+specialized in poetry for the Lit magazine and commonly went by the name
+of Birdie, because of an unfortunate sonnet that he had once written.
+Andrews wore evening dress, and carried a football in a shawl strap.
+Then came McMurty and Boggs, sofa-pillow punishers. They roomed together
+and you could have tied them both up in Ole Skjarsen's belt and had
+enough of it left for a handle. James, the champion featherweight fusser
+of the school, followed. He carried a campchair and a hot-water bottle.
+Petey Simmons, five feet four in his pajamas, and Jiggs Jarley, champion
+catch-as-catch-can-and-hold-on-tight waltzer in college, came next. Then
+came Bain, who weighed two hundred and seventeen pounds, had been a
+preacher, and was so mild that if you stood on his corns he would only
+ask you to get off when it was time to go to class. He was followed by
+Skeeter Wilson, the human dumpling, and Billings, who always carried an
+umbrella to classes and who had it with him then. Behind these came a
+great mob of camp-followers with chairs, books, rugs, flowers, lunch
+tables, tea-urns and guitars. It was the most sensational parade ever
+held at Siwash; and how we yelled and gibbered with delight when we got
+the full aroma of Rearick's plan!</p>
+
+<p>The Kiowa men looked a little dazed, but they didn't have time to
+comment. The toss-up was rushed through and the two teams lined up, our
+team with the ball. It would have done your eyes good <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>to see Rearick
+adjust it carefully on a small doily in the exact center of the field,
+mince up to it and kick it like an old lady urging a setting hen off the
+nest. A Kiowa halfback caught it and started up the field. Right at him
+came Birdie Andrews, hat in hand, and when the halfback arrived he bowed
+and asked him to stop. The runner declined. McMurty was right behind and
+he also begged the runner to stop. Boggs tried to buttonhole him.
+Skeeter Wilson, who was as fast as a trolley car, ran along with him for
+twenty-five yards, pleading with him to listen to reason and consent to
+be downed. It was no use. The halfback went over the goal line. The
+Kiowa delegation didn't know whether to go crazy with joy or disgust.
+Our end of the grandstand clapped its hands pleasantly. Down in the
+Faculty box one or two of the professors, who hadn't forgotten
+everything this side of the Fall of Rome, wiggled uneasily and got a
+little bit red behind the ears.</p>
+
+<p>The teams changed goals and Rearick kicked off again. This time he
+washed the ball carefully and changed his necktie, which had become
+slightly soiled. The other Kiowa half caught the ball this time; he
+plowed into our boys so hard that McMurty couldn't get out of the way
+and was knocked over. Our whole team held up their hands in horror and
+rushed to his aid. They picked him up, washed his face, rearranged his
+clothes and powdered his nose. He cried a little and wanted them to
+telegraph his mother to come, but a big nurse with ribbons in her
+cap&mdash;it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>was Maxwell&mdash;came out and comforted him and gave him a stick of
+candy half as large as a barber-pole.</p>
+
+<p>By this time you could tell the Faculty a mile off. It was a bright red
+glow. Every root-digger in the bunch had caught on except Sillcocks. He
+was intensely interested and extremely grieved because the Kiowa men did
+not enter into the spirit of the occasion. As for the rest of the crowd,
+it sounded like drowning men gasping for breath. Such shrieks of pure
+unadulterated joy hadn't been heard on the campus in years. When the
+teams lined up again Kiowa had got thoroughly wise. They had held a
+five-minute session together, had taken off their shin, nose and ear
+guards, had combed their hair and had put on their hats. The result was
+what you might call picturesque. You could hear ripping diaphragms all
+over the stadium when they tripped out on the field. The two teams lined
+up and Rearick kicked off again. This time he had tied a big loop of
+ribbon around the ball; when it landed a Kiowa man stuck his forefinger
+through the loop and began to sidle up toward our goal, holding an
+imaginary skirt. Our team rushed eagerly at him, Billings and his
+umbrella in the lead. On every side the Kiowa players bowed to them and
+shook hands with them. The critical moment arrived. Billings reached the
+runner and promptly raised his umbrella over him and marched placidly on
+toward our goal. Hysterics from the bleachers. The Kiowa man didn't
+propose to be outdone. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>He stopped, removed his derby and presented the
+ball to Billings. Billings put his hand on his heart and declined. The
+Kiowa man bowed still lower and insisted. Billings bumped the ground
+with his forehead and wouldn't think of it. The Kiowa man offered the
+ball a third time, and we found afterward that he threatened to punch
+Billings' head then and there if he didn't take it. Billings gave in and
+took the ball.</p>
+
+<p>"Siwash's ball!" we yelled joyfully. The two teams lined up for a
+scrimmage. Right here a difficulty arose that threatened to end the
+game. The opposing players insisted on gossiping with their arms around
+each other's necks. They would not get down to business. The referee
+raved&mdash;he was an imported product, with no sense of humor, and was
+rapidly getting congestion of the brain. "Don't hit in the clinches!"
+yelled some joker. For five minutes the teams gossiped. Then our quarter
+gave his signal&mdash;the first two bars of "Oh Promise Me"&mdash;and passed the
+ball to Wilson, who was fullbacking.</p>
+
+<p>It was twice as interesting as an ordinary game because nobody knew what
+Wilson would do; in fact, he didn't seem to know himself. He stood a
+minute dusting off the ball carefully and manicuring his soiled nails.
+The Kiowa team and our boys strolled up, arm in arm. Wilson still
+hesitated. The Kiowa captain offered to send one of his men to carry the
+ball. Wilson wouldn't think of causing so much trouble. Our captain
+suggested that the ball <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>be taken to our goal. The Kiowa captain
+protested that it had been there twice already. Some one suggested that
+they flip for goals. The captains did it. Siwash won. Calling a
+messenger boy, our captain sent him over to Kiowa's goal with the ball,
+while the two teams sat down in the middle of the field and the Kiowa
+captain set 'em up to gum.</p>
+
+<p>By this time people were being removed from the stadium in all
+directions. There was a sort of purple aurora over the Faculty box that
+suggested apoplexy. The learned exponents of revised football looked
+about as comfortable as a collection of expiring beetles mounted on
+large steel pins&mdash;that is, all but Professor Sillcocks. He was beaming
+with pleasure. I never saw a man so entirely wrapped up in manly sports
+as he was just then. Evidently the new football suited him right down to
+the ground. He clapped his hands at every new atrocity; and whenever
+some Siwash man put his arm around a Kiowan and helped him tenderly on
+with the ball, he turned around to the populace behind him and nodded
+his head as if to say: "There, I told you so. It can be done. See?"</p>
+
+<p>When the Kiowa center kicked off for the next scrimmage he introduced a
+novelty. He produced a large beanbag, which I presume Rearick had
+slipped him, kicked it about four feet and then hurriedly picked it up
+and presented it to one of our men. All of our boys thanked him
+profoundly and then lined up for the scrimmage. Immediately the Kiowa
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>captain put his right hand behind him. Our captain guessed "thumbs up."
+He was right and we took the ball forward five yards. Deafening applause
+from the stadium. Then our captain guessed a number between one and
+three. Another five yards. Shrieks of joy from Siwash and desperate
+cries of "Hold 'em!" from the Kiowa gang. Then the Kiowa captain
+demanded that our captain name the English king who came after Edward
+VI. That was a stonewall defense, because Rearick had flunked two years
+running in English history. Kiowa took the ball, but the umpire butted
+in. It was an offside play, he declared, because it wasn't a king at
+all. It was a queen and it was Siwash's ball and ten yards. That made an
+awful row. The Kiowa captain declared that the whole incident was "very
+regrettable," but the umpire was firm. He gave us the ball; and on the
+very next down Rearick conjugated a French verb perfectly for a
+touchdown.</p>
+
+<p>All of this was duly announced to the stadium and the excitement was
+intense. I guess there were as many as two hundred Chautauqua salutes
+after that touchdown. Both teams had tea together and our rooters'
+chorus sang "Juanita," while old Professor Grubb got up, with rage
+printed all over his face in display type, and went home. He never went
+near the stadium again as long as he lived, I understand.</p>
+
+<p>It was a most successful occasion up to this point, but somehow college
+boys always overdo a thing. The strain was telling on the two teams;
+for, when you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>come right down to it, no Siwash man loves a Kiowa man
+any more fervently than a bull pup loves a cat. The teams lined up again
+and began playing "ring-around-a-rosy" to find who should make the next
+touchdown, when something happened. Klingel, the
+two-hundred-and-ten-pound Kiowan guard, started it. He was just about as
+good a fellow as a white rhinoceros, and an hour of entire civilization
+was about all he could possibly stand. He had the beanbag and he was
+tired of it. Beanbags meant nothing to him. He couldn't grasp their
+solemn beauty. He offered it to Petey Simmons. Petey declined, with
+profuse thanks. Klingel insisted. Petey bowed very low and swore that
+rather than make another touchdown on Kiowa he would suffer wild horses
+to tear him into little bits. Then Klingel began to get offside.</p>
+
+<p>"You hear what I say, you little shrimp!" he said politely. "If you
+don't take this thing and quit your yawping I'm going to make you do
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, you overfed mountain of pork!" said Petey, with equal
+cordiality. "If you don't like that beanbag eat it. It would do you
+good. You don't know beans anyway."</p>
+
+<p>Then Klingel, without further argument, hit Petey in the eye and laid
+him out.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_14" id="illo_14" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 334px;">
+<img src="images/i244.jpg" class="ispace" width="334" height="500" alt="&quot;If you don&#39;t like that bean bag eat it&quot;
+
+Page 220" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;If you don&#39;t like that beanbag eat it&quot;<br />
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_220">220</a></i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Wow! Talk about irritating a hornet convention. Klingel was a great
+little irritator. The whole game had been torture for our real team,
+cooped up among the ruffles in the stadium; and when they saw little <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>Petey go down they gave one simultaneous roar and vaulted over the
+railing. It was a close race, but Ole Skjarsen beat Hogboom out by a
+foot. He hit Klingel first. Hogboom hit him second, third, fifth and
+thirty-fourth. Then the two teams closed together and for five minutes a
+cyclone of dust, dirt, sweaters, collars, arms, legs, hair and bright
+red noses swept up and down the field. The grandstand went crazy. The
+five hundred Kiowa rooters grabbed their canes and started in. They met
+about seven hundred Siwash patriots and then the whole universe
+exploded.</p>
+
+<p>The police interfered and about half an hour later the last Siwash
+student was pried off the last Kiowan. It was the most disgraceful riot
+in the history of the college. I don't think there was a whole suit of
+clothes on the field when it was over; and the Siwash man who didn't
+have two or three knobs on his head wasn't considered loyal. The girls
+all cried. The Faculty went home in cabs, the mayor declared martial law
+and the Kiowa gang walked out of town to the crossing and took the train
+there to avoid further hard feelings. We were all ashamed of ourselves
+and I think the two schools liked each other a little better after that.
+Anyway, we regarded the whole affair as only logical.</p>
+
+<p>The Faculty held a meeting that lasted all the next day. Then it
+adjourned and did absolutely nothing at all except to pile upon us more
+theses, themes and special outrages that semester than any <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>body of
+students had ever been inflicted with in a like period. The profs
+wouldn't speak to us. They regarded us as beneath notice. But when the
+real Kiowa game was scheduled by mutual consent, two weeks afterward,
+there wasn't a remark from headquarters. We played Kiowa and spread them
+all over the map&mdash;and not a Faculty member was in town that day.</p>
+
+<p>I understand Professor Sillcocks is not yet thoroughly persuaded that
+his style of football wasn't a success. "But for that unfortunate riot,
+which comes from playing with less cultured colleges," he remarked to a
+Senior the next spring, "that would have been the most successful
+exhibition of mental control and inherent gentility ever seen at
+Siwash."</p>
+
+<p>True, very true.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>CUPID&mdash;THAT OLD COLLEGE CHUM</h3>
+
+<p>Well! Well! Well! Here's another magazine investigator who has made a
+great discovery. Listen to this, Sam: "Co-education, as found in
+American colleges, is amazingly productive of romance, and the great
+number of marriages resulting between the men and women in
+co-educational schools indicates all too plainly that love-making
+occupies an important part of the courses of study."</p>
+
+<p>Those are his very words. Isn't he the Christopher Columbus, though! Who
+would have thought it? Who would have dreamt that there were any mutual
+admiration societies in co-educational colleges? I am amazed. What won't
+these investigators discover next? Why, one of them is just as likely as
+not to get wise to the fact that there is a hired-girl problem. You
+can't keep anything away from these gimlet-eyed scientists.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, sure! I knew it was just about time for some kind of an off-key
+noise from you, you grouchy old leftover. Just because you graduated
+from one of those paradises in pants, where they import a carload <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>of
+girls from all over the country to one dance a year and worry along the
+rest of the time with chorus girls and sweet young town girls who began
+bringing students up by hand about the time Wm. H. Taft was a Freshman,
+you think you are qualified to toss in a few hoots about co-education.
+Back away, Sam! That subject is loaded. I've had palpitations on a
+college campus myself; and I want to tell you right here that it beats
+having them at a stage door, or at a summer resort, or in a parlor just
+around the corner from nine relatives, or in one of those short-story
+conservatories, or in the United States mails, forty ways for Sunday;
+and, besides, it's educational. We co-educationalists get a four years'
+course in close-coupled conversation and girl classification while you
+fellows in the skirtless schools are getting the club habit and are
+saving up for the privilege of dancing with other fellows' fianc&eacute;es at
+the proms once a year.</p>
+
+<p>Honestly, I never could see just why a fellow should wait until he is
+through college before he begins to study the science of how to make
+some particular girl believe that if Adam came back he would look at him
+and say: "Gee, it swells me all up to think that chap is a descendant of
+mine!"</p>
+
+<p>And I may be thick in my thought dome, but I never could see any
+objection to marrying a classmate, either, even though I didn't do it
+myself. I admit co-educational schools are strong on matrimony. Haven't
+I dug up for thirty-nine wedding presents <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>for old Siwash students
+already? And don't I get a shiver that reaches from my collar-button
+down to my heels every time I get one of those thick, stiff,
+double-barreled envelopes, with "Kindly dig," or words to that effect,
+on the inside? Usually they come in pairs&mdash;the bid to the next wedding
+and the bill for the last present. Why, out of sixty-five ninety-umpters
+with whom I graduated, six couples are already holding class reunions
+every evening; and just the other day another of the boys, who thought
+he would look farther, came back after having made a pretty thorough
+inspection all over the civilized world, and camped outside of the home
+of a girl in our class until she admitted that he looked better to her
+than any of the rising young business men who had bisected her orbit in
+the last ten years. They're to be married this spring and I'm going back
+to the wedding. Incidentally I'm going to help pay for three more silver
+cups. We give a silver cup to each class baby and each frat baby, and
+I've been looking around this past year for a place where we can buy
+them by the dozen.</p>
+
+<p>Weddings! Why, man, a co-educational college is a wedding factory. What
+of it? As far as I can see, Old Siwash produces as many governors,
+congressmen and captains of industry to the graduate as any of the
+single-track schools. And I notice one thing more. You don't find any of
+our college couples hanging around the divorce courts. There is a
+peculiar sort of stickiness about college marriages. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>They are for
+keeps. When a Siwash couple doesn't have anything else agreeable to talk
+about it can sit down and have a lovely three months' conversation on
+the good old times. It takes a mighty acrimonious quarrel to stand a
+college reunion around a breakfast table. Take it from me, you lonesome
+old space-waster, with nothing but a hatrack to give you an affectionate
+welcome when you come home at night, there is no better place on earth
+to find good wife material than a college campus. Of course I don't
+think a man should go to college to find a wife; but if his foot should
+slip, and he should marry a girl whose sofa pillows have the same
+reading matter on them as there is on his, there's nothing to yell for
+help about. Ten to one he's drawn a prize. Girls who go through
+co-educational colleges are extra fine, hand-picked, sun-ripened,
+carefully wrapped-up peaches&mdash;and I know what I'm talking about.</p>
+
+<p>How do I know? Heavens, man! didn't I go through the Siwash peach
+orchard for four years? Don't I know the game from candy to carriages?
+Didn't I spend every spring in a light pink haze of perfect bliss? And
+wasn't all the Latin and Greek and trigonometry and athletic junk
+crowded out of my memory at the end of every college year by the face of
+the most utterly, superlatively marvelous girl in the world? And wasn't
+it a different face every spring? Oh, I took the entire course in
+girlology, Sam! I never skipped a single recitation. I got a Summa Cum
+Laudissimus in strolling, losing frat <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>pins, talking futures and
+acquiring hand-made pennants. And the only bitter thought I've got is
+that I can't come back.</p>
+
+<p>You'll never realize, my boy, how old Pa Time roller-skates by until you
+go back to a co-ed college ten years afterward. Here, in the busy mart
+of trade, I'm a promising young infant who has got to "Yes, sir" and
+"No, sir" to the big ones, and be good and get to work on time for
+thirty years before I will be trusted to run a monopoly alone on a quiet
+day; but back on the Siwash Campus, Sam, I'm a patriarch. That's one
+reason why I don't go back. I'm married and I don't care to be madly
+sought after, but also I don't care to make a hit as a fine old antique
+for a while yet, thank you. When I am forty, and have gummed up my
+digestion in the dollar-herding game until I wheeze for breath when I
+run up a column of figures, I'll go back and have a nice comfy time in
+the grandpa class. But not now. The only difference between a
+thirty-year-old alumnus and the mummy of Rameses, to a college girl, is
+in favor of the mummy. It doesn't come around and ask for dances.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose, Sam, you think you've been all lit up under the upper
+left-hand vest pocket over one or two girls in your time, but I don't
+believe a fellow can fall in love so far over his ears anywhere in the
+world as he can in Siwash College. That's only natural, for the finest
+girls in the world go to Siwash&mdash;except one girl who went to another
+school by accident <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>and whom I ran across about three years ago wearing
+an Alfalfa Delt pin. I'll take you up to the house to see her some time.
+She was too nice a girl to wear an Alfalfa Delt pin and I just naturally
+had to take it off and put on an Eta Bita Pie pin; and somehow in the
+proceedings we got married&mdash;and all I have to say about it is three
+cheers for the universe!</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, as I was saying, it was as easy to fall in love at Siwash as it
+was to forget to go to chapel. We got along all right in the fall. We
+liked the girls enormously and were always smashing up some football
+team just to please them. And, of course, we kept ourselves all stove up
+financially during the winter hauling them to parties and things in
+Jonesville's nine varnished cabs. It took about as much money to support
+those cabs as it does to run a fleet of battleships. But it was in the
+spring that the real fireworks began. Suddenly, about the first
+Wednesday after the third Friday in April, the ordinary Siwash man
+discovers that some girl whom he has known all year isn't a girl at all,
+but a peachblow angel who is just stopping on earth to make a better man
+of him and show him what a dull, pifflish thing Paradise would be
+without her. Life becomes a series of awful blank spots, with walks on
+the campus between them. He can't get his calculus because he is busy
+figuring on a much more difficult problem; he is trying to figure
+whether three dances with some other fellow mean anything more to Her
+than charity. He gets <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>cold chills every time he reflects that at any
+minute a member of some royal family may pass by and notice Her, and
+that he will have to promote international spasms by hashing him. He
+realizes that he has misspent his life; that football is a boy business;
+that frats are foolish, and that there ought to be a law giving every
+college graduate a job paying at least two thousand dollars a year on
+graduation. He is nervous, feverish, depressed, inspired, anxious,
+oblivious, glorified, annihilated, encouraged and all cluttered up with
+emotion. The planet was invented for the purpose of letting Her dig Her
+number three heels into it on spring afternoons. Sunshine is important
+because Her hair looks better with the light on it. Every time She
+frowns the weather bureau hangs out a tornado signal, and every time She
+smiles somebody puts a light-blue sash around the horizon and a double
+row of million-candle-power calcium lights clear down the future, as far
+as he can see.</p>
+
+<p>That's what love does to a college boy in spring. It's a kind of
+rose-colored brainstorm, but it very seldom has complications. By the
+next fall, the ozone is out of the air; and after a couple has gone
+strolling about twice, football and the sorority rushes butt in&mdash;and
+it's all over. Freshman girls are a help, too. Beats all how much
+assistance a Freshman girl can be in forgetting a Senior girl who isn't
+on the premises! Even in the spring-fever period we didn't get engaged
+to any extent. The nearest I ever came to it was to ask the light of my
+life for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>ninety-several if she would wear my frat pin forever and ever
+until next fall. And, let me tell you, there wasn't any local of the
+Handholders' Union on the Siwash Campus. That's another place where you
+soubrette worriers have us figured out wrong. Rushing a Siwash girl was
+about as distant a proposition for us as trying to snuggle up to the
+planets in the telescopic astronomy course. For cool, pleasant and
+skillful unapproachability, a co-ed girl breaks all records. We just
+worshiped them as higher beings, and I find that a lot of Siwash boys
+who have married Siwash girls are still a little bit dazed about the
+whole affair. They can't figure how they ever had the nerve to start
+real businesslike negotiations.</p>
+
+<p>This very high-class insulation in our love affairs caused us fellows a
+lot of woe once in a while. You never could tell whether or not a girl
+was engaged to some fellow back home. We didn't get impertinent enough
+to ask. I think there ought to be a law compelling a girl who comes to
+college engaged to some rising young merchant prince in the country
+store back home to wear an engagement ring around her neck, where it can
+be easily seen. More than once, a Siwash man who had been conservative
+enough to worship the same girl right through his college course and who
+had proposed to her on the last night of school, when the open season
+for thou-beside-me talk began, has found that all the time some chap has
+been writing her a letter a day and that she has only regarded the
+Siwash man as a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>kind friend, and so on. Never will I forget when
+Frankling got stung that way! Of course we didn't generally know when a
+tragedy of this sort happened, but in his case he brought it on himself.
+If he hadn't made a furry-eared songbird out of himself when Ole
+Skjarsen drew his girl at the Senior class party&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>You want to know about this girl lottery business, you say? Well, it's
+plain that I shall have to begin right back at the beginning of the
+Siwash social system and educate you a little at a time. Now this class
+party drawing is an institution which has been handed down at Siwash
+ever since the ancients went to school before the war. You see, at
+Siwash, as at most colleges, there is the fraternity problem. The frat
+men give parties to the sorority girls as often as the Dean of Women
+will stand for it, and every one gets gorgeously acquainted and
+extremely sociable. The non-fratters go to the Y. M. C. A. reception at
+the beginning of each year and to the Commencement exercises, and that's
+about all. Of course they pick up lots of friends among the non-sorority
+girls; and I guess D. Cupid solders up about as many jobs among them as
+he does among the others. But there isn't much chance for these two
+tribes to mix. That was why the class lottery was invented. It has been
+a custom at Siwash, ever since there has been a Siwash, for each class
+to hold a party each year. Now class parties are held in order that pure
+and perfect democracy may be promoted, and it is necessary to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>take
+violent measures to shuffle up the people and get every one interested.
+So they draw for partners. The class which is about to effervesce
+socially holds a meeting. At this meeting the names of all the men are
+put in one hat and the names of all the girls in another. Then two
+judges of impregnable honesty draw out a name from each hat
+simultaneously and read them to the class.</p>
+
+<p>When I was at Siwash a class party was the most exciting event in
+college. For uncertainty and breath-grabbing anxiety they made the
+football games seem as tame as a church election. Of course everybody
+can't be a Venus de Milo or an Apollo with a Beveled Ear, as Petey
+Simmons used to call him. Every class has its middle-aged young ladies,
+who are attending college to rest up from ten or fifteen years of
+school-teaching, and its tall young agriculturalists with restless
+Adam's apples, whose idea of being socially interesting is to sit all
+evening in the same chair making a noise like one of those $7.78-suit
+dummies. That's what made the class lotteries so interesting. The
+plow-chasers drew the prettiest girls in the class and the most
+accomplished fusser among the fellows usually drew a girl who would make
+the manager of a beauty parlor utter a sad shriek and throw up his job.
+Of course every one was bound in honor to take what came out of the hat.
+Nobody flinched and nobody renigged, but there was a lot of suppressed
+excitement and well-modulated regret.</p>
+
+<p>I have been reasonably wicked since I left college. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>Once or twice I
+have slapped down a silver dollar or thereabout and have watched the
+little ball roll round and round a pocket that meant a wagon-load of
+tainted tin for me; and once in a while I have placed five dollars on a
+pony of uncertain ability and have watched him go from ninth to second
+before he blew up. But I never got half the heart-ripping suspense out
+of these pastimes that I did out of a certain few party drawings, when I
+waited for my name to come out and wondered, while I looked across the
+hall at the girl section, whether I was going to draw the one girl in
+the world, any one of four or five mighty interesting runners-up, or the
+fat little girl in the corner with ropy hair and the general look of a
+person who had had a bright idea a few years before and had been
+convalescing from it ever since.</p>
+
+<p>Talk about excitement and consequences! Those drawings kept us on the
+jump until the parties were pulled off. Generally the proud beauties who
+had been drawn by the midnight-oil destroyers did not know them, and
+some one had to steer the said destroyers around to be introduced. What
+with dragging bashful young chaps out to call and then seeing that they
+didn't freeze up below the ankles and get sick on the night of the
+party; and what with teaching them the rudiments of waltzing and giving
+them pointers on lawn ties; or how to charter a good seaworthy hack in
+case the girl lived on an unpaved street; and bracing up the fellows who
+had drawn <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>blanks, and going to call on the blanks we had drawn and
+getting gloriously snubbed&mdash;give me a wall-flower for thorns!&mdash;well, it
+was no cinch to run a class party. But they were grand affairs, just the
+same, and promoted true fellowship, besides furnishing amusement for the
+whole college in the off season. And, besides, I always remember them
+with gratitude for what they did to Frankling.</p>
+
+<p>You know there are two kinds of fussers in college. There is the chap
+like Petey Simmons, for instance, whose heart was a directory of Siwash
+girls; and there is the fellow who grabs one girl and stakes out claim
+boards all around her for the whole four years. That was Frankling's
+style. He was what we always called a married man. He and Pauline
+Spencer were the closest corporation in college. They entered school in
+the same class, and he called on her every Friday night at Browning Hall
+and took her to every party and lecture and entertainment for the next
+three and a half years&mdash;except, of course, the class parties. It was one
+of our chief delights to watch Frankling grind his teeth when some
+lowbrow&mdash;as he called them&mdash;drew her name. She always had rotten
+luck&mdash;you never saw such luck! Once Ettleson drew her. He was a tall,
+silent farmer, who wore boots and a look of gloom; and he marched her
+through a mile of mud to the hall without saying a word, handed her to
+the reception committee and went over to a corner, where he sat all
+evening. But that wasn't so bad as the Junior she drew. His <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>name was
+Slaughter. His father had a dairy at the edge of Jonesville and
+Slaughter decided that, as the night was cold and rainy, a carriage
+would be appropriate. So he scrubbed up the milk wagon thoroughly, put a
+lot of nice, clean straw on the floor, hung a lantern from the top for
+heat and drove her down to the party in state. She was game and didn't
+make a murmur, but Frankling made a pale-gray ass of himself. As I said,
+I never liked Frankling. He had a nasty, sneering way of looking at the
+whole school, except his own crowd. His father owned the locomotive
+works and he always went to Europe for his summers. He was one of those
+unnecessary individuals who are solemnly convinced that if you don't do
+things just as they do something is lacking in your mind; and, though he
+was perfectly bred, he was only about half as pleasant to have around as
+a well-behaved hyena.</p>
+
+<p>I never could see what Miss Spencer saw in him, unless it was the
+locomotives. As far as we could tell&mdash;we never got much chance to
+judge&mdash;she was a real nice girl. She was a little haughty and never had
+much to say, and always acted as if she was a princess temporarily off
+the job. But she was a good scout, and proved it at the class parties by
+making it as pleasant as she could for the nervous nobodies who took
+her; while the yellow streak in Frankling was so broad there wasn't
+enough white in him to look like a collar. That's why the whole college
+went crazy with delight over the Ole Skjarsen <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>affair.&mdash;Last station,
+ladies and gents. Story begins here.</p>
+
+<p>When we were Seniors Ole Skjarsen was the chief embarrassment of the
+class. As a football player he was a wonder, but as a society
+fritterling he was one long catastrophe. He just couldn't possibly get
+hep&mdash;that was all. He was as companionable and as good-natured as a St.
+Bernard pup and just as inconvenient to have around. He dressed like a
+vaudeville sketch, and the number of things he could do in an hour,
+which are not generally done in low-vest and low-neck circles, was
+appalling. However we all loved Ole because of his grand and historic
+deeds on the team, and we took him to our parties and never so much as
+fell out of our chairs when he took off his coat in order to dance with
+more comfort and energy. The girls were as loyal as we were and danced
+with him as long as their feet held out, and we made them leather hero
+medals and really had a lot of fun out of the whole business&mdash;all except
+Frankling. It just about killed him to have to mingle with Ole socially;
+and when the time for the Senior class party drew near he got so nervous
+that he called a meeting of a few of us fellows and made a big kick.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, fellows, this has got to stop!" he declared. "We've
+encouraged this lumber-jack until he has gotten too fresh for any use.
+Why, he'll ask any girl in the college to dance with him, and he goes
+and calls on them, too. Now, it's up to us to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>show him his place. I'm
+dead against putting his name in the hat for the party. He'll be sure to
+draw a girl who will be humiliated by having to go with him; and I have
+a little too much regard for chivalry and courtesy to allow him to do
+it. We'll just have to hint to him that he'd better have another
+engagement the night of the class party, that's all."</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon we all rose joyously up and told Frankling to go jump in the
+creek. And he called us muckers and declared we were ignorant of the
+first principles of social ethics. He said that Skjarsen might be near
+enough our level to be inoffensive, but as for him he declined to have
+anything to do with the class party. Thereupon we gave three cheers, and
+that made him so mad that he left the meeting and fell over three chairs
+trying to do it with speed and dignity. Altogether it was a most
+enjoyable occasion. We'd never gotten quite so much satisfaction out of
+him before.</p>
+
+<p>The drawing took place the next week and, sure enough, Frankling
+declined to allow his name to be put in the hat. We put Ole's name in
+and were prepared to have him draw a Class A girl; but what happened
+knocked the props out from under us. His name came fourth and he drew
+the mortgaged and unapproachable Miss Spencer.</p>
+
+<p>We didn't know whether to celebrate or prepare for trouble. It seemed
+reasonable that Miss Spencer would back up Frankling and reduce Ole to
+an icicle <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>when he asked her to go with him. But the next morning, when
+we saw Frankling, we were so happy that we forgot to worry. He was one
+large paroxysm. I never saw so much righteous indignation done up in one
+bundle. He cornered the class officers and declared in passionate tones
+that they had committed the outrage of the century. They had insulted
+one of the finest young women in the college. They had made it advisable
+for all persons of culture to remain away from Siwash. The disgrace must
+not be allowed. He didn't speak as a friend, but as a disinterested
+party who wanted justice done; and he proposed to secure it.</p>
+
+<p>We took all this quite humbly and asked him why he didn't see Ole
+himself and order him to unhand the lady. From the way he turned pale,
+we guessed he had done that already. Ole weighed two-twenty in his
+summer haircut and was quick-tempered. We then asked him why he didn't
+buy Ole off. We also asked him why he didn't shut down the college, and
+why he didn't have Congress pass a law or something, and if his head had
+ever pained him before. He was tearing off his collar in order to answer
+more calmly and collectedly when Ole came into the room. Ole had combed
+his hair and shined his shoes, and he had on the pink-and-blue necktie
+that he had worn the month before to the annual promenade with a rented
+dress suit. He seemed very cheerful.</p>
+
+<p>"Vell, fallers," says he, "das leetle Spencer gal ban all rite. She say
+she go by me to das party. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>Ve ban goin' stylish tu, Aye bet yu." Then
+he saw Frankling and went over to him with his hand out. "Don't yu care,
+Master Frankling," he said, with one of his transcontinental smiles.
+"Aye tak yust sum good care by her lak Aye ban her steddy faller." Phew!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Ole took Miss Spencer to the party. There isn't a bit of doubt but that
+he took her in style. He put more care and exertion into the job than
+any of the rest of us and he got more impressive results. Ole has his
+ideas about dress. Ordinarily he wore one of those canned suits that you
+buy in the coat-and-pants emporiums, giving your age and waist measure
+in order to get a perfect fit. He wore a celluloid collar with it and a
+necktie that must have been an heirloom in the family; and he wore a
+straw hat most of the year. He wore each one till it blew away and then
+got another. This rig was good enough for Ole in ordinary little social
+affairs, but when it came to dances and receptions he blossomed out in
+evening clothes. He had made a bargain with a second-hand clothes-man
+downtown&mdash;split his wood all winter for the use of a dress suit that had
+lost its position in a prominent family and was going downhill fast. You
+know how the tailors work the dress suit racket. They can't exactly
+change the style of a suit&mdash;it's got to be open-faced and have
+tails&mdash;but they work in some little improvement like a braid on or off,
+or an extra buttonhole, or a flare in the vest each <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>year; so that a
+really bang-up-to-date chap would blush all over if he had to wear a
+last year's model. I notice the automobile makers are doing the same
+stunt. They can't improve their cars any more, so they put four doors on
+one year, cut 'em in two the next and take them off the year after.</p>
+
+<p>This hasn't anything to do with Ole except that that dress suit of his
+was behind the times one hundred and two counts. It had been a fat man's
+suit in the first place. It fitted him magnificently at the shoulders.
+He and the suit began to leave each other from that point down. At the
+waist it looked like a deflated balloon. The top of the trousers fitted
+him about as snugly as a round manhole in the street. The legs flapped
+like the mainsail of a catboat that's coming about. They ended some time
+before his own legs did and there was quite a little stretch of yarn
+sock visible before the big tan shoes began. Ole had two acres of feet
+and he polished his shoes himself, with great care. They were not so
+large as an ordinary ballroom, but somehow he used them so skillfully
+that they gave the effect of covering the entire space. Four times
+around Ole's feet constituted a pretty fair encore at our dances; and
+I've seen him pen up as many as three couples in a corner with them when
+he got those feet tangled.</p>
+
+<p>That was Ole's formal costume. But he didn't regard it with awe. Any one
+could wear a dress suit. It seemed to him that a Senior party to which
+he was to escort Miss Spencer was too important to pass <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>airily off with
+the same old suit. He had another card up his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"Aye ent tal yu," he explained when we asked him anxiously what it was
+he proposed to wear. "Yust vait. Aye ban de hull show, Aye tank. Yu
+fallers yust put on your yumpin'-yack suits. Aye mak yu look lak torta
+cent."</p>
+
+<p>Of course we waited. We didn't have anything else to do. We worried a
+little, but we had gotten used to Ole, anyway&mdash;and what was the
+difference? It would be a little hard on Miss Spencer, but it would be
+magnificently horrible to Frankling, who considered that a collar of the
+wrong cut might endanger a man's whole future career. So we resigned
+ourselves and attended to our own troubles.</p>
+
+<p>The night of the party was a cold, clear January evening. There was snow
+on the ground and it was packed hard on the sidewalks. This was nuts for
+the oil-burners. They walked their girls to the hall. Four of the
+reckless ones clubbed together and hired a big closed carriage affair
+from the livery stable. It happened to be a pallbearers' carriage during
+the daytime, but they didn't know the difference and the girls didn't
+tell them; and what you don't know will never cause your poor old brain
+to ache. We frat fellows blew our hard-worked allowances for varnished
+cabs and thereby proved ourselves the biggest suckers in the bunch. To
+this day I can't see why a girl who can dance all night, and can stroll
+all afternoon of a winter's day, has to be hauled three <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>blocks in a
+two-horse rig every time she goes to a party. The money we spent on cabs
+while I was at Siwash would have built a new stadium, painted every frat
+house in town and endowed a chair of United States languages. But,
+there!&mdash;I'm on my pet hobby again. How it did hurt to pay for those
+hacks!</p>
+
+<p>I got there late with my girl&mdash;she was a shy little conservatory
+student, who evidently regarded conversation as against the rules&mdash;and I
+found the usual complications that had to be sorted out at the beginning
+of every class party. Stiffy Short was sore. He was short five dances
+for his girl&mdash;had been working on her program for a week&mdash;and he accused
+the fellows of dodging because she couldn't dance; and was threatening
+to be taken sick and spend the evening in the dressing room smoking
+cigarettes. Miss Worthington, one of our Class A girls, didn't have a
+dance, because Tullings, who had drawn her, had presumed that she was to
+sit and talk with him all evening. Petey Simmons was in even worse. His
+girl couldn't dance, but insisted on doing so. She had done it the year
+before, too. Petey had been training up for two weeks by tugging his
+dresser around the room. Then there was Glenallen. We always had to form
+a committee of national defense against Glenallen. He couldn't dance,
+either, and he would insist on hitching his chair out towards the middle
+of the room. I've seen him throw as many as four couples in a night. And
+there was a telephone call <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>from Miss Morse, class secretary and
+first-magnitude star. Her escort hadn't shown up. He never did show up.
+When we went around to lynch him the next day he explained desperately
+that at the last minute he found he had forgotten to get a lawn necktie.
+You know how a little thing like a lawn necktie that ain't can wreck an
+evening dress, unless you are an old enough head to cut up a
+handkerchief and fold the ends under.</p>
+
+<p>We had gotten things pretty well straightened out before we discovered
+that Ole was missing. That would never do. If Miss Spencer needed
+rescuing we were the boys to do it. Three of us rushed down the stairs
+to send a carriage over to Browning Hall, and that minute Ole arrived at
+the party.</p>
+
+<p>He had worn his very best&mdash;the suit he was proudest of and the one he
+knew couldn't be duplicated. It was his lumber-camp rig&mdash;corduroy
+trousers, big boots and overshoes, red flannel shirt, canvas pea-jacket
+and fur cap. He came marching up the walk like the hero in a
+moving-picture show and we thought he was alone till he reached the
+door. Then we saw Miss Spencer. She was seated in state behind him on
+one of those hand-sledges the farmers use for hauling cordwood. There
+were evergreen boughs behind her and all around her, and she was so
+wrapped up in a huge camp blanket that all we could see of her was her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>We gave Ole three cheers and carried Miss Spencer upstairs on the
+evergreen boughs. The two were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>the hits of the party. We never had a
+better one. The incident broke more ice than we could have chopped out
+in a month with all the dull-edged talk we had been handing around.
+Every one had a good laugh by way of a general introduction and then we
+all turned in and made things hum. The wall-flowers got plucked.
+Somebody taught the president of the Y. M. C. A. how to waltz and poor
+Henry Boggs forgot for two hours that he had hands and feet, and that
+they were beyond his control. It was a tremendous success; we were so
+enthusiastic by the time things broke up that we told the cabmen to go
+hang and all walked home to the Hall, the men fighting for a chance to
+pull on the sledge-rope with Ole.</p>
+
+<p>Hold on, Sam. Put down your hat. This isn't the end, thank you. It's
+just the prologue. Of course we all expected, when Ole unloaded Miss
+Spencer at the Hall and she bade him good evening, and thanked him for
+her delightful time and so on, that the incident would be closed. Never
+dreamed of anything else. Lumber-jack suits and cordwood sledges are
+fine for novelties, but they can't come back, you know&mdash;once is enough.
+And that's why we fell dead in rows when Ole, straw hat and all, walked
+over to Lab. from chapel with Miss Spencer the next day&mdash;and she didn't
+call for the police. We couldn't have stared any harder if the college
+chapel had bowed and walked off with her. And we hadn't recovered from
+the blow when Friday night rolled around and those of us who went to
+call at the Hall <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>found Ole seated in Frankling's particular corner,
+entertaining Miss Spencer with an average of one remark a minute, which,
+so far as we could hear, consisted generally of "Aye tank so" and "No,
+ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>By this time we had decided that Frankling was sulking and that Miss
+Spencer was showing him that if she wanted to be friendly with Ole, or
+the town pump, or the plaster statue of Victory in the college library,
+she had a perfect right to. I guess she showed him all right, too, for
+after a couple of weeks he surrendered and then the queerest rivalry
+Siwash had ever seen began. Frankling, son of the locomotive works,
+authority on speckled vests and cotillons, was scrapping with Ole
+Skjarsen, the cuffless wonder from the lumber camps, for the affections
+of the prettiest girl in college. No wonder we got so interested that
+spring that most of us forgot to fall in love ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>I don't to this day believe that Miss Spencer meant a word of it. I
+think that she was simply good-natured, in the first place, and that,
+when Frankling began to bite little semicircular pieces out of the air,
+she began mixing her drinks, so to speak, just for the excitement of the
+thing. Anyway, Frankling walked over to chapel with her and Ole lumbered
+back. Frankling took her to the basket-ball games and Ole took her to
+the Kiowa debate and slept peacefully through most of it. Frankling
+bought a beautiful little trotting horse and sleigh and took Miss
+Spencer on long rides. In Siwash, young people <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>do not have chaperons,
+guards, nurses nor conservators. That was a knockout, we all thought;
+but it never feazed Ole. He invited Miss Spencer to go street-car riding
+with him and she did it. Some of us found them bumping over the line in
+one of the flat-wheeled catastrophes that the Jonesville Company called
+cars&mdash;and Miss Spencer didn't even blush. She bowed to us just as
+unconcernedly as if she wasn't breaking all long-distance records for
+eccentricity in Siwash history.</p>
+
+<p>Frankling dodged the whole college and got wild in the eyes. He looked
+like an eminent statesman who was being compelled to act as barker in a
+circus against his will. It must have churned up his vitals to do his
+sketch act with Ole; but when you have had one of those four-year cases,
+and it has gotten tangled up in your past and future, you can't always
+dictate just what you are going to do. It was plain to see that Miss
+Spencer had Frankling hooked, haltered, hobbled, staked out,
+Spanish-bitted, wrapped up and stamped with her name and laid on the
+shelf to be called for; and it was just as evident that she considered
+he would be all the nicer if she walked around on him for a while and
+massaged his disposition a little with her little French heels.</p>
+
+<p>So Frankling continued to divide time with Ole, and all the fellows whom
+he had insulted about their neckties and all the girls whom he had
+forgotten to dance with sat around in perfect content and watched the
+show.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_15" id="illo_15" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 366px;">
+<img src="images/i271.jpg" class="ispace" width="366" height="500" alt="He invited Miss Spencer to go street-car riding with him
+
+Page 246" title="" />
+<span class="caption">He invited Miss Spencer to go street-car riding with him<br />
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_246">246</a></i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>We all thought it would wear out after a few weeks. But it didn't. The
+semester recess came and, when college assembled again, Ole cut
+Frankling out for the athletic ball as neatly as if he had been in the
+girl game all his life. Frankling countered with the promenade two weeks
+later, but he went clear to the ropes when Miss Spencer came out one
+fine morning at chapel with Ole's football charm&mdash;the one he had won the
+year the team had annihilated two universities and seven assorted
+colleges. He came back gamely and decorated her with fraternity hatpins,
+cuff buttons, belt buckles and side combs; and on the strength of it he
+got three Friday evenings in a row. That might have jarred any one but
+Ole. But he came up smiling and took Miss Spencer to a Y. M. C. A.
+social, where he bought her four dishes of ice cream and had to be
+almost violently restrained from offering her the whole freezer.</p>
+
+<p>Winter wore out and spring came. Frankling brought the whole resources
+of the locomotive works into play. He got a private car and took a party
+off to the Kiowa baseball game, with Miss Spencer as guest of honor. He
+bombarded her with imported candy and American beauties, and cluttered
+up the spring with a series of whist parties, which butted into the
+social calendar something frabjous. Ole plowed right along with his own
+peculiar style of argument. He met the private-car business with a straw
+ride and his prize offering was a hunk of spruce gum from his pine
+woods, as big as your two fists; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>and, so far as we could see, the gum
+got exactly the same warmth of reception as the candy&mdash;though it didn't
+disappear with anywhere near the rapidity.</p>
+
+<p>As April went by, we Seniors got busy with the first awful preliminaries
+of Commencement. It began to be considered around college that Senior
+Day would settle the affair one way or the other. Senior Day is the last
+event of Commencement Week at Siwash and more engagements have been
+announced formally or otherwise that day than at any other time. If a
+Senior man and girl, who had been making a rather close study of each
+other, walked out on the campus together after the exercises and took in
+the corporation dinner at noon side by side, no one hesitated about
+offering congratulations. They might not be exactly due, but it was a
+sign that there was going to be an awful lot of nice-looking stationery
+spoiled by the two after the sad partings were said. Now we didn't have
+a doubt that either Frankling or Ole would amble proudly down between
+the lilac rows on Class Day with Miss Spencer, under the good old
+pretense of helping her locate the dinner-tables a hundred yards away;
+and betting on the affair got pretty energetic. Day after day the odds
+varied. When Frankling broke closing-time rules at Browning Hall by a
+good thirty minutes some two-to-one money was placed on him. When Ole
+and Miss Spencer cut chapel the next day the odds promptly switched. You
+could get takers on either side at any time, but I think the odds
+favored Ole a little. You can't help <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>boosting your preferences with
+your good money. It's like betting on your college team.</p>
+
+<p>Commencement Week came and, although we were Seniors, we went through it
+without hardly noticing the scenery. We watched Ole and Frankling all
+through Baccalaureate, and when Ole won a twenty-yard dash across the
+church and over several of us, and marched down the street with Miss
+Spencer, it looked as if all was over but the Mendelssohn business. But
+Frankling had her in a box at the class play the next night. How could
+you pay any attention to the glorious threshold of life and the expiring
+gasps of dear college days with a race like that on!</p>
+
+<p>Commencement was on Wednesday and Senior Day was Thursday. Up to
+Wednesday night it was an even break&mdash;steen points all. One of the two
+had won. We hadn't a doubt of it. But, if both men had been born poker
+players, drawing to fill, in a jack-pot that had been sweetened nine
+times, you couldn't have told less to look at them. Frankling was as
+glum as ever and Ole had the same re&euml;nforced concrete expression of
+innocence that he used to wear while he was getting off the ball behind
+somebody's goal line, after having carried it the length of the field.
+We were discussing the thing that night on the porch of the Eta Bita Pie
+house and were putting up a few final bets when Ole came up, carpet-bag
+in hand and his diploma under his arm, and bade us good-by. He was going
+out on the midnight train&mdash;going away for good.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>For a minute you could have heard the grass growing. If Ole was going
+away that night it meant just one thing: the cruel Miss Spencer had
+tossed him over and he was bumping the bumps downward into a cold and
+cheerless future. We were so sorry we could hardly speak for a minute.
+Then Allie Bangs got up and put his arm as far across Ole's shoulder as
+it would go.</p>
+
+<p>"By thunder, I'm sorry, old chap!" he said huskily.</p>
+
+<p>For a man who had just had an air-castle fall on his neck, Ole didn't
+talk very dejectedly. "Vy yu ban sorry?" he demanded. "Aye got gude yob
+St. Paul vay. De boss write me Aye skoll come Friday. Aye ent care to be
+late first t'ing."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Ole&mdash;" Bangs began. Then he stopped. You can't bawl out a question
+about another man's love affairs before a whole mob.</p>
+
+<p>"Yu fallers ban fine tu me," Ole began again. "Aye lak yu bully! Ven yu
+come by St. Paul, take Yim Hill's railroad and come to Sven Akerson's
+camp, femt'n mile above Lars Hjellersen's gang. Aye ban boss of Sven's
+camp now. Aye gat yu gude time and plenty flapyack."</p>
+
+<p>He turned to go. Allie and I got up and walked firmly down the walk with
+him. We were going to be relieved of our suspense if we had to buy the
+information.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Ole," said Allie, grabbing his carpet-bag, "you know we're not
+going to let you go down to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>train alone. Besides, we want to know
+if everything is all right with you. You know we love you. We're for
+you, Ole. You&mdash;you and Miss Spencer parting good friends?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yu bet!" said Ole enthusiastically. "She ban fine gur'rl, Aye tal yu.
+Sum day Aye ban sending her deerskin from lumber camp."</p>
+
+<p>Bangs braced up again. "Er&mdash;you and Miss Spencer&mdash;er&mdash;not engaged, are
+you?" he said, the way a fellow goes at it when he is diving into cold
+water. Ole looked around in perfect good humor. "Get married by each
+odder?" he said. "Yee whiz! no, Master Bangs. She ban nice gur'rl. It
+ent any nicer in Siwash College. But she kent cook. She kent build fire
+in woodstove. She kent wash. She kent bake flatbrot. She kent make
+close. She yust ban purty, like picture. Vat for Aye vant to marry
+picture gallery? Aye ban tu poor faller fur picture gallery, Aye tank."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Ole," says I, jumping in, "you've been rushing the girl all winter
+as if your life depended on it. What did you mean by that?"</p>
+
+<p>Ole turned around patiently and sat down on the steps of the First
+Methodist Church, which happened to be passing just then. "Vell, Aye tal
+yu," he explained. "Miss Spencer she ban nice tu me. She go tu class
+party 'nd ent give dam vat das Frankling faller say. Aye ent forget dat,
+Aye tal yu; 'nd, by yimminy Christmas! Aye show her gude time all
+right."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We took Ole to the station and sat down to rest three times on the way
+back. So all that terrific performance was a reward for Miss Spencer! "O
+gratitude!" says the poet, "how many crimes are committed in thy name!"</p>
+
+<p>We were so dazed that night that it didn't occur to us to wonder why
+Miss Spencer stood for all the gratitude. But the next day, when the
+exercises were over, that young lady stepped down from the platform and
+was met by a tall chap whom she later introduced to us as a friend of
+the family from her home town. You can always spot these family friends
+by the way the girl blushes when she introduces them. Miss Spencer wore
+a fine new diamond ring and we knew what it meant. It was just another
+case where the girl came to school and the man stayed at home and built
+a seven-room house on a prominent corner four blocks from his hardware
+store and waited&mdash;and tried not to get any more jealous than possible. I
+suppose Miss Spencer used Ole as a sort of parachute to let Frankling
+down easily at the last. Anyway, we wiped the whole affair off the slate
+after that. She wasn't one of us, anyway. Made us shiver to think of
+her. What if one of us had sailed in the Freshman year and cut Frankling
+out!</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_16" id="illo_16" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i278.jpg" class="ispace" width="500" height="380" alt="You can always spot these family friends
+
+Page 202" title="" />
+<span class="caption">You can always spot these family friends<br />
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_252">252</a></i></span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>VOTES FROM WOMEN</h3>
+
+<p>Do I believe in woman's suffrage? Certainly, if you do, Miss Allstairs.
+As I sit here, where I couldn't help seeing you frown if I didn't please
+you, I favor anything you favor. If you want the women to vote just hand
+me the ax and show me the man who would prevent them. If you think the
+women should play the baseball of our country it's all right with me.
+I'll help pass a law making it illegal for Hans Wagner to hang around a
+ball park except as water-boy. If you believe that women ought to wear
+three-story hats in theaters&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>No, I'm not making fun of you. I hope I may never be allowed to lug a
+box of Frangipangi's best up your front steps again if I am. If you want
+the women to vote, Miss Allstairs, just breathe the word, and I'll go
+out and start a suffragette mob as soon as ever I can find a brick. And
+I would be a powerful advocate, too. You can't tell me that women
+wouldn't be able to handle the ballot. You can't tell me they would get
+their party issues mixed up with their party gowns. I've seen them vote
+and I've seen them play politics. And let me tell you, when woman gets
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>the vote man will totter right back to the kitchen and prepare the
+asparagus for supper, just to be out of harm's way. His good old
+arguments about the glory of the nation, the rising price of wheat and
+the grand record of those sterling patriots who have succeeded in
+getting their names on the government payroll won't get him to first
+base when women vote. He'll have to learn the game all over again, and
+the first ninety-nine years' course of study will be that famous
+subject, "Woman."</p>
+
+<p>How do I know so much about it? Just as I told you. I've been through
+the mill. I've seen women vote. I've tried to get them to vote my way.
+I've never herded humming birds or drilled goldfishes in close
+formation, but I'd take the job cheerfully. It would be just a rest cure
+after four years' experience in persuading a large voting body of
+beautiful and fascinating young women to vote the ticket straight and to
+let me name the ticket.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, no! I never lived in Colorado, and I never was a polygamist in Utah,
+thank you. I'm nothing but an alumnus of Siwash College, which, as you
+know, is co-educational to a heavenly degree. I'm just a young alumnus
+with about eighty-nine gray hairs scattered around in my thatch. Each
+one of those gray hairs represents a vote gathered by me from some
+Siwash co-ed in the cause of liberty and progress and personal friends.
+Eighty-nine was my total score. Took me four years to get 'em, working
+seven days in the week and forty weeks in the year. I'm no
+brass-finished <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>and splash-lubricated politician, but I'll bet I could
+go out in any election and cord up that many votes with whiskers on them
+in three days. "Votes for Women" is a fine sentiment and very
+appropriate, Miss Allstairs, but "Votes from Women" has always been the
+motto under which I have fought and been bled&mdash;I beg your pardon; that
+just slipped out accidentally. Of course there was nothing of the sort
+possible. Now there isn't the slightest use of your getting angry and
+making me feel like an Arctic explorer in a linen suit. If you insist
+I'll go out on the front porch and sit there a few weeks until you
+forgive me, but that's the very best I can do for you. I will positively
+not erase myself from your list of acquaintances. When a man has been
+hanging around the world in a bored way for thirty-two years, just
+waiting for Fate to catch up with its assignments and trundle you along
+within my range in order to give the sun a rest&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Oh, well&mdash;if you forgive me of course I'll stop anything you say. Though
+really, now, that wasn't joshing. It came from the depths. Anyway, as I
+was saying, "Votes from Women"&mdash;excuse me, please; I fell off there once
+and I'm going to go slow&mdash;"Votes from Women" was the burning question
+back at Siwash when I infested the campus. The women had the votes
+already&mdash;no use agitating that. The big question was getting 'em back
+when we needed them. You see, the Faculty always insisted on regulating
+athletics more or less and on organizing things <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>for us&mdash;didn't believe
+we mere college youths could get an organization together according to
+Hoyle, or whoever drew up the rules of disorder in college societies,
+without the help of some skyscraper-browed professor. So they saw fit to
+organize what they called a general athletic association. Every student
+who paid a dollar was enrolled as a member, with a vote and the
+privilege of blowing a horn in a lady or gentleman like manner at all
+college games. And just to assure a large membership, the faculty made a
+rule that the dollar must be paid by all students with their tuition at
+the beginning of the year. That, of course, enrolled the whole college,
+girls and all, in the Athletic Association. And it was the Athletic
+Association that raised the money to pay for the college teams and hired
+the coaches and greased old Siwash's way to glory every fall during the
+football season.</p>
+
+<p>Now this didn't bother any for a few years. The men went to the meetings
+and voted, and the girls stayed at home and made banners for the games.
+Everything was lovely and comfortable. Then one day, in my Freshman year
+just before the election, there was a crack in the slate and the Shi
+Delts saw a chance to elect one of their men president&mdash;it wasn't their
+turn that year, but you never could trust the Shi Delts politically any
+farther than you could kick a steam roller. They put up their man and
+there was a little campaign for about three hours that got up to eleven
+hundred revolutions a minute. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>We clawed and scratched and dug for votes
+and were still short when Reilly got an idea and rushed over to Browning
+Hall. Five minutes before the polls closed he appeared, leading
+twenty-seven Siwash girls, and the trouble was over. They voted for our
+man and he was elected by four votes. But, incidentally, we tipped over
+a can of&mdash;no, wait a minute. I've simply got to be more classical.
+What's the use of a college diploma if you have to tell all you know in
+baseball language? Let's see&mdash;you remember that beautiful Greek lady who
+opened a box under the impression that there was a pound of assorted
+chocolate creams in it and let loose a whole international museum of
+trouble? Dora Somebody&mdash;eh? Oh, yes, Pandora. I always did fall down on
+that name. Anyway, the box we opened in that election would have made
+Pandora's little grief repository look like a box of pink powder. The
+kind you girls&mdash;oh, very well. I take it back. Honestly, Miss Allstairs,
+you'll get me so afraid of the cars in a minute that I'll have to ditch
+this train of thought and talk about art. Ever hear me talk about art?
+Well, it would serve you right if you did. I talked about art with a
+kalsominer once, and he wanted to fight me for the honor of his
+profession.</p>
+
+<p>However, as I was saying, the women voted at Siwash that fall and I
+guess they must have liked the taste, for the first thing we knew we had
+the woman vote to take care of all the time. The next fall pretty nearly
+every girl in the college turned out to class <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>meetings, and the way
+they voted pretty nearly drove us mad. They seemed to regard it as a
+game. They fussed about whether to vote on pink paper or blue paper;
+voted for members of the Faculty for class president; one of them voted
+for the President of the United States for president of the Sophomore
+class; wanted to vote twice; came up to the ballot box and demanded
+their votes back because they had changed their minds; went away before
+election and left word with a friend to vote for them. Took us an hour,
+right in football practice time, to get the ticket through in our class;
+and what with lending pencils and chasing girls who carried their
+ballots away with them, and getting called down for trying to see that
+everything went along proper and shipshape and according to program, we
+boys were half crazy when it was all over.</p>
+
+<p>But the girls liked it enormously. It was a novelty for them, and we saw
+right there that it was a case of organize the female vote or have
+things hopelessly muddled up before the end of the year. In the
+interests of harmony things had to be done in a businesslike manner.
+Certain candidates had to be put through and certain factions had to be
+gently but firmly stepped on. Harmony, you know, Miss Allstairs, is a
+most important thing in politics. Without harmony you can't do a thing.
+Harmony in politics consists of giving the insurgents not what they ask
+for, but something that you don't want. I was a grand little harmonizer
+in my day too. I ran <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>the oratorical league the year before it went
+broke and then traded the presidency to the Chi Yi-Delta Whoop crowd for
+the editorship of the Student Weekly. That's harmony. They were happy
+and so was I. When I saw how hard they had to hustle to pay the
+association debts the next fall I was so happy I could hardly stand it.</p>
+
+<p>No, Miss Allstairs, that was not meanness on my part. It was politics.
+There is a great deal of difference between meanness and politics. One
+is lowdown and contemptible and nasty, and the other is expedient. See?
+Why, some of the most generous men in the world are politicians. Time
+and again I've seen Andy Hoople, the big politician of our town, pay a
+man's fare to Chicago so that he could go up there and rest during the
+last week of a political campaign and not bother himself and get all
+worried over the way things were going&mdash;and the man would be on the
+other side too.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, to&mdash;wait a minute; I'm going to hook over some French now. Look
+out, low bridge&mdash;to rendezvous to our muttons&mdash;how's that? In a good
+many ways there are worse jobs than that of persuading a pretty girl to
+vote the right way. Sometimes I liked the job so well that I was sorry
+when election came. But, on the whole, it was hard, hard work. We tried
+arguments and exhortation and politics, and you might as well have shot
+cheese balls at the moon. Never touched 'em. I talked straight logic to
+a girl for an hour once, showing her conclusively <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>that it was her duty
+as a patriotic Siwash student to vote for a man who could give a strong
+mind and a lot of money to the debating cause; and then she remarked
+quite placidly that she would always vote for the other man for whatever
+office he wanted, because he wore his dress suit with such an air. I had
+to take her clear downtown and buy her ice cream and things before she
+could understand the gravity of the case at all&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>No, indeed, Miss Allstairs, I didn't bribe her. You must be very careful
+about charging people with bribery. Bribery is a very serious offense.
+It's so serious that nowadays it's a very grave thing to charge a
+politician with it. I think it will be made a crime soon. I bought ice
+cream for this girl because she could understand things better while she
+was eating ice cream. It made her think better. Of course, you can't do
+that with a man in real politics. You have to give him an office or a
+contract or something in order to get his mind into a cheerful
+condition. You can argue so much better with a man when he is cheerful.
+No, indeed. I wouldn't bribe a fly. Nobody would. There isn't any
+bribing any more anyway. Illinois has taught the world that.</p>
+
+<p>But that was the least of our troubles. After you had persuaded a girl
+to vote right you had to keep her persuaded. Now most any man might be
+able to keep one vote in line, but that wasn't enough. Some of us had to
+keep four or five votes all ready for use, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>for competition was pretty
+swift and there were a tremendous number of co-eds in school. You never
+saw such a job as it was. No sooner would I have Miss A. entirely
+friendly to my candidate for the editorship of the Weekly than Miss B.
+would flop over and show marked signs of frost&mdash;and then I would have to
+drop everything and walk over from chapel with her three mornings
+hand-running, and take her to a play, and make a wild pass about not
+knowing whether any one would go to the prom with me or not. And then
+just as she would begin to smile when she saw me Miss A. would pass me
+on the street and look at me as if I had robbed a hen-roost. And just as
+I was entirely friendly with both of them it would occur to me that I
+hadn't called on Miss C. for three weeks and that Bannister, of the
+Alfalfa Delts, was waiting for Miss D. after chapel every morning and
+would doubtless make a lowdown, underhanded attempt to talk politics to
+her in the spring. For a month before each election I felt like a giddy
+young squirrel running races with myself around a wheel. Some college
+boys can keep on terms of desperate and exclusive friendliness with a
+dozen girls at a time&mdash;Petey Simmons got up to eighteen one spring when
+we won the big athletic election&mdash;but four or five were as many as I
+could manage by any means, and it kept me busted, conditioned and all
+out of training to accomplish this. And when election-time approached
+and it came to talking real politics, and the girl you had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>counted on
+all winter to swing her wing of the third floor in Browning Hall for
+your candidate would suddenly remember in the midst of a businesslike
+talk on candidates and things that you had cut two dances with her at
+the prom, and you couldn't explain that you simply had to do it because
+you had to keep your stand-in with a girl on the first floor who had the
+music-club vote in her pocket-book&mdash;well, I may get out over Niagara
+Falls some day on a rotten old tight-rope, with a sprained ankle and a
+fellow on my shoulders who is drunk and wants to make a speech, standing
+up&mdash;but if I do I won't feel any more wobbly and uncertain about the
+future than I used to feel on those occasions.</p>
+
+<p>Of course it was entirely impossible for the few dozen college
+politicians to make personal friends and supporters of all the girls in
+Siwash. We didn't want to. There are girls and girls at Siwash, just as
+there are everywhere else. Maybe a third of the Siwash girls were pretty
+and fascinating and wise and loyal, and nine or ten other exceedingly
+pleasant adjectives. And perhaps another third were&mdash;well, nice enough
+to dance with at a class party and not remember it with terror. And then
+there was another third which&mdash;oh, well, you know how it goes
+everywhere. They were grand young women, and they were there for
+educational purposes. They took prizes and learned a lot, and this was
+partly because there were no swarms of bumptious young collegians
+hanging around them and wasting <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>their time. Far be it from me, Miss
+Allstairs, to speak disparagingly of a single member of your sex&mdash;you
+are all too good for us&mdash;but, if you will force me to admit it, there
+were girls at Siwash&mdash;ex-girls&mdash;who would have made a true and loyal
+student of art and beauty climb a high board&mdash;certainly, I said I wasn't
+going to say anything against them, and I'm not. Anyway, it's no great
+compliment to be admired for your youth and beauty alone. Age has its
+claims to respect too&mdash;oh, very well; I'll change the subject.</p>
+
+<p>As I was saying, we couldn't influence all the co-ed vote personally,
+but we handled it very systematically. Every popular girl in the school
+had her following, of course, at Browning Hall. So we just fought it out
+among the popular girls. Before elections they'd line up on their
+respective sides, and then they'd line up the rest of the co-ed vote. On
+a close election we'd get out every vote, and we'd have it accounted
+for, too, beforehand. The real precinct leaders had nothing on us. It
+took a lot of time and worry; but it was all very pleasant at the end.
+The popular girls would each lead over her collection of slaves of
+Horace and Trig, and Counterpoint and Rhetoric, and we'd cheer politely
+while they voted 'em. Then we'd take off our hats and bow low to said
+slaves, and they would go back to their galleys after having done their
+duty as free-born college girls, and that would be over for another
+year. Everything would have continued lovely <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>and comfortable and darned
+expensive if it hadn't been for Mary Jane Hicks, of Carruthers' Corners,
+Missouri.</p>
+
+<p>No, I've never told you of Mary Jane Hicks. Why? The real reason is
+because when we fellows of that period mention her name we usually cuss
+a little in a hopeless and irritable sort of way. It's painful to think
+of her. It's humiliating to think that twenty-five of the case-hardened
+and time-seasoned politicians of Siwash should have been double-crossed,
+checkmated, outwitted, out-generaled, sewed up into sacks and dumped
+into Salt Creek by a red-headed, freckled-nosed exile from a Missouri
+clay farm; and a Sophomore at that&mdash;say, what am I telling you this for,
+Miss Allstairs? Honestly, it hurts. It's nice for a woman to hear, I
+know, but I may have to take gas to get through this story.</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_17" id="illo_17" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 336px;">
+<img src="images/i291.jpg" class="ispace" width="336" height="500" alt="It was a blow between the eyes
+
+See page 268" title="" />
+<span class="caption">It was a blow between the eyes<br />
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_268">268</a></i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>This Mary Jane Hicks came to Siwash the year before it all happened and
+was elected to the unnoticeables on the spot. She was a dumpy little
+girl, with about as much style as a cornplanter; and I suspect that she
+bade her pet calf a fond good-by when she left the dear old farm to come
+and play tag with knowledge on the Siwash campus. Nobody saw her in
+particular the first year, except that you couldn't help noticing her
+hair any more than you can help noticing a barn that's burning on a
+damp, dark night. It was explosively red and she didn't seem to care.
+She always had her nose turned up a little&mdash;just on principle, I guess.
+And when <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>you see a red-headed girl with a freckled nose that turns up just locate
+the cyclone cellars in your immediate vicinity, say I.</p>
+
+<p>Well, Mary Jane Hicks went through her Freshman year without causing any
+more excitement than you could make by throwing a clamshell into the
+Atlantic Ocean. She drew a couple of classy men for the class parties
+and they reported that she towed unusually hard when dancing. She voted
+in the various elections under the protecting care of Miss Willoughby,
+who was a particular friend of mine just before the Athletic election,
+and that's how I happened to meet her. I was considerably grand at that
+time&mdash;being a Junior who had had a rib smashed playing football and was
+going to edit the college paper the next year&mdash;but the way she looked at
+me you would have thought that I was the fractional part of a peeled
+cipher. She just nodded at me and said "Howdedo," and then asked if the
+vest-pocket vote was being successfully extracted that day. That was
+nervy of her and I frowned; after which she remarked that she objected
+to voting without being told in advance that the cause of liberty was
+trembling in the voter's palm. I remember wondering at the time where
+she had dug up all that rot.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hicks voted at all the elections along with the rest of the herd,
+and as far as I know no rude collegian came around and broke into her
+studies by taking her anywhere. Commencement came and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>we all went home,
+and I forgot all about her. The next fall was a critical time with the
+Eta Bita Pie-Fly Gam-Sigh Whoopsilon combination, because we had
+graduated a large number of men and we had to pull down the fall
+elections with a small voting strength. So I went down to college a day
+early to confer with some of the other patriotic leaders regarding
+slates and other matters concerning the good of the college.</p>
+
+<p>I hadn't more than stepped off the train until I met Frankling, the
+president of the Alfalfa Delts, and Randolph, of the Delta Kappa
+Sonofaguns, and Chickering, of the Mu Kow Moos, in close consultation.
+It was very evident that they were going to do a little high-class
+voting too. And before night I discovered that the Shi Delts and the
+Delta Flushes and the Omega Salves had formed a coalition with the
+independents, and that there was going to be more politics to the square
+inch in old Siwash that year than there had been since the year of the
+big wind&mdash;that's what we called the year when Maxwell was boss of the
+college and swept every election with his eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>There were any number of important elections coming off that fall. There
+were all the class elections, of course, and the Oratorical election,
+and a couple of vacancies to fill in the Athletic Association, and a
+college marshal to elect, and goodness knows what all else to nail down
+and tuck away before we could get down to the serious job of fighting
+conditions <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>that fall. I was so busy for the first three days, wiring up
+the new students and putting through a trade on the Athletic
+secretaryship with the Delta Kap gang, that I couldn't pay any attention
+to the class elections. But they were pretty safe anyway. It was only
+about a day's job to put through a class slate. The Junior election came
+first, and we had arranged to give it to Miss Willoughby. We always
+elected women presidents of the Junior class at Siwash. Little
+Willoughby had a cinch because, of course, our crowd backed her
+hard&mdash;and we were strong in Juniors&mdash;and, besides she had a good
+following among the girls. So we just turned the whole thing over to the
+girls to manage and thought no more about it, being mighty hard pressed
+by the miserable and un-American bipartisan combination on the Athletic
+offices.</p>
+
+<p>School opened on Tuesday. The Junior class election came off on Thursday
+afternoon and a Miss Hamthrick was elected president. I would have bet
+on the college bell against her. It was the shockingest thing that had
+happened in politics for five years. Miss Hamthrick was a conservatory
+student. Even when you shut your eyes and listened to her singing she
+didn't sound good-looking. Davis drew her for the Sophomore class party
+the year before and exposed himself to the mumps to get out of going.
+Not only was she elected president, but the rest of the offices went
+to&mdash;no, I'll not describe them. I'm sort of prejudiced anyway. They made
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>Miss Hamthrick seem beautiful and clever by comparison.</p>
+
+<p>It was a blow between the eyes. The worst of it was we couldn't
+understand it. I went over to see Miss Willoughby about it, and she came
+down all powdery and beautiful about the eyes and nose and talked to me
+as haughtily as if I had done it myself. She said she had trusted us,
+but it was evident that all a woman could hope for in politics was the
+privilege of being fooled by a man. She even accused me of helping elect
+the Hamthrick lady, said she wished me joy, and asked if it had been a
+pretty romance. That made me tired, and I said&mdash;oh, well, no use
+remembering what I said. It was the last thing I ever had a chance to
+say to Miss Willoughby anyway. I was pretty miserable over
+it&mdash;politically, of course, I mean, Miss Allstairs. You understand. Now
+there's no use saying that. It wasn't so. College girls are all very
+well, and one must be entertained while getting gorged with knowledge;
+but really, when it comes to more serious things, I never&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>All right, I'll go on with my story. The next day we got a harder blow
+than ever. The Freshman class election came off on a snap call, and
+about half the class, mostly girls, elected a lean young lady with
+spectacles and a wasp-like conversation to the presidency. We raised a
+storm of indignation, but they blandly told us to go hence. There was
+nothing in the Constitution of the United States <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>to prevent a woman
+from being president of the Freshman class, and there didn't seem to be
+any other laws on the subject. Besides, the Freshman class was a
+brand-new republic and didn't need the advice of such an effete monarchy
+as the Senior class. While we were talking it all over the next day the
+Sophomores met, and after a terrific struggle between the Eta Bita Pies,
+the Alfalfa Delts and the Shi Delts, Miss Hicks was elected president by
+what Shorty Gamble was pleased to term "the gargoyle vote." I wouldn't
+say that myself of any girl, but Shorty had been working for the place
+for a year, and when the twenty girls who had never known what it was to
+have a sassy cab rumble up to Browning Hall and wait for them cast their
+votes solidly and elected the Missouri Prairie Fire he felt justified in
+making comments.</p>
+
+<p>By this time it was a case of save the pieces. The whole thing had been
+as mysterious as the plague. We were getting mortal blows, we couldn't
+tell from whom. All political signs were failing. The game was going
+backward. A lot of the leaders got together and held a meeting, and some
+of them were for declaring a constitutional monarchy and then losing the
+constitution. My! But they were bitter. Everybody accused everybody else
+of double-crossing, underhandedness, gum-shoeing, back-biting, trading,
+pilfering and horse-stealing. I think there was a window or two broken
+during the discussion. But we didn't get anywhere. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>next day the
+Senior class elected officers, and every frat went out with a knife for
+its neighbor. A quiet lady by the name of Simpkins, who was one of the
+finest old wartime relics in school, was elected president.</p>
+
+<p>That night I began putting two and two and fractional numbers together
+and called in calculus and second sight on the problem. I remembered
+what the Hicks girl had said to me the year before. That was more than
+the ordinary girl ought to know about politics. I remembered seeing her
+doing more or less close-harmony work with the other midnight-oil
+consumers&mdash;and the upshot was I went over to Browning Hall that night
+and called on her.</p>
+
+<p>She came down in due time&mdash;kept me waiting as long as if she had been
+the belle of the prom&mdash;and she shook hands all over me.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear boy," she said, sitting down on the sofa with me, "I'm so
+delighted to renew our old friendship."</p>
+
+<p>Now, I don't like to be "my dear boyed" by a Sophomore, and there never
+had been any old friendship. I started to stiffen up&mdash;and then didn't. I
+didn't because I didn't know what she would do if I did.</p>
+
+<p>"How are all the other good old chaps?" she said as cordially as could
+be. "My, but those were grand days."</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_18" id="illo_18" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 305px;">
+<img src="images/i298.jpg" class="ispace" width="305" height="500" alt="&quot;How are all the other good old chaps?&quot; she said
+
+Page 270" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;How are all the other good old chaps?&quot; she said<br />
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_270">270</a></i></span></div>
+
+<p>I didn't see any terminus in that conversation. Besides, she looked like
+one of those most uncomfortable <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>girls who can guy you in such
+an innocent and friendly manner that you don't know what to say back. So
+I brushed the preliminaries aside and jumped right into the middle of
+things. "Miss Hicks," says I, "why are you doing all this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Singular or plural you?" she asked. "And why am I or are we doing what,
+and why shouldn't we?"</p>
+
+<p>"Help," said I, feeling that way. "Do you deny that you haven't been
+instrumental in upsetting the whole college with those fool elections?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am a modest young lady," said she, "so, of course, I deny it.
+Besides, this college isn't upset at all. I went over this morning and
+every professor was right side up with care where he belonged. And,
+moreover, you must not call an election a fool because it doesn't do
+what you want it to. It can't help itself."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Hicks," says I, feeling like a fly in an acre of web, "I am a
+plain and simple man and not handy with my tongue. What I mean is this,
+and I hope you'll excuse me for living&mdash;do you admit that you had a hand
+in those class elections?"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hicks looked at me in the friendliest way possible. "It is more
+modest to admit it than to declare it, isn't it?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," says I; "and this leads right back to question Number
+One&mdash;Why did you do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"And this leads back to answer Number One&mdash;Why shouldn't I?" she asked
+again.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>"Why, don't you see, Miss Hicks," says I, "that you've elected a lot of
+girls that never have been active in college work, and that don't
+represent the student body, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go to the proms?" she suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't say it and I'd die before I did," said I virtuously. "But
+what's your object?"</p>
+
+<p>"Education," said Miss Hicks mildly. "I'm paying full tuition and I want
+to get all there is out of college. I think politics is a fascinating
+study. I didn't get a chance to do much at it last year, but I'm
+learning something about it every day now."</p>
+
+<p>"But what's the good of it all?" I protested. "You'll just get the
+college affairs hopelessly mixed up&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Like the Oratorical Association was last year?" she inquired gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, pshaw!" said I, getting entirely red. "Let's not get personal. What
+can we do to satisfy you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You've been satisfying us beautifully so far," said Miss Hicks.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's us?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't in the least mind telling you," said Miss Hicks. "It's the
+Blanks."</p>
+
+<p>"The Blanks!" I repeated fretfully. "Never heard of 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it," said Miss Hicks, "but you named them yourselves. What do
+you say you've drawn when you draw a homely girl's name out of the hat
+as a partner for a class party?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>"Oh!" said I.</p>
+
+<p>"We're the Blanks," said Miss Hicks, "and we feel that we haven't been
+getting our full share of college atmosphere. So we're going into
+politics. In this way we can mingle with the students and help run
+things and have a very enjoyable time. It's most fascinating. All of us
+are dippy over it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said I again. "You mean you're going to ruin things for your own
+selfish interests?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear boy," said Miss Hicks&mdash;my, but that grated&mdash;"we're not going to
+ruin anything. And we may build up the Oratorical Association."</p>
+
+<p>That was too much. I got up and stood as nearly ten feet as I could.
+"Very well," said I. "If there's no use of arguing on a reasonable basis
+we may as well terminate this interview. But I'll just tell you there's
+no use of your going any further. Now we know what we have to fight,
+we'll take precious good care that you do not do any more mischief."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very well," said Miss Hicks&mdash;she was infuriatingly
+good-natured&mdash;"but I might as well tell you that we're going to get the
+Athletic offices, the prom committee, the Oratorical offices and the
+Athletic election next spring."</p>
+
+<p>"Ha, ha!" said I loudly and rudely. Then I took my hat and went away.
+Miss Hicks asked me very eagerly to drop in again. Me? I'd as soon have
+dropped on a Mexican cactus. It couldn't be any more uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>I went away and called our gang together and we seethed over the
+situation most all night. They voted me campaign leader on the strength
+of my service, and the next day we got the rest of the frats together,
+buried the hatchet and doped out the campaign. It was the pride and
+strength of Siwash against a red-headed Missouri girl, weight about
+ninety-five pounds; and we couldn't help feeling sorry for her. But she
+had brought it on herself. Insurgency, Miss Allstairs, is a very wicked
+thing. It's a despicable attempt on the part of the minority to become
+the majority, and no true patriot will desert the majority in his time
+of need.</p>
+
+<p>I'm not going to linger over the next month. I'll get it over in a few
+words. We started out to exterminate Miss Hicks. We put up our candidate
+for the Oratorical Association presidency. The hall was jammed when the
+time came, and before anything could be done Miss Hicks demanded that no
+one be allowed to vote who hadn't paid his or her dues. Half the fellows
+we had there never had any intention of getting that far into Oratorical
+work, and backed out; but the rest of us paid up. There had never been
+so much money in the treasury since the association began. Then the
+Blanks nominated a candidate and skinned us by three votes. When we
+thought of all that money gone to waste we almost went crazy.</p>
+
+<p>But that was just a starter. We were determined to have our own way
+about the Junior prom. What <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>do wall-flowers know about running a prom?
+We worked up an absolute majority in the Junior class, only to have a
+snap meeting called on us over in Browning Hall, in which three
+middle-aged young ladies who had never danced a step were named. The
+roar we raised was terrific, but the president sweetly informed us that
+they had only followed precedent&mdash;we'd had to do the same thing the year
+before to keep out the Mu Kow Moos. We appealed to the Faculty, and it
+laughed at us. Unfortunately, we didn't stand any too well there anyway,
+while most of the Blanks were the pride and joy of the professors.
+Anyway, they told us to fight our own battles and they'd see that there
+was fair play. Oh, yes. They saw it. They passed a rule that no student
+who was conditioned in any study could vote in any college election.
+That disenfranchised about half of us right on the spot. If ever anarchy
+breaks out in this country, Miss Allstairs, it will be because of
+college Faculties.</p>
+
+<p>We made a last stand on the Athletic Association treasurership. It
+looked for a while as if it was going to be easy. We threw all the rules
+away and gave a magnificent party for all the girls we thought we could
+count on. It was the most gorgeous affair on record, and half the dress
+suits in college went into hock afterward for the whole semester. The
+result was most encouraging. The girls were delighted. They pledged
+their votes and support and we counted up that we had a clear majority.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>We went to bed that night happy and woke up to find that Miss Hicks had
+entertained the non-fraternity men in the gymnasium that night and had
+served lemonade and wafers. She had alluded to them playfully as slaves,
+and they had broken up about fifty chairs demonstrating that they were
+not. When the election came off she had the unattached vote solid, and
+we lost out by a comfortable majority. An estimable lady, who didn't
+know athletics from croquet, was elected. And when the reception
+committee of the prom was announced the next day it was composed
+exclusively of men who would have had to be led through the grand march
+on wheels.</p>
+
+<p>After that we gave up. I tried to resign as campaign manager, but the
+boys wouldn't let me. They admitted that no one else could have done any
+better, and, besides, they wanted me to go over and see Miss Hicks
+again. They wanted me to ask her what her crowd wanted. When I thought
+of her pleasant conversational hatpin work I felt like resigning from
+college; but there always have to be martyrs, and in the end I went.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hicks received me rapturously. You would have thought we had been
+boy and girl friends. She insisted on asking how all the folks were at
+home, and how my health had been, and hadn't it been a gay winter, and
+was I going to the prom, and how did I like her new gown? While I was at
+it I thought I might as well amuse myself, too, so I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>asked her to marry
+me. That was the only time I ever got ahead of her. She refused
+indignantly, and I laughed at her for getting so fussed up over a little
+thing.</p>
+
+<p>"Marriage is a sacred subject," she said very soberly.</p>
+
+<p>"So was politics," said I, "until you came along. If you won't talk
+marriage let's talk politics. What do you girls want?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I told you a while ago," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Great Scott!" said I. "Aren't you going to leave a thing for us
+fellows who have done our best for the college?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now you put it that way," she said quite kindly, "I'll think it over.
+We might find something for you to do. There's a couple of janitorships
+loose."</p>
+
+<p>"Hicksey," says I.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Hicks," says she.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon&mdash;my dear girl, then," said I. "I've come over to the
+bunch to confess. You've busted us. We're on the mat nine points down
+and yelling for help. We don't want to run things. We only want to be
+allowed to live. We surrender. We give up. We humbly ask that you
+prepare the crow and let us eat the neck. Isn't there any way by which
+we can get a little something to keep us busy and happy? We're in a
+horrible situation. Aren't you even going to let us have the Athletic
+Association next spring?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>"I was thinking of running that myself," said Miss Hicks thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>I let out an impolite groan.</p>
+
+<p>"But I'll tell you what you might do," said Miss Hicks. "You boys might
+try to win my crowd away from me. You see, you've played right into my
+hand so far. You haven't paid any attention to my supporters. Now, if
+you were to go after them the way you do the other girls in the college
+I shudder to think what might happen to me."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean take them to parties and theaters?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" asked Miss Hicks. "You see, they're only human. I'll bet you
+could land every vote in the bunch if you went at it scientifically."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know they're not pretty," said Miss Hicks. "But they cast the
+most bee-you-ti-ful votes you ever saw."</p>
+
+<p>"What you mean," I said, "is that if we don't show those girls a
+superlatively good time this winter we won't get a look at the election
+next spring?"</p>
+
+<p>"They'd be awfully shocked if you put it that way," said Miss Hicks;
+"and I wouldn't advise you to talk to them about it. Their notions of
+honor are so high that I had to pay for the lemonade for the independent
+men myself at the last election."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very well," says I, taking my hat, "we'll think it over."</p>
+
+<p>"You might wear blinders, you know," she suggested.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>"Oh, go to thunder!" said I as earnestly as I could.</p>
+
+<p>"Come again," she said when she closed the door after me. "I do so enjoy
+these little confidences."</p>
+
+<p>Honestly, Miss Allstairs, when I think of that girl I shrink up until
+I'm afraid I'll fall into my own hat. It ought not to be legal for a
+girl to talk to a man like that. It's inhuman.</p>
+
+<p>We thought matters over for two weeks and tried one or two little raids
+on the enemy with most horrible results to ourselves. Then we gave in.
+We put our pride and our devotion to art in cold storage and took up the
+politicians' burden. We gave those girls the time of their
+young-to-middle-aged lives. We got up dances and crokinole parties and
+concerts for them. We took them to see Hamlet. We had sleighing parties.
+We helped every lecture course in the college do a rushing business. We
+just backed into the shafts and took the bit without a murmur. And maybe
+you think those girls didn't drive us. They seemed determined to make up
+for the drought of all the past. They were as coy and uncertain and as
+infernally hard to please as if they'd been used to getting one proposal
+a day and two on Sunday. Let one of us so much as drop over to Browning
+Hall to pass the time of day with one of the real heart-disturbers, and
+the particular vote that he was courting would go off the reservation
+for a week. It would take a pair of theater tickets at the least to
+square things.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>We gave dances that winter at which only one in five girls could dance.
+We took moonlight strolls with ladies who could remember the moon of
+seventy-six, and we gave strawrides to girls who insisted on talking
+history of art and missionary work to us all the way. When I think of
+the tons of candy and the mountains of flowers and the wagonloads of
+latest books that we lavished, and of the hard feelings it made in other
+quarters, and of our loneliness amid all this gayety, and of our frantic
+efforts to make the prom a success, with ten couples dancing and the
+rest decorating the walls, I sometimes wonder whether the college was
+worth our great love for it after all.</p>
+
+<p>But we were winning out. By April it was easy to see this. The Blanks
+thawed with the snow-drifts. They got real friendly and sociable, and
+after the warm weather came on we simply had to entertain them all the
+time, they liked it so. When I think of those beautiful spring days,
+with us sauntering with our political fates about the campus, and the
+nicest girls in the world walking two and two all by themselves&mdash;Oh,
+gee! Why, they even made us cut chapel to go walking with them, just as
+if it was a genuine case of "Oh, those eyes!" and "Shut up, you thumping
+heart."</p>
+
+<p><a name="illo_19" id="illo_19" /></p><div class="figcenter" style="width: 409px;">
+<img src="images/i308.jpg" class="ispace" width="409" height="500" alt="Why, they even made us cut chapel to go walking with them
+Page 280" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Why, they even made us cut chapel to go walking with them<br />
+<i>Page <a href="#Page_280">280</a></i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>All this time Miss Hicks wouldn't accept any invitation at all. She just
+flocked by herself as usual, and watched us taking her votes away from
+her without any concern apparently. I always felt that she had something
+saved up for us, but I couldn't <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>tell what it was; and anyway,
+we had those votes. By the time the Athletic election came around there
+wasn't a doubt of it.</p>
+
+<p>I must say the women did pretty well during the year. They'd cleaned up
+the Oratorical debt, and somehow there was about three times as much
+money in the Athletic treasury after the football season as there had
+ever been before. But they'd raised a lot of trouble too. No passes.
+Dues had to be paid up. Nobody got any fun out of the class affairs.
+They got up lectures and teas and made the class pay for them. And,
+anyway, we wanted to run things again. We'd felt all year like a bunch
+of last year's sunflowers. Besides, we'd earned it. We'd earned a starry
+crown as a matter of fact, but all we asked was that they give our
+little old Athletic Association back and let us run it once more.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hicks announced herself as a candidate, and we felt sorry for her.
+Not one of her gang was with her. They were enthusiastically for us.
+We'd planned the biggest party of the year right after the election in
+celebration, and had invited them already. Election day came and we
+hardly worried a bit. The result was 189 to 197 in favor of Miss Hicks.
+Every independent man and every bang-up-to-date girl in college voted
+for her.</p>
+
+<p>Of course it looks simple enough now, but why couldn't we see it then?
+We supposed the real girls knew that it was a case of college
+patriotism. And, of course, it was a low-lived trick for Miss Hicks to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>float around the last day and spread the impression that we'd never
+loved them except for their votes. She simply traded constituencies with
+us, that's all. Take it coming or going, year in or year out, you
+couldn't beat that girl. I'll bet she goes out to Washington state and
+gets elected governor some day.</p>
+
+<p>I went over to Browning Hall the night after the election, ready to tell
+Miss Hicks just what everybody thought of her. I was prepared to tell
+her that every athletic team in college was going to disband and that
+anarchy would be declared in the morning. She came down as pleasant as
+ever and held out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say it, please," she said, "because I'm going to tell you
+something. I'm not coming back next year."</p>
+
+<p>"Not coming back!" said I, gulping down a piece of relief as big as an
+apple.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said, "I'm&mdash;I'm going to be married this summer. I've&mdash;I've
+been engaged all this year to a man back home, but I wanted to come back
+and learn something about politics. He's a lawyer."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you learned enough to suit you, didn't you?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," she said with a giggle. "Wasn't it fun, though! My father
+will be so pleased. He's the chairman of the congressional committee out
+at home and he's always told me an awful lot about politics. I've
+enjoyed this year so much."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>"Well, I haven't," I said; "but I hope to enjoy next year." And then I
+took half an hour to tell her that, in spite of the fact that she was
+the most arrant, deceitful, unreliable, two-faced and scuttling
+politician in the world, she was almost incredibly nice. She listened
+quite patiently, and at the end she held up her fingers. They'd been
+crossed all the time.</p>
+
+<p>No, that's the last I ever saw of her, Miss Allstairs. She left before
+Commencement. She sent me an invitation to the wedding. I'll bet she
+didn't quite get the significance of the magnificent silver set we
+Siwash boys sent. We sent it to the groom.</p>
+
+<p>That was the end of women dominion at Siwash. There wasn't a rag of the
+movement left next fall. But we boys never entirely forgot what happened
+to us, and it's still the custom to elect a co-ed to some Athletic
+office. They do say that the only way to teach a politician what the
+people want is to bore a shaft in his head and shout it in, but our
+experience ought to be proof to the contrary. Why, all we needed was the
+gentle little hint that Mary Jane Hicks gave us.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>SIC TRANSIT GLORIA ALL-AMERICA</h3>
+
+<p>How did the Siwash game come out Saturday? Forget it, my boy. You'll
+never know in this oversized, ingrowing, fenced-off, insulated
+metropolis till some one writes and tells you. Every fall I ask myself
+that same question all day Saturday and Sunday, and do you suppose I
+ever find a Siwash score in one of those muddy-faced, red-headed,
+ward-gossip parties that they call newspapers in New York? Never, not at
+all, you hopeful tenderfoot from the unimportant West. After you've
+existed in this secluded portion of the universe a few years you'll get
+over trying to find anything that looks like news from home in the daily
+disturbances here. And I don't care whether your home is in Buffalo,
+Chicago or Strawberry Point, Iowa, either. Go down on the East Side and
+beat up a policeman, and you'll get immortalized in ten-inch type. Go
+back West and get elected governor, and ten to one if you're mentioned
+at all they'll slip you the wrong state to preside over.</p>
+
+<p>Excuse me, but I'm considerably sore, just as I am every Sunday during
+the football season. Here I am, eating my heart out with longing to know
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>whether good old Siwash has dusted off half a township with
+Muggledorfer again, and what do I get to read? Four yards of Gale; five
+yards of Jarhard; two yards of Ohell; and a page of Quincetown,
+Hardmouth, Jamhurst, Saint Mikes, Holy Moses College and the Connecticut
+Institute of Etymology. Nice fodder for a loyal alumnus eleven hundred
+and then some miles from home, isn't it? Honest, when I first hit this
+seething burg I used to go down to the Grand Central station on Sunday
+afternoon and look at the people coming in from the trains, just because
+some of them were from the West. Once I took a New Yorker up to
+Riverside Park, pointed him west and asked him what he saw. He said he
+saw a ferryboat coming to New York. That was all he had ever seen of the
+other shore. He called it Hinterland. That made me mad and I called him
+an electric-light bug. We had a lovely row.</p>
+
+<p>But we're blasting out a corner for the old coll., even back here. We've
+got things fixed pretty nicely here now, we Siwash men. Down near
+Gramercy Park there's an old-fashioned city dwelling house, four stories
+high and elbow-room wide. It's the Siwash Alumni Club. There are half a
+hundred Siwash men in New York, gradually getting into the king row in
+various lines of business, and we pay enough rent each year for that
+house to buy a pretty fair little cottage out in Jonesville. Whenever a
+Siwash man drops in there he's pretty sure to find another Siwash man
+who smokes the same brand of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>tobacco and knows the same brand of
+college songs. We've got one legislator, four magazine publishers, two
+railroad officials, a city prosecutor and three bankers on the
+membership roll, and maybe some day we'll have a mayor. Then we'll pass
+a law requiring the boys and girls of New York to spend at least one
+hour a day learning about Siwash College, Jonesville, the big team of
+naughty-nix and the formula for getting credit at the Horseshoe Caf&eacute;.
+We'll make it obligatory for every newspaper to publish a full page
+about each Siwash game in the fall, with pictures of the captain, the
+coach and the fullback's right leg. Hurrah for revenge! I see it coming.</p>
+
+<p>Join the club? Why, you don't have to ask to join it. You've got to join
+it. Ten dollars, please, and sign here. When we get a little huskier
+financially we won't charge new-fledged graduates anything for a year or
+two, but we've got to now. The soulless landlord wants his rent in
+advance. You'll find the whole gang there Saturday nights. Just butt
+right in if I'm not around. You're a Siwash man, and if you want to
+borrow the doorknob to throw at a hackman you've a perfect right to do
+it.</p>
+
+<p>I'll tell you, old man, you don't know how nice it is to have a hole
+that you can hunt in this hurricane town, when you're a bright young
+chap with a glorious college past and a business future that you can't
+hock for a plate of beans a day! Leaving college and going into business
+in a big city is like <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>taking a high dive from the hall of fame into an
+ice-water tank. Think of that and be cheerful. You've got a nice time
+coming. Just now you're Rudolph Weedon Burlingame, Siwash
+Naughty-several, late captain of the baseball team, prize orator,
+manager of two proms and president of the Senior class. To-morrow you'll
+be a nameless cumberer of busy streets, useful only to the street-car
+companies to shake down for nickels. To-morrow you're going around to
+the manager of some firm or other with a letter from some customer of
+his, and you're going to put your hand on your college diploma so as to
+have it handy, and you're going to hand him the letter and prepare to
+tell the story of your strong young life. But just before you begin
+you'll go away, because the manager will tell you he's sorry, but he's
+busy, and there are fourteen applicants ahead of you, and anyway he'll
+not be hiring any more men until 1918, and will you please come around
+then, and shut the door behind you, if you don't mind.</p>
+
+<p>Yep, that's what will happen to you. You'll spend your first three days
+trying to haul that diploma out. The fourth day you'll put it in your
+trunk. I've known men to cut 'em up for shaving paper. You'll stop
+trying to tell the story of your life and in about a week you'll be
+wondering why you have been allowed to live so long. In two weeks a
+clerk will look as big as a senator to you and you'll begin to get
+bashful before elevator men. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>You'll get off the sidewalk when you see a
+man who looks as if he had a job and was in a hurry. You'll envy a
+messenger boy with a job and a future; you'll wonder if managers are
+really carnivorous or only pretend to be. You feel as tall as the Singer
+Building to-day, but you'll shrink before long. You'll shrink until,
+after a long, hard day, with about nine turndowns in it, you'll have to
+climb up on top of the dresser to look at yourself in the glass.</p>
+
+<p>That's what you're going up against. Then the Siwash Club will be your
+hole and you'll hunt it every evening. You'll be a big man there, for we
+judge our members not by what they are, but by what they were at school.
+You'll sit around with the boys after dinner, and the man on your right,
+who is running a railroad, will be interested in that home run you made
+against Muggledorfer, and the man on your left, who won't touch a law
+case for less than five thousand dollars, will tell you that he, too,
+won the Perkins debate once. And he'll treat you as if you were a real
+life-sized human being instead of a job hunter, knee high to a copying
+clerk. You'll be back in the old college atmosphere, as big as the best
+of 'em, and after you've swapped yarns all evening you'll go to bed full
+of tabasco and pepper and you'll tackle the first manager the next
+morning as if he were a Kiowa man and had the ball. And sooner or later
+you'll get old Mr. Opportunity where he can't give you the straight arm,
+and if you don't put a knee in his chest and tame him for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>life you
+haven't got the real Siwash spirit, that's all.</p>
+
+<p>Funny thing about college. It isn't merely an education. It's a whole
+life in itself. You enter it unknown and tiny&mdash;just a Freshman with no
+rights on earth. You work and toil and suffer&mdash;and fall in love&mdash;and
+climb and rise to fame. When you are a Senior, if you have good luck,
+you are one of the biggest things in the whole world&mdash;for there isn't
+any world but the campus at college. Freshmen look up to you and admire
+men who are big enough to talk with you. The Sophomores may sneer at
+faculties and kings, but they wouldn't think of sassing you. The papers
+publish your picture in your football clothes. You dine with the
+professors, and prominent alumni come back and shake you by the hand. Of
+course, you know that somewhere in the dim nebulous outside there is a
+President of the United States who is quite a party in his way, but none
+of the girls mention it when they tell you how grand you looked after
+they had hauled the other team off of you and sewed on your ear. They
+talk about you exclusively because you're really the only thing worth
+talking about, you know.</p>
+
+<p>When Commencement comes you move about the campus like some tall
+mountain peak on legs. The students bring their young brothers up to
+meet you and you try to be kind and approachable. They give you a
+tremendous cheer when you go down the aisle in the chapel to get your
+prizes. You are referred <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>to on all sides as one of the reasons why
+America is great. The professors when they bid you good-by ask you
+anxiously not to forget them. Then Commencement is over and college life
+is past, and there is nothing left in life but to become a senator or
+run a darned old trust. You leave the campus, taking care not to step on
+any of the buildings, and go out into the world pretty blue because
+you're through with about everything worth while; and you wonder if you
+can stand it to toil away making history eleven months in the year with
+only time to hang around college a few weeks in spring or fall. You're
+done with the real life. You're an old man, you've seen it all; and it
+sometimes takes you two weeks or more to recover and decide that after
+all a great career may be almost as interesting in a way as college
+itself. So you buck up and decide to accept the career&mdash;and that's where
+you begin to catch on to the general drift of the universe in dead
+earnest.</p>
+
+<p>Take a man of sixty, with a permanent place in Who's Who and a large
+circle of people who believe that he has some influence with the sunrise
+and sunset. Then let him suddenly find himself a ten-year-old boy with
+two empty pockets and an appetite for assets, and let him learn that it
+isn't considered even an impertinence to spank him whenever he tries to
+mix in and air his opinions. I don't believe he would be much more
+shocked than the college man who finds, at the conclusion of a glorious
+four-year slosh in fame, that he is really just about to begin life, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>that the first thing he must learn is to keep out from under foot and
+say "Yes, sir," when the boss barks at him. It's a painful thing,
+Burlingame. Took me about a year to think of it without saying "ouch."</p>
+
+<p>The saddest thing about it all is that the two careers don't always
+mesh. The college athlete may discover that the only use the world has
+for talented shoulder muscles is for hod-carrying purposes. The society
+fashion plate may never get the hang of how to earn anything but last
+year's model pants; and the fishy-eyed nonentity, who never did anything
+more glorious in college than pay his class tax, may be doing a
+brokerage business in skyscrapers within ten years.</p>
+
+<p>When I left Siwash and came to New York I guess I was as big as the next
+graduate. Of course I hadn't been the one best bet on the campus, but I
+knew all the college celebrities well enough to slap them on the backs
+and call them by pet names and lend them money. That of course should be
+a great assistance in knowing just how to approach the president of a
+big city bank and touch him for a cigar in a red-and-gold corset, while
+he is telling you to make yourself at home around the place until a job
+turns up. Allie Bangs, my chum, went on East with me. We had decided to
+rise side by side and to buy the same make of yachts. Of course we were
+sensible. We didn't expect to crowd out any magnates the first week or
+two. We intended to rise by honest worth, if it took a whole year. All
+we asked was that the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>fellows ahead should take care of themselves and
+not hold it against us if we ran over them from behind. We didn't think
+we were the biggest men on earth&mdash;not yet. That's where we fell down.
+We've never had a chance to since. You've got to seize the opportunity
+for having a swelled head just as you have for everything else.</p>
+
+<p>It took us just six weeks to get a toe-hold on the earth and establish
+our right to breathe our fair share of New York air. At the end of that
+time neither one of us would have been surprised if we had been charged
+rent while waiting in the ante-rooms of New York offices to be told that
+no one had time to tell us that there was no use of our waiting to get a
+chance to ask for anything. Talk about a come-down! It was worse than
+coming down a bump-the-bumps with nails in it. It was three months
+before we got jobs. They were microscopic jobs in the same company, with
+wages that were so small that it seemed a shame to make out our weekly
+checks on nice engraved bank paper&mdash;jobs where any one from the
+proprietor down could yell "Here, you!" and the office boy could have
+fired us and got away with it. If I had been hanging on to a rope
+trailing behind a fifty-thousand-ton ocean liner I don't believe I
+should have felt more inconsequential and totally superfluous.</p>
+
+<p>But they were jobs just the same and we were game. I think most college
+graduates are after they get their feelings reduced to normal size. We
+hung <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>on and dug in, and sneaked more work into our positions, and
+didn't quarrel with any one except the window-washer's little boy who
+brought meat for the cats in the basement. We drew the line at letting
+him boss us. And how we did enjoy being part of the big rumpus on
+Manhattan Island. We had a room&mdash;it wasn't so much of a room as it was a
+sort of stationary vest&mdash;and we ate at those hunger cures where a girl
+punches out your bill on a little ticket and you don't dare eat up above
+the third figure from the bottom or you'll go broke on Friday. By hook
+or crook we always managed to save a dollar from the wreckage each week
+for Sunday, and say, did you ever conduct a scientific investigation
+into just how far a dollar will go providing a day's pleasure in a big
+city? We did that for six months, and if I do say it myself we stretched
+some of those dollars until the eagle's neck reached from Tarrytown to
+Coney Island. We saw New York from roof garden to sub-cellar. We even
+got to doing fancy stunts. We'd dig out our dress suits, go over to one
+of those caf&eacute;s where you begin owing money as soon as you see the head
+waiter, and put on a bored and haughty front for two hours on a dollar
+and twenty cents, including tips. And what we didn't know about the
+Subway, the Snubway and the Grubway, the Clubway, and the various
+Dubways of New York wasn't worth discovering or even imagining.</p>
+
+<p>We hadn't been conducting our explorations for more than a week when a
+most tremendous thing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>happened to us. You know how you are always
+running up against mastodons in the big town. You see about every one
+who is big enough to die in scare-heads. Taking a stroll down Fifth
+Avenue with an old residenter and having him tell about the people you
+pass is like having the hall of fame directory read off to you. Well,
+one Sunday night when we were blowing in our little fifty cents apiece
+on one of those Italian table d'h&ocirc;te dinners with red varnish free,
+Allie looked across the room and began to tremble. "Look at that chap,"
+says he.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?" I asked, getting interested. "Roosevelt?"</p>
+
+<p>"Roosevelt nothing," he says scornfully. "Man alive, that's Jarvis!"</p>
+
+<p>I just dropped my jaw and stared. Of course you remember Jarvis, the
+great football player. At that time I guess most of the college boys in
+America said their prayers to him. Out West we students used to read of
+his terrific line plunges on the eastern fields and of his titanic
+defense when his team was hard pushed, and wonder if any of us would
+ever become great enough to meet him and shake him by the hand. What did
+we care for the achievements of Achilles and Hector and Hercules and
+other eminent hasbeens, which we had to soak up at the rate of forty
+lines of Greek a day? They had old Homer to write them up&mdash;the best man
+ever in the business. But they were too tame for us. I've caught myself
+speculating more than once on what Achilles would have done if Jarvis
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>had tried to make a gain through him. Achilles was probably a pretty
+good spear artist, and all that, but if Jarvis had put his
+leather-helmeted head down and hit the line low&mdash;about two points south
+of the solar plexus&mdash;they would have carted Ac. away in a cab right
+there, invulnerability and all.</p>
+
+<p>That's about what we thought of Jarvis. We had his pictures pasted all
+over our training quarters along with those of the other
+super-dreadnoughts from the colleges that break into literature, and I
+imagine that if he had suddenly appeared back in Jonesville we should
+have put our heads right down and kow-towed until he gave us permission
+to get up. And here we were, sitting in the same caf&eacute; with him. I'll
+tell you, I had never felt the glory of living in the metropolis and
+prowling around the ankles of the big chiefs more vividly than right
+there in that room the night we first saw him.</p>
+
+<p>We sat and watched Jarvis while our meat course got cold. There was no
+mistaking him&mdash;some people have their looks copyrighted and Jarvis was
+one of them. We would have known it was he if we had seen him in a Roman
+mob. After a while Bangs, who always did have a triple re&euml;nforced
+Harveyized steel cheek, straightened up. "I'm going over to speak to
+him," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit still, you fool," says I; "don't annoy him."</p>
+
+<p>"Watch me," says Bangs; "I'm going over to introduce myself. He can't
+any more than freeze me. And after I've spoken to him they can take my
+little <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>old job away from me and ship me back to the hayfields whenever
+they please. I'll be satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to bottle that nerve of yours and sell it to the
+lightning-rod pedlers," says I, getting all sweaty. "Just because you
+introduced yourself to a governor once you think you can go as far as
+you like. You stay right here&mdash;" But Bangs had gone over to Jarvis.</p>
+
+<p>I sat there and blushed for him, and suffered the tortures of a man who
+is watching his friend making a furry-eared nuisance of himself. There
+was the greatest football player in the world being pestered by a
+frying-sized sprig of a ninth assistant shipping clerk. It was
+preposterous. I waited to see Bangs wilt and come slinking back. Then I
+was going to put on my hat and walk out as if I didn't belong with him
+at all. But instead of that Bangs shook hands with Jarvis, talked a
+minute and then sat down with him. When Bangs is routed out by the Angel
+Gabriel he'll sit down on the edge of his grave and delay the whole
+procession, trying to find a mutual acquaintance or two. That's the kind
+of a leather-skin he is.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Bangs turned around and beckoned to me to come over. More
+colossal impudence. I wasn't going to do it, but Jarvis turned, too, and
+smiled at me. Like a hypnotized man I went over to their table. "I want
+you to meet Mr. Jarvis," said Bangs, with the air of a man who is giving
+away his aeroplane to a personal friend.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>"Glad to meet you," said Jarvis kindly.</p>
+
+<p>"M-m-m-mrugh," says I easily and naturally. Then I sat down on the edge
+of a chair.</p>
+
+<p>Well, sir, Jarvis&mdash;it was the real Jarvis all right&mdash;was as pleasant a
+fellow as you would ever care to meet. There he was talking away to us
+fishworms just as cordially as if he enjoyed it. He didn't seem to be a
+bit better than we were. I've often noticed that when you meet the very
+greatest people they are that way. It's only the fellows who aren't sure
+they're great and who are pretty sure you aren't sure either, who have
+to put up a haughty front. Jarvis offered us cigarettes and put us so
+much at our ease that we stayed there an hour. It was a dazzling
+experience. He told us a lot about the city, and asked us about
+ourselves and laughed at our experiences. And he told us that he often
+dined there and hoped to see us again. When we got safely outside, after
+having bade him good-by without any sort of a break, I mopped my
+forehead. Then I took off my hat. "Bangs," said I, "you're the world's
+champion. Some day you'll get killed for impudence in the first degree,
+but just now I've got ten cents and I'm going to buy you a big cigar and
+walk home to pay for it."</p>
+
+<p>Incredible as it may sound, that was the beginning of a real friendship
+between the three of us. Jarvis seemed to take a positive pleasure in
+being democratic. And he was wonderfully thoughtful, too. He realized
+instinctively that we had about nine cents <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>apiece in our clothes as a
+rule, and he didn't offer to be gorgeous and buy things we couldn't buy
+back. We got to dropping in at the caf&eacute; once a week or so and eating at
+the same table with him. Why on earth he fancied eating around with
+grubs like us, when he could have been tucking away classy fare up on
+Fifth Avenue, we couldn't imagine. Some people are naturally Bohemian,
+however. It seemed to delight Jarvis to hear us tell about our team, and
+our college, and our prospects, and how lucky we had been up to date,
+not getting stepped on by any financial magnate or other tall city
+monument. He wasn't a talkative man himself. It was especially hard to
+pry any football talk out of him, probably because he was so modest.
+When we insisted he would finally open up, and tell us the inside facts
+about some great college game that we knew by heart from the newspaper
+accounts. And he would mention all the famous players by their first
+names&mdash;you can't imagine how much more alarming it sounded than calling
+a president "Teddy"&mdash;and we would just sit there and drink it in, and
+watch history from behind the scenes until suddenly he would stop, look
+absent and shut up like a clam. No use trying to turn him on again.
+Presently he would bid us good night and go away. The first time we
+thought we had offended him and we were miserable for a week. But when
+we ran across him again he seemed as pleased as ever to see us. It was
+just moods, after all, we finally decided, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>thought no more about
+it. Great men have a right to have moods if they want to. We admired his
+moods as much as the rest of him, and were only glad they weren't
+violent.</p>
+
+<p>It was a couple of months before we got up courage enough to ask him to
+drop in at our room. Even Allie got timid. He explained that he didn't
+want to break the spell. But finally I braced up myself and invited him
+to drop around with us, and he consented as kindly as you please. Came
+right up to our little three by twice and wouldn't even sit in the one
+chair. Sat on the bed and looked over our college pictures, and chatted
+until Allie asked him if he was going back for the big game that fall.
+Then he said sort of abruptly that he couldn't get away, and a few
+minutes afterward he went home. We thought we'd offended him again, but
+a week afterward he turned up and called on us&mdash;we'd asked him to drop
+in any time. We decided that he didn't like to have too much familiarity
+about his football career and we respected him for it. It's all right
+for a man like that to be affable and democratic, but he mustn't let you
+crawl all over him. He's got his dignity to maintain.</p>
+
+<p>As the winter came on Jarvis dropped up to see us quite frequently. He
+never asked us to come and see him and we were really a little
+grateful&mdash;for I don't believe I should have had the nerve to go bouncing
+into the apartments of a national hero and hobnob with the mile-a-minute
+class. Anyway we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>didn't expect it or dream of it. And we didn't ask him
+any more questions about himself. We didn't care to try to elbow into
+his circle. If he chose to come slumming and sit around with us, we were
+more than content. We had seen enough of him already to keep us busy
+paralyzing Siwash fellows for a week when we went back to Commencement.
+"Jarvis? Oh, yes. Fact is, he's a friend of ours. Comes up to our rooms
+right along. We happened to meet him in a caf&eacute;. And say, he tells us
+that when he made that fifty-yard run&mdash;and so on." We used to practise
+saying things like this naturally and easily. We could just see the
+undergrads at the frat house sitting around in circles and lapping it
+up.</p>
+
+<p>All this time we were plugging away down at the plant, early and late,
+with every ounce of steam we had. There's one good thing about business
+in this Bedlam&mdash;when you break in you keep right on going. By the time
+Commencement rolled around we were getting checks with two figures on
+them, and had a better job treed and ready to drop. Ask for a vacation?
+Why, we wouldn't have asked for four days off to go home and help bury
+our worst enemy. That's what business does to the dear old college days
+when it gets a good bite at them. There we were, one year out of Siwash,
+breaking forty-five reunion dates, and never even sitting around with
+our heads in our hands over it. This business bug is a bad, bad biter
+all right. Just let it get its tooth into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>you, and what do you care if
+some other fellow is smoking your two-quart pipe back in the old chapter
+house? And for that matter, what do you care about anything else until
+you get up far enough to take breath and look around? Sometimes, after a
+couple of weeks of extra hard work, I've taken my mind off invoices long
+enough to wag it around a bit and I've felt like a swimmer coming up
+after a long dive.</p>
+
+<p>We landed those promotions in July and went right after another pair. I
+got mine in August&mdash;Allie in September. And along in December they
+called us both up in the office, where the big crash was. He said nice
+things to us about getting a chance to fire our own chauffeurs if we
+kept on tending to business, and first thing we knew we had offices of
+our own in the back of the building, with our names painted on the
+doors, and call-bells that brought stenographers and the same old brand
+of office boys that used to blow us out of the other offices along with
+their cigarette smoke. And we realized then that if we worked like
+thunder for thirty years more and saved our money and made it earn one
+hundred per cent, perhaps some of the real business kings would notice
+us on the street some day. That's about the way the college swelling
+goes down.</p>
+
+<p>All this time we hadn't seen much of Jarvis. He'd stopped coming to the
+caf&eacute; and we'd really been so busy that we almost forgot about him. It's
+simply wonderful the things business will drive out <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>of your mind. It
+wasn't until late in the winter that we realized that we'd probably lost
+track of Jarvis for good&mdash;that is, until we climbed up into his set and
+discovered him at some dinner that was a page out of the social
+register. We mixed around a lot more now. We went to the
+million-candle-power restaurants every now and then, and ate a good deal
+more than sixty-five cents' worth apiece without batting an eye; and we
+went to see a play occasionally and didn't climb up into the rarefied
+atmosphere to find our seats, either. And whenever we broke in with the
+limousine crowd we kept a bright lookout for Jarvis. We wanted to see
+him and show him that we were coming along. We wanted him to be proud of
+us. I'd have given all my small bank balance to hear him say: "Fine
+work, old man; keep it up." I'll tell you when a big chap like that
+takes an interest in you, it's just as bracing as a hypodermic of
+ginger. Baccalaureates and inspirational editorials can't touch it.</p>
+
+<p>I was holding down the proud position of shipping clerk and Allie was my
+assistant the next spring, and it seemed as if we had to empty that
+warehouse every twenty-four hours and find the men to load the stuff
+with search-warrants. Help was scandalously scarce. We couldn't have
+worked harder if we had been standing off grizzly bears with brickbats.
+I'd just fired the fourth loafer in one day for trying to roll barrels
+by mental suggestion, when the boss came into my office.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>"Can you use an extra man?" he asked me.</p>
+
+<p>"Use him?" says I, swabbing off my forehead&mdash;I'd been hustling a few
+barrels myself. "Use him? Say, I'll give him a whole car to load all by
+himself, and if he can get the job finished by yesterday he can have
+another to load for to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, see here," said the boss, sitting down; "this is a peculiar case.
+This chap's been at me for a job for months. There's nothing in the
+office. He's a fine fellow and well educated, but he's on his uppers. He
+can't seem to land anywhere. I'm sorry for him. He looks as if he was
+headed for the bread line. He's too good to roll barrels, but it won't
+hurt him. If you'll take him in and use him I'll give him a place as
+soon as I get it; let me know how he pans out."</p>
+
+<p>"Just ask him to run all the way here," I said, and put my nose down in
+a bill of lading. After a while the door opened and some one said, "Is
+this the shipping clerk?" It was the ghost of a voice I used to know and
+I turned around in a hurry. It was Jarvis.</p>
+
+<p>I don't suppose it is strictly business to cry while you are shaking
+hands with a husky you're just putting into harness at one-fifty per. I
+didn't intend to do it, but somehow when your whole conception of fame
+and glory comes clattering down about your ears, and you find you've got
+to order your star and idol to get a hustle on him and load the car at
+door four damquick, you are likely to do something <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>foolish. I just
+stood and sniveled and let my mouth hang open. Neither of us said a
+word, but presently I put my arm around his shoulders and led him out
+into the shipping room. "There's the foreman," I said, in a voice like a
+wet sponge. "And you report here at six o'clock sharp." Then I went and
+hunted up Allie and for once we let business go hang in business hours.
+We couldn't work. We kept clawing for the solid ground and trying to
+readjust society and the universe and the beacon lights of progress all
+afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>When quitting time came we waited for Jarvis. We didn't say anything,
+but we loaded him into a cab and took him up to the old caf&eacute;. Then he
+told us his story, while we learned a lot of things about glory we
+hadn't even vaguely suspected before. He was one of the greatest
+football players who ever carried a ball, Jarvis was. Of that there was
+no doubt. He admitted it himself then. I might say he confessed it. He'd
+come to his university without any real preparation&mdash;you know even in
+the best regulated institutions of learning they sometimes get your
+marks on tackling mixed with your grades on entrance algebra. He'd spent
+two hours a day on football and the rest of his time being a college
+hero. He'd had to work at it like a dog, he said. How he got by the
+exams, he never knew. It seemed to him as if he must have studied in his
+sleep. By the time he graduated he'd had about every honor that has been
+invented for campus consumption. He belonged <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>to the exclusive
+societies. All kinds of big people had shaken hands with him&mdash;asked for
+the privilege. He had a scrapbook of newspaper stories about his career
+that weighed four pounds. He knew the differences between eight kinds of
+wine by the taste and he had a perfect education in forkology,
+waltzology, necktiematics, and all the other branches of social science.</p>
+
+<p>He would never forget, he said, how he felt when he was graduated and
+the university moved off behind him and left him alone. It was up to him
+to keep on being a famous character, he felt. His college demanded it.
+He had to make good. But there he was with a magnificent football
+education and no more football to play. His financial training consisted
+in knowing when his bank account was overdrawn. His folks had pretty
+nearly paralyzed themselves putting him through and he wasn't going to
+draw on them any further. He went to New York because it seemed to be
+almost as big as the university, and he started all alone on the job of
+shouldering his way past the captains of finance up to the place where
+his college mates might feel proud of him some more.</p>
+
+<p>The result was so ridiculous that he had to laugh at it himself. He lost
+five yards every time he bucked an office boy. His college friends kept
+inviting him out and he went until they began offering him help. Then he
+cut the whole bunch. He didn't care to have them watch the struggle.
+He'd been in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>New York two years when he met us, he said, and he hadn't
+earned enough money to pay his room-rent in that time. There were times
+when he might have got a decent little job at twelve dollars per, or so,
+but he would have had to meet the boys who had looked up to him as a
+world-beater and somehow he just couldn't tackle it. When we had come
+over and paid homage to him he saw we had taken him for a successful man
+of the world, as well as a member of the All-America team, and he hadn't
+been able to resist the desire to let two human beings look up to him
+again. He hadn't invited us to his room, he said, because part of the
+time he didn't have a room; and he even confessed that once or twice
+he'd walked up to our rooms from downtown because he was crazy for a
+smoke and didn't have the price.</p>
+
+<p>I guess there never was a more peculiar dinner party in New York. Part
+of the time I sniveled and part of the time Allie sniveled, and once or
+twice we were all three all balled up in our throats. But after a while
+we braced up and I told Jarvis what the Boss had told me, and we drank a
+toast to the glad new days, and another to success, and another to
+Jarvis, the coming business pillar, and some more to our private yachts
+and country homes, and to Commencement reunions, and this and that. Then
+we chartered a sea-going cab and took Jarvis home with us. We made him
+sleep in the bed while we slept on the floor, and the next morning we
+loaned him a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>pair of overalls that we had honorably retired and we all
+went down to work together.</p>
+
+<p>The next three months were perfectly ridiculous. We simply couldn't
+order Jarvis around. Suppose you had to ask the Statue of Liberty to get
+a move on and scrub the floors? We couldn't get our ingrained awe of
+that freight hustler out of our systems. Of course when any one was
+around we had to keep up appearances, but when I was alone and I had
+something for Jarvis to do I'd call him in and get at it about this way:
+"Er&mdash;say, Jarvis, could you help me out on a little matter, if you have
+the time? You know there's a shipment for Pittsburgh that's got to go
+out by noon. I think the car is at door 6. Those barrels ought to be put
+into the car right away, and if you'd see that they get in there I'd be
+very much obliged to you. I'd attend to it myself, but they've given me
+a lot of stuff to go over here."</p>
+
+<p>Then Jarvis would grin cheerfully and hustle those barrels in before I
+could get over blushing. If you don't believe football has its
+advantages in after life you ought to watch a prize tackle waltzing a
+three-hundred-pound barrel through a car door.</p>
+
+<p>By day we ordered Jarvis about in this fashion, and made him earn his
+one-fifty with the rest of the red-shirted gang. But at six o'clock we
+dropped all that like a hot poker. Nights we were his adoring young
+friends again. We sat together in restaurants and said "sir" to him to
+his infinite disgust, and made him tell over and over again the stories
+of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>the big games and the grand doings of the old days. When his
+promotion came, three months later, and he went into a small job in the
+office, with a traveling job looming up in the offing, we held a
+celebration that set us back about half the price of a railroad ticket
+home. It meant more to us than it did to him. To him it was three
+dollars more a week, congenial work and a chance. But to us it was the
+release of a great man from grinding captivity&mdash;a racehorse rescued from
+the shafts of a garbage cart; a Richard the Lion-hearted hauled from the
+gloomy dungeon, where he had had to peel his own potatoes, and set on
+the road to kingly pomp and circumstance again. Excuse me for this
+frightful mess of language. I can't help getting a little squashy with
+my adjectives when I think of that glorious banquet night.</p>
+
+<p>I'm glad to say that Jarvis kept coming along after that. He developed
+into a first-class salesman, and in a couple of years he came in from
+the road and took a desk in the house with his name on the side in gilt
+letters. When this happened we made him look up every one of his old
+college friends again. He hesitated a little, but we got behind him and
+pushed. We pushed him into his college club and back to Commencement,
+and we really pushed him out of our life&mdash;for every one was glad to see
+him, of course, and to his amazement he found that he was still a grand
+old college institution among the alumni. So he trained with his own
+crowd after that, but even now we go over to his club and dine with him
+at least once <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>a year&mdash;always on some anniversary or other. And for the
+last two years he has been sending his machine around for us.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, no, you don't! I'm paying for this lunch, young fellow. Don't fight
+any one about paying for your lunch just because you still have the
+price. It's a privilege we older chaps insist on with you newcomers
+anyway. And remember, there is always a bunch of us before the fire at
+the club Saturday evenings, and we don't talk business. While you're
+waiting for that job, don't you dare miss a meeting. And say&mdash;one thing
+more. Don't be afraid of those blamed office boys. They're all a bluff.
+I'm getting so I can fire them without even getting pale.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES</h2>
+
+<p>Minor changes have been made to make punctuation and spelling
+consistent; every other effort has been made to remain true to the
+original book.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of At Good Old Siwash, by George Fitch
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,8148 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of At Good Old Siwash, by George Fitch
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: At Good Old Siwash
+
+Author: George Fitch
+
+Release Date: April 25, 2008 [EBook #25163]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AT GOOD OLD SIWASH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Janet Keller, D. Alexander and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+AT
+
+GOOD OLD SIWASH
+
+BY GEORGE FITCH
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1916
+
+
+
+
+_Copyright, 1910, 1911,_ BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.
+
+_Copyright, 1911,_ BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+Printers S. J. PARKHILL & CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Twenty-five yards with four Muggledorfer men hanging on
+his legs
+                    FRONTISPIECE. _Page 19_]
+
+
+
+
+AT GOOD OLD SIWASH
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Little did I think, during the countless occasions on which I have
+skipped blithely over the preface of a book in order to plunge into the
+plot, that I should be called upon to write a preface myself some day.
+And little have I realized until just now the extreme importance to the
+author of having his preface read.
+
+I want this preface to be read, though I have an uneasy premonition that
+it is going to be skipped as joyously as ever I skipped a preface
+myself. I want the reader to toil through my preface in order to save
+him the task of trying to follow a plot through this book. For if he
+attempts to do this he will most certainly dislocate something about
+himself very seriously. I have found it impossible, in writing of
+college days which are just one deep-laid scheme after another, to
+confine myself to one plot. How could I describe in one plot the life of
+the student who carries out an average of three plots a day? It is
+unreasonable. So I have done the next best thing. There is a plot in
+every chapter. This requires the use of upwards of a dozen villains, an
+almost equal number of heroes, and a whole bouquet of heroines. But I
+do not begrudge this extravagance. It is necessary, and that settles it.
+
+Then, again, I want to answer in this preface a number of questions by
+readers who kindly consented to become interested in the stories when
+they appeared in the _Saturday Evening Post_. Siwash isn't Michigan in
+disguise. It isn't Kansas. It isn't Knox. It isn't Minnesota. It isn't
+Tuskegee, Texas, or Tufts. It is just Siwash College. I built it myself
+with a typewriter out of memories, legends, and contributed tales from a
+score of colleges. I have tried to locate it myself a dozen times, but I
+can't. I have tried to place my thumb on it firmly and say, "There, darn
+you, stay put." But no halfback was ever so elusive as this infernal
+college. Just as I have it definitely located on the Knox College
+campus, which I myself once infested, I look up to find it on the Kansas
+prairies. I surround it with infinite caution and attempt to nail it
+down there. Instead, I find it in Minnesota with a strong Norwegian
+accent running through the course of study. Worse than that, I often
+find it in two or three places at once. It is harder to corner than a
+flea. I never saw such a peripatetic school.
+
+That is only the least of my troubles, too. The college itself is never
+twice the same. Sometimes I am amazed at its size and perfection, by the
+grandeur of its gymnasium and the colossal lines of its stadium. But at
+other times I cannot find the stadium at all, and the gymnasium has
+shrunk until it looks amazingly like the old wooden barn in which we
+once built up Sandow biceps at Knox. I never saw such a college to get
+lost in, either. I know as well as anything that to get to the Eta Bita
+Pie house, you go north from the old bricks, past the new science hall
+and past Browning Hall. But often when I start north from the campus, I
+find my way blocked by the stadium, and when I try to dodge it, I run
+into the Alfalfa Delt House, and the Eatemalive boarding club, and other
+places which belong properly to the south. And when I go south I
+frequently lose sight of the college altogether, and can't for the life
+of me remember what the library tower looks like or whether the
+theological school is just falling down, or is to be built next year; or
+whether I ought to turn to my right, and ask for directions at Prexie's
+house, or turn to my left and crawl under a freight train which blocks a
+crossing on the Hither, Yonder and Elsewhere Railroad. If you think it
+is an easy task to carry a whole college in your head without getting it
+jumbled, just try it a while.
+
+Then, again, the Siwash people puzzle me. Professor Grubb is always a
+trial. That man alternates a smooth-shaven face with a full beard in the
+most startling manner. Petey Simmons is short and flaxen-haired, long
+and black-haired, and wide and hatchet-faced in turns, depending on the
+illustrator. I never know Ole Skjarsen when I see him for the same
+reason. As for Prince Hogboom, Allie Bangs, Keg Rearick and the rest of
+them, nobody knows how they look but the artists who illustrated the
+stories; and as I read each number and viewed the smiling faces of
+these students, I murmured, "Goodness, how you have changed!"
+
+So I have struggled along as best I could to administer the affairs of a
+college which is located nowhere, has no student body, has no endowment,
+never looks the same twice, and cannot be reached by any reliable route.
+The situation is impossible. I must locate it somewhere. If you are
+interested in the college when you have read these few stories, suppose
+you hunt for it wherever college boys are full of applied deviltry and
+college girls are distractingly fair; where it is necessary to win
+football games in order to be half-way contented with the universe;
+where the spring weather is too wonderful to be wasted on College
+Algebra or History of Art; and where, whatever you do, or whoever you
+like, or however you live, you can't forget it, no matter how long you
+work or worry afterward.
+
+There! I can't mark it on the map, but if you have ever worried a
+college faculty you'll know the way.
+
+                              GEORGE FITCH.
+          July, 1911.
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+ CHAPTER                                                     PAGE
+
+
+    I OLE SKJARSEN'S FIRST TOUCHDOWN                           1
+
+   II INITIATING OLE                                          28
+
+  III WHEN GREEK MEETS GROUCH                                 50
+
+   IV A FUNERAL THAT FLASHED IN THE PAN                       78
+
+    V COLLEGES WHILE YOU WAIT                                105
+
+   VI THE GREEK DOUBLE CROSS                                 135
+
+  VII TAKING PACE FROM FATHER TIME                           169
+
+ VIII FRAPPED FOOTBALL                                       196
+
+   IX CUPID--THAT OLD COLLEGE CHUM                           223
+
+    X VOTES FROM WOMEN                                       253
+
+   XI SIC TRANSIT GLORIA ALL-AMERICA                         284
+
+
+
+
+ ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ Twenty-five yards with four Muggledorfer
+ men hanging on his legs                           _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                             PAGE
+
+ "Aye ent care to stop," he said. "Aye kent suit
+ you, Master Bost"                                            20
+
+ He pulled himself together and touched Ole gently            26
+
+ There wasn't a college anywhere around us that
+ didn't have Ole's hoofmarks all over its pride               33
+
+ Martha caused some mild sensation                            63
+
+ My, but that girl was a wonder!                              74
+
+ "Har's das spy!" he yelled. "Kill him, fallers;
+ he ban a spy!"                                              120
+
+ We spent another five minutes hoisting him aboard
+ a prehistoric plug                                          125
+
+ He may have been fat, but how he could run!                 132
+
+ Naturally I was somewhat dazzled                            147
+
+ He was so bashful that his voice blushed when he
+ used it                                                     151
+
+ With our colors on and four particularly wicked-looking
+ chair legs in our hands                                     167
+
+ Our peculiar style of pushing a football right
+ through the thorax of the whole middle west                 205
+
+ "If you don't like that beanbag, eat it"                    220
+
+ He invited Miss Spencer to go street-car riding
+ with him                                                    246
+
+ You can always spot these family friends                    252
+
+ It was a blow between the eyes                              264
+
+ "How are all the other good old chaps?" she said            270
+
+ Why, they even made us cut chapel to go walking
+ with them                                                   280
+
+
+
+
+AT GOOD OLD SIWASH
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+OLE SKJARSEN'S FIRST TOUCHDOWN
+
+
+Am I going to the game Saturday? Am I? Me? Am I going to eat some more
+food this year? Am I going to draw my pay this month? Am I going to do
+any more breathing after I get this lungful used up? All foolish
+questions, pal. Very silly conversation. Pshaw!
+
+Am I going to the game, you ask me? Is the sun going to get up
+to-morrow? You couldn't keep me away from that game if you put a
+protective tariff of seventy-eight per cent ad valorem, whatever that
+means, on the front gate. I came out to this town on business, and I'll
+have to take an extra fare train home to make up the time; but what of
+that? I'm going to the game, and when the Siwash team comes out I'm
+going to get up and give as near a correct imitation of a Roman mob and
+a Polish riot as my throat will stand; and if we put a crimp in the
+large-footed, humpy-shouldered behemoths we're going up against this
+afternoon, I'm going out to-night and burn the City Hall. Any Siwash man
+who is a gentleman would do it. I'll probably have to run like thunder
+to beat some of them to it.
+
+You know how it is, old man. Or maybe you don't, because you made all
+your end runs on the Glee Club. But I played football all through my
+college course and the microbe is still there. In the fall I think
+football, talk football, dream football, even though I haven't had a
+suit on for six years. And when I go out to the field and see little old
+Siwash lining up against a bunch of overgrown hippos from a university
+with a catalogue as thick as a city directory, the old
+mud-and-perspiration smell gets in my nostrils, and the desire to get
+under the bunch and feel the feet jabbing into my ribs boils up so
+strong that I have to hold on to myself with both hands. If you've never
+sat on a hard board and wanted to be between two halfbacks with your
+hands on their shoulders, and the quarter ready to sock a ball into your
+solar plexus, and eleven men daring you to dodge 'em, and nine thousand
+friends and enemies raising Cain and keeping him well propped up in the
+grandstands--if you haven't had that want you wouldn't know a healthy,
+able-bodied want if you ran into it on the street.
+
+Of course, I never got any further along than a scrub. But what's the
+odds? A broken bone feels just as grand to a scrub as to a star. I
+sometimes think a scrub gets more real football knowledge than a varsity
+man, because he doesn't have to addle his brain by worrying about
+holding his job and keeping his wind, and by dreaming that he has
+fumbled a punt and presented ninety-five yards to the hereditary enemies
+of his college. I played scrub football five years, four of 'em under
+Bost, the greatest coach who ever put wings on the heels of a
+two-hundred-pound hunk of meat; and while my ribs never lasted long
+enough to put me on the team, what I didn't learn about the game you
+could put in the other fellow's eye.
+
+Say, but it's great, learning football under a good coach. It's the
+finest training a man can get anywhere on this old globule. Football is
+only the smallest thing you learn. You learn how to be patient when what
+you want to do is to chew somebody up and spit him into the gutter. You
+learn to control your temper when it is on the high speed, with the
+throttle jerked wide open and buzzing like a hornet convention. You
+learn, by having it told you, just how small and foolish and
+insignificant you are, and how well this earth could stagger along
+without you if some one were to take a fly-killer and mash you with it.
+And you learn all this at the time of life when your head is swelling up
+until you mistake it for a planet, and regard whatever you say as a
+volcanic disturbance.
+
+I suppose you think, like the rest of the chaps who never came out to
+practice but observed the game from the dollar-and-a-half seats, that
+being coached in football is like being instructed in German or
+calculus. You are told what to do and how to do it, and then you
+recite. Far from it, my boy! They don't bother telling you what to do
+and how to do it on a big football field. Mostly they tell you what to
+do and how you do it. And they do it artistically, too. They use plenty
+of language. A football coach is picked out for his ready tongue. He
+must be a conversationalist. He must be able to talk to a greenhorn,
+with fine shoulders and a needle-shaped head, until that greenhorn would
+pick up the ball and take it through a Sioux war dance to get away from
+the conversation. You can't reason with football men. They're not
+logical, most of them. They are selected for their heels and shoulders
+and their leg muscles, and not for their ability to look at you with
+luminous eyes and say: "Yes, Professor, I think I understand." The way
+to make 'em understand is to talk about them. Any man can understand you
+while you are telling him that if he were just a little bit slower he
+would have to be tied to the earth to keep up with it. That hurts his
+pride. And when you hurt his pride he takes it out on whatever is in
+front of him--which is the other team. Never get in front of a football
+player when you are coaching him.
+
+But this brings me to the subject of Bost again. Bost is still coaching
+Siwash. This makes his 'steenth year. I guess he can stay there forever.
+He's coached all these years and has never used the same adjective to
+the same man twice. There's a record for you! He's a little man, Bost
+is. He played end on some Western team when he only weighed one hundred
+and forty. Got his football knowledge there. But where he got his
+vocabulary is still a mystery. He has a way of convincing a man that a
+dill pickle would make a better guard than he is, and of making that man
+so jealous of the pickle that he will perform perfectly unreasonable
+feats for a week to beat it out for the place. He has a way of saying
+"Hurry up," with a few descriptive adjectives tacked on, that makes a
+man rub himself in the stung place for an hour; and oh, how mad he can
+make you while he is telling you pleasantly that while the little fellow
+playing against you is only a prep and has sloping shoulders and weighs
+one hundred and eleven stripped, he is making you look like a bale of
+hay that has been dumped by mistake on an athletic field. And when he
+gets a team in the gymnasium between halves, with the game going wrong,
+and stands up before them and sizes up their insect nerve and rubber
+backbone and hereditary awkwardness and incredible talent in doing the
+wrong thing, to say nothing of describing each individual blunder in
+that queer nasal clack of his--well, I'd rather be tied up in a great
+big frying-pan over a good hot stove for the same length of time, any
+day in the week. The reason Bost is a great coach is because his men
+don't dare play poorly. When they do he talks to them. If he would only
+hit them, or skin them by inches, or shoot at them, they wouldn't mind
+it so much; but when you get on the field with him and realize that if
+you miss a tackle he is going to get you out before the whole gang and
+tell you what a great mistake the Creator made when He put joints in
+your arms instead of letting them stick out stiff as they do any other
+signpost, you're not going to miss that tackle, that's all.
+
+When Bost came to Siwash he succeeded a line of coaches who had been
+telling the fellows to get down low and hit the line hard, and had been
+showing them how to do it very patiently. Nice fellows, those coaches.
+Perfect gentlemen. Make you proud to associate with them. They could
+take a herd of green farmer boys, with wrists like mules' ankles, and by
+Thanksgiving they would have them familiar with all the rudiments of the
+game. By that time the season would be over and all the schools in the
+vicinity would have beaten us by big scores. The next year the last
+year's crop of big farmer boys would stay at home to husk corn, and the
+coach would begin all over on a new crop. The result was, we were a dub
+school at football. Any school that could scare up a good rangy halfback
+and a line that could hold sheep could get up an adding festival at our
+expense any time. We lived in a perpetual state of fear. Some day we
+felt that the normal school would come down and beat us. That would be
+the limit of disgrace. After that there would be nothing left to do but
+disband the college and take to drink to forget the past.
+
+But Bost changed all that in one year. He didn't care to show any one
+how to play football. He was just interested in making the player afraid
+not to play it. When you went down the field on a punt you knew that if
+you missed your man he would tell you when you came back that two stone
+hitching-posts out of three could get past you in a six-foot alley. If
+you missed a punt you could expect to be told that you might catch a
+haystack by running with your arms wide open, but that was no way to
+catch a football. Maybe things like that don't sound jabby when two
+dozen men hear them! They kept us catching punts between classes, and
+tackling each other all the way to our rooms and back. We simply had to
+play football to keep from being bawled out. It's an awful thing to have
+a coach with a tongue like a cheese knife swinging away at you, and to
+know that if you get mad and quit, no one but the dear old Coll. will
+suffer--but it gets the results. They use the same system in the East,
+but there they only swear at a man, I believe. Siwash is a mighty proper
+college and you can't swear on its campus, whatever else you do.
+Swearing is only a lazy man's substitute for thinking, anyway; and Bost
+wasn't lazy. He preferred the descriptive; he sat up nights thinking it
+out.
+
+We began to see the results before Bost had been tracing our pedigrees
+for two weeks. First game of the season was with that little old dinky
+Normal School which had been scaring us so for the past five years. We
+had been satisfied to push some awkward halfback over the line once,
+and then hold on to the enemy so tight he couldn't run; and we started
+out that year in the same old way. First half ended 0 to 0, with our
+boys pretty satisfied because they had kept the ball in Normal's
+territory. Bost led the team and the substitutes into the overgrown barn
+we used for a gymnasium, and while we were still patting ourselves
+approvingly in our minds he cut loose:
+
+"You pasty-faced, overfed, white-livered beanbag experts, what do you
+mean by running a beauty show instead of a football game?" he yelled.
+"Do you suppose I came out here to be art director of a statuary
+exhibit? Does any one of you imagine for a holy minute that he knows the
+difference between a football game and ushering in a church? Don't fool
+yourselves. You don't; you don't know anything. All you ever knew about
+football I could carve on granite and put in my eye and never feel it.
+Nothing to nothing against a crowd of farmer boys who haven't known a
+football from a duck's egg for more than a week! Bah! If I ever turned
+the Old Folks' Home loose on you doll babies they'd run up a century
+while you were hunting for your handkerchiefs. Jackson, what do you
+suppose a halfback is for? I don't want cloak models. I want a man who
+can stick his head down and run. Don't be afraid of that bean of yours;
+it hasn't got anything worth saving in it. When you get the ball you're
+supposed to run with it and not sit around trying to hatch it. You,
+Saunders! You held that other guard just like a sweet-pea vine. Where
+did you ever learn that sweet, lovely way of falling down on your nose
+when a real man sneezes at you? Did you ever hear of sand? Eat it! Eat
+it! Fill yourself up with it. I want you to get in that line this half
+and stop something or I'll make you play left end in a fancy-work club.
+Johnson, the only way to get you around the field is to put you on
+wheels and haul you. Next time you grow fast to the ground I'm going to
+violate some forestry regulations and take an axe to you. Same to you,
+Briggs. You'd make the All-American boundary posts, but that's all.
+Vance, I picked you for a quarterback, but I made a mistake; you ought
+to be sorting eggs. That ball isn't red hot. You don't have to let go of
+it as soon as you get it. Don't be afraid, nobody will step on you. This
+isn't a rude game. It's only a game of post-office. You needn't act so
+nervous about it. Maybe some of the big girls will kiss you, but it
+won't hurt."
+
+Bost stopped for breath and eyed us. We were a sick-looking crowd. You
+could almost see the remarks sticking into us and quivering. We had come
+in feeling pretty virtuous, and what we were getting was a hideous
+surprise.
+
+"Now I want to tell this tea-party something," continued Bost. "Either
+you're going out on that field and score thirty points this last half or
+I'm going to let the girls of Siwash play your football for you. I'm
+tired of coaching men that aren't good at anything but falling down
+scientifically when they're tackled. There isn't a broken nose among
+you. Every one of you will run back five yards to pick out a soft spot
+to fall on. It's got to stop. You're going to hold on to that ball this
+half and take it places. If some little fellow from Normal crosses his
+fingers and says 'naughty, naughty,' don't fall on the ball and yell
+'down' until they can hear it uptown. Thirty points is what I want out
+of you this half, and if you don't get 'em--well, you just dare to come
+back here without them, that's all. Now get out on that field and jostle
+somebody. Git!"
+
+Did we git? Well, rather. We were so mad our clothes smoked. We would
+have quit the game right there and resigned from the team, but we didn't
+dare to. Bost would have talked to us some more. And we didn't dare not
+to make those thirty points, either. It was an awful tough job, but we
+did it with a couple over. We raged like wild beasts. We scared those
+gentle Normalites out of their boots. I can't imagine how we ever got it
+into our heads that they could play football, anyway. When it was all
+over we went back to the gymnasium feeling righteously triumphant, and
+had another hour with Bost in which he took us all apart without
+anaesthetics, and showed us how Nature would have done a better job if
+she had used a better grade of lumber in our composition.
+
+That day made the Siwash team. The school went wild over the score. Bost
+rounded up two or three more good players, and every afternoon he
+lashed us around the field with that wire-edged tongue of his. On
+Saturdays we played, and oh, how we worked! In the first half we were
+afraid of what Bost would say to us when we came off the field. In the
+second half we were mad at what he had said. And how he did drive us
+down the field in practice! I can remember whole cross sections of his
+talk yet:
+
+"Faster, faster, you scows. Line up. Quick! Johnson, are you waiting for
+a stone-mason to set you? Snap the ball. Tear into them. Low! Low! Hi-i!
+You end, do you think you're the quarter pole in a horse race? Nine men
+went past you that time. If you can't touch 'em drop 'em a souvenir
+card. Line up. Faster, faster! Oh, thunder, hurry up! If you ran a
+funeral, center, the corpse would spoil on your hands. Wow! Fumble! Drop
+on that ball. Drop on it! Hogboom, you'd fumble a loving-cup. Use your
+hand instead of your jaw to catch that ball. It isn't good to eat.
+That's four chances you've had. I could lose two games a day if I had
+you all the time. Now try that signal again--low, you linemen; there's
+no girls watching you. Snap it; snap it. Great Scott! Say, Hogboom, come
+here. When you get that ball, don't think we gave it to you to nurse.
+You're supposed to start the same day with the line. We give you that
+ball to take forward. Have you got to get a legal permit to start those
+legs of yours? You'd make a good vault to store footballs in, but you're
+too stationary for a fullback. Now I'll give you one more chance--"
+
+And maybe Hogboom wouldn't go some with that chance!
+
+In a month we had a team that wouldn't have used past Siwash teams to
+hold its sweaters. It was mad all the time, and it played the game
+carnivorously. Siwash was delirious with joy. The whole school turned
+out for practice, and to see those eleven men snapping through signals
+up and down the field as fast as an ordinary man could run just
+congested us with happiness. You've no idea what a lovely time of the
+year autumn is when you can go out after classes and sit on a pine seat
+in the soft dusk and watch your college team pulling off end runs in as
+pretty formation as if they were chorus girls, while you discuss lazily
+with your friends just how many points it is going to run up on the
+neighboring schools. I never expect to be a Captain of Industry, but it
+couldn't make me feel any more contented or powerful or complacent than
+to be a busted-up scrub in Siwash, with a team like that to watch. I'm
+pretty sure of that.
+
+But, happy as we were, Bost wasn't nearly content. He had ideals. I
+believe one of them must have been to run that team through a couple of
+brick flats without spoiling the formation. Nothing satisfied him. He
+was particularly distressed about the fullback. Hogboom was a good
+fellow and took signal practice perfectly, but he was no fiend. He
+lacked the vivacity of a real, first-class Bengal tiger. He wouldn't
+eat any one alive. He'd run until he was pulled down, but you never
+expected him to explode in the midst of seven hostiles and ricochet down
+the field for forty yards. He never jumped over two men and on to
+another, and he never dodged two ways at once and laid out three men
+with stiff arms on his way to the goal. It wasn't his style. He was good
+for two and a half yards every time, but that didn't suit Bost. He was
+after statistics, and what does a three-yard buck amount to when you
+want 70 to 0 scores?
+
+The result of this dissatisfaction was Ole Skjarsen. Late in September
+Bost disappeared for three days and came back leading Ole by a rope--at
+least, he was towing him by an old carpet-bag when we sighted him. Bost
+found him in a lumber camp, he afterward told us, and had to explain to
+him what a college was before he would quit his job. He thought it was
+something good to eat at first, I believe. Ole was a timid young
+Norwegian giant, with a rick of white hair and a reenforced concrete
+physique. He escaped from his clothes in all directions, and was so
+green and bashful that you would have thought we were cannibals from the
+way he shied at us--though, as that was the year the bright hat-ribbons
+came in, I can't blame him. He wasn't like anything we had ever seen
+before in college. He was as big as a carthorse, as graceful as a dray
+and as meek as a missionary. He had a double width smile and a thin
+little old faded voice that made you think you could tip him over and
+shine your shoes on him with impunity. But I wouldn't have tried it for
+a month's allowance. His voice and his arms didn't harmonize worth a
+cent. They were as big as ordinary legs--those arms, and they ended in
+hands that could have picked up a football and mislaid it among their
+fingers.
+
+No wonder Ole was a sensation. He didn't look exactly like football
+material to us, I'll admit. He seemed more especially designed for light
+derrick work. But we trusted Bost implicitly by that time and we gave
+him a royal reception. We crowded around him as if he had been a T. R.
+capture straight from Africa. Everybody helped him register third prep,
+with business-college extras. Then we took him out, harnessed him in
+football armor, and set to work to teach him the game.
+
+Bost went right to work on Ole in a businesslike manner. He tossed him
+the football and said: "Catch it." Ole watched it sail past and then
+tore after it like a pup retrieving a stick. He got it in a few minutes
+and brought it back to where Bost was raving.
+
+"See here, you overgrown fox terrier," he shouted, "catch it on the fly.
+Here!" He hurled it at him.
+
+"Aye ent seen no fly," said Ole, allowing the ball to pass on as he
+conversed.
+
+"You cotton-headed Scandinavian cattleship ballast, catch that ball in
+your arms when I throw it to you, and don't let go of it!" shrieked
+Bost, shooting it at him again.
+
+"Oll right," said Ole patiently. He cornered the ball after a short
+struggle and stood hugging it faithfully.
+
+"Toss it back, toss it back!" howled Bost, jumping up and down.
+
+"Yu tal me to hold it," said Ole reproachfully, hugging it tighter than
+ever.
+
+"Drop it, you Mammoth Cave of ignorance!" yelled Bost. "If I had your
+head I'd sell it for cordwood. Drop it!"
+
+Ole dropped the ball placidly. "Das ban fule game," he smiled dazedly.
+"Aye ent care for it. Eny faller got a Yewsharp?"
+
+That was the opening chapter of Ole's instruction. The rest were just
+like it. You had to tell him to do a thing. You then had to show him how
+to do it. You then had to tell him how to stop doing it. After that you
+had to explain that he wasn't to refrain forever--just until he had to
+do it again. Then you had to persuade him to do it again. He was as
+good-natured as a lost puppy, and just as hard to reason with. In three
+nights Bost was so hoarse that he couldn't talk. He had called Ole
+everything in the dictionary that is fit to print; and the knowledge
+that Ole didn't understand more than a hundredth part of it, and didn't
+mind that, was wormwood to his soul.
+
+For all that, we could see that if any one could teach Ole the game he
+would make a fine player. He was as hard as flint and so fast on his
+feet that we couldn't tackle him any more than we could have tackled a
+jack-rabbit. He learned to catch the ball in a night, and as for
+defense--his one-handed catches of flying players would have made a
+National League fielder envious. But with all of it he was perfectly
+useless. You had to start him, stop him, back him, speed him up,
+throttle him down and run him off the field just as if he had been a
+close-coupled, next year's model scootcart. If we could have rigged up a
+driver's seat and chauffeured Ole, it would have been all right. But
+every other method of trying to get him to understand what he was
+expected to do was a failure. He just grinned, took orders, executed
+them, and waited for more. When a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound man takes
+a football, wades through eleven frantic scrubs, shakes them all off,
+and then stops dead with a clear field to the goal before him--because
+his instructions ran out when he shook the last scrub--you can be
+pardoned for feeling hopeless about him.
+
+That was what happened the day before the Muggledorfer game. Bost had
+been working Ole at fullback all evening. He and the captain had steered
+him up and down the field as carefully as if he had been a sea-going
+yacht. It was a wonderful sight. Ole was under perfect control. He
+advanced the ball five yards, ten yards, or twenty at command. Nothing
+could stop him. The scrubs represented only so many doormats to him.
+Every time he made a play he stopped at the latter end of it for
+instructions.
+
+When he stopped the last time, with nothing before him but the goal, and
+asked placidly, "Vere skoll I take das ball now, Master Bost?" I thought
+the coach would expire of the heat. He positively steamed with
+suppressed emotion. He swelled and got purple about the face. We were
+alarmed and were getting ready to hoop him like a barrel when he found
+his tongue at last.
+
+"You pale-eyed, prehistoric mudhead," he spluttered, "I've spent a week
+trying to get through that skull lining of yours. It's no use, you field
+boulder. Where do you keep your brains? Give me a chance at them. I just
+want to get into them one minute and stir them up with my finger. To
+think that I have to use you to play football when they are paying five
+dollars and a half for ox meat in Kansas City. Skjarsen, do you know
+anything at all?"
+
+"Aye ban getting gude eddication," said Ole serenely. "Aye tank I ban
+college faller purty sune, I don't know. I like I skoll understand all
+das har big vorts yu make."
+
+"You'll understand them, I don't think," moaned Bost. "You couldn't
+understand a swift kick in the ribs. You are a fool. Understand that,
+muttonhead?"
+
+Ole understood. "Vy for yu call me fule?" he said indignantly. "Aye du
+yust vat you say."
+
+"Ar-r-r-r!" bubbled Bost, walking around himself three or four times.
+"You do just what I say! Of course you do. Did I tell you to stop in the
+middle of the field? What would Muggledorfer do to you if you stopped
+there?"
+
+"Yu ent tal me to go on," said Ole sullenly. "Aye go on, Aye gass, pooty
+qveek den."
+
+"You bet you'll go on," said Bost. "Now, look here, you sausage
+material, to-morrow you play fullback. You stop everything that comes at
+you from the other side. Hear? You catch the ball when it comes to you.
+Hear? And when they give you the ball you take it, and don't you dare to
+stop with it. Get that? Can I get that into your head without a drill
+and a blast? If you dare to stop with that ball I'll ship you back to
+the lumber camp in a cattle car. Stop in the middle of the field--Ow!"
+
+But at this point we took Bost away.
+
+The next afternoon we dressed Ole up in his armor--he invariably got it
+on wrong side out if we didn't help him--and took him out to the field.
+We confidently expected to promenade all over Muggledorfer--their coach
+was an innocent child beside Bost--and that was the reason why Ole was
+going to play. It didn't matter much what he did.
+
+Ole was just coming to a boil when we got him into his clothes. Bost's
+remarks had gotten through his hide at last. He was pretty slow, Ole
+was, but he had begun getting mad the night before and had kept at the
+job all night and all morning. By afternoon he was seething, mostly in
+Norwegian. The injustice of being called a muttonhead all week for not
+obeying orders, and then being called a mudhead for stopping for orders,
+churned his soul, to say nothing of his language. He only averaged one
+English word in three, as he told us on the way out that to-day he was
+going to do exactly as he had been told or fill a martyr's grave--only
+that wasn't the way he put it.
+
+The Muggledorfers were a pruny-looking lot. We had the game won when our
+team came out and glared at them. Bost had filled most of the positions
+with regular young mammoths, and when you dressed them up in football
+armor they were enough to make a Dreadnought a little nervous. The
+Muggleses kicked off to our team, and for a few plays we plowed along
+five or ten yards at a time. Then Ole was given the ball. He went
+twenty-five yards. Any other man would have been crushed to earth in
+five. He just waded through the middle of the line and went down the
+field, a moving mass of wriggling men. It was a wonderful play. They
+disinterred him at last and he started straight across the field for
+Bost.
+
+"Aye ent mean to stop, Master Bost," he shouted. "Dese fallers har, dey
+squash me down--"
+
+We hauled him into line and went to work again. Ole had performed so
+well that the captain called his signal again. This time I hope I may be
+roasted in a subway in July if Ole didn't run twenty-five yards with
+four Muggledorfer men hanging on his legs. We stood up and yelled until
+our teeth ached. It took about five minutes to get Ole dug out, and then
+he started for Bost again.
+
+"Honest, Master Bost, Aye ent mean to stop," he said imploringly. "Aye
+yust tal you, dese fallers ban devils. Aye fule dem naxt time--"
+
+"Line up and shut up," the captain shouted. The ball wasn't over twenty
+yards from the line, and as a matter of course the quarter shot it back
+to Ole. He put his head down, gave one mad-bull plunge, laid a windrow
+of Muggledorfer players out on either side, and shot over the goal line
+like a locomotive.
+
+We rose up to cheer a few lines, but stopped to stare. Ole didn't stop
+at the goal line. He didn't stop at the fence. He put up one hand,
+hurdled it, and disappeared across the campus like a young whirlwind.
+
+"He doesn't know enough to stop!" yelled Bost, rushing up to the fence.
+"Hustle up, you fellows, and bring him back!"
+
+[Illustration: "Aye ent care to stop," he said "Aye kent suit you,
+Master Bost"
+                    _Page 24_]
+
+Three or four of us jumped the fence, but it was a hopeless game. Ole
+was disappearing up the campus and across the street. The Muggledorfer
+team was nonplussed and sort of indignant. To be bowled over by a
+cyclone, and then to have said cyclone break up the game by running away
+with the ball was to them a new idea in football. It wasn't to those of
+us who knew Ole, however. One of us telephoned down to the _Leader_
+office where Hinckley, an old team man, worked, and asked him to head
+off Ole and send him back. Muggledorfer kindly consented to call time,
+and we started after the fugitive ourselves.
+
+Ten minutes later we met Hinckley downtown. He looked as if he had had a
+slight argument with a thirteen-inch shell. He was also mad.
+
+"What was that you asked me to stop?" he snorted, pinning himself
+together. "Was it a gorilla or a high explosive? When did you fellows
+begin importing steam rollers for the team? I asked him to stop. I
+ordered him to stop. Then I went around in front of him to stop him--and
+he ran right over me. I held on for thirty yards, but that's no way to
+travel. I could have gone to the next town just as well, though. What
+sort of a game is this, and where is that tow-headed holy terror bound
+for?"
+
+We gave the answer up, but we couldn't give up Ole. He was too valuable
+to lose. How to catch him was the sticker. An awful uproar in the street
+gave us an idea. It was Ted Harris in the only auto in town--one of the
+earliest brands of sneeze vehicles. In a minute more four of us were in,
+and Ted was chiveying the thing up the street.
+
+If you've never chased an escaping fullback in one of those pioneer
+automobiles you've got something coming. Take it all around, a good,
+swift man, running all the time, could almost keep ahead of one. We
+pumped up a tire, fixed a wire or two, and cranked up a few times; and
+the upshot of it was we were two miles out on the state road before we
+caught sight of Ole.
+
+He was trotting briskly when we caught up with him, the ball under his
+arm, and that patient, resigned expression on his face that he always
+had when Bost cussed him. "Stop, Ole," I yelled; "this is no Marathon.
+Come back. Climb in here with us."
+
+Ole shook his head and let out a notch of speed.
+
+"Stop, you mullethead," yelled Simpson above the roar of the auto--those
+old machines could roar some, too. "What do you mean by running off with
+our ball? You're not supposed to do hare-and-hounds in football."
+
+Ole kept on running. We drove the car on ahead, stopped it across the
+road, and jumped out to stop him. When the attempt was over three of us
+picked up the fourth and put him aboard. Ole had tramped on us and had
+climbed over the auto.
+
+Force wouldn't do, that was plain. "Where are you going, Ole?" we
+pleaded as we tore along beside him.
+
+"Aye ent know," he panted, laboring up a hill; "das ban fule game, Aye
+tenk."
+
+"Come on back and play some more," we urged. "Bost won't like it, your
+running all over the country this way."
+
+"Das ban my orders," panted Ole. "Aye ent no fule, yentlemen; Aye know
+ven Aye ban doing right teng. Master Bost he say 'Keep on running!' Aye
+gass I run till hal freeze on top. Aye ent know why. Master Bost he
+know, I tenk."
+
+"This is awful," said Lambert, the manager of the team. "He's taken
+Bost literally again--the chump. He'll run till he lands up in those
+pine woods again. And that ball cost the association five dollars.
+Besides, we want him. What are we going to do?"
+
+"I know," I said. "We're going back to get Bost. I guess the man who
+started him can stop him."
+
+We left Ole still plugging north and ran back to town. The game was
+still hanging fire. Bost was tearing his hair. Of course, the
+Muggledorfer fellows could have insisted on playing, but they weren't
+anxious. Ole or no Ole, we could have walked all over them, and they
+knew it. Besides, they were having too much fun with Bost. They were
+sitting around, Indian-like, in their blankets, and every three minutes
+their captain would go and ask Bost with perfect politeness whether he
+thought they had better continue the game there or move it on to the
+next town in time to catch his fullback as he came through.
+
+"Of course, we are in no hurry," he would explain pleasantly; "we're
+just here for amusement, anyway; and it's as much fun watching you try
+to catch your players as it is to get scored on. Why don't you hobble
+them, Mr. Bost? A fifty-yard rope wouldn't interfere much with that gay
+young Percheron of yours, and it would save you lots of time rounding
+him up. Do you have to use a lariat when you put his harness on?"
+
+Fancy Bost having to take all that conversation, with no adequate reply
+to make. When I got there he was blue in the face. It didn't take him
+half a second to decide what to do. Telling the captain of the Siwash
+team to go ahead and play if Muggledorfer insisted, and on no account to
+use that 32 double-X play except on first downs, he jumped into the
+machine and we started for Ole.
+
+There were no speed records in those days. Wouldn't have made any
+difference if there were. Harris just turned on all the juice his old
+double-opposed motor could soak up, and when we hit the wooden crossings
+on the outskirts of town we fellows in the tonneau went up so high that
+we changed sides coming down. It wasn't over twenty minutes till we
+sighted a little cloud of dust just beyond a little town to the north.
+Pretty soon we saw it was Ole. He was still doing his six miles per. We
+caught up and Bost hopped out, still mad.
+
+"Where in Billy-be-blamed are you going, you human trolley car?" he
+spluttered, sprinting along beside Skjarsen. "What do you mean by
+breaking up a game in the middle and vamoosing with the ball? Do you
+think we're going to win this game on mileage? Turn around, you chump,
+and climb into this car."
+
+Ole looked around him sadly. He kept on running as he did. "Aye ent care
+to stop," he said. "Aye kent suit you, Master Bost. You tal me Aye skoll
+du a teng, den you cuss me for duing et. You tal me not to du a teng and
+you cuss me some more den. Aye tenk I yust keep on a-running, lak yu
+tal me tu last night. Et ent so hard bein' cussed ven yu ban running."
+
+"I tell you to stop, you potato-top," gasped Bost. By this time he was
+fifteen yards behind and losing at every step. He had wasted too much
+breath on oratory. We picked him up in the car and set him alongside of
+Ole again.
+
+"See here, Ole, I'm tired of this," he said, sprinting up by him again.
+"The game's waiting. Come on back. You're making a fool of yourself."
+
+"Eny teng Aye du Aye ban beeg fule," said Ole gloomily. "Aye yust keep
+on runnin'. Fallers ent got breath to call me fule ven Aye run. Aye tenk
+das best vay."
+
+We picked Bost up again thirty yards behind. Maybe he would have run
+better if he hadn't choked so in his conversation. In another minute we
+landed him abreast of Ole again. He got out and sprinted for the third
+time. He wabbled as he did it.
+
+"Ole," he panted, "I've been mistaken in you. You are all right, Ole. I
+never saw a more intelligent fellow. I won't cuss you any more, Ole. If
+you'll stop now we'll take you back in an automobile--hold on there a
+minute; can't you see I'm all out of breath?"
+
+"Aye ban gude faller, den?" asked Ole, letting out another link of
+speed.
+
+"You are a"--puff-puff--"peach, Ole," gasped Bost.
+"I'll"--puff-puff--"never cuss you again. Please"--puff-puff--"stop!
+Oh, hang it, I'm all in." And Bost sat down in the road.
+
+A hundred yards on we noticed Ole slacken speed. "It's sinking through
+his skull," said Harris eagerly. In another minute he had stopped. We
+picked up Bost again and ran up to him. He surveyed us long and
+critically.
+
+"Das ban qveer masheen," he said finally. "Aye tenk Aye lak Aye skoll be
+riding back in it. Aye ent care for das futball game, Aye gass. It ban
+tu much running in it."
+
+We took Ole back to town in twenty-two minutes, three chickens, a dog
+and a back spring. It was close to five o'clock when he ran out on the
+field again. The Muggledorfer team was still waiting. Time was no object
+to them. They would only play ten minutes, but in that ten minutes Ole
+made three scores. Five substitutes stood back of either goal and asked
+him with great politeness to stop as he tore over the line. And he did
+it. If any one else had run six miles between halves he would have
+stopped a good deal short of the line. But as far as we could see, it
+hadn't winded Ole.
+
+Bost went home by himself that night after the game, not stopping even
+to assure us that as a team we were beneath his contempt. The next
+afternoon he was, if anything, a little more vitriolic than ever--but
+not with Ole. Toward the middle of the signal practice he pulled himself
+together and touched Ole gently.
+
+[Illustration: He pulled himself together and touched Ole gently
+                    _Page 26_]
+
+"My dear Mr. Skjarsen," he said apologetically, "if it will not annoy
+you too much, would you mind running the same way the rest of the team
+does? I don't insist on it, mind you, but it looks so much better to the
+audience, you know."
+
+"Jas," said Ole; "Aye ban fule, Aye gass, but yu ban tu polite to say
+it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+INITIATING OLE
+
+
+Were you ever Hamburgered by a real, live college fraternity? I mean,
+were you ever initiated into full brotherhood by a Greek-letter society
+with the aid of a baseball bat, a sausage-making machine, a stick of
+dynamite and a corn-sheller? What's that? You say you belong to the
+Up-to-Date Wood-choppers and have taken the josh degree in the Noble
+Order of Prong-Horned Wapiti? Forget it. Those aren't initiations. They
+are rest cures. I went into one of those societies which give horse-play
+initiations for middle-aged daredevils last year and was bored to death
+because I forgot to bring my knitting. They are stiff enough for fat
+business men who never do anything more exciting than to fall over the
+lawn mower in the cellar once a year; but, compared with a genuine,
+eighteen-donkey-power college frat initiation with a Spanish Inquisition
+attachment, the little degree teams, made up of grandfathers, feel like
+a slap on the wrist delivered by a young lady in frail health.
+
+Mind you, I'm not talking about the baby-ribbon affairs that the college
+boys use nowadays. It doesn't seem to be the fashion to grease the
+landscape with freshmen any more. Initiations are getting to be as safe
+and sane as an ice-cream festival in a village church. When a frat wants
+to submit a neophyte to a trying ordeal it sends him out on the campus
+to climb a tree, or makes him go to a dance in evening clothes with a
+red necktie on. A boy who can roll a peanut half a mile with a
+toothpick, or can fish all morning in a pail of water in front of the
+college chapel without getting mad and trying to thrash any one is
+considered to be lion-hearted enough to ornament any frat. These are
+mollycoddle times in all departments. I'm glad I'm out of college and am
+catching street cars in the rush hours. That is about the only job left
+that feels like the good old times in college when muscles were made to
+jar some one else with.
+
+Eight or ten years ago, when a college fraternity absorbed a freshman,
+the job was worth talking about. There was no half-way business about
+it. The freshman could tell at any stage of the game that something was
+being done to him. They just ate him alive, that was all. Why, at
+Siwash, where I was lap-welded into the Eta Bita Pies, any fraternity
+which initiated a candidate and left enough of him to appear in chapel
+the next morning was the joke of the school. Even the girls'
+fraternities gave it the laugh. The girls used to do a little quiet
+initiating themselves, and when they received a sister into membership
+you could generally follow her mad career over the town by a trail of
+hairpins, "rats" and little fragments of dressgoods.
+
+Those were the days when the pledgling of a good high-pressure frat
+wrote to his mother the night before he was taken in and telegraphed her
+when he found himself alive in the morning. There used to be
+considerable rivalry between the frats at Siwash in the matter of giving
+a freshman a good, hospitable time. I remember when the Sigh Whoopsilons
+hung young Allen from the girder of an overhead railroad crossing, and
+let the switch engines smoke him up for two hours as they passed
+underneath, there was a good deal of jealousy among the rest of us who
+hadn't thought of it. The Alfalfa Delts went them one better by tying
+roller skates to the shoulders and hips of a big freshman football star
+and hauling him through the main streets of Jonesville on his back,
+behind an automobile, and the Chi Yi's covered a candidate with plaster
+of Paris, with blow-holes for his nose, sculptured him artistically, and
+left him before the college chapel on a pedestal all night. The Delta
+Kappa Sonofaguns set fire to their house once by shooting Roman candles
+at a row of neophytes in the cellar, and we had to turn out at one A. M.
+one winter morning to help the Delta Flushes dig a freshman out of their
+chimney. They had been trying to let him down into the fireplace, and
+when he got stuck they had poked at him with a clothes pole until they
+had mussed him up considerably. This just shows you what a gay life the
+young scholar led in the days when every ritual had claws on, and there
+was no such thing as soothing syrup in the equipment of a college.
+
+Of all the frats at Siwash the Eta Bita Pies, when I was in college,
+were preeminent in the art of near-killing freshmen. We used to call our
+initiation "A little journey to the pearly gates," and once or twice it
+looked for a short time as if the victim had mislaid his return ticket.
+Treat yourself to an election riot, a railway collision and a subway
+explosion, all in one evening, and you will get a rather sketchy idea of
+what we aimed at. I don't mean, of course, that we ever killed any one.
+There is no real danger in an initiation, you know, if the initiate does
+exactly as he is told and the members don't get careless and something
+that wasn't expected doesn't happen--as did when we tied Tudor Snyder to
+the south track while an express went by on the north track, and then
+had the time of our young lives getting him off ahead of a wild freight
+which we hadn't counted on. All we ever aimed at was to make the
+initiate so thankful to get through alive that he would love Eta Bita
+Pie forever, and I must say we usually succeeded. It is wonderful what a
+young fellow will endure cheerfully for the sake of passing it on to
+some one else the next year. I remember I was pretty mad when my Eta
+Bita Pie brethren headed me up in a barrel and rolled me downhill into a
+creek without taking the trouble to remove all the nails. It seemed like
+wanton carelessness. But long before my nose was out of splints and my
+hide would hold water I was perfecting our famous "Lover's Leap" for the
+next year's bunch. That was our greatest triumph. There was an abandoned
+rock quarry north of town with thirty feet of water in the bottom and a
+fifty-foot drop to the water. By means of a long beam and a system of
+pulleys we could make a freshman walk the plank and drop off into the
+water in almost perfect safety, providing the ropes didn't break. It
+created a sensation, and the other frats were mad with jealousy. We took
+every man we wanted the next fall before the authorities put a stop to
+the scheme. That shows you just how repugnant the idea of being
+initiated is to the green young collegian.
+
+Of course, fraternity initiations are supposed to be conducted for the
+amusement of the chapter and not of the candidate. But you can't always
+entirely tell what will happen, especially if the victim is husky and
+unimpressionable. Sometimes he does a little initiating himself. And
+that reminds me that I started out to tell a story and not to give a
+lecture on the polite art of making veal salad. Did I ever tell you of
+the time when we initiated Ole Skjarsen into Eta Bita Pie, and how the
+ceremony backfired and very nearly blew us all into the discard? No?
+Well, don't get impatient and look in the back of the book. I'll tell it
+now and cut as many corners as I can.
+
+[Illustration: There wasn't a college anywhere around us that didn't
+have Ole's hoofmarks all over its pride
+                    _Page 33_]
+
+As I have told you before, Ole Skjarsen was a little slow in grasping
+the real beauties of football science. It took him some time to uncoil
+his mind from the principles of woodchopping and concentrate it on the
+full duty of man in a fullback's position. He nearly drove us to a
+sanitarium during the process, but when he once took hold, mercy me, how
+he did progress from hither to yon over the opposition! He was the
+wonder fullback of those times, and at the end of three years there
+wasn't a college anywhere that didn't have Ole's hoofmarks all over its
+pride. Oh, he was a darling. To see him jumping sideways down a football
+field with the ball under his arm, landing on some one of the opposition
+at every jump and romping over the goal line with tacklers hanging to
+him like streamers would have made you want to vote for him for
+Governor. Ole was the greatest man who ever came to Siwash. Prexy had
+always been considered some personage by the outside world, but he was
+only a bump in the background when Ole was around.
+
+Of course we all loved Ole madly, but for all that he didn't make a
+frat. He didn't, for the same reason that a rhinoceros doesn't get
+invited to garden parties. He didn't seem to fit the part. Not only his
+clothes, but also his haircuts were hand-me-down. He regarded a fork as
+a curiosity. His language was a sort of a head-on collision between
+Norwegian and English in which very few words had come out undamaged. In
+social conversation he was out of bounds nine minutes out of ten, and it
+kept three men busy changing the subject when he was in full swing. He
+could dodge eleven men and a referee on the football field without
+trying, but put him in a forty by fifty room with one vase in it, and he
+couldn't dodge it to save his life.
+
+No, he just naturally didn't fit the part, and up to his senior year no
+fraternity had bid him. This grieved Ole so that he retired from
+football just before the Kiowa game on which all our young hearts were
+set, and before he would consent to go back and leave some more of his
+priceless foot-tracks on the opposition we had to pledge him to three of
+our proudest fraternities. Talk of wedding a favorite daughter to the
+greasy villain in the melodrama in order to save the homestead! No
+crushed father, with a mortgage hanging over him in the third act, could
+have felt one-half so badly as we Eta Bita Pies did when we had pledged
+Ole and realized that all the rest of the year we would have to climb
+over him in our beautiful, beamed-ceiling lounging-room and parade him
+before the world as a much-loved brother.
+
+But the job had to be done, and all three frats took a melancholy
+pleasure in arranging the details of the initiation. We decided to make
+it a three-night demonstration of all that the Siwash frats had learned
+in the art of imitating dynamite and other disintegrants. The Alfalfa
+Delts were to get first crack at him. They were to be followed on the
+second night by the Chi Yi Sighs, who were to make him a brother, dead
+or alive. On the third night we of Eta Bita Pie were to take the remains
+and decorate them with our fraternity pin after ceremonies in which
+being kicked by a mule would only be considered a two-minute recess.
+
+We fellows knew that when it came to initiating Ole we would have to do
+the real work. The other frats couldn't touch it. They might scratch him
+up a bit, but they lacked the ingenuity, the enthusiasm--I might say the
+poetic temperament--to make a good job of it. We determined to put on an
+initiation which would make our past efforts seem like the effort of an
+old ladies' home to start a rough-house. It was a great pleasure, I
+assure you, to plan that initiation. We revised our floor work and added
+some cellar and garret and ceiling and second-story work to it. We began
+the program with the celebrated third degree and worked gradually from
+that up to the twenty-third degree, with a few intervals of simple
+assault and battery for breathing spells. When we had finished doping
+out the program we shook hands all around. It was a masterpiece. It
+would have made Battenberg lace out of a steam boiler.
+
+Ole was initiated into the Alfalfa Delts on a Wednesday night. We heard
+echoes of it from our front porch. The next morning only three of the
+Alfalfa Delts appeared at chapel, while Ole was out at six A. M.,
+roaming about the campus with the Alfalfa Delt pin on his necktie. The
+next night the Chi Yi Sighs took him on for one hundred and seventeen
+rounds in their brand new lodge, which had a sheet-iron initiation den.
+The whole thing was a fizzle. When we looked Ole over the next morning
+we couldn't find so much as a scratch on him. He was wearing the Chi Yi
+pin beside the Alfalfa Delt pin, and he was as happy as a baby with a
+bottle of ink. There were nine broken window-lights in the Chi Yi lodge,
+and we heard in a roundabout way that they called in the police about
+three A. M. to help them explain to Ole that the initiation was over.
+That's the kind of a trembling neophyte Ole was. But we just giggled to
+ourselves. Anybody could break up a Chi Yi initiation, and the Alfalfa
+Delts were a set of narrow-chested snobs with automobile callouses
+instead of muscles. We ate a hasty dinner on Friday evening and set all
+the scenery for the big scrunch. Then we put on our old clothes and
+waited for Ole to walk into our parlor.
+
+He wasn't due until nine, but about eight o'clock he came creaking up
+the steps and dented the door with his large knuckles in a bashful way.
+He looked larger and knobbier than ever and, if anything, more
+embarrassed. We led him into the lounging-room in silence, and he sat
+down twirling his straw hat. It was October, and he had worn the thing
+ever since school opened. Other people who wore straw hats in October
+get removed from under them more or less violently; but, somehow, no one
+had felt called upon to maltreat Ole. We hated that hat, however, and
+decided to begin the evening's work on it.
+
+"Your hat, Mr. Skjarsen," said Bugs Wilbur in majestic tones.
+
+Ole reached the old ruin out. Wilbur took it and tossed it into the
+grate. Ole upset four or five of us who couldn't get out of the way and
+rescued the hat, which was blazing merrily.
+
+"Ent yu gat no sanse?" he roared angrily. "Das ban a gude hat." He
+looked at it gloomily. "Et ban spoiled now," he growled, tossing the
+remains into a waste-paper basket. "Yu ban purty fallers. Vat for yu do
+dat?"
+
+The basket was full of papers and things. In about four seconds it was
+all ablaze. Wilbur tried to go over and choke it off, but Ole pushed him
+back with one forefinger.
+
+"Yust stay avay," he growled. "Das basket ent costing some more as my
+hat, I gass."
+
+We stood around and watched the basket burn. We also watched a curtain
+blaze up and the finish on a nice mahogany desk crack and blister. It
+was all very humorous. The fire kindly went out of its own accord, and
+some one tiptoed around and opened the windows in a timid sort of way.
+It was a very successful initiation so far--only we were the neophytes.
+
+"This won't do," muttered "Allie" Bangs, our president. He got up and
+went over to Ole. "Mr. Skjarsen," he said severely, "you are here to be
+initiated into the awful mysteries of Eta Bita Pie. It is not fitting
+that you should enter her sacred boundaries in an unfettered condition.
+Submit to the brethren, that they may blindfold you and bind you for
+the ordeals to come." Gee, but we used to use hand-picked language when
+we were unsheathing our claws!
+
+Ole growled. "Ol rite," he said. "But Aye tal yu ef yu fallers burn das
+har west lak yu burn ma hat I skoll raise ruffhaus like deekins!"
+
+We tied his hands behind him with several feet of good stout rope and
+hobbled him about the ankles with a dog chain. Then we blindfolded him
+and put a pillowslip over his head for good measure. Things began to
+look brighter. Even a demon fullback has to have one or two limbs
+working in order to accomplish anything. When all was fast Bangs gave
+Ole a preliminary kick. "Now, brethren," he roared, "bring on the
+Macedonian guards and give them the neophyte!"
+
+Now I'm not revealing any real initiation secrets, mind you, and maybe
+what I'm telling you didn't exactly happen. But you can be perfectly
+sure that something just as bad did happen every time. For an hour we
+abused that two hundred and twenty pounds of gristle and hide. It was as
+much fun as roughhousing a two-ton safe. We rolled him downstairs. He
+broke out sixty dollars' worth of balustrade on the way and he didn't
+seem to mind it at all. We tried to toss him in a blanket. Ever have a
+two-hundred-and-twenty-pound man land on you coming down from the
+ceiling? We got tired of that. We made him play automobile. Ever play
+automobile? They tie roller skates and an automobile horn on you and
+push you around into the furniture, just the way a real automobile runs
+into things. We broke a table, five chairs, a French window, a
+one-hundred-dollar vase and seven shins. We didn't even interest Ole.
+When a man has plowed through leather-covered football players for three
+years his head gets used to hitting things. Also his heels will fly out
+no matter how careful you are. We took him into the basement and
+performed our famous trick of boiling the candidate in oil. Of course we
+wanted to scare him. He accommodated us. He broke away and hopped
+stiff-legged all over the room. That wasn't so bad, but, confound it, he
+hopped on us most of the time! How would you like to initiate a bronze
+statue that got scared and hopped on you?
+
+We got desperate. We threw aside the formality of explaining the deep
+significance of each action and just assaulted Ole with everything in
+the house. We prodded him with furnace tools and thumped him with
+cordwood and rolling-pins and barrel-staves and shovels. We walked over
+him, a dozen at a time. And all the time we were getting it worse than
+he was. He didn't exactly fight, but whenever his elbows twitched some
+fellow's face would happen to be in the way, and he couldn't move his
+knee without getting it tangled in some one's ribs. You could hear the
+thunders of the assault and the shrieks of the wounded for a block.
+
+At the end of an hour we were positively all in. There weren't three of
+us unwounded. The house was a wreck. Wilbur had a broken nose. "Chick"
+Struthers' kneecap hurt. "Lima" Bean's ribs were telescoped, and there
+wasn't a good shin in the house. We quit in disgust and sat around
+looking at Ole. He was sitting around, too. He happened to be sitting on
+Bangs, who was yelling for help. But we didn't feel like starting any
+relief expedition.
+
+Ole was some rumpled, and his clothes looked as if they had been fed
+into a separator. But he was intact, as far as we could see. He was
+still tied and blindfolded, and I hope to be buried alive in a
+branch-line town if he wasn't getting bored.
+
+"Vat fur yu qvit?" he asked. "It ent fun setting around har."
+
+Then Petey Simmons, who had been taking a minor part in the assault in
+order to give his wheels full play, rose and beckoned the crowd outside.
+We left Ole and clustered around him.
+
+"Now, this won't do at all," he said. "Are we going to let Eta Bita Pie
+be made the laughing-stock of the college? If we can't initiate that
+human quartz mill by force let's do it by strategy. I've got a plan. You
+just let me have Ole and one man for an hour and I'll make him so glad
+to get back to the house that he'll eat out of our hands."
+
+We were dead ready to turn the job over to Petey, though we hated to see
+him put his head in the lion's mouth, so to speak. I hated it worse than
+any of the others because he picked me for his assistant. We went in
+and found Ole dozing in the corner. Petey prodded him. "Get up!" he
+said.
+
+Ole got up cheerfully. Petey took the dog chain off of his legs. Then he
+threw his sub-cellar voice into gear.
+
+"Skjarsen," he rumbled, "you have passed right well the first test of
+our noble order. You have faced the hideous dangers which were in
+reality but shams to prove your faith, and you have borne your
+sufferings patiently, thus proving your meekness."
+
+I let a couple of grins escape into my sweater-sleeve. Oh, yes, Ole had
+been meek all right.
+
+"It remains for you to prove your desire," said Petey in curdled tones.
+"Listen!" He gave the Eta Bita Pie whistle. We had the best whistle in
+college. It was six notes--a sort of insidious, inviting thing that you
+could slide across two blocks, past all manner of barbarians, and into a
+frat brother's ear without disturbing any one at all. Petey gave it
+several times. "Now, Skjarsen," he said, "you are to follow that
+whistle. Let no obstacle discourage you. Let no barrier stop you. If you
+can prove your loyalty by following that whistle through the outside
+world and back to the altar of Eta Bita Pie we will ask no more of you.
+Come on!"
+
+We tiptoed out of the cellar and whistled. Ole followed us up the steps.
+That is, he did on the second attempt. On the first he fell down with
+melodious thumps. We hugged each other, slipped behind a tree and
+whistled again.
+
+Ole charged across the yard and into the tree. The line held. I heard
+him say something in Norwegian that sounded secular. By that time we
+were across the street. There was a low railing around the parking, and
+when we whistled again Ole walked right into the railing. The line held
+again.
+
+Oh, I'll tell you that Petey boy was a wonder at getting up ideas. Think
+of it! Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Christopher Columbus, old Bill
+Archimedes and all the rest of the wise guys had overlooked this simple
+little discovery of how to make a neophyte initiate himself. It was too
+good to be true. We held a war dance of pure delight, and we whistled
+some more. We got behind stone walls, and whistled. We climbed
+embankments, and whistled. We slid behind blackberry bushes and ash
+piles and across ditches and over hedge fences, and whistled. We were so
+happy we could hardly pucker. Think of it! There was Ole Skjarsen, the
+most uncontrollable force in Nature, following us like a yellow pup with
+his dinner three days overdue. It was as fascinating as guiding a
+battleship by wireless.
+
+We slipped across a footbridge over Cedar Creek, and whistled. Ole
+missed the bridge by nine yards. There isn't much water in Cedar Creek,
+but what there is is strong. It took Ole fifteen minutes to climb the
+other bank, owing to a beautiful collection of old barrel-hoops,
+corsets, crockery and empty tomato cans which decorated the spot. Did
+you ever see a blindfolded man, with his hands tied behind his back,
+trying to climb over a city dump? No? Of course not, any more than you
+have seen a green elephant. But it's a fine sight, I assure you. When
+Ole got out of the creek we whistled him dexterously into a barnyard and
+right into the maw of a brindle bull-pup with a capacity of one small
+man in two bites--we being safe on the other side of the fence, beyond
+the reach of the chain. Maybe that was mean, but Eta Bita Pie is not to
+be trifled with when she is aroused. Anyway, the bull got the worst of
+it. He only got one bite. Ole kicked in the barn door on the first try,
+and demolished a corn-sheller on the second; but on the third he hit the
+pup squarely abeam and dropped a beautiful goal with him. We went around
+to see the dog the next day. He looked quite natural. You would almost
+think he was alive.
+
+It was here that we began to smell trouble. I had my suspicions when we
+whistled again. There was a pretty substantial fence around that
+barnyard, but Ole didn't wait to find the gate.
+
+He came through the fence not very far from us. He was conversing under
+that mangled pillowslip, and we heard fragments sounding like this:
+
+"Purty soon Aye gat yu--yu spindle-shank, vite-face, skagaroot-smokin'
+dudes! Ugh--ump!"--here he caromed off a tree. "Ven Aye gat das
+blindfold off, Aye gat yu--yu Baked-Pie galoots!--Ugh!
+Wow!"--barbed-wire fence. "Vistle sum more, yu vide-trousered polekats.
+Aye make yu vistle, Aye bet yu, rite avay! Up--pllp--pllp!" That's the
+kind of noise a man makes when he walks into a horse-trough at full
+speed.
+
+"Gee!" said Petey nervously. "I guess we've given him enough. He's
+getting sort of peevish. I don't believe in being too cruel. Let's take
+him back now. You don't suppose he can get his hands loose, do you?"
+
+I didn't know. I wished I did. Of course, when you watch a lion trying
+to get at you from behind a fairly strong cage you feel perfectly safe,
+but you feel safer when you are somewhere else, just the same. We got
+out on the pavement and gave a gentle whistle.
+
+"Aye har yu!" roared Ole, coming through a chicken yard. "Aye har yu,
+you leetle Baked Pies! Aye gat yu purty soon. Yust vait."
+
+We didn't wait. We put on a little more gasoline and started for the
+frat house. We didn't have to whistle any more. Ole was right behind us.
+We could hear him thundering on the pavement and pleading with us in
+that rich, nutty dialect of his to stop and have our heads pounded on
+the bricks.
+
+I shudder yet when I think of all the things he promised to do to us. We
+went down that street like a couple of Roman gladiators pacing a hungry
+bear, and, by tangling Ole up in the parkings again, managed to get home
+a few yards ahead.
+
+There was an atmosphere of arnica and dejection in the house when we got
+there. Ill-health seemed to be rampant. "Did you lose him?" asked Bangs
+hopefully from behind a big bandage.
+
+"Lose him?" says I with a snort. "Oh, yes, we lost him all right. He
+loses just like a foxhound. That's him, falling over the front steps
+now. You can stay and entertain him; I'm going upstairs."
+
+Everybody came along. We piled chairs on the stairs and listened while
+Ole felt his way over the porch. In about a minute he found the door.
+Then he came right in. I had locked the door, but I had neglected to
+reenforce it with concrete and boiler iron. Ole wore part of the frame
+in with him.
+
+"Come on, yu Baked Pies!" he shouted.
+
+"You're in the wrong house," squeaked that little fool, Jimmy Skelton.
+
+"Yu kent fule me!" said Ole, crashing around the loafing-room. "Aye yust
+can tal das haus by har skagaroot smell. Come on, yu leetle fallers! Aye
+bet Aye inittyate yu some, tu!"
+
+By this time he had found the stairs and was plowing through the
+furniture. We retired to the third floor. When twenty-seven fellows go
+up a three-foot stairway at once it necessarily makes some noise. Ole
+heard us and kept right on coming.
+
+We grabbed a bureau and a bed and barricaded the staircase. There was a
+ladder to the attic. I was the last man up and my heart was giving my
+ribs all kinds of massage treatment before I got up. We hauled up the
+ladder just as Ole kicked the bureau downstairs, and then we watched him
+charge over our beautiful third-floor dormitory, leaving ruin in his
+wake.
+
+Maybe he would have been satisfied with breaking the furniture. But, of
+course, a few of us had to sneeze. Ole hunted those sneezes all over the
+third floor. He couldn't reach them, but he sat down on the wreck
+underneath them.
+
+"Aye ent know vere yu fallers ban," he said, "but Aye kin vait. Aye har
+yu, yu Baked Pies! Aye gat yu yet, by yimminy! Yust come on down ven yu
+ban ready."
+
+Oh, yes, we were ready--I don't think. It was a perfectly lovely
+predicament. Here was the Damma Yappa chapter of Eta Bita Pie penned up
+in a deucedly-cold attic with one lone initiate guarding the trapdoor.
+Nice story for the college to tell when the police rescued us! Nice end
+of our reputation as the best neophyte jugglers in the school! Makes me
+shiver now to think of it.
+
+We sat around in that garret and listened to the clock strike in the
+library tower across the campus. At eleven o'clock Ole promised to kill
+the first man who came down. That bait caught no fish. At twelve he
+begged for the privilege of kicking us out of our own house, one by one.
+At one o'clock he remarked that, while it was pretty cold, it was much
+colder in Norway, where he came from, and that, as we would freeze
+first, we might as well come down.
+
+At two o'clock we were all stiff. At three we were kicking the plaster
+off of the joists, trying to keep from freezing to death. At four a
+bunch of Sophomores were all for throwing Petey Simmons down as a
+sacrifice. Petey talked them out of it. Petey could talk a stone dog
+into wagging its tail.
+
+We sat in that garret from ten P. M. until the year after the great
+pyramid wore down to the ground. At least that was the length of time
+that seemed to pass. It must have been about five o'clock when Petey
+stopped kicking his feet on the chimney and said:
+
+"Well, fellows, I have an idea. It may work or it may not, but--"
+
+"Shut up, you mental desert!" some one growled. "Another of your fine
+ideas will wreck this frat."
+
+"As I was saying," continued Petey cheerfully, "it may not succeed, but
+it will not hurt any one but me if it doesn't. I'm going to be the
+Daniel in this den. But first I want the officers of the chapter to come
+up around the scuttle-hole with me."
+
+Five of us crept over to the hole and looked down. "Aye har yu, yu
+leetle Baked Pies!" said Ole, waking in an instant. "Yust come on down.
+Aye ban vaiting long enough to smash yu!"
+
+"Mr. Skjarsen," began Petey in the regular dark-lantern voice that all
+secret societies use--"Mr. Skjarsen--for as such we must still call
+you--the final test is over. You have acquitted yourself nobly. You have
+been faithful to the end. You have stood your vigil unflinchingly. You
+have followed the call of Eta Bita Pie over every obstacle and through
+every suffering."
+
+"Aye ban following him leetle furder, if Aye had ladder," said Ole in a
+bloodthirsty voice. "Ven Aye ban getting at yu, Aye play hal vid yu
+Baked Pies!"
+
+"And now," said Petey, ignoring the interruption, "the final ceremony is
+at hand. Do not fear. Your trials are over. In the dark recesses of this
+secret chamber above you we have discussed your bearing in the trials
+that have beset you. It has pleased us. You have been found worthy to
+continue toward the high goal. Ole Skjarsen, we are now ready to receive
+you into full membership."
+
+"Come rite on!" snorted Ole. "Aye receeve yu into membership all rite.
+Yust come on down."
+
+"It won't work, Petey," Bangs groaned. Petey kicked his shins as a sign
+to shut up.
+
+"Ole Skjarsen, son of Skjar Oleson, stand up!" he said, sinking his
+voice another story.
+
+Ole got up. It was plain to be seen that he was getting interested.
+
+"The president of this powerful order will now administer the oath,"
+said Petey, shoving Bangs forward.
+
+So there, at five A. M., with the whole chapter treed in a garret, and
+the officers, the leading lights of Siwash, crouching around a scuttle
+and shivering their teeth loose, we initiated Ole Skjarsen. It was
+impressive, I can tell you. When it came to the part where the neophyte
+swears to protect a brother, even if he has to wade in blood up to his
+necktie, Bangs bore down beautifully and added a lot of extra frills.
+The last words were spoken. Ole was an Eta Bita Pie. Still, we weren't
+very sanguine. You might interest a man-eater by initiating him, but
+would you destroy his appetite? There was no grand rush for the ladder.
+
+As Ole stood waiting, however, Petey swung himself down and landed
+beside him. He cut the ropes that bound his wrists, jerked off the
+pillowslip and cut off the blindfold. Then he grabbed Ole's mastodonic
+paw.
+
+"Shake, brother!" he said.
+
+Nobody breathed for a few seconds. It was darned terrifying, I can tell
+you. Ole rubbed his eyes with his free hand and looked down at the
+morsel hanging on to the other.
+
+"Shake, Ole!" insisted Petey. "You went through it better than I did
+when I got it."
+
+I saw the rudiments of a smile begin to break out on Ole's face. It grew
+wider. It got to be a grin; then a chasm with a sunrise on either side.
+
+He looked up at us again, then down at Petey. Then he pumped Petey's arm
+until the latter danced like a cork bobber.
+
+"By ying, Aye du et!" he shouted. "Ve ban gude fallers, ve Baked Pies,
+if ve did broke my nose."
+
+"What's the matter with Ole?" some one shouted.
+
+"He's all right!" we yelled. Then we came down out of the garret and
+made a rush for the furnace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WHEN GREEK MEETS GROUCH
+
+
+It's a cinch that college life would be a whole lot more congested with
+pleasure if it wasn't for the towns that the colleges are in. I don't
+mean that a town around a college hasn't its uses. Wherever you find a
+town you can find lunch counters and theaters with galleries from which
+you can learn the drama at a quarter a throw, and street cars that can
+be tampered with, and wooden sidewalks that burn well on celebration
+nights, and nice girls who began being nice four college generations ago
+and never forgot how. All of these things about a town are mighty handy
+when it comes to getting a higher education in a good, live college
+where you don't have to tunnel through three feet of moss to find the
+college customs. But even all this can't reconcile me to the way a town
+butts into college affairs. It is something disgusting.
+
+You know it yourself, Bill. Didn't you go to Yellagain where the police
+arrested the whole Freshman class for painting the Sophomores green?
+Well, it's the same way all over. No sooner does a college town get big
+enough to support a rudimentary policeman who peddles vegetables when
+he isn't putting down anarchy than it gets busy and begins to regulate
+the college students. And the bigger it gets the more regulating it
+wants to do. Why, they tell me that at the University of Chicago there
+hasn't been a riot for nine years, and that over in Washington Park,
+three blocks away, an eleven-ton statue of old Chris. Columbus has lain
+for ages and no college class has had spirit enough to haul it out on
+the street-car tracks. That's what regulating a college does for it.
+There are more policemen in Chicago than there are students in the
+University. If you give your yell off the campus you have to get a
+permit from the city council. It's worse than that in Philadelphia, they
+tell me. Why, there, if a college student comes downtown with a
+flareback coat and heart-shaped trousers and one of those nifty little
+pompadour hats that are brushed back from the brow to give the brains a
+chance to grow, they arrest him for collecting a crowd and disturbing
+traffic. No, sir, no big-town college for me. Getting college life in
+those places reminds me of trying to get that world-wide feeling on
+ice-cream soda. There's as much chance in one as in the other.
+
+Excuse me for getting sore, but that's the way I do when I begin to talk
+about college towns. They don't know their places. Take Jonesville,
+where Siwash is, for instance. When Siwash College was founded by "that
+noble band of Christian truth seekers," as the catalogue puts it,
+Jonesville was a mud-hole freckled with houses. The railroad trains
+whistled "get out of my way" to the town when they whooped through it,
+and when you went into a merchant's store and woke him up he started off
+home to dinner from force of habit. The only thing they ever regulated
+there was the clock. They regulated that once a year and usually found
+that it was two or three days behind time. Hadn't noticed it at all.
+
+That's what Jonesville was when Siwash started. You can bet for the
+first forty years they didn't do much regulating around the college. The
+students just let the town stay there because it was quiet. The citizens
+used to elect town marshals over seventy years old, so their gray hairs
+would protect them from the students, and when the boys had won a debate
+or a ball game and wanted to burn a barn or two to cheer up the
+atmosphere at evening, nothing at all was said--at least out loud.
+Jonesville was meek enough, you bet. Why, back in the seventies the
+students used to vote at town elections, and once for a joke they all
+voted for old "Apple Sally" for president of the village board. Made her
+serve, too. Talk about regulating! Did you ever see a farmer's dog go
+out and try to regulate a sixty-horse-power automobile? That's about as
+much as Jonesville would have regulated us thirty years ago.
+
+But, of course, having a real peppery college in its midst, Jonesville
+couldn't help but grow. People came and started boarding-houses. There
+had to be restaurants and bookstores and necktie emporiums, too, and
+pretty soon the railroad built a couple of branches into town and
+started the division shops. Then Jonesville woke up and walked right
+past old Siwash. In ten years it had street cars, paved streets,
+water-works, a political machine and a city debt, as large as the law
+would allow. And worse than that, it had a police force. It had nine
+officers in uniform, most of whom could read and write and swing big
+clubs with a strictly American accent. Nice sort of a thing to turn
+loose in a quiet college town. This was long before my time, but they
+tell me that the students held indignation meetings for a week after the
+first arrest was made. You see, the students at Siwash always had their
+own rules and lived up to them strictly. The Faculty put them on their
+honor and that honor was never abused. Students were not allowed to burn
+the college buildings nor kill the professors. These rules were never
+broken, and naturally the boys felt rather insulted when the city turned
+loose a horde of blue-coated busybodies to interfere with things that
+didn't concern them.
+
+Still, Siwash got along very well even after the police force was
+organized. You see, after a town has had a college in its middle for
+about fifty years, pretty much everybody in town has attended it at one
+time or another. None of the police had diplomas, but it was no uncommon
+thing to see an ex-member of a college debating society delivering
+groceries, or an ex-president of his class getting up in an engine cab
+to take the flyer into the city. For years every police magistrate was
+an old Siwash man, and, though plenty of the boys would get arrested,
+there were never any thirty-day complications or anything of the sort.
+Two classes would meet on the main street and muss each other up. The
+police would arrest nine or ten of the ringleaders. The next morning the
+prisoners would appear before Squire Jennings, who climbed up on the old
+college building with his class flag in '54 and kept a rival class away
+by tearing down the chimney and throwing the bricks at them. Naturally,
+nothing very deadly happened. The good old fellow would lecture the
+crowd and let them off with a stern warning. Maybe two or three Seniors
+would come home late at night from their frat hall and take a wooden
+Indian cigar sign along with them just for company. One of those Indians
+is such a steady sort of a chap to have along late at night. Of course,
+they would be arrested by old Hank Anderson on the courthouse beat, but
+it wasn't anything serious. They would telephone Frank Hinckley, who was
+editor of the city daily, and just convalescing from four years of
+college life himself, and he would come down and bail them out, and
+Squire Jennings would kick them out of court next morning. Frank was the
+patron saint of the students for years when it came to bail. He used to
+say he had all the fun of being a doctor and getting called out nights
+without having to try to collect any fees. Frank was no Croesus those
+days and I've seen him go bail for fifteen students at one hundred
+dollars apiece, when his total assets amounted to a dress suit, three
+hundred and forty-five photographs and his next week's salary.
+
+By the time I had come to college, getting arrested had gotten to be a
+regular formality. A Freshman would go up Main Street at night, trying
+to hide a nine-foot board sign under his spring overcoat. Halvor
+Skoogerson, a pale-eyed guardian of the peace, who was studying up to be
+a naturalized, would arrest him for theft, riot, disorderly conduct,
+suspicious appearance and intoxication, not understanding why any sober
+man would want to carry a young lumber-yard home under his coat at
+night. The prisoner would telephone for Hinckley, who would crawl out of
+bed, come downtown cussing, and bail away in sleepy tones. The next
+morning the freshie would go up before Squire Jennings, who would ask
+him in awful accents if he realized that the state penitentiary was only
+four hours away by fast train, and that many a man was boarding there
+who would blush to be seen in the company of a man who had stolen a
+nine-foot sign and carried it down Main Street, interfering with
+pedestrians, when there was a perfectly good alley which ought to be
+used for such purposes. Then he would warn the culprit that the next
+time he was caught lugging off a billboard or a wooden platform or a
+corncrib he would be compelled to put it back again before he got
+breakfast; after which he would tell him to go along and try studying
+for a change, and the Freshman would go back to college and join the
+hero brigade. It was a mighty meek man in Siwash who couldn't get
+arrested those days. Even the hymn singers at the Y. M. C. A. had
+criminal records. It got so, finally, that whenever we had a nightshirt
+parade in honor of any little college victory the line of march would
+lead right through the police station. We knew what was coming and would
+save the cops the trouble of hauling us over in the hustle wagon.
+
+Take it all in all, it was about as much fun to be regulated as it was
+to run the town. But one night Squire Jennings put his other foot into
+the grave and died entirely; and before any of us realized what was
+happening a special election had been held and Malachi Scroggs had been
+elected police magistrate.
+
+Malachi Scroggs was a triple extract of grouch who lived on the north
+side two miles away from college in a big white house with one of those
+old-fashioned dog-house affairs on top of it. He was an acrimonious
+quarrel all by himself. Sunlight soured when it struck him. I have seen
+a fox terrier who had been lying perfectly happy on the sidewalk, get up
+after Scroggs had passed him and go over and bite an automobile tire. He
+lived on gloom and law-suits and the last time he smiled was 1878--that
+was when a small boy fell nineteen feet out of a tree while robbing his
+orchard, and the doctor said he would never be able to rob any more
+orchards.
+
+This was the kind of mental astringent Malachi was. Naturally, he loved
+the gay and happy little college boys. Oh, how he loved us! He had
+complained to the police regularly during each celebration for twenty
+years and he had expressed the opinion, publicly, that a college boy was
+a cross between a hyena and a grasshopper with a fog-horn attachment
+thrown in free of charge. He wasn't a college man himself, you
+see--never could find one where the students didn't use slang, probably,
+and he just naturally didn't understand us at all. Of course, we didn't
+mind that. It's no credit to carry an interlinear translation of your
+temperament on your face. So long as he kept in his own yard and
+quarreled with his own dog for not feeding on Freshmen more
+enthusiastically, we got along as nicely as the Egyptian Sphinx and John
+L. Sullivan. Even when he was elected police magistrate we didn't
+object. In fact, we didn't bumpity-bump to the situation until we went
+up against him in court.
+
+Part of the Senior class had been having a little choir practice in one
+of the town restaurants. It was a lovely affair and there wasn't a more
+cheerful crowd of fellows on earth than they were when they marched down
+the street at one A. M. eighteen abreast and singing one of the dear old
+songs in a kind of a steam-siren barytone.
+
+Now they had never attempted to regulate mere noise in Jonesville, but
+that night a brand-new policeman had gone on the courthouse beat, and
+blamed if he didn't arrest the whole bunch for disturbing the
+peace--when they hadn't broken a single thing, mind you. They were
+pretty mad about it at first; but after all it was only a joke, and when
+Hinckley got down to bail them out they were singing with great feeling
+a song which Jenkins, the class poet, had just composed, and which ran
+as follows:
+
+     "As we walked along the street
+     Officer Sikes we chanced to meet,
+     And his shoes were full of feet
+     As he prowled along his beat.
+     He took us down and locked us up;
+     Left us in charge of a Norsky Cop,
+     And we didn't get home till early in the morning."
+
+Hold that "morning" as long as you can and tonsorialize to beat the
+band. Even the desk sergeant enjoyed it.
+
+When the bunch lined up the next morning in police court there was Judge
+Scroggs. They felt as if they ought to treat him nicely, he being a
+newcomer and all of them being very familiar with the ropes; and Emmons,
+the class president, started explaining to him that it was all a
+mistake. Scroggs bit him off with a voice that sounded like a terrier
+snapping at a fly.
+
+"We're here to correct these mistakes," he said. "You were all singing
+on the public street at one o'clock in the morning, weren't you?"
+
+"We were trying to," said Emmons, still friendly.
+
+"Ten days apiece," said the magistrate. "Call the next case."
+
+If any one had removed the floor from under these Seniors and let them
+drop one thousand and one feet into space they couldn't have felt more
+shocked. Even the clerk and the desk sergeant were amazed. They tried to
+help explain, but the human vinegar-cruet turned around and spat the
+following through his clenched teeth:
+
+"Gentlemen, I have been appointed to sit on this bench and I don't need
+any help. Any more objections will be in contempt of court. Sergeant,
+remove these young thugs and have them sent to the workhouse at once."
+
+Maybe you don't think the college seethed when the news got out. There
+were the leading lights of the school, including the president of the
+Senior class, the chairman of the Junior promenade, two halfbacks, the
+pitcher on the baseball team and the president of the Y. M. C. A., all
+on the works for ten days, along with as choice an assortment of plain
+drunks and fancy resters as you could find in ninety miles of mainline
+railroad. The students fairly went mad and bit at the air. Even the
+Faculty got busy and Prexy dropped over to the police court to square
+it. He came out a minute later very white around the mouth. I don't know
+what Old Maledictions said to him, but it was a great sufficiency, I
+guess. He seemed as insulted as Lord Tennyson might have been if the
+milkman had pulled his whiskers.
+
+There wasn't a thing to be done. The Faculty appealed to the mayor, but
+old Scroggs had some regular Spanish-bit hold on him in the way of a
+short-time note, I guess, and he washed his hands of the whole affair.
+Our college great men were hauled out to the works and served their
+time. When they got out they were sights. They weren't strong on
+sanitation in workhouses in those days. Even their friends shook hands
+with them with tongs. Think of sixteen proud monarchs of the campus
+making brick in striped suits, with a cross foreman who used to haul
+ashes from the college campus lording it over them and tracing their
+ancestry back through thirty generations of undesirable citizens! Nice,
+wasn't it? Oh, very!
+
+That was the beginning of a sad and serious year for Siwash. For the
+first time Scroggs enjoyed college boys. Soaking students got to be his
+specialty. We did our blamedest to behave, but you can't break off the
+habits of generations in a week or two. Soon after the Seniors got out
+the Mock Turtles, a Sophomore society, capacity thirty thousand quarts,
+absent-mindedly tipped over a street car on their way home and were
+jugged for thirty days. They had to enlarge the workhouse to take care
+of them, and four of our best football players were retired from
+circulation all through October. Think what that meant! The whole
+college went up, just before the game with Hambletonian, and knelt on
+the sidewalk before Judge Scroggs' house. He set the dog on us. Said
+afterwards he wished the dog had been larger and hadn't had his supper.
+A month later four members of the glee club tried to do our favorite
+stunt of putting the horse in the herdic and hauling him home, and it
+cost them twenty-nine days--just enough to break up the club. The whole
+basket-ball team got thirty days because they took the bronze statue off
+the fountain in the public square one night, laid him on the car tracks
+in some old clothes, and had the ambulance force trying to resuscitate
+him. Nobody had ever objected to this little joke before, but it cost us
+the state championship and two of the team left school when they got
+out. Said they'd come to Siwash for a college education, not for a
+course of etymology in a workhouse.
+
+It was terrible. We scarcely dared to cut out our mufflers enough to
+whistle to each other on the street. By spring we were desperate. We had
+lost the basket-ball championship. The glee club was ruined.
+Muggledorfer had bumped us in football--that was the year before Ole
+Skjarsen came to school--and college spirit at Siwash had been gummed up
+until it could have been successfully imitated by a
+four-thousand-year-old mummy. Our college meetings resembled the
+overflow from a funeral around the front steps. We used to shut down all
+the windows, say "shsh" nine times, and then write out our college yell
+on curl papers and burn the papers. You could have swapped Siwash off
+for a correspondence school without noticing any difference in the
+reverberations. That was Petey Simmons' first year in college--as a
+matter of fact, he was a Senior prep. I've told you more or less about
+Petey before. He was the only son of one of these country bankers who
+manage to get as much fun out of a half million as a New Yorker could
+out of a whole railroad. Petey was a little chap who had always had what
+he wanted and would cheerfully sit up all night thinking up new things
+to want. He wasn't a Freshman yet, but he could give points to all the
+college in the matter of explosive clothes and nifty ways of being
+expensive to Dad. He couldn't get along without coat-cut underwear long
+before we had heard of it, and you could tell by looking at his shoes
+just what the rest of the school would be wearing in two years. That was
+Petey all the way through. He was first and Father Time was nowhere,
+forty miles back with a busted tire.
+
+[Illustration: Martha caused some mild sensation
+                    _Page 63_]
+
+Petey took to college life like a kid to candy and just soaked himself
+in college spirit. He proposed his sixty-five-dollar banjo for
+membership in the club and went in with it of course. He was elected
+yell-master before he had been in school two weeks, and if you ever want
+to know how much noise can come out of a comparatively small orifice you
+should have seen him emitting riot and pandemonium in the second half of
+a lively football game. Naturally, it worried Petey almost to death to
+see the dear old Coll. disintegrating under the Scroggs Inquisition, and
+he used to sit around the frat house with his head on his hands for
+hours, smoking his pipe, which had the largest bowl in school, and
+combing his convolutions for a plan. Then, along in March, he
+electrified the whole school by taking Martha Scroggs to the college
+promenade.
+
+Martha was old Malachi's daughter. We hadn't known it, but she had been
+in school all that year. She was a quiet girl who was designed like a
+tall problem in plane geometry. While it was possible for a clock to run
+in the same room with her, still she was not what you might call a
+picnic to look at. She was the kind of girl a man would look at once and
+then go off and admire the scenery, even if it only consisted of a
+ninety-acre cornfield and a grain elevator. Martha was only about
+eighteen, and I never could understand how she got on to the styles of
+thirty-six years ago and wore them as fluently as she did.
+
+Naturally, Martha had gotten along in her studies without being pestered
+by society to any extent. I sometimes think this helped old Scroggs to
+hate us. She was his only child, and he had taken all the affection and
+interest that most people distribute over their entire acquaintanceship
+and concentrated it on her. They had grown up together since she became
+a motherless baby, and they did say that while you could bombard the old
+man with gatling guns without jarring his opinions he would lie down,
+jump through a hoop or play dead whenever Martha wanted him to.
+
+Naturally Martha caused some mild sensation when she appeared at the
+biggest social spasm of the college year, with her sleeves bulging in
+the wrong place, and nothing but her own hair on her head. But what
+caused the real sensation was the fact that Petey had been released from
+the workhouse the day before. Yes, sir--just turned out with seven more
+days to serve. He had thrown a brick at a Sophomore who was trying to
+catch him and dye his hair the Sophomore colors, and the brick had
+annihilated one of the city's precious thirty-seven-cent street lights.
+Petey had gone to the works for ten days, leaving a new dress suit that
+hadn't been dedicated and unlimited woe among the girls, for he was a
+Class A fusser.
+
+Petey was non-committal about his insanity. He had the best eye for
+beauty in the college, and yet he had been taking Miss Scroggs around to
+church socials and town affairs for two months. But college boys aren't
+slow, whatever you want to say about them. We had faith in Petey and we
+backed up his game. We gave Martha the time of her young life at the
+Prom.--pulled off three imitation rows over her program--and then we
+turned in that winter and gave her a good, hot rush--which is a
+technical college expression for keeping a girl dated up so that she
+doesn't have time to wash the dishes at home once a month.
+
+I must say that it wasn't much of a punishment, either, when we got
+acquainted with Martha. She was a good fellow clear through and had a
+smile that illuminated her plain face like a torchlight parade. Of
+course, after you get out of school you learn that beauty is only skin
+deep and seldom affects the brain; but this is a wonderful discovery for
+a college boy to make when there are so many raving beauties about him
+that he has to take a nap in the afternoon in order to dream about all
+of them. At any rate, we took Martha to everything that came along, one
+of us or another, and before a month we didn't have to pretend very much
+to scrap for her dances, even if you did have to lug her around the room
+by main strength--she was as heavy on her feet as a motor-bus.
+
+April came and the first baseball game with it, and Saunders, our
+pitcher, managed to draw a thirty-day sentence for stealing a steam
+roller one noon and racing off down the avenue with a fat cop in
+pursuit. We nearly fell dead once more when Saunders came walking into
+chapel three days later. He had been released by Judge Scroggs with a
+warning never under any circumstances to do anything of any sort at any
+time any more, and been assured that he was nothing more than hangman's
+meat. But he had been released! That night he took Martha Scroggs to the
+Alfalfa Delt hop. And the next day he held Muggledorfer down to two hits
+and no runs, with Martha waving hurrahs at him from a tally-ho.
+
+We wanted to elect Petey president of the college, for we laid the whole
+affair to him. But he wouldn't talk at all. If anything, he seemed a
+little sore about the whole thing. Martha didn't loosen up, either. She
+just smiled and told those of us who knew her well enough to ask
+questions that Saunders was a lovely boy and that she had had that date
+with him for ages--flies' ages, I guess she meant, for Alice Marsters,
+one of the beauties of the school, stayed home from the dance after
+announcing that she was going with Saunders, and never seemed able to
+remember him by sight after that.
+
+About a week afterward Maxwell, the college orator, a very solemn member
+of the Siwash brain trust, was arrested for ever so little a thing. I
+believe he so far forgot himself as to help give the college yell on
+Main Street the night his literary society won a debate. Anyway, he got
+ten days, and he was due in three days to orate for Siwash against the
+whole Northwest. It was the biggest event of the school year--the
+oratorical contest. We'd won seven of them--more than any other school
+in the sixteen states--and we stood a good show with Maxwell. We were
+crazy to win. Of course nobody ever goes to the contests; but we all
+stay up all night to hear the results, and when we win, which we do once
+every other college generation, we try to make the celebration bigger
+than the stories of other celebrations that have been handed down. We'd
+been planning this celebration all winter and had everything combustible
+in Jonesville spotted.
+
+Some of us were for going out and burning up the workhouse, but before
+we got around to it Maxwell appeared. It was the day before the contest.
+He'd served only two days, but instead of rushing right off to rehearse
+his oration, which he couldn't do in the workhouse, owing to an
+accountable prejudice the tramps and other prisoners had against
+oratory, he took the evening off and went driving with Martha
+Scroggs--about as queer a thing for him to do as it would be for the
+Pope to take a young lady to the theatre. But we didn't ask any
+questions. We cheered him off on the midnight train, and the next night,
+when he won and we got the news, we turned out and built a bonfire of
+everything that wasn't nailed down. And when the police got done chasing
+us they had nineteen of the brightest and best sons of Siwash bottled up
+in the booby hatch.
+
+We didn't mind that on general principles. The bonfire was worth it,
+especially since we managed to get a few palings from old Scroggs' fence
+for it--but, as usual, the wrong men got pinched. There was the
+intercollegiate track meet due in two weeks, and there, in the list of
+felons, were Evans, our crack sprinter, Petersen, our hammer heaver, and
+yours truly, who could pole vault about as high as they run elevators in
+Europe, even if he was only a sub-Freshman with field mice in his hair.
+
+Now, this was really serious. We could afford to lose an oratorical
+contest--it just meant no bonfire for another year--but we had our
+hearts set on that track meet. We were up against our lifelong
+rivals--Muggledorfer, the State Normal, Kiowa, Hambletonian, and all the
+rest of them. We had to win--I don't know why. Beats all how many things
+you have to do in college that don't seem so absolutely necessary a few
+years afterward. Anyhow, if we three point-gobblers had to spend the
+next ten days in the works instead of rounding into form, the points
+Siwash would win in that meet could be added up by a three-year-old boy
+who was a bad scholar. It was so desperate that we hired a lawyer and
+laid the case before him that night as we sat in our horrid cells--they
+wouldn't take Hinckley for bail any more.
+
+"Get a continuance," said he. And the next morning he appeared with us
+before the awful presence and demanded the continuance on the score of
+important evidence, lack of time to perfect a defense, other
+engagements, poor crops, Presidential election, and goodness knows
+what--regular lawyer style, you know.
+
+Old Scroggs glared at us the way an unusually hungry tiger might look at
+a lamb that was being taken away to get a little riper. "I cannot object
+to a reasonable continuance," he said sourly. "And I don't deny that you
+will need all the defense you can get. The case is an atrocious one, and
+I propose to do my small part toward putting down arson and riot in this
+unhappy town. You will appear two weeks from this morning."
+
+The field meet was two weeks from that afternoon! And we didn't have a
+ghost of a defense!
+
+We three scraped up the required bail and went back to college feeling
+cheerful as a man who has been told that his hanging has been postponed
+until his wedding morning. Of course we sent for Petey Simmons. He
+arrived dejected. "No use, fellows," he remarked as he came in the door.
+"I know what you all want. You all want engagements with Martha Scroggs.
+It's no go. I've been over to see her and she's afraid to tackle it. The
+old man's told her that if she runs around with any more of this
+disgraceful, disgusting and nine other epitheted college bunch he'll
+show her the door. Says he's been worked and he's through. Says he's
+going to give you the limit and, if possible, he's going to give you
+enough to keep you in all vacation instead of letting you loose on a
+defenseless world all summer. That's how strong you are up at the
+Scroggs house."
+
+There you were! Siwash College, the pride of six decades, mollycoddled
+by an old parody on a gorilla with a grouch against the solar system! We
+trained these two weeks in hopes that a chariot of fire would come up
+and take the old man down, but there was nothing doing. He remained
+abnormally healthy and supernaturally mad. On the morning before the
+fatal day we all wrote letters home, explaining that we had secured
+elegant jobs in various emporiums over the city and wouldn't be home
+until late in the summer. Then we shivered a shake or two apiece and got
+ready to retire from this vain world for somewhere between thirty and
+ninety days. Just about that time Petey Simmons blew down to the
+college, bursting with information. He demanded a meeting of the
+Athletic Council at once and of us three sterling athletes as well. We
+were all in order in ten minutes.
+
+"Fellows, it's this way," said Petey. "Martha Scroggs is very loyal to
+the college, as you all know. She has done her very best with old
+Fireworks, but it hasn't made a dent in him. No little old party or
+buggy ride is going to get any one out this time. There's just one
+chance, she says, and she's taken it. This morning she confessed to her
+father that she is engaged to one of the men who is to come up for trial
+to-morrow morning. They think the old man will be well enough to
+unmuzzle before noon, but he's been acting like a bad case of dog-days
+all morning. He's given her twenty-four hours to name the man--and
+Martha thinks that by night he'll be resting comfortably enough to
+promise to let him off to-morrow. And she has given us the privilege of
+choosing the man she's engaged to. Now, it's up to this council to pick
+out the lucky chap. It's our only hope, fellows. We'll have one
+point-winner anyway--unless the old man eats him alive to-morrow."
+
+Evans and Petersen turned pale--they had real fiancees in college. But
+each stepped forward nobly and offered himself for the sacrifice. I
+stepped out, too, though I was so young at that time that I didn't know
+any more how to go about being engaged to a girl than I did about my
+Greek lessons. Then the council began to discuss the choice. And just
+there the trouble began.
+
+It all came about through the frats, of course. Frats are a good thing
+all right, but they stir up more trouble in a college than a Turk's nine
+wives can make for him. Ashcroft was president of the council. He was an
+Alfalfa Delt. So was Evans. Ashcroft hung out for Evans like a bulldog
+hanging to a tramp. Beeman, a council member, was a Sigh Whoop and so
+was Petersen. Beeman argued that Petersen could win more points than the
+rest of the school put together and that it would be unpatriotic,
+unmanly, disgraceful and un-Siwash-like not to select him. Bailey, the
+third member, was an Eta Bita Pie, and while sub-Freshmen are not
+supposed to be anything with Greek letters on, we understood each other,
+and I was to be initiated the next fall. Bailey pointed out caustically
+that to imprison a sub-Freshman would be to ruin his reputation, break
+his spirit and disgrace the school--that one world's record was worth
+fifty points, and that, if allowed to, I would pole-vault so high the
+next day that I would have to come down in a parachute. The result was
+the council broke up in one big row and Martha Scroggs spent the
+afternoon unengaged.
+
+About five o'clock Bailey came over to the track, where we were going
+through the last sad rites, and hauled me aside.
+
+"Take off those togs, kid," he said. "I've got a stunt. These yaps are
+going to hold another meeting to-night to decide on Martha Scroggs'
+fiancee. In the meantime you're going out to ask the old man for her.
+Understand? You're going to ask him and take what he gives you like a
+little man and beg off for to-day, and then you're going to break the
+pole-vault record. See?"
+
+Unfortunately, I did. I liked the job just as well as I would like
+getting boiled in oil. But one must stand by one's frat, you know--Gee,
+how proud I felt when I said that! I didn't have any idea how an engaged
+man ought to look or act, but I went home, put on the happiest duds I
+had, and shinned up the street about eight o'clock.
+
+The man-eating dog of the Scroggses was somewhere else, gorging himself
+on another unfortunate, and I got to the front door all right. I rang
+the bell. Some one opened the door. It was Judge Scroggs. He looked at
+me as one might look at a bug which had wandered on to the table and was
+trying to climb over a fork.
+
+"Young man," he said, "what do you want?"
+
+Did you ever have your voice slink around behind your larynx and refuse
+to come out? Mine did. I only wish I could have slunk with it. I started
+talking twice. My tongue went all right, but I couldn't slip in the
+clutch and make any sound.
+
+"Well," roared Scroggs, "what is it?"
+
+That jarred me loose. "Mr. Scroggs," I sputtered, "I am engaged to your
+daughter. I want to marry her. I want your permission. I--I'll be good
+to her, sir."
+
+He glared at me for a minute. "Oh!" he said with a queer look. "Well,
+come on in with the rest of them."
+
+I followed him into the parlor. There sat Evans and Petersen. They were
+older than I, but if I looked as scared as they did I wish somebody had
+shot me. In the corner was another student. His name was Driggs. His
+specialty was cotillons.
+
+We four sat and looked at each other with awful suspicions. Something
+was excessively wrong. I felt indignant. Can't a fellow go to see his
+fiancee without being annoyed by a Roman mob? I noticed Petersen and
+Evans looked indignant, too. We took it out by staring Driggs almost
+into the collywobbles. Who was he anyway, and why was he billy-goating
+around?
+
+Old Scroggs had called Martha. He sat and looked at us so peculiarly
+that I got gooseflesh all over. Here I was, a Freshman so green that the
+cows looked longingly at me, and up against the job of saving the
+college, winning out for the frat and becoming engaged to a girl I
+didn't know before a whole roomful of rivals. I wasn't up to the job. If
+only I had gone to the works! They seemed a haven of sweet peace just
+then.
+
+Martha Scroggs came into the room. She looked at the quartet. We looked
+at her with hunted looks. Scroggs looked at all of us.
+
+"Martha," he said at last, "each one of these four young idiots says he
+is engaged to you. Which of them shall I throw out?"
+
+The jig was up! The college was ruined! Each one of us had the same
+bright thought!
+
+For a moment I thought Martha was going to faint. She looked at the mob
+with a dazed expression. You could almost see her brain grabbing for
+some explanation. It was just for a moment, though. My, but that girl
+was a wonder! She gulped once or twice. Then she smiled in an inspired
+sort of way.
+
+"None of them, Papa," she said ever so sweetly. "I am engaged to all of
+them."
+
+The eruption of Vesuvius was only a little sputter to what followed. For
+a moment we had hopes that old Scroggs would explode. I think if he had
+had us there alone he would have tried to hang us. But every tyrant has
+his master, so before long we began to see the halter on old Scroggs.
+And his daughter held the leading rope. She let him rave about so long
+and then she retired into her pocket-handkerchief and turned on a
+regular equinoctial. Scroggs looked more uncomfortable than we felt. He
+took her in his arms and there was a family reconciliation. Every little
+while Martha would look over his shoulder at us four hopefuls sitting up
+against the wall as lively as wooden Indians, and then she would bury
+her face in her handkerchief again and shake her shoulders and writhe
+with grief--or maybe it was something else. Martha always did have a
+pretty keen sense of humor.
+
+[Illustration: My, but that girl was a wonder!
+                    _Page 74_]
+
+Suddenly Scroggs remembered us and we went out of the house like
+projectiles fired from a very loud gun. We cussed each other all the
+way home--we three athletes. We would have cussed Driggs, but he sneaked
+the other way and we lost him.
+
+The next morning we went up to police court in our old clothes. Judge
+Scroggs looked at us sourly when our turn came.
+
+"Young men," he said, "my daughter has admitted that she has been
+foolish enough to engage herself provisionally to all of you, with the
+idea of choosing the hero in this afternoon's games. I do not admire her
+taste. I think she is indeed reckless to fall in love with collegians
+when there are so many honest cab drivers and grocery boys to choose
+from. But I have, in the interests of peace, consented to allow you to
+compete this afternoon. You are discharged. I do this the more willingly
+because I have seen you here before and shall again. You may go."
+
+We did go, and when we got through that afternoon the knobby-legged
+athletes from our rival schools looked like quarter horses plowing home
+just ahead of the next race. Siwash won by an enormous lead and we three
+were the stars of the meet. Why shouldn't we be when our fiancee sat in
+a box in the grandstand and cheered us impartially? More than that, old
+Scroggs sat with her and I have an idea that he got excited, too, in the
+breath-catching parts.
+
+I think that engagement business must have broken the old man's spirit,
+or else so much association with college people began to waken dormant
+brain cells in his head. The rest of the rioters got out of the
+workhouse right away, and that fall he retired from the bench, declaring
+that if he was to have a college student for a son-in-law, as looked
+extremely likely, he needed to put in all of his time at home protecting
+his property. In honor of his retirement we had a pajama parade which
+was nine blocks long and forty-two blocks loud, and a platoon of six
+policemen led the way.
+
+Of course that engagement business left all sorts of complications.
+Scroggs pestered his daughter for about a month to make her decision. He
+seemed somewhat relieved when she finally announced that she couldn't;
+but it wasn't much relief, after all, for by this time he couldn't walk
+around his own house without falling over Petey Simmons. Just two years
+ago I got cards to Petey's wedding. He and Martha are living in Chicago
+in one of those flats where you have seven hundred and eighty-nine
+dollars' worth of bath-room, and eighty-nine cents' worth of living
+room, and which you have to lease by measure just as you would buy a
+vest. If Petey hangs on long enough he is going to be a big man in the
+banking business, too.
+
+I forgot to clear up this Driggs mystery. The evening after the races,
+Martha called up Petey Simmons. "Petey," said she, "I wish you would
+tell me who this fourth man is that I'm engaged to. He doesn't seem to
+be on the track team and I didn't catch his name. I don't mind having to
+make up an excuse for being engaged to four men right on the spur of
+the moment if it is necessary, but I'd at least like to know their
+names."
+
+Petey was as puzzled as she was and lit out to find Driggs. He was gone,
+but the next day he turned up and confessed all. He had a terrible
+affair with a girl in the next town, it seems, and had a date to bring
+her to the games. He was one of the nineteen criminals, and was so
+terror-stricken at the idea of being compelled to desert his hypnotizer
+that when the news of the engagement business leaked out he took a long
+chance and went up and announced himself. It worked, but we caught him
+two nights later and shaved his hair on one side as a gentle warning not
+to do it again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A FUNERAL THAT FLASHED IN THE PAN
+
+
+Honest, Bill, sometimes when I sit down in these sober, plug-away
+days--when we are kind to the poor dumb policemen and don't dare wear
+straw hats after the first of September--and think about the good old
+college times, I wonder how we ever had the nerve to imitate insanity
+the way we did. Here I am, rubbing noses with thirty, outgrowing my
+belts every year, and sitting eight hours at a desk without exploding.
+Am I the chap who climbed up sixty feet of waterspout a few short years
+ago and persuaded the clapper of the college bell to come down with me?
+Here you are all worn smooth on top and proprietor of an overflow
+meeting in a nursery. In about ten minutes you'll be tearing your
+coat-tails out of my hands because you have to go back home before the
+eldest kid asks for a story. Are you the loafer who spent all one night
+getting a profane parrot into the cold-air pipes of the college chapel?
+Maybe you think you are, but I don't believe it. If I were to tip this
+table over on you now you'd get mad and go home instead of handing me a
+volume of George Barr McCutcheon in the watch-pocket. You're not the
+good old lunatic you used to be, and neither am I.
+
+Yes, times have changed. I don't feel as unfettered as I used to. There
+are a few things nowadays that I don't care to do. When I come home at
+night I take my shoes off and tiptoe to my room instead of standing
+outside and trying to persuade my landlady that the house is on fire.
+When I visit a friend in his apartments I do not, as a bit of repartee,
+throw all of his clothes out of the window while he is out of the room,
+and it has been a long time since I last hung a basket out of my window
+on Saturday night, expecting some early-rising friend to put a pocketful
+of breakfast in it as he came past from boarding-club. I am a slave to
+conventions and so are you, you slant-shouldered, hollow-chested,
+four-eyed, flabby-spirited pill-roller, you! The city makes more mummies
+out of live ones than old Rameses ever did out of his obituary crop.
+
+And yet it's no time at all since you and I were back at Siwash College,
+making a dear playmate out of trouble from morning till night. I wonder
+what it is in college that makes a fellow want to stick his finger into
+conventions and customs and manners, to say nothing of the revised
+statutes, and stir the whole mess 'round and 'round! When you're in
+college, college life seems big and all the rest of the world so small
+that what you want to do as a student seems to be the only important
+thing in life--no matter if what you want to do is only to put a
+free-lunch sign over the First Methodist Church. What does the college
+student care for the U. S. A., the planet or the solar system? Why, at
+Siwash, I remember the biggest man in the world was Ole Skjarsen. Next
+to him was Coach Bost, then Rogers, captain of the football team, and
+then Jensen, the quarter. After him came Frankling, of the Alfalfa
+Delts, whose father picked up bargains in railroads instead of gloves;
+then came Prexy, and after him the President of the United States and a
+few scattered celebrities, tailing down to the Mayor of Jonesville and
+its leading citizens--mere nobodies.
+
+That's how important the outside world seemed to us. Is it any wonder
+that when we wanted to go downtown in pajamas and plug hats we paddled
+right along? Or that when we wanted to steal a couple of actors and tie
+them in a barn, while two of us took their places, we did not hesitate
+to do so? We felt perfectly free to do just what we pleased. The college
+understood us, and what the world thought never entered our heads.
+
+Those were certainly nightmarish times for the Faculty of a small but
+husky college filled with live wires who specialized in applied
+mischief. It beats all what peculiar things college students can do and
+not think anything of it at all; and it's funny how closely wisdom and
+blame foolishness seem to be related. I remember after I had spent two
+hours putting my Polykon down on a concrete foundation so that I could
+recite John Stuart Mill by the ream, it seemed as if I couldn't live
+half an hour longer without a certain kind of pie that was kept in
+captivity a mile away downtown at a lunch-counter. And, moreover, I
+couldn't eat that pie alone. A college student doesn't know how to
+masticate without an assistant or two. When I think of the hours and
+hours I have spent traveling around at midnight and battering on the
+doors of perfectly respectable houses, trying to drag some student out
+and take him a mile or two away downtown after pie, I am struck with
+awe. When I came to this town I walked two days for a job and then sat
+around with my feet on a sofa cushion for three days. I'll bet I've
+walked twice as far hunting up some devoted friend to help me go
+downtown and eat a piece of pie. And that pie seemed three times as
+important as the easy lessons for beginners in running the earth that I
+had been absorbing all the evening.
+
+You needn't grin, Bill. You were just as bad. I remember you were the
+biggest math. shark in college. You could do calculus problems that took
+all the English letters from A to Z and then slopped over into the Greek
+alphabet; and everybody predicted that you would be a great man if
+anybody ever found any use for calculus. And yet the chief ambition of
+your life was to find a way of tampering with the college clock so that
+it would run twice as fast as its schedule. You used to sit around and
+figure all evening over it and declare that if you could only do it once
+and watch the profs. letting out classes early and going home to supper
+at one P. M. you would consider your life well spent. Sounds fiddling
+now, doesn't it? But I admired you for it then. I really looked up to
+you, Bill, as a man with a firm, fixed purpose, while I was just a
+trifler who would be satisfied to steal the hands of the clock or jolly
+it into striking two hundred times in a row.
+
+There was Rearick, for instance. He was the smartest man in our class.
+Took scholarship prizes as carelessly as a policeman takes peanuts from
+a Dago stand. Since then he's gone up so fast that every time I see him
+I insult him by congratulating him on getting the place he's just been
+promoted from. But what was Rearick's hobby at Siwash? Stealing hatpins.
+He had four hundred hatpins when he graduated, and he never could see
+anything wrong in it. Guess he's got them yet. Perkins is in Congress
+already. He out-debated the whole Northwest and wrote pieces on subjects
+so heavy that you could break up coal with them. But I never saw him so
+earnest in debate as he was the night he talked old Bill Morrison into
+letting him drive his hack for him all evening. He told me he had driven
+every hack in town but Bill's, and that Bill had baffled him for two
+years. It cost him four dollars to turn the trick, but he was happier
+after it than he was when he won the Siwash-Muggledorfer debate. Said he
+was ready to graduate now--college held nothing further for him.
+Perkins' brains weren't addled, because he has been working them double
+shift ever since. He just had the college microbe, that's all. It gets
+into your gray matter and makes you enjoy things turned inside out. You
+remember "Prince" Hogboom's funeral, don't you?
+
+What year was it? Why, ninety-ump-teen. What? That's right, you got out
+the year before. I remember they held your diploma until you paid for
+the library cornerstone that your class stole and cut up into
+paper-weights. Well, by not staying the next year you missed the most
+unsuccessful funeral that was ever held in the history of Siwash or
+anywhere else. It was one of the very few funerals on record in which
+the corpse succeeded in licking the mourners. I've got a small scar from
+it now. You may think you're going home to that valuable baby of yours,
+but you are not. You'll hear me out. I haven't talked with a Siwash man
+for a month, and all of these Hale and Jarhard and Stencilmania fellows
+give me an ashy taste in my mouth when I talk with them. It's about as
+much fun talking college days with a fellow from another school as it is
+to talk ranching with a New England old maid; and when I get hold of a
+Siwash man you can bet I hang on to him as long as my talons will stick.
+You just sit right there and start another Wheeling conflagration while
+I tell you how we killed Hogboom to make a Siwash holiday.
+
+I helped kill him myself. It was my first murder. It was an awful thing
+to do, but we were desperate men. It was spring--in May--and not one of
+us had a cut left. You know how unimportant your cuts are in the fall
+when you know that you can skip classes ten times that year without
+getting called up on the green carpet and gimleted by the Faculty. Ten
+cuts seem an awful lot when you begin. You throw 'em away for anything.
+You cut class to go downtown and buy a cigarette. You cut class to see a
+dog fight. I've even known a fellow to cut a class in the fall because
+he had to go back to the room and put on a clean collar. But, oh, how
+different it is in May, when you haven't a cut left to your name and the
+Faculty has been holding meetings on you, anyway; when classroom is a
+jail and the campus just outside the window is a paradise, green and
+sunshiny and fanned by warm breezes--excuse these poetries. And you can
+sit in your class in Evidences of Christianity--of which you knew as
+much as a Chinese laundryman does of force-feed lubrication--and look
+out of the window and see your best girl sitting on the grass with some
+smug oyster who has saved up his cuts. How I used to hate these chaps
+who saved up their cuts till spring and then took my girl out walking
+while I went to classes! Is there anything more maddening, I'd like to
+know, than to sit before a big, low window trying to follow a psychology
+recitation closely enough to get up when called on, and at the same time
+watch five girls, with all of whom you are dead in love, strolling
+slowly off into the bright distance with five job-lot male beings who
+are dull and uninteresting and just cold-blooded enough to save their
+cuts until the springtime? If there is I've never had it.
+
+In this spring of umpty-steen it seemed as if only one ambition in the
+world was worth achieving--that was to get out of classes. Most of us
+had used up our cuts long ago. The Faculty is never any too patient in
+the spring, anyhow, and a lot of us were on the ragged edge. I remember
+feeling very confidently that if I went up before that brain trust in
+the Faculty room once more and tried to explain how it was that I was
+giving absent treatment to my beloved studies, said Faculty would take
+the college away from me and wouldn't let me play with it never no more.
+And that's an awful distressing fear to hang over a man who loves and
+enjoys everything connected with a college except the few trifling
+recitations which take up his time and interfere with his plans. It hung
+over five of us who were trying to plan some way of going over to
+Hambletonian College to see our baseball team wear deep paths around
+their diamond. We were certain to win, and as the Hambletonians hadn't
+found this out there was a legitimate profit to be made from our
+knowledge--profit we yearned for and needed frightfully. I wonder if
+these Wall Street financiers and Western railroad men really think they
+know anything about hard times? Why, I've known times to be so hard in
+May that three men would pool all their available funds and then toss up
+to see which one of them would eat the piece of pie the total sum
+bought. I've known Seniors to begin selling their personal effects in
+April--a pair of shoes for a dime, a dress suit for five dollars--and to
+go home in June with a trunk full of flags and dance programs and
+nothing else. I've known students to buy velveteen pants in the spring
+and go around with big slouch hats and very long hair--not because they
+were really artistic and Bohemian, but because it was easier to buy the
+trousers and have them charged than it was to find a quarter for a
+haircut.
+
+That's how busted live college students with unappreciative dads can get
+in the spring. That's how busted we were; and there was Hambletonian,
+twenty miles away, full of money and misguided faith in their team. If
+we could scrape up a little cash we could ride over on our bicycles and
+transfer the financial stringency to the other college with no trouble
+at all. But it was a midweek game and not one of us had a cut left. That
+was why we murdered Hogboom.
+
+It happened one evening when we were sitting on the front porch of the
+Eta Bita Pie house. That was the least expensive thing we could do. We
+had been discussing girls and baseball and spring suits, and the
+comparative excellence of the wheat cakes at the Union Lunch Counter and
+Jim's place. But whatever we talked about ran into money in the end and
+we had to change the subject. There's mighty little a poor man can talk
+about in spring in college, I can tell you. We discussed around for an
+hour or two, bumping into the dollar mark in every direction, and
+finally got so depressed that we shut up and sat around with our heads
+in our hands. That seemed to be about the only thing to do that didn't
+require money.
+
+"We'll have to do something desperate to get to that game," said Hogboom
+at last. Hogboom was a Senior. He ranked "sublime" in football,
+"excellent" in baseball, "good" in mandolin, "fair" in dancing, and from
+there down in Greek, Latin and Mathematics.
+
+"Intelligent boy," said Bunk Bailey pleasantly; "tell us what it must
+be. Desperate things done to order, day or night, with care and
+thoroughness. Trot out your desperate thing and get me an axe. I'll do
+it."
+
+"Well," said Hogboom, "I don't know, but it seems to me that if one of
+us was to die maybe the Faculty would take a day off and we could go
+over to Hambletonian without getting cuts."
+
+"Fine scheme; get me a gun, Hogboom." "Do you prefer drowning or
+lynching?" "Kill him quick, somebody." "Look pleasant, please, while the
+operator is working." "What do you charge for dying?" Oh, we guyed him
+good and plenty, which is a way they have at old Harvard and middle-aged
+Siwash and Infant South Dakota University and wherever two students are
+gathered together anywhere in the U. S. A.
+
+Hogboom only grinned. "Prattle away all you please," he said, "but I
+mean it. I've got magnificent facilities for dying just now. I'll
+consider a proposition to die for the benefit of the cause if you
+fellows will agree to keep me in cigarettes and pie while I'm dead."
+
+"Done," says I, "and in embalming fluid, too. But just demonstrate this
+theorem, Hoggy, old boy. How extensively are you going to die?"
+
+"Just enough to get a holiday," said Hogboom. "You see, I happen to have
+a chum in the telegraph office in Weeping Water, where I live. Now if I
+were to go home to spend Sunday and you fellows were to receive a
+telegram that I had been kicked to death by an automobile, would you
+have sense enough to show it to Prexy?"
+
+"We would," we remarked, beginning to get intelligent.
+
+"And, after he had confirmed the sad news by telegram, would you have
+sense enough left to suggest that college dismiss on Tuesday and hold a
+memorial meeting?"
+
+"We would," we chuckled.
+
+"And would you have foresight enough to suggest that it be held in the
+morning so that you could rush away to Weeping Water in the afternoon to
+attend the funeral?"
+
+"Yes, indeed," we said, so mildly that the cop two blocks away strolled
+down to see what was up.
+
+"And then would you be diplomatic enough to produce a telegram saying
+that the report was false, just too late to start the afternoon
+classes?"
+
+"You bet!" we whooped, pounding Hogboom with great joy. Then we sat down
+as unconcernedly as if we were planning to go to the vaudeville the next
+afternoon and arranged the details of Hogboom's assassination. As I was
+remarking, positively nothing looks serious to a college boy until after
+he has done it.
+
+That was on Friday night. On Saturday we killed Hogboom. That is, he
+killed himself. He got permission to go home over Sunday and retired to
+an upper back room in our house, very unostentatiously. He had already
+written to his operator chum, who had attended college just long enough
+to take away his respect for death, the integrity of the telegraph
+service and practically everything else. The result was that at nine
+o'clock that evening a messenger boy rang our bell and handed in a
+telegram. It was brief and terrible. Wilbur Hogboom had been submerged
+in the Weeping Water River while trying to abduct a catfish from his
+happy home and had only just been hauled out entirely extinct.
+
+It was an awful shock to us. We had expected him to be shot. We read it
+solemnly and then tiptoed up to Hogboom with it. He turned pale when he
+saw the yellow slip.
+
+"What is it?" he asked hurriedly. "How did it happen?"
+
+"You were drowned, Hoggy, old boy," Wilkins said. "Drowned in your
+little old Weeping Water River. They have got you now and you're all
+damp and drippy, and your best girl is having one hysteric after
+another. Don't you think you ought to throw that cigarette away and show
+some respect to yourself? We've all quit playing cards and are going to
+bed early in your honor."
+
+"Well, I'm not," said Hogboom. "It's the first time I have ever been
+dead, and I'm going to stay up all night and see how I feel. Another
+thing, I'm going down and telephone the news to Prexy myself. I've had
+nothing but hard words out of him all my college course, and if he can't
+think up something nice to say on an occasion like this I'm going to
+give him up."
+
+Hogboom called up Prexy and in a shaking voice read him the telegram. We
+sat around, choking each other to preserve the peace, and listened to
+the following cross section of a dialogue--telephone talk is so
+interesting when you just get one hemisphere of it.
+
+"Hello! That you, Doctor? This is the Eta Bita Pie House. I've some very
+sad news to tell you. Hogboom was drowned to-day in the Weeping Water
+River. We've just had a telegram--Yes, quite dead--No chance of a
+mistake, I'm afraid--Yes, they recovered him--We're all broken up--Oh,
+yes, he was a fine fellow--We loved him deeply--I'm glad you thought so
+much of him--He was always so frank in his admiration of you--Yes, he
+was honorable--Yes, and brilliant, too--Of course, we valued him for
+his good fellowship, but, as you say, he was also an earnest boy--It's
+awful--Yes, a fine athlete--I wish he could hear you say that,
+Doctor--No, I'm afraid we can't fill his place--Yes, it is a loss to the
+college--I guess you just address telegram to his folks at Weeping
+Water--That's how we're sending ours--Good-night--Yes, a fine
+fellow--Good-night."
+
+Hogboom hung up the 'phone and went upstairs, where he lay for an hour
+or two with his face full of pillows. The rest of us weren't so gay. We
+could see the humor of the thing all right, but the awful fact that we
+were murderers was beginning to hang over our heads. It was easy enough
+to kill Hogboom, but now that he was dead the future looked tolerably
+complicated. Suppose something happened? Suppose he didn't stay dead?
+There's no peace for a murderer, anyway. We didn't sleep much that
+night.
+
+The next day it was worse. We sat around and entertained callers all
+day. Half a hundred students called and brought enough woe to fit out a
+Democratic headquarters on Presidential election night. They all had
+something nice to say of Hoggy. We sat around and mourned and gloomed
+and agreed with them until we were ready to yell with disgust.
+
+Hogboom was the most disgracefully lively corpse I ever saw. He insisted
+on sitting at the head of the stairs where he could hear every good word
+that was said of him, and the things he demanded of us during the day
+would have driven a stone saint to crime. Four times we went downtown
+for pie; three times for cigarettes; once for all the Sunday newspapers,
+and once for ice cream. As I told you, it was May, the time of the year
+when street-car fare is a problem of financial magnitude. We had to
+borrow money from the cook before night. Hoggy had us helpless, and he
+was taking a mean and contemptible advantage of the fact that he was a
+corpse. Half a dozen times we were on the verge of letting him come to
+life. It would have served him right.
+
+Old Siwash was just naturally submerged in sorrow when Monday morning
+came. The campus dripped with sadness. The Faculty oozed regret at every
+pore. We loyal friends of Hogboom were looked on as the chief mourners
+and it was up to us to fill the part. We did our best. We talked with
+the soft pedal on. We went without cigarettes. We wiped our eyes
+whenever we got an audience. Time after time we told the sad story and
+exhibited the telegram. By noon more particulars began to come in. Prexy
+got an answer to his telegram of condolence. The funeral, the telegram
+said, would be on Tuesday afternoon. There was great and universal grief
+in Weeping Water, where Hogboom had been held in reverent esteem.
+Hoggy's chum in the telegraph office simply laid himself out on that
+telegram. Prexy read it to me himself and wiped his eyes while he did
+it. He was a nice, sympathetic man, Prexy was, when he wasn't discussing
+cuts or scholarship.
+
+Getting the memorial meeting was so easy we hated to take it. The
+Faculty met to pass resolutions Monday afternoon, and when our
+delegation arrived they treated us like brothers. It was just like
+entering the camp of the enemy under a flag of truce. Many a time I've
+gone in on that same carpet, but never with such a feeling of holy calm.
+"They would, of course, hold the memorial meeting," said Prexy. They had
+in fact decided on this already. They would, of course, dismiss college
+all day. It was, perhaps, best to hold the memorial in the morning if so
+many of us were going out to Weeping Water. It was nice so many of us
+could go. Prexy was going. So was the mathematics professor, old
+"Ichthyosaurus" James, a very fine old ruin, whom Hogboom hated with a
+frenzy worthy of a better cause, but who, it seemed, had worked up a
+great regard for Hogboom through having him for three years in the same
+trigonometry class.
+
+We went out of Faculty meeting men and equals with the professors. They
+walked down to the corner with us, I remember, and I talked with Cander,
+the Polykon professor, who had always seemed to me to be the embodiment
+of Comanche cruelty and cunning. We talked of Hogboom all the way to the
+corner. Wonderful how deeply the Faculty loved the boy; and with what
+Spartan firmness they had concealed all indications of it through his
+career!
+
+When Monday night came we began to breathe more easily. Of course there
+was some kind of a deluge coming when Hogboom appeared, but that was
+his affair. We didn't propose to monkey with the resurrection at all. He
+could do his own explaining. To tell the truth, we were pretty sore at
+Hogboom. He was making a regular Roman holiday out of his demise. It
+kept four men busy running errands for him. We had to retail him every
+compliment that we had heard during the day, especially if it came from
+the Faculty. We had to describe in detail the effect of the news upon
+six or seven girls, for all of whom Hogboom had a tender regard. He
+insisted upon arranging the funeral and vetoed our plans as fast as we
+made them. He was as domineering and ugly as if he was the only man who
+had ever met a tragic end. He acted as if he had a monopoly. We hated
+him cordially by Monday night, but we were helpless. Hoggy claimed that
+being dead was a nerve-wearing and exhausting business, and that if he
+didn't get the respect due to him as a corpse he would put on his plug
+hat and a plush curtain and walk up the main street of Jonesville. And
+as he was a football man and a blamed fool combined we didn't see any
+way of preventing him.
+
+However, everything looked promising. We had made all the necessary
+arrangements. The students were to meet in chapel at nine o'clock in the
+morning and eulogize Hogboom for an hour, after which college was to be
+dismissed for the day in order that unlimited mourning could be indulged
+in. There were to be speeches by the Faculty and by students. Maxfield,
+the human textbook, was to make the address for the Senior class. We
+chuckled when we thought how he was toiling over it. Noddy Pierce, of
+our crowd, was to talk about Hogboom as a brother; Rogers, of the
+football team, was to make a few grief-saturated remarks. So was
+Perkins. Every one was confidently expecting Perkins to make the effort
+of his life and swamp the chapel in sorrow. He was in the secret and he
+afterward said that he would rather try to write a Shakespearean tragedy
+offhand than to write another funeral oration about a man who he knew
+was at that moment sitting in a pair of pajamas in an upper room half a
+mile away and yelling for pie.
+
+As a matter of fact, there were so many in the secret that we were dead
+afraid that it would explode. We had to put the baseball team on so that
+they would be prepared to go over to Hambletonian at noon. The game had
+been called off, of course, and Hambletonian had been telegraphed. But I
+was secretary of the Athletic Club and had done the telegraphing. So I
+addressed the telegram to my aunt in New Jersey. It puzzled the dear old
+lady for months, I guess, because she kept writing to me about it. We
+had to tell all the fellows in the frat house and every one of the
+conspirators let in a friend or two. There were about fifty students who
+weren't as soggy with grief as they should have been by Monday night.
+
+I blame Hogboom entirely for what happened. He started it when he
+insisted that he be smuggled into the chapel to hear his own funeral
+orations. We argued half the Monday night with him, but it was no use.
+He simply demanded it. If all dead men are as disagreeable as Hogboom
+was, no undertaker's job for me. He was the limit. He put on a blue
+bath-robe and got as far as the door on his promenade downtown before we
+gave in and promised to do anything he wanted. We had to break into the
+chapel and stow him away in a little grilled alcove in the attic on the
+side of the auditorium where he could hear everything. Sounds
+uncomfortable, but don't imagine it was. That nervy slavedriver made us
+lug over two dozen sofa pillows, a rug or two, a bottle of moisture and
+three pies to while away the time with. That was where we first began to
+think of revenge. We got it, too--only we got it the way Samson did when
+he jerked the columns out from under the roof and furnished the material
+for a general funeral, with himself in the leading role.
+
+By the time we got Hogboom planted in his luxurious nest, about three
+A. M., we were ready to do anything. Some of us were for giving the
+whole snap away, but Pierce and Perkins and Rogers objected. They wanted
+to deliver their speeches at the meeting. If we would leave it to them,
+they said, they would see that justice was ladled out.
+
+The whole college and most of the town were at the memorial meeting. It
+was a grand and tear-spangled occasion. There were three grades of
+emotion plainly visible. There was the resigned and almost pleased
+expression of the students who weren't in on the deal and who saw a
+vacation looming up for that afternoon; the grieved and sympathetic
+sorrow of the Faculty who were attempting to mourn for what they had
+always called a general school nuisance; and there was the phenomenally
+solemn woe of the conspirators, who were spreading it on good and thick.
+
+The Faculty spoke first. Beats all how much of a hypocrite a good man
+can be when he feels it to be his duty. There was Bates, the Latin prof.
+He had struggled with Hogboom three years and had often expressed the
+firm opinion that, if Hoggy were removed from this world by a
+masterpiece of justice of some sort, the general tone of civilization
+would go up fifty per cent. Yet Bates got up that morning and
+cried--yes, sir, actually cried. Cried into a large pocket handkerchief
+that wasn't water-tight, either. That's more than Hoggy would ever have
+done for him. And Prexy was so sympathetic and spoke so beautifully of
+young soldiers getting drawn aside by Fate on their way to the battle,
+and all that sort of thing, that you would have thought he had spent the
+last three years loving Hogboom--whereas he had spent most of the time
+trying to get some good excuse for rooting him out of school. You know
+how Faculties always dislike a good football player. I think, myself,
+they are jealous of his fame.
+
+Maxfield made a telling address for the Senior class. He and Hoggy had
+always disagreed, but it was all over now; and the way he laid it on was
+simply wonderful. I thought of Hoggy up there behind the grilling,
+swelling with pride and satisfaction as Maxfield told how brave, how
+tender, how affectionate and how honorable he was, and I wished I was
+dead, too. Being dead with a string to it is one of the finest things
+that can happen to a man if he can just hang around and listen to
+people.
+
+Pierce got up. He was the college silver-tongue, and we settled back to
+listen to him. Previous speakers had made Hoggy out about as fine as Sir
+Philip Sidney, but they were amateurs. Here was where Hoggy went up
+beside A. Lincoln and Alexander if Pierce was anywhere near himself.
+
+There is no denying that Pierce started out magnificently. But pretty
+soon I began to have an uneasy feeling that something was wrong. He was
+eloquent enough, but it seemed to me that he was handling the deceased a
+little too strenuously. You know how you can damn a man in nine ways and
+then pull all the stingers out with a "but" at the end of it. That was
+what Pierce was doing. "What if Hogboom was, in a way, fond of his
+ease?" he thundered. "What if the spirit of good fellowship linked arms
+with him when lessons were waiting, and led him to the pool hall? He may
+have been dilatory in his college duties; he may have wasted his
+allowance on billiards instead of in missionary contributions. He may
+have owed money--yes, a lot of money. He may, indeed, have been a
+little selfish--which one of us isn't? He may have frittered away time
+for which his parents were spending the fruit of their early toil--but
+youth, friends, is a golden age when life runs riot, and he is only half
+a man who stops to think of petty prudence."
+
+That was all very well to say about Rameses or Julius Caesar or some
+other deceased who is pretty well seasoned, but I'll tell you it made
+the college gasp, coming when it did. It sounded sacrilegious and to me
+it sounded as if some one who was noted as an orator was going to get
+thumped by the late Mr. Hogboom about the next day. I perspired a lot
+from nervousness as Pierce rumbled on, first praising the departed and
+then landing on him with both oratorical feet. When he finally sat down
+and mopped his forehead the whole school gave one of those long breaths
+that you let go of when you have just come up from a dive under cold
+water.
+
+Rogers followed Pierce. Rogers wasn't much of a talker, but he surpassed
+even his own record that day in falling over himself. When he tried to
+illustrate how thoughtful and generous Hogboom was he blundered into the
+story of the time Hoggy bet all of his money on a baseball game at
+Muggledorfer, and of how he walked home with his chum and carried the
+latter's coat and grip all the way. That made the Faculty wriggle, I can
+tell you. He illustrated the pluck of the deceased by telling how
+Hogboom, as a Freshman, dug all night alone to rescue a man imprisoned
+in a sewer, spurred on by his cries--though Rogers explained in his
+halting way, it afterward turned out that this was only the famous
+"sewer racket" which is worked on every green Freshman, and that the
+cries for help came from a Sophomore who was alternately smoking a pipe
+and yelling into a drain across the road. Still, Rogers said, it
+illustrated Hogboom's nobility of spirit. In his blundering fashion he
+went on to explain some more of Hoggy's good points, and by the time he
+sat down there wasn't a shred of the latter's reputation left intact.
+The whole school was grinning uncomfortably, and the Faculty was acting
+as if it was sitting, individually and collectively, on seventeen great
+gross of red-hot pins.
+
+By this time we conspirators were divided between holy joy and a fear
+that the thing was going to be overdone. It was plain to be seen that
+the Faculty wasn't going to stand for much more loving frankness. Pierce
+whispered to Tad Perkins, Hogboom's chum, and the worst victim of his
+posthumous whims, to draw it mild and go slow. Perkins was to make the
+last talk, and we trembled in our shoes when he got up.
+
+We needn't have feared for Perkins. He was as smooth as a Tammany
+orator. He praised Hogboom so pathetically that the chapel began to show
+acres of white handkerchiefs again. Very gently he talked over his
+career, his bravery and his achievements. Then just as poetically and
+gently he glided on into the biggest lie that has been told since
+Ananias short-circuited retribution with his unholy tale.
+
+"What fills up the heart and the throat, fellows," he swung along, "is
+not the loss we have sustained; not the irreparable injury to all our
+college activities; not even the vacant chair that must sit mutely
+eloquent beside us this year. It's something worse than that. Perhaps I
+should not be telling this. It's known to but a few of his most intimate
+friends. The saddest thing of all is the fact that back in Weeping Water
+there is a girl--a lovely girl--who will never smile again."
+
+Phew! You could just feel the feminine side of the chapel
+stiffen--Hogboom was the worst fusser in college. He was chronically in
+love with no less than four girls and was devoted to dozens at a time.
+We had reason to believe that he was at that time engaged to two, and
+spring was only half over at that. This was the best of all; our revenge
+was complete.
+
+"A girl," Perkins purred on, "who has grown up with him from childhood;
+who whispered her promise to him while yet in short dresses; who sat at
+home and waited and dreamed while her knight fought his way to glory in
+college; who treasured his vows and wore his ring and--"
+
+"'Tain't so, you blamed idiot!" came a hoarse voice from above. If the
+chapel had been stormed by Comanches there couldn't have been more of a
+commotion. A thousand pairs of eyes focused themselves on the grill. It
+sagged in and then disappeared with a crash. The towsled head of Hogboom
+came out of the opening.
+
+"I'll fix you for that, Tad Perkins!" he yelled. "I'll get even with you
+if it takes me the rest of my life. I ain't engaged to any Weeping Water
+girl. You know it, you liar! I've had enough of this--" You couldn't
+hear any more for the shrieks. When a supposedly dead man sticks his
+head out of a jog in the ceiling and offers to fight his Mark Antony it
+is bound to create some commotion. Even the professors turned white. As
+for the girls--great smelling salts, what a cinch! They fainted in
+windrows. Some of us carried out as many as six, and you had better
+believe we were fastidious in our choice, too.
+
+There had never been such a sensation since Siwash was invented. Between
+the panic-stricken, the dazed, the hilarious, the indignant and the
+guilty wretches like myself, who were wondering how in thunder there was
+going to be any explaining done, that chapel was just as coherent as a
+madhouse. And then Hogboom himself burst in a side door, and it took
+seven of us to prevent him from reducing Perkins to a paste and
+frescoing him all over the chapel walls. Everybody was rattled but
+Prexy. I think Prexy's circulation was principally ice water. When the
+row was over he got up and blandly announced that classes would take up
+immediately and that the Faculty would meet in extraordinary session
+that noon.
+
+How did we get out of it? Well, if you want to catch the last car, old
+man, I'll have to hit the high spots on the sequel. Of course, it was a
+tremendous scandal--a memorial meeting breaking up in a fight. We all
+stood to be expelled, and some of the Faculty were sorry they couldn't
+hang us, I guess, from the way they talked. But in the end it blew over
+because there wasn't much of anything to hang on any one. The telegrams
+were all traced to the agent at Weeping Water, and he identified the
+sender as a long, short, thick, stout, agricultural-looking man in a
+plug hat, or words to that effect. What's more, he declared it wasn't
+his duty to chase around town confirming messages--he was paid to send
+them. Hogboom had a harder time, but he, too, explained that he had come
+home from Weeping Water a day late, owing to a slight attack of
+appendicitis, and that when he found himself late for chapel he had
+climbed up into the balcony through a side door to hear the chapel talk,
+of which he was very fond, and had found, to his amazement, that he was
+being reviled by his friends under the supposition that he was dead and
+unable to defend himself. Nobody believed Hogboom, but nobody could
+suggest any proof of his villainy--so the Faculty gave him an extra
+five-thousand-word oration by way of punishment, and Hogboom made
+Perkins write it in two nights by threats of making a clean breast. Poor
+Hoggy came out of it pretty badly. I think it broke both of his
+engagements, and what between explaining to the Faculty and studying to
+make a good showing and redeem himself, he didn't have time to work up
+another before Commencement--while the rest of us lived in mortal terror
+of exposure and didn't enjoy ourselves a bit all through May, though it
+was some comfort to reflect on what would have happened if the scheme
+had worked--for Hambletonian beat us to a frazzle that afternoon.
+
+That's what we got for monkeying with a solemn subject. But, pshaw! Who
+cares in college? What a student can do is limited only by what he can
+think up. Did I ever tell you what we did to the English Explorer? Take
+another cigar. It isn't late yet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+COLLEGES WHILE YOU WAIT
+
+
+Mind you, old head, I'm not saying that a little education isn't a good
+thing in a college course. I learned a lot of real knowledge in school
+myself that I wouldn't have missed for anything, though I have forgotten
+it now. But what irritate me are the people who think that the education
+you get in a modern American super-heated, cross-compound college comes
+to you already canned in neat little textbooks sold by the trust at one
+hundred per cent profit, and that all you have to do is to go to your
+room with them, fill up a student lamp with essence of General Education
+and take the lid off.
+
+Honest, lots of them think that. It might have been so, too, in the good
+old days when there was only one college graduate for each town and he
+had to do the heavy thinking for the whole community. But, pshaw! the
+easiest job in the world nowadays is to stuff your storage battery full
+of Greek verbs and obituaries in English literature, and the hardest job
+is to get it hitched up to something that will bring in the yellowbacks,
+the chopped-wood furniture, the automobile tires and the large
+majorities in the fall elections. I've seen brilliant boys at old
+Siwash go out of college knowing everything that had ever happened in
+the world up to one hundred years ago, and try to peddle hexameters in
+the wholesale district in Chicago. And I've seen boys who slid through
+the course just half a hair's breadth ahead of the Faculty boot, go out
+and do the bossing for a whole Congressional district in five years.
+They hadn't learned the exact chemical formula of the universe, but they
+had learned how to run the blamed thing from practicing on the college
+during study hours.
+
+Not that I'm knocking on knowledge, you understand. Knowledge is, of
+course, a grand thing to have around the house. But nowadays knowledge
+alone isn't worth as much as it used to be, seems to me. A man has to
+mix it up with imagination, and ingenuity, and hustle, and nerve, and
+the science of getting mad at the right time, and a fourteen-year course
+of study in understanding the other fellow. The college professors lump
+all this in one course and call it applied deviltry. They don't put it
+down in the catalogue and they encourage you to cut classes in it. But,
+honestly, I wouldn't trade what I learned under Professor Petey Simmons,
+warm boy and official gadfly to the Faculty, for all the Lat. and Greek
+and Analit. and Diffy. Cal., and the other studies--whatever they
+were--that I took in good old Siwash.
+
+You remember Petey, of course. He went through Siwash in four years and
+eight suspensions, and came out fresh--as fresh as when he went in,
+which is saying a good deal. Every summer during his career the Faculty
+went to a rest cure and tried to forget him. He was as handy to have
+around school as a fox terrier in a cat show. There are two varieties of
+college students--the midnight-oil and the natural-gas kind; and Petey
+was a whole gas well in himself. Not that he didn't study. He was the
+hardest student in the college, but he didn't recite much in classes.
+Sometimes he recited in the police court, sometimes to his Pa back home,
+and sometimes the whole college took a hand in looking over his
+examination papers. He used to pass medium fair in Horace; sub-passable
+in Trig., and extraordinary mediocre in Polikon. But his marks in
+Imagination, the Psychological Moment and Dodging Consequences were plus
+perfect, extra magnificent, and superlatively some, respectively.
+
+I saw Petey last year. He is in Chicago now. You have to bribe a
+doorkeeper and bluff a secretary to get to him--that is, you do if you
+are an ordinary mortal. But if you give the Siwash yell or the Eta Bita
+Pie whistle in the outside office he will emerge from his office out
+over the railing in one joyous jump. He came to Chicago ten years ago
+equipped with a diploma and a two-year tailor-bill back at Jonesville
+that he had been afraid to tell his folks about. If he had been a
+midnight-oil graduate he would have worn out three pairs of shoes
+hunting for a business house which was willing to let an earnest young
+scholar enter its employ at the bottom and rise gradually to the top as
+the century went by. But Petey wasn't that kind. He had been used to
+running the whole college and messing up the universe as far as one
+could see from the Siwash belfry if things didn't suit him. So he picked
+out the likeliest-looking institution on Dearborn Street and offered it
+a position as his employer. He was on the payroll before the president
+got over his daze. Two weeks later he promoted the firm to a more
+responsible job--that of paying him a bigger salary--and a year ago the
+general manager gave up and went to Europe for two years; said he would
+take a positive pleasure in coming back and looking at the map of
+Chicago after Petey had done it over to suit himself.
+
+Imagination was what did it. You can't take Imagination in any college
+classroom, but you can get more of it on the campus in four years than
+you can anywhere else in the world. You've got to have a mighty good
+imagination to get into any real warm trouble--and by the time you have
+gotten out of it again you have had to double its horse-power. That was
+Petey's daily recreation. In the morning he would think up an absolutely
+air-tight reason for being expelled from Siwash as a disturber, an
+anarchist, a superfluosity and a malefactor of great stealth. That night
+he would go to his room and figure out an equally good proof that
+nothing had happened or that whatever had happened was an act of
+Providence and not traceable to any student. Figuring out ways for
+selling bonds in carload lots was just recreation to him after a
+four-year course of this sort.
+
+But to back in on the main track. I whistled outside of Petey's office
+the other day and went in with him past two magnates, three salesmen and
+a bank president. I sat with my feet on a mahogany table--I wanted to
+put them on an oak desk, but Petey declared mahogany was none too good
+for a Siwash man--and we spent an hour talking over the time when Petey
+manufactured excitement in wholesale lots at Siwash, with me for his
+first assistant and favorite apprentice. Those are my proudest memories.
+I won my track S. and got honorably mentioned in three Commencement
+exercises; but when I want to brag of my college career do I mention
+these things? Not unless I have a lot of time. When I want to paralyze
+an alumnus of some rival college with admiration and envy, I tell him
+how Petey and I manufactured a real Wild West college--buildings,
+Faculty, bad men and all--for one day only, for the benefit of an
+Englishman who had gotten fifteen hundred miles inland without noticing
+the general color scheme of the inhabitants.
+
+We met this chap accidentally--a little favor of Providence, which had a
+special pigeonhole for us in those days. Our team had been using the
+Kiowa football team as a running track on their own field that
+afternoon, and the score was about 105 to 0 when the timekeeper turned
+off the massacre. Naturally all Siwash was happy. I will admit we were
+too happy to be careful. About two hundred of us made the hundred-mile
+trip home by local train that night, and I remember wondering, when the
+boys dumped the stove off the rear platform and tied up the conductor in
+his own bell-rope, if we weren't getting just a little bit indiscreet;
+and when a college boy really wonders if he is getting indiscreet he is
+generally doing something that will keep the grand jury busy for the
+next few months.
+
+I was in the last car, and had just finished telling "Prince" Hogboom
+that if he poked any more window-lights out with his cane he would have
+to finish the year under an assumed name, when Petey crawled over two
+mobs of rough-housers and came up to me. He was seething with
+indignation. It was breaking out all over him like a rash. Petey was
+excitable anyway.
+
+"What do you suppose I've found in the next car?" he said, fizzing like
+an escape valve.
+
+"Prof?" said I, getting alarmed.
+
+"Naw," said Petey; "worse than that. A chap that has never heard of
+Siwash. Asked me if it was a breakfast food. He's an Englishman. I'm
+ag'in' the English." He stopped and began kicking a water tank around to
+relieve himself.
+
+"How did he get this far away from home?" I asked.
+
+"He's traveling," snorted Petey; "traveling to improve his mind.
+Hopeless job. He's one of those quarter-sawed old beef-eaters who stop
+thinking as soon as they've got their education. He's the editor of a
+missionary publication, he told me, and he is writing some articles on
+Heathen America. Honest, it almost made me boil over when he asked me if
+anything was being done to educate the aborigines out here."
+
+"What did you do?" I asked.
+
+"Do?" said Petey. "Why, I answered his question, of course. I told him
+he wasn't fifty miles from a college this minute, and he said, 'Oh, I
+say now! Are you spoofing me?' What's 'spoofing'?"
+
+"Kidding, stringing, stuffing, jollying along, blowing east wind,
+turning on the gas," says I. "'Spoofing' is University English. They
+don't use slang over there, you know."
+
+"Well, then, I spoofed him," said Petey, grinning. "He said it was
+remarkable how very few revolvers he had seen, and then he wanted to
+know why there was no shooting on the train with so much disorder. He's
+pretty well posted now. I'd go a mile out of my way to help a poor dumb
+chap like him. I told him this was the Y. M. C. A. section of Siwash and
+that the real rough students were coming along on horseback. I said they
+weren't allowed on the trains because they were so fatal to passengers.
+I informed him that all the profs at Siwash went armed, and that the
+course of study consisted of mining, draw poker, shooting from the hip,
+broncho-busting, sheep-shearing, History of Art, bread-making and
+Evidences of Christianity."
+
+"Did he admit by that time that you were a good, free-handed liar?" I
+asked.
+
+"Admit nothing," said Petey; "he took it all down in his notebook and
+remarked that in a wild country like this, remote from civilization, a
+knowledge of bread-making would undoubtedly be invaluable to a man."
+
+"He was spoofing you," says I.
+
+"He wasn't," said Petey; "he thinks he's a thousand miles from a plug
+hat this minute. He's so interested he is going to stop over for a day
+or two and write up the college for his magazine. I've invited him to
+stay at the Eta Bita Pie House with us, and we're going to show him a
+real Wild West school if we have to shoot blank cartridges at the cook
+to do it."
+
+"Petey," said I solemnly, "some day you'll bump an asteroid when you go
+up in the air like this. This friend of yours will take one look at
+Siwash and ask you if Sapphira is feeling well these days."
+
+"Bet you five, my opera hat, a good mandolin and a meal ticket on Jim's
+place against your dress suit," said Petey promptly. "And you better not
+take it, either."
+
+"Done!" says I. "I bet you my hunting-case suit against your earthly
+possessions that you can't tow old Britannia-rules-the-waves around
+Siwash for a day without disclosing the fact that you are the best
+catch-as-catch-can liar in this section of the solar system."
+
+"All right," said Petey. "But you've got to help me win the stuff. This
+is a great big contract. It's going to be my masterpiece, and I need
+help."
+
+"I'm with you clear to Faculty meeting, as usual," says I. "But what's
+the use? He'll catch on."
+
+"Leave that to me," said Petey. "Anyway, he won't catch on. When I told
+him we had a checkroom for pappooses in the Siwash chapel he wrote it
+down and asked if the Indians ever massacred the professors. He wouldn't
+catch on if we fed him dog for dinner. Just come and see for yourself."
+
+I agreed with Petey when I took a good look at the victim a minute
+later. We found him in the car ahead, sitting on the edge of the seat
+and looking as if he expected to be eaten alive, without salt, any
+minute. You could have told that he was from extremely elsewhere at
+first glance. He was as different as if he had worn tattoo-marks for
+trousers. He was a stout party with black-rimmed eyeglasses, side
+whiskers that you wouldn't have believed even if you had seen them, and
+slabs of iron-gray hair with a pepper-and-salt traveling cap stuck on
+top of his head like a cupola. He was beautifully curved and his black
+preacher uniform looked as if it had been put on him by a paperhanger. I
+forgot to tell you that his name was the Reverend Ponsonby Diggs. He had
+to tell it to me four times and then write it down, for the way he
+handled his words was positively heartless. He clipped them, beheaded
+them, disemboweled them and warped them all out of shape. Have you ever
+heard a real ingrowing Englishman start a word in the roof of his mouth
+and then back away from it as if it was red-hot and had prickles on it?
+It's interesting. They seem to think it is indecent to come brazenly out
+and sound a vowel.
+
+The Reverend Ponsonby Diggs--as near as I could get it he called himself
+"Pubby Daggs"--greeted Petey with great relief. He seemed to regard us
+as a rescue brigade. "Reahly, you know, this is extraordinary," he
+sputtered. "I have never seen such disorder. What will the authorities
+do?"
+
+That touched my pride. "Pshaw, man!" I says; "we're only warming up.
+Pretty soon we'll take this train out in the woods and lose it."
+
+I meant it for a joke. But the Reverend Mr. Diggs hadn't specialized in
+American jokes. "You don't mean to say they will derail the train!" he
+said anxiously. Then I knew that Petey was going to win my dress suit.
+
+I assured the Reverend--pshaw, I'm tired of saying all that! I'm going
+to save breath. I assured Diggsey that derailing was the kindest thing
+ever done to trains by Siwash students, but that as his hosts we would
+stand by him, whatever happened. Then Petey slipped away to arrange the
+cast and I kept on answering questions. Say! that man was a regular
+magazine gun, loaded with interrogation points. Was there any danger to
+life on these trains? Would it be possible for him to take a ride in a
+stage-coach? Were train robbers still plentiful? Had gold ever been
+found around Siwash? Were the Indians troublesome? Did we have regular
+school buildings or did we live in tents? Had not the railroad had a
+distinctly--er--civilizing influence in this region? Was it not, after
+all, remarkable that the thirst for learning could be found even in this
+wild and desolate country?
+
+And Siwash is only half a day from Chicago by parlor car!
+
+I answered his questions as well as I could. I told him how hard it was
+to find professors who wouldn't get drunk, and how we had to let the men
+and women recite on alternate days after a few of the hen students had
+been winged by stray bullets. I had never heard of Greek, I said, but I
+assured him that we studied Latin and that we had a professor to whom
+Caesar was as easy as print. I told him how hard we worked to get a
+little culture and how many of the boys gave up their ponies altogether,
+wore store clothes and took 'em off when they went to bed all the time
+they were in college; but, try as I would, I couldn't make the answers
+as ridiculous as his questions. He had me on the mat, two points down
+and fighting for wind all the time. His thirst for knowledge was
+wonderful and his objection to believing what his eyes must have told
+him was still more wonderful. There he was, half-way across the country
+from New York, and he must have looked out of the car windows on the
+way; but he hadn't seen a thing. I suppose it was because he wasn't
+looking for anything but Indians.
+
+All this time Petey was circulating about the car, taking aside members
+of the Rep Rho Betas and talking to them earnestly. The Rep Rho Betas
+were the Sophomore fraternity and were the real demons of the college.
+Each year the outgoing Sophomore class initiated the twenty Freshmen who
+were most likely to meet the hangman on professional business and passed
+on the duties of the fraternity to them. The fraternity spent its time
+in pleasure and was suspected of anything violent which happened in the
+county. Petey was highbinder of the gang that year and was very far gone
+in crime.
+
+We were due home about ten P. M., and just before they untied the
+conductor Petey hauled me off to one side.
+
+"It's all fixed," he said; "it's glorious. We'll just make Siwash into a
+Wild West show for his benefit. The Rep Rho Betas will entertain him
+days and he'll stay at the Eta Pie House nights. I'm putting the Eta
+Bites on now. You've got to get him off this train before we get to the
+station and keep him busy while I arrange the program. Just give me an
+hour before you get him there. That's all I ask."
+
+Now I never was a diplomat, and the job of lugging a fat old foreigner
+around a dead college town at night and trying to make him think he was
+in peril of his life every minute was about three numbers larger than
+my size. I couldn't think of anything else, so I slipped the word to Ole
+Skjarsen that Diggs was a Kiowa professor who was coming over to get
+notes on our team and tip them off to Muggledorfer College. I judged
+this would create some hostility and I wasn't mistaken. Ole began to
+climb over his fellow-students and I was just able to beat him to his
+prey.
+
+"Come on," I whispered. "Skjarsen's on the warpath. He says he wants to
+bite up a stranger and he thinks you'll do."
+
+"Oh, my dear sir," said the Reverend Ponsonby, jumping up and grabbing a
+hatbox, "you don't mean to tell me that he will use violence?"
+
+"Violence nothing!" I yelled, picking up four pieces of baggage. "He
+won't use violence. He'll just eat you alive, that's all. He's awful
+that way. Come, quick!"
+
+"Oh, my word!" said Diggsey, grabbing his other five bundles and piling
+out of the car after me.
+
+The train was slowing down for the crossing west of Jonesville, and I
+judged it wouldn't hurt the great collector of Western local color to
+roll a little. So I yelled, "Jump for your life!" He jumped. I swung off
+and went back till I met him coming along on his shoulder-blades, with a
+procession of baggage following him. He wasn't hurt a bit, but he looked
+interesting. I brushed him off, cached the baggage--all but a suitcase
+and the hatbox which he hadn't dropped for a minute--and we began to
+edge unostentatiously into Jonesville.
+
+For an hour or more we dodged around in alleys and behind barns, while
+up on the campus the boys burned a woodshed, an old fruit-stand, half a
+hundred drygoods boxes and half a mile of wooden sidewalk by way of
+celebration. The glare in the sky was wild enough to satisfy any one,
+and when some of the boys got the old army muskets that the cadets
+drilled with out of the armory and banged away, I was happy. But how I
+did long to be close up to that fire! It was a cold night in early
+November, and as I lay behind woodsheds, with my teeth wearing
+themselves out on each other, I felt like an early Christian
+martyr--though it wasn't cold they suffered from as a rule. As for the
+Reverend Pubby, he wanted to creep away to the next town and then start
+for England disguised as a chorus girl, or anything; but I wouldn't let
+him. We sneaked around till nearly midnight and then crept up the alley
+to the Eta Bita Pie House, wondering if we would ever get warm again.
+
+I've seen some grand transformation scenes, but I never saw anything
+more impressive than the way the Eta Bita Pie House had been done over
+in two hours. We always prided ourselves on our house. It cost fifteen
+thousand dollars, exclusive of the plumber's little hold-up and the
+Oriental rugs, and it was full of polished floors and monogram
+silverware and fancy pottery and framed prints, and other
+bang-up-to-date incumbrances. But in two hours thirty boys can change a
+whole lot of scenery. They had spread dirt and sand over the floor, had
+ripped out the curtains and chased the pictures. They had poked out a
+window-light or two, had unhung a few doors, and had filled the corners
+with saddles, old clothes, flour barrels and dogs. You never saw so many
+dogs. The whole neighborhood had been raided. They were hanging round
+everywhere, homesick and miserable; and one of the Freshmen had been
+given the job of cruising around and kicking them just to keep them
+tuned up.
+
+A dozen of the fellows were playing poker on an old board table in the
+middle of the big living-hall when we came in. Their clothes were
+hand-me-downs from Noah's time, and every one of them was outraging some
+convention or other. Our boys always did go in for amateur theatricals
+pretty strongly, and the way our most talented members abused the
+English language that night when they welcomed the Reverend Pubby was as
+good as a book.
+
+"Proud ter meet you," roared Allie Bangs, our president, taking off his
+hat and making a low bow. "Set right in and enjoy yourself. White chips
+is a dime, limit is a dollar and no gunplay goes."
+
+When Pubby had explained for the third time that he had never had the
+pleasure of playing the game, Bangs finally got on to the curves in his
+pronunciation and understood him.
+
+"What! Never played poker!" he whooped. "Hell a humpin', where was you
+raised? You sure ain't a college man? Any lop-eared galoot that didn't
+play poker in Siwash would get run out by the Faculty. You ought to see
+our president put up his pile and draw to a pair of deuces. What!--a
+Reverend! I beg your pardon, friend. 'S all right. Jest name the game
+you're strong at and we'll try to accommodate you later on. Here, you
+fellows, watch my chips while I show the Reverend around our diggin's.
+You nip one like you did last time, Turk Bowman, and there'll be the
+all-firedest row that this shack has ever seed. Come right along,
+Reverend."
+
+[Illustration: "Har's das spy'" he yelled "Kill him, fallers, he ban a
+spy!"
+                    _Page 132_]
+
+That tour was a great triumph for Bangs. We always did admire his
+acting, but he outdid himself that night. The rest of us just kept quiet
+and let him handle the conversation, and I must say it sounded desperate
+enough to be convincing. Of course he slipped up occasionally and stuck
+in words that would have choked an ordinary cow-gentleman, but Diggsey
+was that dazed he wouldn't have suspected if they had been Latin. I
+thought it would be more or less of a job to explain how we were living
+in a fifteen-thousand-dollar house instead of dugouts, but Bangs never
+hesitated a minute. He explained that the house belonged to a
+millionaire cattle-owner who had built it from reading a society novel,
+and that he let us live in it because he preferred to live in the barn
+with the horses. The boys had filled their rooms full of junk and one of
+them had even tied a pig to his bed--while the way Bangs cleared
+rubbish out of the bathtub and promised to have some water heated in the
+morning was convincingly artless. He had just finished explaining that,
+owing to the boiler-plate in the walls, the house was practically Indian
+proof, when an awful fusillade of shots broke out from the kitchen.
+Bangs disappeared for a moment, gun in hand, and I watched our guest
+trying to make himself six inches narrower and three feet shorter. I
+don't know when I ever saw a chap so anxious to melt right down into a
+corner and be mistaken for a carpet tack.
+
+"'S all right," said Bangs, clumping in cheerfully. "Jest the cook
+having another fit. We've got a cook," he explained, "who gets loaded up
+'bout oncet a month so full that he cries pure alcohol, and when he gits
+that way he insists on trying to shoot cockroaches with his gun. He
+ain't never killed one, but he's gotten two Chinamen and a mule, and
+we've got to put a stop to it. He's tied up in the cellar a-swearin'
+that if he gits loose he'll come upstairs and furnish material for
+nineteen fancy funerals with silver name-plates. But, don't you worry,
+Reverend. He can't hurt a fly 'less he gits loose. Here's your room.
+That hoss blanket on the cot's brand new; towel's in the hall and you'll
+find a comb somewheres round. Just you turn in if you feel like it, and
+when you hear Wall-Eye Denton and Pete Pearsall trying to massacre each
+other in the next room it's time to git up."
+
+Pubby said he would retire at once, and we left him looking scared but
+relieved. I'll bet he sat up all night taking notes and expecting things
+to happen. We sat up, too, but for a different reason. You can't imagine
+how much work it took to get that house running backward. And it was an
+awful job to do the Wild West stunt, too. We sat and criticised each
+other's dialect and actions until there were as many as three free
+fights going on at once. One man favored the Bret Harte style of bad
+man; another adhered to the Henry Wallace Phillips brand; while still
+another insisted on following the Remington school. We compromised on a
+mixture and then spent the rest of the night learning how to forget our
+table manners.
+
+The result was magnificent. I shall never forget the Reverend Pubby's
+pained but fascinated expression as he sat at breakfast the next morning
+and watched thirty hungry savages shoveling plain, unvarnished grub into
+their faces. The breakfast couldn't have gone better if we had had a
+dress rehearsal. Our guest couldn't eat. He was afraid to talk. He just
+held on to his chair, and we could see him stiffen with horror every
+time some eater would rise up so as to increase his reach and spear a
+piece of bread six feet away with his fork. The breakfast was a
+disgusting display of Poland-China manners and was successful in every
+particular.
+
+We confidently expected Petey Simmons to turn up during the meal and
+tell us what to do next. He had spent the night with his odoriferous
+Rep Rho Beta brothers cooking up the rest of the plot and had promised
+to run up at breakfast. But no Petey appeared. We strung the meal along
+as far as we could toward dinner and then took up the job of keeping the
+Reverend Pubby contented and in the house until the life-saving crew
+arrived. Did you ever try to lie all morning with a slow-speed
+imagination? That's what we had to do. We explained to Pubby that the
+students caroused all night and never came to college in the morning; we
+told him it was against the rules for strangers to go on the campus in
+the morning; we told him it was dangerous to go out-of-doors because of
+the Alfalfa Delta, who were suspected of being cannibals; we told him
+forty thousand things, most of which contradicted each other. If it
+hadn't been for the boys who kindly started a fight whenever his
+reverence had tangled Bangs and me up hopelessly on some question we
+couldn't have survived the inquisition. As it was, I perspired about a
+barrel and my brain ached for a week.
+
+We went to lunch and put on another exhibition of free-hand feeding,
+getting more grumpy and disgusted every minute. We were all ready to
+yell for mercy and put on our civilized clothes when we heard a terrific
+riot from outside. Then Petey came in.
+
+If there ever was a sure-enough Wild Westerner it was Petey that
+afternoon. He had on the whole works--two-acre hat, red woolen shirt,
+spurs, and even chaps--nice hairy ones. I discovered next day that he
+had swiped my fine bearskin rug and cut it up to make them. In his belt
+he had a revolver which couldn't have been less than two feet long.
+Petey was a little fellow, with one of those nineteen-sizes-too-large
+voices, and when he turned the full organ on you would have thought old
+Mount Vesuvius had wakened up and rumbled into the room.
+
+"Howdy, Reverend," he thundered. "We jest come along to take you on a
+little ride over to college. Got a nice gentle cow-pony out here. She
+bucks as easy as a rockin'-horse. Don't mind about your clothes. Just
+hop right on. The boys is some anxious to get along, it being most
+classtime."
+
+We followed the two of them out to the back yard. There were seven Rep
+Rho Betas on seven moth-eaten ponies which they had dug up from goodness
+knows where. The rigs they had on represented each fellow's idea of what
+a cowboy looked like, and would have made a real cowpuncher hang himself
+for shame. Petey confessed afterward that, of all the Rep Rho Betas,
+only seven had ever been on a horse, and, of these, three kept him in
+agony for fear they would fall off and compel him to explain that they
+were on the verge of delirium tremens. They were a weird-looking bunch,
+but, gee! they were fierce. Pirates would have been kittens beside them.
+
+[Illustration: We spent another five minutes hoisting him aboard a
+prehistoric plug
+                    _Page 125_]
+
+I guess the Reverend Pubby had never done much in the Centaur line, for
+he came very near balking entirely right there. It took us five minutes
+to explain that there was no other way of getting out to Siwash and
+that the Faculty would take it as a personal insult if he didn't come.
+We also had to explain how disagreeable the Faculty was when it was
+insulted. And then after he had consented we spent another five minutes
+hoisting him aboard a prehistoric plug and telling him how to stick on.
+Then the line filed out through the alley with a regular ghost-dance
+yell, while we detained Petey. We were about to massacre him for leaving
+us to sweat all morning, but we forgot all about it when Petey told us
+what he had been doing. He admitted that, in order not to annoy the
+profs and cause unnecessary questions, he had taken the liberty to build
+a temporary Siwash College for this special occasion.
+
+Yes, sir; nothing less than that. You remember Dillpickle Academy, the
+extinct college in the west part of town? It had been closed for years
+because the only remaining student had gotten lonesome. But most of the
+equipment was still there, and Petey had borrowed it of the caretaker
+for one day only, promising to give it back as good as new in the
+morning. Petey could have borrowed the great seal away from the
+Department of State. He and his Rep Rho Betas had let a lot of students
+into the deal, had been working all morning, and Siwash was ready for
+business at the new stand.
+
+We wanted to measure Petey for a medal then and there, but he refused,
+being needed on the firing-line. He rode off and we made a grand rush
+for the new Siwash College--special one-day stand, benefit performance.
+We got there before the escorting committee and had a fine view of the
+grand entry. The Reverend Pubby had fallen off four times, and the last
+mile he had led his horse. It was a sagacious scheme bringing him along,
+as none of the others had a chance to exhibit their extremely sketchy
+horsemanship in anything better than a mile-an-hour gait.
+
+Old Dillpickle Academy was busier than it had ever been in real life
+when we got there. Fully fifty students were on the scene. They were
+decked out in cowboy clothes, hand-me-downs, big straw hats,
+blankets--any old thing. One thing that impressed me was the number of
+books they were carrying. At Siwash we always refused to carry books
+except when absolutely necessary. It seemed too affected--as if you were
+trying to learn something. But out there at near-Siwash every man had at
+least six books. I saw geographies, spellers, Ella Wheeler Wilcox's
+poems, Science and Health, and the Congressional Record. Learning was
+just naturally rampant out there. Students were studying on the fence.
+They were walking up and down the campus "boning" furiously. They were
+even studying in the trees. You get fifty college boys to turn actors
+for a day and you will see some mighty mixed results. There was "Bay"
+Sanderson, for instance. "Bay's" idea of being a wild and Western
+student was to sit on the front gate with a long knife stuck in his
+belt and read detective stories. He did it all through the performance,
+and whenever the guest was led past him he would turn the book down
+carefully, pull the knife out of his belt and whoop three times as
+solemn as a judge.
+
+You never saw any one so interested as the Reverend Ponsonby Diggs. His
+eyes stuck out like incandescent globes. He had been pretty well jolted
+up, and he yelled in a low, polite way every time he made a quick
+movement, but his thirst for information was still vigorous. As head
+host Petey was pumpee, and he was always four laps ahead of the job.
+
+"Eh, I say," said Pubby, after surveying the scene for a few minutes.
+"This is all very interesting, you know. But what a little place!"
+
+"Hell, Reverend," said Petey emphatically, "she's the biggest school in
+the world."
+
+The Reverend was a man of guile. He didn't bat an eye.
+
+"How many students has the college?" he inquired.
+
+"We've got a hundred, all studying books and learning things," said
+Petey proudly.
+
+"Reahly, now?" said the Reverend; "I say, reahly? And these cows! Might
+I ask if these cows are a part of the college?"
+
+"Sure thing," said Petey. "Sophomore roping class uses 'em. Great class
+to watch."
+
+"I say now, this is extraordinary," said the Reverend. "You don't mean
+to tell me you tie up cows?"
+
+"Rope 'em and tie 'em and brand 'em," said Petey. "What's college for if
+it ain't to learn you things?"
+
+"I say now, this is extraordinary," said the Reverend. I gave him four
+more "extraordinaries" before I did something violent. He'd used two
+hundred that morning. "Might I see the class at work?" he inquired.
+
+Petey didn't even hesitate. "Sorry, Reverend," says he. "But the
+Professor of Roping and Branding has been drunk for a week. Class ain't
+working now."
+
+The college bell tapped three times. "That's cleaning-up bell," said
+Petey.
+
+"Oh, I say now," said the Reverend, hauling out his notebook. "What's
+cleaning-up bell?"
+
+"Why, to clean up the college," said Petey. "We clean it up once a week.
+With the fellows riding their horses into class and tracking mud and
+clay in, and eating lunches and stuff around, it gets pretty messy
+before the end of the week. We make the Freshmen clean it out. There
+they go now."
+
+A dozen "supes" filed slowly into the building with brooms and shovels.
+Pubby couldn't have looked more interested if they had been crowned
+heads of Europe.
+
+Just then a fine assortment of sounds broke out in the old building. The
+doors burst open and a young red-headed Mick from the seventh ward near
+by rode a pony down the steps and away for dear life. Behind him came a
+double-sized gent with yard-wide mustaches. He was dressed in a red
+shirt, overalls and firearms. He was a walking museum of weapons. Petey
+told me afterward that he had borrowed him from the roundhouse near by,
+and that for a box of cigars he had kindly consented to play the part of
+an irritable arsenal for one afternoon only.
+
+"That's the janitor," said Petey in an awestruck whisper. "Get behind a
+tree, quick. He's sure some vexed. He hates to have the boys ride their
+ponies into classroom."
+
+We got a fine view of the janitor as he swept past. He was a regular
+volcano in pants. Never have I heard the English language more richly
+embossed with profanity. Firing a fat locomotive up the grades around
+Siwash with bad coal gives a man great talent in expression. We listened
+to him with awe. Pubby was entranced. He asked me if it would be safe to
+take anything down in his notebook, and when I promised to protect him
+he wrote three pages.
+
+By this time the campus was filling up. Word had gotten around the real
+college that the big show of the season was being pulled off up at
+Dillpickle, and the students were arriving by the dozen. We were getting
+pretty nervous. The new arrivals weren't coached, and sooner or later
+they were bound to give the snap away. We decided to introduce our guest
+to the president. If we could keep things quiet another half hour all
+would be safe, Petey assured us.
+
+We took the Reverend up to the main entrance, Petey's thinker working
+like a well-oiled machine all the way. He pointed out the tree where
+they hanged a horse thief, and Pubby made us wait till he had gotten a
+leaf from it. The Senior classes at Dillpickle had had the custom of
+hauling boulders on to the campus as graduation presents. Petey
+explained that each boulder marked the resting place of some student
+whose career had been foreshortened accidentally, and he described
+several of the tragedies--invented them right off the reel. Pubby was so
+interested he didn't care who saw his notebook. When Petey told him how
+a pack of timber wolves had besieged the school for nine days and
+nights, four years before, he almost cried because there was no
+photograph of the scene handy. We had to promise him a wolf skin to
+comfort him.
+
+Dillpickle Academy was a plain old brick building, with one of those
+cupolas which were so popular among schools and colleges forty years
+ago. I don't know just what mysterious effect a cupola has on education,
+but it was considered necessary at that time. In front of the building
+was a wide stone porch. Inside we could see half a dozen dogs and a
+horse. Pubby looked a bushel of exclamation points when Petey explained
+that they belonged to the president. He looked a lot more when he saw a
+counter with a fine assortment of chewing tobacco and pipes on it.
+That, Petey whispered to me, was his masterpiece. He had borrowed the
+whole thing from a corner grocery store.
+
+Petey had just put his eye to the window of the president's room,
+ostensibly to find out whether Prexy was in a good humor and in reality
+to find out whether Kennedy, an old grad who had consented to play the
+part, was on duty, when one of the boys hurried up and grabbed me.
+
+"Just evaporate as fast as you can," he whispered; "there are six cops
+on the way out. They're going to pinch the whole bunch of us."
+
+Now this was a fine predicament for a young and promising college--to be
+arrested by six lowly cops on its own campus, in the act of showing a
+distinguished visitor how it ran the earth, and was particular Hades
+with the trigger-finger! Bangs was showing Pubby the window through
+which the Professor of Arithmetic had thrown him the term before, and I
+told Petey. He sat down and cried.
+
+"After all this work and just as we had it cinched!" he moaned. "I'll
+quit school to-morrow and devote my life to poisoning policemen. This
+has made an anarchist of me."
+
+There was nothing to do. We couldn't very well explain that the college
+would now have to run away and hide because some enthusiastic Freshman
+had fired a horse-pistol on the streets of Jonesville. I looked at the
+crowd of fantastic students getting ready to bolt for the fence. I
+looked at our victim, fairly punching words into his notebook. It was
+the brightest young dream that was ever busted by a fat loafer in brass
+buttons. Then I saw Ole Skjarsen and had my one big inspiration.
+
+"Excuse me," I said, rushing over to Pubby, "but you'll have to mosey
+right out of here. There's Ole Skjarsen, and he looks ugly."
+
+"Oh, my word!" said Pubby; he remembered Ole from the night before.
+
+"Right around the building!" yelled Petey, grabbing the cue. Naturally
+Ole heard him and saw those whiskers. "Har's das spy!" he yelled. "Kill
+him, fallers; he ban a spy!" We dashed around the building, Ole
+following us. And then, because the cops had arrived at the front gate,
+the whole mob thundered after us.
+
+[Illustration: He may have been fat, but how he could run!
+                    _Page 132_]
+
+Well, sir, you never saw a more successful race in your life. There were
+no less than a hundred Siwash students behind us, and, though no one but
+Ole Skjarsen had any interest in us, they were all trying to break the
+sprint record in our direction, it being the line of least resistance.
+And, say! We certainly had misjudged the Reverend Ponsonby Diggs. He may
+have been fat, but how he could run! His work was phenomenal. I think he
+must have been on a track team himself at some earlier part of his
+career, for the way he steamed away from the gang would have reminded
+you of the _Lusitania_ racing the Statue of Liberty. He lost his cap. He
+shed his long black coat. He rolled over the fence at the rear of the
+campus without even hesitating, and the last we saw of him he was going
+down the road out of Jonesville into the west, his legs revolving in a
+blue haze. Even if we had wanted to stop him, we couldn't have caught
+him. And besides, Ole caught Petey and me just outside of the campus and
+we had to do some twenty-nine-story-tall explaining to keep from getting
+punched for harboring spies. No one had thought to put him next to the
+game.
+
+That all? Goodness, no! We cleaned up for a week and had been so good
+that the Faculty had about decided that nothing had happened when the
+Reverend Ponsonby Diggs appeared in Jonesville again. He came with a
+United States marshal for a bodyguard, too. He had footed it to the next
+town, it seems, and had wired the nearest British consul that he had
+been attacked by savages at Siwash College and robbed of all his
+baggage. They say he demanded battleships or a Hague conference, or
+something of the sort, and that the consul's office asked a Government
+officer to go out and pacify him. They stepped off the train at the
+Union Station and went right up to college--only four blocks away.
+
+Petey and I remained considerably invisible, but the boys tell me that
+the look on the Reverend's face when he arrived at the real Siwash was
+worth perpetuating in bronze. He went up the fine old avenue, past the
+fine new buildings, in a daze; and when our good old Prexy, who had him
+skinned forty ways for dignity, shook hands with him and handed him a
+little talk that was a saturated solution of Latin, he couldn't even say
+"most extraordinary." You can realize how far gone he was.
+
+Some of the boys got hold of the marshal that day and told him the
+story. He laughed from four P. M. until midnight, with only three stops
+for refreshments. The Reverend Pubby Diggs stayed three days as the
+guest of the Faculty and he didn't get up nerve enough in all that time
+to talk business. We saw him at chapel where he couldn't see us, and he
+looked like a man who had suddenly discovered, while falling out of his
+aeroplane, that somebody had removed the earth and had left no address
+behind. His baggage mysteriously appeared at his room in the hotel on
+the first night, and when he left he hadn't recovered consciousness
+sufficiently to inquire where it came from. I think he went right back
+to England when he left Siwash, and I'll bet that by now he has almost
+concluded that some one had been playing a joke on him. You give those
+Englishmen time and they will catch on to almost anything.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE GREEK DOUBLE CROSS
+
+
+Suffering bear-cats! Say! excuse me while I take a long rest, Jim. I
+need it. I've just read a piece of information in this letter that makes
+me tired all over.
+
+What is it? Oh, just another variety of competition smothered with a
+gentlemanly agreement--that's all; another bright-eyed little trust
+formed and another readjustment of affairs on a business basis. We old
+fellows needn't break our necks to get back to Siwash and the frat this
+fall, they write me. Of course they'll be delighted to see us and all
+that; but there's no burning need for us and we needn't jump any jobs to
+report in time to put the brands on the Freshmen and rescue them from
+the noisome Alfalfa Delts and Sigh Whoops--because there isn't going to
+be any rescuing this fall.
+
+They've had an agreement at Siwash. They're going to approach the
+Freshies under strict rules. No parties. No dinners at the houses. No
+abductions. No big, tall talk about pledging to-night or staggering
+through a twilight life to a frowzy-headed and unimportant old age in
+some bum bunch. All done away with. Everything nice and orderly.
+Freshman arrives. You take his name and address. Call on him, attended
+by referees. Maintain a general temperature of not more than sixty-five
+when you meet him on the campus. Buy him one ten-cent cigar during the
+fall and introduce him to one girl--age, complexion and hypnotic power
+to be carefully regulated by the rushing committee. Then you send him a
+little engraved invitation to amalgamate with you; and when he answers,
+per the self-addressed envelope inclosed, you are to love him like a
+brother for the next three and a half years. Gee! how that makes me
+ache!
+
+Think of it! And at old Siwash, too!--Siwash, where we never considered
+a pledge safe until we had him tied up in a back room, with our colors
+on him and a guard around the house! That settles me. I've always
+yearned to go back and cavort over the campus in the fall when college
+opened; but not for me no more! Why, if I went back there and got into
+the rushing game, first thing I knew they'd have me run up before a
+pan-Hellenic council, charged with giving an eligible Freshman more than
+two fingers when I shook hands with him; and I'd be ridden out of town
+on a rail for rushing in an undignified manner.
+
+Rushing? What's rushing? Oh, yes; I forgot that you never participated
+in that delicious form of insanity known as a fall term in college.
+Rushing is a cross between proposing to a girl and abducting a coyote.
+Rushing a man for a frat is trying to make him believe that to belong to
+it is joy and inspiration, and to belong to any other means misery and
+an early tomb; that all the best men in college either belong to your
+frat or couldn't get in; that you're the best fellows on earth, and that
+you're crazy to have him, and that he is a coming Senator; that you
+can't live without him; that the other gang can't appreciate him; that
+you never ask men twice; that you don't care much for him anyway, and
+that you are just as likely as not to withdraw the spike any minute if
+you should happen to get tired of the cut of his trousers; that your
+crowd can make him class president and the other crowds can make him
+fine mausoleums; that you love him like real brothers and that he has
+already bound himself in honor to pledge--and that if he doesn't he will
+regret it all his life; and, besides, you will punch his head if he
+doesn't put on the colors. That's rushing for you.
+
+What's my crowd? Why, the Eta Bita Pie, of course. Couldn't you tell
+that from my skyscraper brow? We Eta Bites are so much better than any
+other frat that we break down and cry now and then when we think of the
+poor chaps who can't belong to us. We're bigger, grander, nobler and
+tighter about the chest than any other gang. We've turned out more
+Senators, Congressmen, Supreme Justices, near-Presidents, captains of
+industry, foreign ambassadors and football captains than any two of
+them. We own more frat houses, win more college elections, know more
+about neckties and girls, wear louder vests and put more cross-hatch
+effects on our neophytes than any three of them. We're so immeasurably
+ahead of everything with a Greek-letter name that every Freshman of
+taste and discrimination turns down everything else and waits until we
+crook our little finger at him. Of course, sometimes we make a mistake
+and ask some fellow that isn't a man of taste and discrimination; he
+proves it by going into some other frat; and that, of course, keeps all
+the men of poor judgment out of our gang and puts them in the others.
+Regular automatic dispensation of Providence, isn't it?
+
+It's been a long time since I had a chance to gather with the brethren
+back at Siwash and agree with them how glorious we are, but this note
+brings it all back. My! how I'd like this minute to go back about ten
+years and cluster around our big grate fire, which used to make the
+Delta Kaps so crazy with envy. Those were the good old days when we came
+back to college in the fall, looked over the haycrop in the Freshman
+class, picked out the likeliest seed repositories, and then proceeded to
+carve them out from the clutches of a round dozen rival frats, each one
+crazy to get a spike into every new student who looked as if he might be
+president of the Senior class and an authority on cotillons some day. No
+namby-pamby, drop-three-and-carry-one crochet effects about our rushing
+those days! We just stood up on our hind legs and scrapped it out. For
+concentrated, triple-distilled, double-X excitement, the first three
+weeks of college, with every frat breaking its collective neck to get a
+habeas corpus on the same six or eight men, had a suffragette riot in
+the House of Parliament beaten down to a dove-coo.
+
+There was nothing that made us love a Freshman so hard as to have about
+six other frats after him. I've seen women buy hats the same way.
+They've got to beat some other woman to a hat before they can really
+appreciate it. And when we could swat half a dozen rival frats over the
+heart by waltzing a good-looking young chap down the walk to chapel with
+our colors on his coat, and could watch them turning green and purple
+and clawing for air--well, I guess it beat getting elected to Congress
+or marrying an heiress-apparent for pure, unadulterated, unspeckled joy!
+
+Competition was getting mighty scarce in the country even then. There
+were understandings between railroad magnates and beef kings and biscuit
+makers--and even the ministers had a scale of wedding fees. But
+competition had a happy home on our campus. About the best we had been
+able to do had been to agree not to burn down each other's frat houses
+while we were haltering the Freshmen. I've seen nine frats, with a total
+of one hundred and fifty members, sitting up nights for a week at a time
+working out plans to despoil each other of a runty little fellow in a
+pancake hat, whose only accomplishment was playing the piano with his
+feet. One frat wanted him and that started the others.
+
+Of course we'd have got along better if we'd put the whole Freshman
+class in cold storage until we could have found out who the good men
+were and who the spoiled fruit might be. We were just as likely to fall
+in love with a suit of clothes as with a future class orator. We took in
+one man once because he bought a pair of patent-leather tan shoes in his
+Junior year. We argued that, if he had the nerve to wear the things to
+his Y. M. C. A. meetings, there must be some originality in him after
+all--and we took a chance. We won. But it's a risky business. Once five
+frats rushed a fellow for a month because of the beautiful clothes he
+wore--and just after the victorious bunch had initiated him a clothing
+house came down on the young man and took the whole outfit. You can't
+always tell at first sight. But then, I don't know but that college
+fraternities exercise as much care and judgment in picking brothers as
+women do in picking husbands. Many a woman has married a fine mustache
+or a bunch of noble clothes and has taken the thing that wore them on
+spec. That's one more than we ever did. You could fool us with clothes;
+but the man who came to Siwash with a mustache had to flock by himself.
+He and his whiskers were considered to be enough company for each other.
+
+There were plenty of frats in Siwash to make things interesting in the
+fall. There were the Alfalfa Delts, who had a house in the same block
+with us and were snobbish just because they had initiated a locomotive
+works, two railroads and a pickle factory. Then there were the Sigh
+Whoopsilons, who got to Siwash first and who regarded the rest of us
+with the same kindly tolerance with which the Indians regarded Daniel
+Boone. And there were the Chi Yis, who fought society hard and always
+had their picture taken for the college annual in dress suits. Many's
+the time I've loaned my dress suit to drape over some green young Chi
+Yi, so that the annual picture could show an unbroken row of open-faced
+vests. And there were the Shi Delts, who were a bold, bad bunch; and the
+Fli Gammas, who were good, pious boys, about as exciting as a
+smooth-running prayer-meeting; and the Delta Kappa Sonofaguns, who got
+every political office either by electing a member or initiating one;
+and the Delta Flushes; and the Mu Kow Moos; the Sigma Numerous; and two
+or three others that we didn't lie awake nights worrying about. Every
+one of these bunches had one burning ambition--that was to initiate the
+very best men in the Freshman class every fall. That made it necessary
+for us, in order to maintain our proud position, to disappoint each one
+of them every year and to make ourselves about as popular as the
+directors of a fresh-air and drinking-water trust.
+
+Of course we always disappointed them. Wouldn't admit it if we didn't.
+But, holy mackerel! what a job it was! Herding a bunch of green and
+timid and nervous and contrary youngsters past all the temptations and
+pitfalls and confidence games and blarneyfests put up by a dozen frats,
+and landing the bunch in a crowd that it had never heard of two weeks
+before, is as bad as trying to herd a bunch of whales into a fishpond
+with nothing but hot air for gads. It took diplomacy, pugnacity and
+psychological moments, I tell you; and it took more: it took ingenuity
+and inventiveness and cheek and second sight and cool heads in time of
+trouble and long heads on the job, from daybreak to daybreak. I'd rather
+go out and sell battleships to farmers, so far as the toughness of the
+job is concerned, than to tackle the job of persuading a wise young
+high-school product with two chums in another frat that my bunch and he
+were made for each other. What did he care for our glorious history? We
+had to use other means of getting him. We had to hypnotize him, daze
+him, waft him off his feet; and if necessary we had to get the other
+frats to help us. How? Oh, you never know just how until you have to;
+and then you slip your scheme wheels into gear and do it. You just have
+to; that's all. It's like running away from a bear. You know you can't,
+but you've got to; and so you do.
+
+Makes me smile now when I think of some of the desperate crises that
+used to roll up around old Eta Bita Pie like a tornado convention and
+threaten to engulf the bright, beautiful world and turn it into a
+howling desert, peopled only by Delta Kappa Whoops and other
+undesirables. I'm far enough away, now, to forget the heart-bursting
+suspense and to see only the humor of it. Once I remember the Shi Delts,
+in spite of everything we could do, managed so to befog the brain of the
+Freshman class president that he cut a date with us and sequestered
+himself in the Shi Delt house in an upper back room, with the horrible
+intention of pledging himself the next morning. Four of the largest Shi
+Delts sat on the front porch that evening and the telephone got
+paralysis right after supper. They had told the boy that if he joined
+them he would probably have to leave school in his Junior year to become
+governor; and he didn't want to see any of us for fear we would wake him
+up. I chuckle yet when I think of those four big bruisers sitting on the
+front porch and guarding their property while I was shinning up the
+corner post of the back porch, leaving a part of my trousers fluttering
+on a nail and ordering the youngster in a blood-curdling whisper to hand
+down his coat, unless he wanted to lose forever his chance of being
+captain of the football team in his Sophomore year. He weighed the
+governorship against the captaincy for a minute, but the right triumphed
+and he handed down his coat. I sewed a big bunch of our colors on it,
+discoursed with him fraternally while balancing on the slanting roof,
+shook hands with him in a solemn, ritualistic way and bade him be firm
+the next morning. When the Shi Delts came in and found that Freshman
+pledged to another gang they had a convulsion that lasted a week; and to
+this day they don't know how the crime was committed.
+
+There was another Freshman, I remember, who was led violently astray by
+the Chi Yis and was about to pledge to them under the belief that their
+gang contained every man of note in the United States. We had to get him
+over to the house and palm off a lot of our alumni as leading actors and
+authors, who had dropped in to dinner, before he was sufficiently
+impressed to reason with us. Of course this is not what the English
+would call "rully sporting, don't you know!" but in our consciences it
+was all classified as revenge. We got the same doses. Pillings, of the
+Mu Kow Moos, pulled one of our spikes out in beautiful fashion once by
+impersonating our landlord. He rushed up the steps just as a Freshman
+rushee was starting down all alone and demanded the rent for six months
+on the spot, threatening to throw us out into the street that minute.
+The Freshman hesitated just long enough to get his clothes out of the
+house, and we didn't know for a month what had frozen his feet.
+
+The Fli Gams weren't so slow, either. They found out once that one of
+the men we were just about to land had a great disgust for two of our
+men. What did one of their alumni do but happen craftily over our way
+and mention in the most casual manner the undying admiration that the
+boy had for those two? Of course we sandwiched him between them for a
+week--and of course we were pained and grieved when he tossed us into
+the discard; but we got even with them the next year. We picked up an
+eminent young pugilist, who made his headquarters in the next town, and
+for a little consideration and a suit of clothes that was a regular
+college yell we got him to hang around the campus for a week. We rushed
+him terrifically for a day and then managed to let the Fli Gams get him.
+They rushed him for a week in spite of our carefully regulated
+indignation and then proposed to him. When he told them that he might
+consider coming to school--as soon as he had gone South and had cleaned
+up a couple of good scraps--they let out an awful shriek and fumigated
+the house. They were nice young chaps, but no judge of a pugilist. They
+expected to be able to see his hoofs.
+
+Well, it was this way every year all fall. Ding-dong, bing-bang, give
+and take, no quarter and pretty nearly everything fair. As I said, it
+wasn't considered exactly proper to burn a rival frat house in order to
+distract the attention of the occupants while they were entertaining a
+Freshman, but otherwise we did pretty nearly what we pleased to each
+other--only being careful to do it first. Of course a lot of things are
+fair in love and war that would not be considered strictly ethical in a
+game of croquet. And rushing a Freshman is as near like love as
+anything I know of. It isn't that we love the Freshman so much. When I
+think of some of the trash we fought over and lost I have to laugh. But
+we couldn't bear the idea of losing him. To sit by and watch another
+gang win the affections of a young fellow who you know is designed by
+Nature for your frat and the football team; to note him gradually
+breaking off the desperate chumminess that has grown up between you in
+the last forty-eight hours; to think that in another day he will have on
+the pledge colors of another fraternity and will be lost to you forever
+and ever and ever, and then some--what is losing a mere girl to some
+other fellow compared with that? Of course I realize now that, even if a
+Freshman does join another frat, you can eventually get chummy with him
+again after college days are over if you find him worth crossing the
+street to see; and I find myself lending money to Shi Delts and
+borrowing it from Delta Whoops just as freely as if they were Eta Bites.
+But somehow you don't learn these things in time to save your poor old
+nerves in college.
+
+[Illustration: Naturally I was somewhat dazzled
+                    _Page 147_]
+
+When I was in school the Alfalfa Delts, the Sigh Whoopsilons and the Chi
+Yis were giving us a horrible race. I'm willing to admit it now, though
+I'd have fought Jeffries before doing it ten years ago. Each fall was
+one long whirlwind. The President of the United States in an
+office-seekers' convention would have had a placid time compared with
+the Freshmen. We didn't exactly use real axes on each other and we
+didn't actually tear any Freshman in two pieces, but we came as near the
+limit as was comfortable. No frat was safe for a minute with its guests.
+If you tried to feed 'em there was kerosene in the ice cream. If you
+entertained them some frat with a better quartet worked outside the
+house. If you took them out to call the parlor would fill up with
+riffraff in no time; and if you took your eye off your victim for a
+minute he was gone--some other gang had got him. I sometimes think some
+of the crowds knew how to palm Freshmen the way magicians do, from the
+way they disappeared.
+
+Even the girls took a hand in it. When I was a Sophomore I was intrusted
+with the task of leading a Freshman three blocks down to Browning Hall
+to call on one of our solid girls, and before I had gone a block two
+Senior girls met us. They were bare acquaintances of mine, being strong
+Delta Kap. allies, and they usually managed to see me only after a
+severe effort; but this time you'd have thought I was a whole regiment
+of fiancees. They literally fell on my neck. It was cruel of me, they
+declared, to be so unsociable. There I was, a football hero--I'd just
+broken my rib on the scrub team--and every girl in school was dying to
+tell me how grand it was to suffer for one's college; and yet I wouldn't
+so much as hint that I wanted to come to the sorority parties--and lots
+more talk of the same kind. Naturally I was somewhat dazzled and I'd
+walked about half a block with the prettiest one before I noticed that
+the other one was steering Freshie the other way. I turned around and
+never even said "Good day" to that girl; but it was too late. About a
+dozen Delta Kaps appeared out of the ground and tried to look surprised
+as they gathered around that scared little Freshman and engulfed him. We
+never saw him again--that is, in his innocent condition--and the boys
+wouldn't even trust me with the pledges we were rushing around for bait
+the rest of the fall term. Bait? Oh, yes. Sometimes we'd pledge a man on
+the quiet and leave him out a week or two, so that plenty of frats could
+bid him--made them appreciate his worth, you know, and got every one
+well acquainted.
+
+By the time I was a Senior the competition was desperate. We spent the
+summers scouring the country for prospects and we spent the first week
+of school smuggling our trophies into our houses and pledging them,
+without giving the other fellow a look in--that is, we tried to. We came
+back fairly strong in my Senior year, with a good bunch of prospects;
+but the one that excited us most was a telegram from Snooty Vincent in
+Chicago. It was brief and erratic, like Snooty himself, and read as
+follows:
+
+     Freshman named Smith will register from Chicago. Son of old man
+     Smith, multimillionaire. Kid's a comer. Get him sure! SNOOTY.
+
+That was all. One of the half million Smiths of Chicago was coming to
+college--age, weight, complexion, habits and time of arrival unknown.
+That telegram qualified Snooty for the paresis ward. We didn't even know
+what Smith his millionaire father was. The world is full of Smiths who
+are pestered by automobile agents. All we knew was the fact that we had
+to find him, grab him, sequester him where no meddling Alfalfa Delt or
+Chi Yi could find him, and make him fall in love with us inside of
+forty-eight hours. Then we could lead him forth, with the colors and his
+_art-nouveau_ clothes on, spread the glad news--and there wouldn't have
+to be any more rushing that fall. We'd just sit back and take our pick.
+
+We sat back and built brains full of air-castles for about three
+minutes--and then got busy. It was matriculation day. There were half a
+dozen trains to come yet from Chicago on various roads. We had to meet
+them all, pick out the right man by his aura or by the way the porter
+looked when he tipped him, and grab him out from under the ravenous foe.
+The next train was due in ten minutes and the depot was a mile away. We
+sent Crawford down. He was trying for the distance runs anyway.
+
+The rest of us went out to show a couple of classy boys from a big prep
+school how to register and find a room, and pick out textbooks; and
+incidentally how to distinguish a crowd of magnificent young student
+leaders from eleven wrangling bunches of miscellaneous thickheads, who
+wouldn't like anything better than to rope in a couple of good men to
+teach them the ways of the world. We were succeeding in this to the
+queen's taste, having accidentally dropped in on our porch with the
+pair, when young Crawford rushed up green with despair and took the
+rushing committee inside. He almost cried when he told us. He'd watched
+the train as carefully as he could, he said, but he couldn't be
+everywhere at once; and so a couple of Mu Kow Moos had got Smith. He
+knew it because he had heard them ask what his name was and he had told
+them Smith. He'd pretty nearly wrecked his brain trying to think of an
+excuse to butt in, but they had taken the boy away and he'd run all the
+way to the house to see if something couldn't be done.
+
+Petey Simmons had listened, sitting crosslegged on the windowseat, which
+was a habit of his. Petey was a Senior and his deep studies in rhetoric
+during his four years in the frat had given him a great power of
+expression. He turned to the despairing Crawford and reduced him to a
+cinder with one look.
+
+"So you couldn't think of any excuse to butt in!" he remarked slowly,
+"Say, Crawford, if you saw a young lady falling through the ice you'd
+write to her mother for permission to cheer her up. Which way did they
+go?"
+
+"They're coming this way," said what was left of Crawford.
+
+[Illustration: He was so bashful that his voice blushed when he used it
+                    _Page 151_]
+
+Petey grabbed his hat and discharged himself toward the depot. We
+brought in those big prep school boys and tried to give them the time of
+their lives, but our hearts weren't in it. We were thinking of those Mu
+Kow Moos--that frat of all others--blissfully towing home a prize they'd
+stumbled onto and didn't know anything about! We thought of those
+beautifully designed air-castles we were hoping to move into and we got
+pumpkins in our throats. Stung on the first day of school by a bunch
+that had to wear their pins on their neckties to keep from being
+mistaken for a literary society! Oh, thunder! We went in to dinner all
+smeared up with gloom. Then the door opened and Petey came in. He was
+five feet five, Petey was, but he stooped when he came under the
+chandelier. He had a suitcase in one hand and a stranger in the other.
+
+"Boys," he said, "I want you to meet Mr. Smith, of Chicago."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At first glance you wouldn't have taken Smith for a perambulating
+national bank, with a wheelbarrow of spending-money every month. He was
+well-enough dressed and all that, but he didn't loom up in any
+mountainous fashion as to looks. He was runty and his hair was a kind of
+discouraged red. He had freckles, too, and he was so bashful that his
+voice blushed when he used it. He didn't have a word to say until
+dinner, when he said "thank you" to Sam, the waiter. Altogether he was
+so meek that he had us worried; but then, as Allie Bangs said, you can't
+always tell about these multimillionaires. Some of them didn't have the
+nerve of a mouse. He'd seen millionaires in New York, he said, who were
+afraid of cab drivers.
+
+"And besides," said Petey, when a few of us were talking it over after
+dinner, "I'd never have got him if he hadn't been so meek. I was
+determined that no Mu Kow Moo was going to hang anything on us; and when
+I saw the three of them coming I waded right in. Allison and Briggs,
+those two dumb Juniors, were doing the steering. It was like taking
+candy from the baby. I just fell right into them and took about five
+minutes to tell those two how glad I was to see them back. I introduced
+myself to Smith; and--would you believe it?--he was still carrying his
+suitcase! I grabbed it and apologized for not having carried it all the
+way up from the station. You should have seen those yaps scowl. They
+wanted to shred me up, but I never noticed them again. I pointed out all
+the sights to Smith and told him his friends had written me about him.
+There was so little room on the sidewalk that I suggested we two walk
+ahead; and I shoved him right into the middle of the walk and made
+Allison and Briggs fall behind. I had a piece of luck just then. Old
+Pete and his sawed-off cab came by and I flagged him in a minute. I
+shoved Smith in and got in after him. Then I told the two babes that I
+could take care of Smith all right and that there was no need of their
+walking clear up to the house. After that I shut the door and we came
+away. If looks could kill I'd be tuning up my harp this minute. Say, if
+I didn't have any more nerve than those two I'd get a permit from the
+city to live. And all the time Smith never made a kick. I had him
+hypnotized. Now I'm going in and make him jump through a hoop."
+
+We should have been very happy--and we would have been, but just then
+Symington came in with some astounding news. The Alfalfa Delts had a man
+named Smith, of Chicago, over at their house. He was on the front porch,
+with the whole gang around him; and from the looks of things they'd have
+him benevolently assimilated before twenty-four hours. Naturally this
+created a tremendous lot of emotion around our house. It was a serious
+situation. We might have the right Smith and then again we might have a
+Smith who would be borrowing money for car fare inside of ten minutes.
+We had to find out which Smith it was before we tampered with his young
+affections.
+
+Did you ever snuggle up to a young captain of industry and ask him who
+his father was and whether he was important enough in the business world
+to be indicted by the Government for anything? That was the job we
+tackled that night. Smith was meek enough, but somehow even Petey's
+nerve had its limits. We approached the subject from every corner of the
+compass. We led up to it, we beat around it--and finally we got
+desperate and led the boy up to it. But he was too shy to come down with
+the information. Yes, he lived in Chicago. Oh, on the North Side. Yes,
+he guessed the stock market was stronger. Yes, the Annex was a great
+hotel. No, he didn't know whether they were going to put a tower on the
+Board of Trade or not. Yes, the lake Shore Drive was dusty in
+summer.--[Good!]--He wouldn't care to live on it.--[Bah!]--Altogether he
+was as unsatisfactory to pump as a well full of dusty old brickbats.
+Just then Rawlins, who had been scouting around seeing what he could run
+against in the dark of the moon, arrived with the stunning information
+that the Chi Yis had a man named Smith, of Oak Park, at their house and
+that every corner of the lawn was guarded by picked men!
+
+When we got this news most of us went upstairs and bathed our heads in
+cold water. Oak Park sounded even more suspicious than Chicago. It's a
+solid mahogany suburb and everybody there is somebody or other. You have
+to get initiated into the place just as if it were a secret society,
+it's so exclusive. That meant there were three Smiths from Chicago in
+school. We had only one Smith. We had a one-in-three shot.
+
+We stuck the colors on the boys from the big prep school just to keep
+our hands in and went to bed so nervous that we only slept in patches.
+Still, two Chicago Smiths in other frat houses were better than one. It
+meant that at least one frat wasn't sure of its man. Maybe neither one
+was. Our scouts had reported that, from what they could pick up, neither
+Smith had it on our Smith much in looks. That could only mean one thing:
+there had been a leak in the telegraph office again. What show has a
+guileless sixty-five-dollar-a-month operator against a bunch of crafty
+young diplomatists? They had read our telegram and were after the same
+Smith that we were.
+
+By morning the suspense around the house could have been shoveled out
+with a pitchfork. If one of the other frats had the right Smith and knew
+it, and had pledged him during the night, there was positively no use in
+living any longer. Petey, who had shared his room with our Smith,
+reported that he was now like wax in our hands. But that didn't comfort
+us much. It was too confoundedly puzzling. Maybe we had the heir to a
+subtreasury panting to join us and maybe his freckles were his fortune.
+All Petey had gouged out of him during the night was the fact that his
+father wanted him to come to Siwash because it was a nice, quiet place.
+Oh, yes; it was deadly calm!
+
+It couldn't have been more than seven o'clock when the telephone rang.
+Petey answered it. A relative of Smith's was at the hotel and had heard
+the boy was at our house. Would we please tell him to come right down?
+Petey said he would and then rang off. Then he grabbed the 'phone again
+and asked Central excitedly why she had cut him off. Central said she
+hadn't, but of course she rang the other line again.
+
+"Hello!" said Petey blandly. "This is the Alfalfa Delt house?"
+
+"No; it's the Chi Yi house," was the answer. Petey put the receiver up
+contentedly and we all turned handsprings over the library table. Fifty
+per cent safe, anyway. The Chi Yis were trying to sort out the Smiths,
+too.
+
+It was an hour before anything else happened. Then Matheson of the
+Alfalfa Delts, a ponderous personage, who wore a silk hat on Sunday and
+did instructing, came over and asked if we had a man named Smith with
+us. He was to be a pupil of his, he said, and he wanted to arrange his
+work. Of course Matheson was hoping to get a green man at the door, but
+he didn't have any luck. Bangs himself let him in and let him read two
+or three magazines through in the library while we turned some more
+handsprings--in the dining room this time. The Alfalfa Delts were
+fishing, too. It was a fair field and no favors.
+
+After a while Bangs told Matheson that the man named Smith presented his
+compliments and said it was all a mistake. His tutor's name was not
+Matheson, but Muttonhead. That sent Matheson away as pleasant as you
+please.
+
+All that day we sat around and beat off the enemy and got beaten off
+ourselves. Our Smith got a Faculty notice to appear at once and
+register--that is, it got as far as the door. We sent it back to the Chi
+Yi house. We sent the Alfalfa Delt Smith a telegram from Chicago,
+reading: "Father ill. Come at once." That only got as far as a door,
+too. Some Alfalfa Delt got it and sent the boy back with the answer: "So
+careless of father!" Blanchard called up the fire department and sent it
+over to the Chi Yi house, hoping to be able to slip over and cut out
+Smith in the confusion that followed; but the game was too old. The Chi
+Yis had played it themselves the year before and refused to bite.
+Meantime we had found a Chi Yi alumnus in the kitchen trying to sell a
+book to the cook; and in the proceedings that followed we discovered
+that the book had a ten-dollar bill in it. All around, it was an
+entertaining but profitless day. By night, there wasn't another idea
+left in the three camps. We sat exhausted, each clutching its Smith and
+glaring at the other two.
+
+As far as our Smith was concerned we almost wished some one would steal
+him. He was about as interesting as a pound of baking powder. What with
+fishing for his Bradstreet rating, and inventing lies to keep him from
+going out and seeing the town, and watching the horizon for predatory
+Alfalfa Delts and Chi Yis, we were plumb worn out. We were so skittish
+that, when the bell rang about eight o'clock, we let it ring four times
+more before we answered it; and when the ringer claimed to be an Eta
+Bita Pie from Muggledorfer who had come over to attend Siwash, we made
+him repeat pretty nearly the whole ritual before we would consider his
+credentials good.
+
+He got in at last, slightly peevish at our unbrotherly welcome, and took
+his place in the library circle. We were explaining the whole situation
+to him, when Allie Bangs gave an earnest yell and stood on his head in
+the corner.
+
+"What did you say your name was?" he asked the visitor after he had been
+set right side up again.
+
+"Maxwell, of Fella Kappa chapter," said the latter.
+
+"No, it isn't," said Bangs earnestly. "You ought to know your own name!"
+he went on severely. "It's Smith--and you're a barb from the cornfield!
+You've come to Siwash to forget how to plow and to-morrow you're going
+to organize a Smith Club. Do you hear? Don't let me catch you forgetting
+your name now--and listen closely."
+
+It was all as simple as beating a standpat Congressman. Maxwell was a
+stranger, of course. He was to pin his Eta Bita Pie pin on his
+undershirt and go forth in the morning a brand-new Smith, green and
+guileless. It was to occur to him just before chapel that a Smith Club
+ought to be formed and he was to post a notice to that effect. He would
+get a couple of well-known non-fraternity Smiths interested and have
+them visit the houses and see the Chicago Smiths. With all the Smiths in
+session that night he ought to have no difficulty in finding out which
+was the son of old man Smith. He could be lowdown and vulgar enough to
+ask right out if he wished. If he found out he was to cut out that Smith
+and bring him to our house--if he had to bind and gag him. If he didn't
+he was to bring all three--if he could.
+
+There was a quiet and most reassuring tone in Maxwell's voice as he
+said: "I can." They evidently had their little troubles at Muggledorfer,
+too.
+
+"After we get them here," said Bangs earnestly, "we'll just pledge all
+three. We'll surely get the right one that way and perhaps the other two
+will not be so bad."
+
+Upstairs, Petey Simmons was wearily explaining to our Smith for the
+ninth time that Freshmen were not allowed to appear on the campus for
+the first three days; and that it was considered good form to keep
+indoors until the Sophomore rush; and that there wasn't a room left in
+town anyway, and he might as well stay with us a while; and that the
+police were looking for college students downtown and locking them up,
+as they did each fall, to show their authority. Blanchard relieved him
+of his task and he came downstairs mopping his brow. Then we went to
+work and planned details until midnight. It was to be the plot of the
+century and every wheel had to mesh.
+
+We spent the next day in a cold perspiration. Neither Alfalfa Delt nor
+Chi Yi paraded any pledged Freshmen. They were still hunting for the
+right Smith, too--evidently. They fell for the Smith Club plan with such
+suspicious eagerness that it was plain each bunch had some nasty,
+low-lived scheme up its sleeves. We were righteously indignant. It was
+our game and they ought not to butt in. But Maxwell only smiled. He was
+a Napoleon, that boy was. He just waved us aside. "I'll run this little
+thing the way we do at Muggledorfer," he explained. "You fellows can
+play a few lines of football pretty well, but when it comes to
+surrounding a Freshman and making a Greek out of him, I wouldn't take
+lessons from old Ulysses himself." And so we left him alone and held
+each other's hands and smoked and cussed--and hoped and hoped and hoped.
+
+Maxwell went after the three Smiths himself that night. He had taken a
+room in an out-of-the-way part of town and his plan was to take them
+over there after the meeting to discuss the future good of the Smith
+Club. Then about a dozen of us would slide gently over there--and a
+curtain would have to be drawn over the woe that would ensue for the
+other gangs. Meanwhile, all we had to do was to sit around the house and
+gnaw our fingers. Maxwell called for our Smith last and he had the other
+two in tow. Oh, no; we didn't invite them in. Two Alfalfa Delts and
+three Chi Yis were sitting on our porch, visiting us. Three Chi Yis and
+two Eta Bita Pies were sitting on the Alfalfa Delt porch. Four Eta
+Bites and two Alfalfa Delts were calling on the Chi Yi house. It was a
+critical moment and none of us was taking chances. We couldn't keep our
+Smiths from wandering, but we could make sure they didn't wander into
+the wrong place.
+
+Maxwell led his flock of Smiths away and we all sat and talked to each
+other in little short bites. The Chi Yis were nervous as rabbits. They
+looked at their watches every five minutes. The Alfalfa Delts listened
+to us with one ear and swept the other around the gloom. The night was
+charged with plots. Innumerable things seemed trembling in the immediate
+future. When the visitors excused themselves a little later, and went
+away very hurriedly, we learned with pleasure from one of our boys, who
+had been wandering around to break in a new pair of shoes or something,
+that the Smith meeting, which had been called for the Erosophian Hall,
+had been attended by four nondescript and unknown Smiths and fourteen
+Chi Yis, who had dropped in casually. First blood for us! Maxwell had
+evidently succeeded in segregating his Smiths. We expected a telephone
+call from his room at any minute.
+
+We kept on expecting it until midnight and then strolled down that way.
+The house was dark. A very mad landlady came down in response to our
+earnest request and informed us that the young carouser who had rented
+her room had not been there that evening; and that if we were his rowdy
+friends we could tell him that he would find his trunk in the alley.
+Then we went home and our brains throbbed and gummed up all night long.
+
+We went to chapel the next morning to keep from going insane outright.
+The Chi Yis were there looking perfectly sour. The Alfalfa Delts on the
+other hand were riotous. Every one of them had a pleasant greeting for
+us. They slapped us on the back and asked us how we were coming on in
+our rushing. Matheson was particularly vicious. He came over to Bangs
+and put his arm around him in a friendly way. "I am going to have dinner
+with my pupil to-night," he said triumphantly. "He wants me to come over
+and get his trunk. Says he's got a good room now and he's much obliged
+to you fellows for your trouble. Have you heard that there's another
+Smith in school--son of a big Chicago man? There's some great material
+here this fall, don't you think?"
+
+Bangs tripped on Matheson's pet toe and went away. Something horrible
+had happened. How we hated those Alfalfa Delts! They had stung us
+before, but this was a triple-expansion, double-back-action,
+high-explosive sting, with a dum dum point. We hurt all over; and the
+worst of it was, we hadn't really been stung yet and didn't know where
+it was going to hit us. Did you ever wait perfectly helpless while a
+large, taciturn wasp with a red-hot tail was looking you over?
+
+The Alfalfa Delts frolicked up and down college that day, Smithless but
+blissful. We consoled ourselves with a couple of corking chaps whom the
+Delta Flushes had been cultivating, and put the ribbons on them in
+record time. Ordinarily we would have been perfectly happy about this,
+but instead we were perfectly miserable. We detailed four men at a time
+to be gay and carefree with our pledges; and the rest of us sat around
+and listened to our bursting hearts. Of all the all-gone and utterly
+hopeless feelings, there is nothing to compare with the one you have
+when your frat--the pride of the nation--has just been tossed into the
+discard by some hollow-headed Freshman.
+
+I took my head out of my hands just before dinner and went down the
+street to keep a rushing engagement. I had to pass the Alfalfa Delt
+house. It hurt like barbed wire, but I had to look. I was that miserable
+that it couldn't have bothered me much more, anyway, to see that wildly
+happy bunch. But I didn't see it. I saw instead a crowd of fellows on
+the porch who made our dejection look like disorderly conduct. There was
+enough gloom there to fit out a dozen funerals, and then there would
+have been enough left for a book of German philosophy. The crowd looked
+at me and I fancied I heard a slight gnashing of teeth. I didn't
+hesitate. I just walked right up to the porch and said: "Howdedo? Lovely
+evening!" says I. "How many Smiths have you pledged to-day?"
+
+The gang turned a dark crimson. Then Matheson got up and came down to
+me. He was as safe-looking as somebody else's bull terrier.
+
+"We don't care to hear any more from you," he said, clenching his words;
+"and it would be safer for you to get out of here. We're done with your
+whole crowd. You're lowdown skates--that's what you are. You're
+dishonorable and sneaky. You're cads! We'll get even. I give you
+warning. We'll get even if it takes a hundred years."
+
+"Thanks!" says I. "Hope it takes twice as long." Then I went back home
+and let my date take care of itself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We went through dinner in a daze and sat around, that night, like a
+bunch of vacant grins on legs. Our grins were vacant because we didn't
+know why we were grinning. We'd stung the Alfalfa Delts. We didn't know
+why or how or when. But we'd stung them! We had their word for it.
+Sooner or later something would turn up in the shape of particulars;
+only we wished it would hurry. If it didn't turn up sooner we were
+extremely likely to burst at the seams.
+
+It turned up about nine o'clock. There was a commotion at the front door
+and Maxwell came in. He was followed by an avalanche of Smiths. There
+was our Smith, and a tall, lean Smith, and a Smith who waddled when he
+walked. They were all dirty and dusty; they all wore our pink-and-blue
+pledge ribbons on their coat lapels and when they got in the house they
+gave the Eta Bita Pie yell and sang about half of the songbook. Maxwell
+had not only pledged them, but he had educated them.
+
+After we had stopped carrying the bunch about on our shoulders, and had
+put the roof of the house back, and had righted the billiard table, and
+persuaded the cook to come down out of a tree in the back yard, we
+allowed Maxwell to tell his story.
+
+"It was perfectly simple," he said. "Didn't expect to be kidnapped, of
+course; but it's all in the day's work. You've no idea what a job I had
+getting colors to pin on these chumps. If it hadn't been for my pink
+garters and a blue union suit I'd put on yesterday--"
+
+We stopped Maxwell and backed him up to the starting pole again. But he
+was no story-teller. He skipped like a cheap gas engine. We had to take
+the story away from him piece by piece. He'd dodged his Smiths down a
+side street, it seems, on the plea that there weren't any more Smiths
+coming--and they might as well go over to his room. All would have been
+well if one Smith hadn't got an awful thirst. There was a corner drug
+store on the way to the room and while the quartet were insulting their
+digestions with raspberry ice-cream soda a college man with a wicked eye
+came by. A few minutes later, just as they were crossing the railroad
+viaduct near Smith's home, two closed carriages drove up and six husky
+villains fell upon them, shouting: "Chi Yi forever!" And after dumping
+them in the carriages, they sat on them while the teams went off.
+
+"After I'd got my man's knee out of my neck," said Maxwell, "I didn't
+seem to care much whether I was kidnapped or not. It would bind us four
+closer together after we escaped; and, besides, I have never found
+kidnapping to pay--too much risk. Anyway, they drove us nothing less
+than twenty miles and bundled us into an old deserted house. The leader
+told us, with a whole lot of unnecessary embroidery, that we were to
+stay there until we pledged to Chi Yi if we rotted in our shoes. Then,
+of course, I saw through the whole thing. It was an Alfalfa Delt gang
+disguised as Chi Yis. The Alfalfa Delts would send another gang out the
+next day, rout the bogus Chi Yis and allow the poor Freshies to fall on
+their necks and pledge up. That used to be popular at Muggledorfer.
+
+"I did the talking and let my knees knock together considerably. I told
+them that we'd been too badly shaken up to think, but if they would let
+us alone that night we'd try to learn to love them by morning. So they
+put us upstairs and warned us that every window was guarded; then we lay
+down together and I began at the first chapter and pumped those chaps
+full of Eta Bita Pie all night.
+
+[Illustration: With our colors on and four particularly wicked-looking
+chair legs in our hands
+                    _Page 167_]
+
+"It was six o'clock when they finally pledged. When the gang came up
+they found us adamant. 'Never!' said I. 'We'll pledge Alfalfa Delt or
+die martyrs to a holy cause!' Of course they didn't dare give
+themselves away. They couldn't even shout for joy. All they could do was
+to wait for the rescuing party. I spent the day teaching the boys the
+songs and the yell in whispers; and about three o'clock I got my grand
+inspiration about the colors and rigged them out. Then I dug my own pin
+out and put on my vest and about four o'clock the rescuing party drove
+up. Say, you'd have laughed to see that fight! Ham-actors in Richard the
+Third would have made it look tame. The Chi Yis put up a fist or two,
+threw a brick and then cut for the timber; and the noble Alfalfa Delts
+burst open the door just as I got the chorus going on that grand old
+song:
+
+     "_'Oh, you've got to be an Eta Bita Pie
+     Or you won't get a scarehead when you die!_'
+
+"When they saw us there, with our colors on and four particularly
+wicked-looking chair legs in our hands, they gave one simultaneous
+gasp--and say, boys, I don't believe in ghosts, but I don't see yet how
+they disappeared so instantaneously! And anyway, for Heaven's sake,
+bring out the prog. We drilled eight miles to a railroad station and my
+vest buttons are tickling my backbone."
+
+Just then a telegram arrived.
+
+     "Don't look for Smith. Changed his mind and went to Jarhard!
+
+                    "SNOOTY."
+
+No wonder we couldn't blast any information out of our Smiths! Oh, they
+were our Smiths all right--and they weren't such a bad bunch at that.
+The fat one turned out to be the champion mandolin teaser in school and
+the lean one made the debating team; while our own particular first
+edition Smith won the catch-as-catch-can chess championship of the
+college three years later.
+
+Just the same, I'd like to get one fair crack at that Smith who went to
+Jarhard. I'd get even for those three days, I'll bet a few!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+TAKING PACE FROM FATHER TIME
+
+
+Honestly, Bill, it's so hard to keep up to date these days, that
+sometimes I'm afraid to go to sleep at night for fear I'll find myself
+in an ethnological museum when I wake up the next morning, with people
+making funny cracks about the strange clothes I was wearing when they
+caught me.
+
+I'm not constitutionally a back number myself either. I come as near
+wearing next year's styles as most fellows, and I had my wrist broken
+cranking an automobile before most Americans believed the things would
+go. I was tired of this hand-chopped furniture fad years ago, and if you
+hand me any slang that I can't catch on the fly you'll have to make it
+up right now. But there's no use talking. No one man can keep up with
+this world all by himself. Sometimes I get to thinking I'm so far ahead
+that I can afford to sit down and get a breath or two, and when I get up
+I have to eat dust for the next year trying to catch up.
+
+Take colleges, for instance. I've been conceited enough to think that
+these flappy little college boys, with their front hair brushed back
+down on their necks, couldn't show me anything that I wasn't tired of.
+I've kept up to date on college things, I've always flattered myself.
+You might lose me now and then on some new way of abusing lettuce during
+a salad course, perhaps, but as far as looking startled at anything that
+might be said or done around a college campus goes, I've had a notion
+that I wasn't in the learning class--which shows how much I knew about
+it. This morning a gosling from the old school--a Sophomore--came in and
+visited with me for a few minutes, on the strength of the fact that he
+knew my baby brother in high school. We hadn't talked a minute before he
+handed me "pragmatism" and "zing-slingers." While I was rolling my eyes
+and clawing for a foothold he confessed that he was the best glider in
+college. When I remarked that I had been somewhat of a glider myself,
+but that I had preferred the twostep, he laughed and explained that he
+was captain of the aviation team--that they had three gliders and were
+finishing a monoplane that had a home-made engine with concentric
+cylinders.
+
+Can you beat it? There I was, Petey Simmons' best friend, and personally
+acquainted with eleven thousand forms of college excitement, listening
+to an infant with my mouth open and stopping him every few words to say
+"land sakes," "dew tell" and "what d'ye mean by that?" I never was so
+humiliated in my life, but there's no getting around the truth. I've
+been ten years out of college, and when I go back they'll pull the
+grandfather clause on me and wheel me in early nights. I'm a back number
+and I know the symptoms. When that young Sophomore told me the boys of
+Eta Bita Pie had just spent twenty dollars apiece on a formal dance and
+house party, I put up the same kind of a lecture to him that my father
+gave me when I explained that we simply had to spend five dollars apiece
+on our party, or belong in the fag end of things. And I suppose when my
+father's crowd blew in a couple of dollars for a load of wood, his
+father reminded him that when HE went to college they didn't coddle
+themselves with fires in their dormitories. And I suppose that some day
+this Sophomore will be telling his son that when he was in college a
+simple little home-made aeroplane furnished amusement for twenty
+fellows, and that they never dreamed of dropping over to the coast on
+Saturdays for a dip in the surf in their private monoplanes. Oh, well,
+it's human nature and natural law, I suppose. No use trying to put a
+rock on the wheels of progress--and there's no use trying to ride the
+darned thing either. It'll throw you every time.
+
+When I went to college, Billy--loud pedal on that "I"--things were
+different. We didn't spend our time fooling with gliders or blow
+ourselves up monkeying with pragmatism. We attended strictly to
+business. We were there for educational purposes and we had no time to
+chase humming birds and chicken hawks. Why, the gasoline money of a
+young collegian to-day would have paid my board bills then! We didn't
+go to Japan on baseball tours, or lug telescopes around South America
+when we ought to have been studying ethics. We lived simply and plainly.
+There wasn't an automatic piano in a single frat house when I was in
+college, and as for wasting our money on motion-picture shows and
+taxi-cabs--nonsense. We'd have died first.
+
+You see I'm getting into practice. Some day I'll have a son, I hope, and
+he'll go back to Siwash. Just wait till he comes home at the end of the
+first semester and tries to put across any bills for radium stickpins
+and lookophonic conversations with the co-eds at Kiowa. I'll pull a
+When-I-was-at-Siwash lecture on him that will make him feel like a
+spider on a hot stove. If I've got to be a back number I want to romp
+right back far enough to have some fun out of it. I'll make him sweat as
+much lugging me up to date as I had to perspire in the old days to
+illuminate things for Pa.
+
+After all, there is no question at college more serious than the Pa
+question, anyway, Bill. It was always butting into our youthful
+ambitions and tying pig iron to our coat-tails when we wanted to soar.
+It's simply marvelous how hard it is to educate a Pa a hundred miles or
+more away into the supreme importance of certain college necessities. It
+isn't because they forget, either. It's because they don't realize that
+the world is roaring along.
+
+I can see it all since this morning. Take my father, for instance.
+There was no more generous or liberal a Pa up to a certain point. He
+wanted me to have a comfortable room and vast quantities of good food,
+and he was glad to pay literary society dues, and he would stand for
+frat dues; but when it came to paying cab hire, you could jam an
+appropriation for a post-office in an enemy's district past Joe Cannon
+in Congress more easily than you could put a carriage bill through him.
+He just said "no" in nine languages; said that when he went to
+Siwash--"and it turned out good men then, too, young fellow"--the girls
+were glad to walk to entertainments through the mud; and when it was
+unusually muddy they weren't averse to being carried a short distance. I
+believe I would have had to lead disgusted co-eds to parties on foot
+through my whole college course if I hadn't happened across an old
+college picture of father in a two-gallon plug hat. That gave me an
+idea. I put in a bill for a plug hat twice a year and he paid it without
+a murmur. Then I paid my carriage bills with the money. Plug hats had
+been the peculiar form of insanity prevalent at Siwash in his day and he
+thought they were still part of the course of study.
+
+I got along much easier than many of the boys, too. Allie Bangs' Pa made
+him buy all his clothes at home, for fear he'd get to looking like some
+of the cartoons he'd seen in the funny papers. "Prince" Hogboom was a
+wonder of a fullback, and his favorite amusement was to get out at night
+and try to pull gas lamps up by the roots. He was a natural born holy
+terror, but his father thought he was fitted by nature to be a
+missionary, and so Hoggie had to harness himself up in meek and
+long-suffering clothes and attend Bible-study class twice a week. The
+crimes he committed by way of relieving himself after each class were
+shocking. Then there was Petey Simmons, who was a perpetual sunbeam and
+greatly beloved because it was so easy to catch happiness from him. And
+yet Petey went through school with a cloud over his young life, in the
+shape of a Pa who gave him a thousand dollars a year for expenses and
+wouldn't allow a single cent of it to be spent for frivolity. And he had
+a blanket definition for frivolity that covered everything from dancing
+parties to pie at an all-night lunch counter. By hard work Petey could
+spend about four hundred dollars on necessary expenses, and that left
+him six hundred dollars a year to blow in on illuminated manuscripts,
+student lamps, debating club dues and prints of the old masters. He had
+to borrow money from us all through the year, and then hold a great
+auction of his art trophies and student lamps, before vacation came, in
+order to pay us back.
+
+But all of these troubles weren't even annoyances beside what Keg
+Rearick had to endure. Keg was an affectionate contraction of his real
+nickname--"Keghead." He had the worst case of "Pa" I ever heard of. He
+was a regular high explosive--one of these fine, old, hair-triggered
+gentlemen, who consider that they have done all the thinking that the
+world needs and refuse to have any of their ideas altered or edited in
+any particular. Keg had had his life laid out for him since the day of
+his birth, and when he left for Siwash--on the precise day announced by
+his father eighteen years before--the old man stood him up and
+discoursed with him as follows:
+
+"My son, I am about to give you the finest education obtainable. You are
+to go down to Siwash and learn how to be a credit to me. Let me impress
+it on you that that is your only duty. You will meet there companions
+who will try to persuade you that there are other things to be done in
+college besides becoming a scholar. You will pay no attention to them.
+You are to spend your time at your books. You are to lead your class in
+Latin and Greek. Mathematics I am not so particular about. You are to
+waste no time on athletics and other modern curses of college. I shall
+pay your expenses and I shall come down occasionally to see how you are
+progressing. And you know me well enough to know that if I find you
+deviating from the course I have laid out in any particular, you will
+return home and go into the store at six dollars a week."
+
+That's the way Keg always repeated it to us. With that affectionate
+farewell ringing in his ears he came on down to Jonesville; and when the
+Eta Bita Pies saw his honest features and his particularly likable
+smile, they surrounded and assimilated him in something less than
+fifteen minutes by the clock. And then his troubles began. Keg's father
+had come down the week before school and had selected a quiet place
+about three miles from the college--out beyond the cemetery in a nice
+lonely neighborhood, where there was just about enough company to keep
+the telephone poles from getting despondent. Moreover, he hadn't given
+Keg any spending money.
+
+"Education is the cheapest thing in the world," he roared. "You don't
+have to keep your pockets full of dollars to live in the times of Homer
+and Horace. I've told them to let you have what you need at the
+bookstore. For the rest, the college library should be your haunt and
+the debating society your recreation." If ever any one was getting
+knowledge put down his throat with a hydraulic ram, it certainly was Keg
+Rearick.
+
+It isn't hard to imagine the result. Keg toiled away three miles from
+anything interesting and got bluer and gloomier and more anarchistic
+every day. Wouldn't have been so bad if nobody had loved him. Lots of
+fellows go through college with no particular friends and emerge in good
+health and spirits. But we had courted Keg and had tried to make it
+impossible for him to live without us. We liked him and we hankered for
+his company. We wanted to parade him around the campus and confer him
+upon the prettiest co-ed in his boarding hall, and teach him to sing a
+great variety of interesting songs, with no particular sense to them,
+and snatch off two or three important offices around school. Instead of
+that he only got to say "howdy" to us between classes, and the rest of
+his time he spent Edward Payson Westoning back and forth from his
+suburban lair, without a cent in his pockets and the street-car
+motor-men giving him the bell to get off of the track into the mud every
+other block.
+
+We very soon found this wasn't going to do. Keg's spirits were down
+about two notches below the absolute zero. If this was college life, he
+said, would somebody kindly take a pair of forceps and remove it. It
+ached. The upshot was we made Keg steward of the frat-house table, which
+paid his board and room and moved him into the chapter house. He
+objected at first, because of what his father would say when he heard of
+it. But he finally concluded that anything he might say would be
+pleasanter than going all day without hearing anything, so he
+surrendered and came along.
+
+The first night at dinner, when we pushed back our chairs and sang a few
+lines by way of getting ready to go upstairs and chink a little assorted
+learning into our headpieces, Keg cried for pure joy. He buckled down to
+work the way a dog takes hold of a root, and inside of a week he
+couldn't remember a time in his young existence when he had been
+unhappy. He was tossing out Greek declensions to the prof. like a
+geyser, and Conny Matthews, our champion Livy unraveler, had shown him
+how to hold a Latin verb in his teeth while he broke open the rest of
+the sentence. And, besides that, we had introduced him to all the
+nicest girls in the college and had assisted the glee club coach to
+discover that he had a fine tenor voice. He was a sure-enough find, and
+fitted into college life as if it had been made to measure for him.
+
+Of course all this pleasantness had to have a gloom spot in it
+somewhere. Rearick's father furnished the gloom. He was certainly the
+most rambunctious, most unreconstructed and most egregious Pa that ever
+tried to turn the sunshine off of a bright young college career.
+Regularly once a week a letter would come to Keg from him. It always
+began "When I was in college," and it always wound up by ordering Keg to
+eat a few assorted lemons for the good of his future. He was to go to
+morning prayer, regularly--there hadn't been any for twenty years. He
+was to become as well acquainted as possible with his professors,
+because of the inspiration it would give him--fancy snuggling up to old
+Grubb. He was to take a Sunday-school class at once. He was to remember
+above all things that though it was a disgrace to waste a minute of the
+precious college years it was equally a disgrace to go through college
+without being self-supporting. He should by all means learn to milk at
+once. He, Keg's father, had been valet to a couple of very fine Holstein
+cows while he was in college, and he attributed much of his success to
+this fact. He would of course pay Keg's expenses while he had to, but he
+would hold it to his discredit. He must at once begin to find work.
+
+This last command impressed Keg deeply, for he had been sailing along
+with us without a cent. He'd been earning his board and room, of course,
+but that was already paid for for a month out on the edge of the planet;
+and as it was the first time the family that owned the house had ever
+got a student boarder they firmly declined to rebate. It's pretty hard
+to butterfly joyously along with the fancy-vest gang without any other
+assets than unlimited credit at the bookstore, so Keg began to prowl for
+a job. Presently he picked up a laundry route. The laundry wagon was a
+favorite vehicle on which to ride to fame and knowledge in those days.
+By getting up early two mornings a week and working late nights, Keg
+managed to put away about six dollars and forty-five cents a week,
+providing every one paid his laundry bill. He was so pleased and tickled
+over the idea that he wrote to his father at once explaining that he now
+had plenty of work, but had had to move downtown in order to do it.
+
+Did this please old pain-in-the-face? Not noticeably. There had been no
+such things as laundry wagons in his day. Students were lucky if they
+had a shirt to wear and one to have washed at the same time. He wrote a
+letter back to Keg that bit him in every paragraph. He was to give up
+the frivolous laundry job and get some wood to saw. That and tending
+cows were the only real methods of toiling through college. He, Keg's
+father, had received his board and room for milking cows and doing
+chores, and he had sometimes earned as much as three dollars a week
+after school hours and before breakfast sawing cordwood at seventy-five
+cents a cord. It was healthful and classic. He would send his old saw by
+express. And he was further to remember--there were about four more
+pages to memorize, a headache in every page.
+
+Good old Keg did his best to be obedient, but he had no chance. In the
+first place, cordwood was phenomenally scarce in Jonesville, and anyway,
+people had a vicious habit of hindering the cause of education by sawing
+it at the wood-yards with a steam saw. There were plenty of cows in the
+outskirts, but they were either well provided with companions for their
+leisure hours, or their owners declined to allow Keg to practice on
+them--he knowing about as much about a cow as he did about a locomotive.
+And so he dawdled on with us at the chapter house, gulping down Livy,
+getting a strangle hold on Homer, and pulling in six or seven dollars a
+week at his frivolous laundry job, some of which cash he was saving up
+for a dress suit. And then, one day, Pa Rearick blew in for another
+visit and caught his son playing a mandolin in our lounging room--far,
+far from the nearest cyclone cellar.
+
+To judge from the conversation that followed--we couldn't help hearing
+it, although we went out-of-doors at once--one might have thought that
+Keg had been caught in a gilded den of sin, playing poker with
+body-snatchers. Pa Rearick simply cut loose and bombarded the
+neighborhood with red-hot adjectives. That he should have brought up a
+son to do him honor and should have found him dawdling his college
+moments away with loafers; fawning on the idle sons of the rich;
+tinkling a mandolin instead of walking with Homer; wasting time and
+money instead of trying to earn his way to success--"Bah," likewise
+"Faugh," to say nothing of other picturesque expressions of entire
+disgust--from all of which one would judge almost without effort that
+Keg was in bad, and in all over.
+
+I suppose Keg attempted to explain. Possibly some people try to argue
+with a funnel-shaped cloud while it is juggling the house and the barn
+and the piano. Anyway the explanations weren't audible. Presently Pa
+Rearick announced, for most of the world to hear, that he was going to
+take his idle, worthless, disgraced and unspeakable nincompoop of a son
+back to his home and set him to weighing out dried apples for the rest
+of his life. Then up rose Keg and spoke quite clearly and distinctly as
+follows:
+
+"No, you're not, Dad."
+
+"Wh-wh-wh-whowhowwy not!" said Pa Rearick, with perfect self-possession
+but some difficulty.
+
+"Because I like this college and I'm going to stay here," said Keg. "I'm
+standing well in my studies and I'm learning a lot all around."
+
+"All I have to say is this," said Pa Rearick. I really haven't time to
+repeat all of those few words, but the ukase, when it was completely
+out, was the following: Keg was to have a chance to ride home in the
+cars if he packed up within ten minutes. After that he could walk home
+or dance home or play his way home with his mandolin. And he was given
+to understand that, when he finally arrived, the nearest substitute to a
+fatted calf that would be prepared for dinner would be a plate of cold
+beans in the kitchen with the hired man.
+
+"You may stay here and dawdle with your worthless companions if you
+desire," shouted Pa Rearick to a man in an adjoining county. "The lesson
+may be a good one for you. I wash my hands of the whole matter. But
+understand. Don't write to me for a cent. Not one cent. You've made your
+bed. Now lie on it."
+
+With which he went away, and we tiptoed carefully in to rearrange the
+shattered atmosphere and comfort Keg. We found him looking thoughtfully
+at nothing, with his hands deep in his pockets, from which about six
+dollars and seventy-five cents' worth of jingle sounded now and then. We
+waited patiently for him to speak. At last he turned on us and grinned
+pensively.
+
+"Do you know, boys," he said, "as a bed-maker I can beat the owner of
+that prehistoric old corn-husk mattress out in the suburbs with one hand
+tied behind me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of course it is a sad thing to be regarded with indignation and disgust
+by one's only paternal parent, but Keg bore up under it pretty
+manfully. He dug into his work harder than ever--and he was a good
+student. Latin words stuck to him like sandburrs. That wasn't his fault,
+of course. Some men are born with a natural magnetism for Latin words;
+and others, like myself, have to look up _quoque_ as many as nine times
+in a page of Mr. Horace's celebrated metrical salve-slinging. Keg went
+into a literary society, too, and developed such an unholy genius at
+wadding up the other fellow's words and feeding them back to him that he
+made the Kiowa debate in his Freshman year. He also chased locals for
+the college paper, made his class football team, got on the track squad
+and won the Freshman essay prize. In fact, he killed it all year long
+and likewise he trained all year long with his idle and vicious
+companions--meaning us.
+
+It beats all how much benefit you can get from training with idle and
+vicious companions, if you are built that way. Of course we taught him
+how to play a mandolin, and how to twostep on his own feet exclusively,
+and how to roll a cigarette without carpeting the floor with tobacco,
+and how to make a pretty girl wonder if she is as beautiful as all that,
+without really saying it himself, and dozens of other pretty and
+harmless little tricks. But that wasn't half he picked up while he was
+loafing away the golden hours of his college course in our chapter
+house. Conny Matthews, whose hobby was Latin verse, plugged him up to
+sending in translated sonnets from Horace for Freshman themes. Noddy
+Pierce showed him how to grab the weak point in the other fellow's
+debate and hang on to it through the rebuttal, while the enemy
+floundered and struggled and splattered disjointed premises all over the
+hall. Allie Bangs had a bug on fencing, and because he and Keg used to
+tip over everything in the basement trying to skewer each other, they
+got to reading up on old French customs of producing artistic
+conversations and deaths and other things, and eventually they wrote one
+of those "Ha" and "Zounds" plays for the Dramatic Club. In fact, there's
+no limit to what you can absorb from idle and vicious companions. In one
+term alone I myself picked up banjo playing, pole vaulting, a little
+Spanish, a bad case of mumps, and two flunks, simply by associating with
+the Eta Bita Pie gang twenty-seven hours a day.
+
+But nobody had to show Keg how to get jobs after his first experience.
+He had a knack of scenting a soft financial snap a mile away to leeward,
+and working his way through college was the least of his troubles. It
+used to make me tired to see the nonchalance with which he would sleuth
+up to a nice fat thing like a baseball season program, and put away a
+couple of hundred with a single turn of the wrist and about four days'
+hard soliciting among the long-suffering Jonesville merchants. I never
+could do it myself. I had the popular desire to work my way through
+school when I entered Siwash, and I pictured myself at the end of my
+college career receiving my diploma in my toil-scarred fist, without
+having had a cent from home. But pshaw! I was a joke. I mowed one lawn
+in my Freshman year, after hunting for work for three weeks; and I lost
+that engagement because the family decided the hired girl could do it
+better. After that I gave up and took my checks from home like a little
+man. In Siwash it is all right to get sent through school, and nobody
+looks down on you for it. The boys who make their own way are very kind
+and never taunt you if you have to lean on Pa. But all the same, you
+feel a little bit disgraced. Why, I've seen a cotillon leader run all
+the way home from a downtown store where he clerked after school hours,
+in order to get into his society harness on time; and when the winner of
+the Interstate Oratorical in my Freshman year had received his laurel
+wreath and three times three times three times three from the crazy
+student body, he excused himself and went off to the house where he
+lived, to fill up the hard-coal heater and pump the water for the next
+day's washing.
+
+As I started to say, some time ago, Keg proved to be a positive genius
+in nailing down jobs. He hadn't been with us three months until he had
+presented his laundry route to one of the boys. He didn't have time to
+attend to it. He had hauled down a chapel monitorship that paid his
+tuition. He got his board and room from us for being steward, and how he
+ever got the fancy eats he gave us out of four dollars per week per
+appetite is an unsolved wonder. He made twenty-five dollars in one week
+by introducing a new brand of canned beans among the hash clubs. He took
+orders for bookbinding on Saturdays, and sold advertising programs for
+the college functions after school hours. More than once I borrowed ten
+dollars from him that year, while I was living on hope and meeting the
+mailman half-way down the block each morning just before the first of
+the month. And I wasn't the only man who did it, either.
+
+Perhaps you wonder how he had time to do all this and to mix up in all
+the various departments of student bumptiousness, besides absorbing
+enough information laid down and prescribed by the curriculum to batter
+an "A" out of old Grubb, who hated to give a top mark worse than most
+men hate to take quinine. That's one of the mysteries of college life.
+No one has time to do anything but the busy man. In every school there
+are a few hundred joyous loafers who hold down an office or two, and
+make one team, and then have only time to take a few hasty peeps at a
+book while running for chapel; and there are a dozen men who do the
+debating and the heavy thinking for half a dozen societies, and make
+some athletic team, and get their lessons and make their own living on
+the side--and who always have time, somehow, to pick up some new and
+pleasant pastime, like reading up for an oration on John Randolph, of
+Roanoke, or some other eminent has-been. When I think of my wasted years
+in college and of how I was always going to take hold of Psych. and
+Polykon and Advanced German, and shake them as a terrier does a rat,
+just as soon as I had finished about three more hands of whist--oh,
+well, there's no use of crying about it now. What makes me the maddest
+is that my wife says I'm an imposingly poor whist player at that.
+
+Keg went home with one of us for the semester holidays. And at
+commencement time he wrote an affectionate letter home to his volcanic
+old sire, and told him that he was going to stride forth into the
+unappreciative world and yank a living away from it that summer. That
+was the great ambition of almost every Siwash boy. When we weren't
+thinking of girls and exams in the blissful spring days, we were
+stalking some summer job to its lair and sitting down to wait for it.
+There wasn't anything that a Siwash boy wouldn't tackle in the summer
+vacation. The farmer boys had a cinch, of course. They were skilled
+laborers; and, besides, they came back in the fall in perfect condition
+for the football squad. Some of the town boys became street-car
+conductors. The new railroad that was built into Jonesville about that
+time was a bonanza for us. It was no uncommon thing, the summer of my
+Sophomore year, to find a dozen muddy society leaders shoveling dirt in
+a construction crew and singing that grand old hymn composed by Petey
+Simmons, which ran as follows:
+
+     _I've a blister on me heel, and me beak's begun to peel;
+       I've an ache for every bone that's in me back.
+     I've a feeling I could eat rubber hose and call it sweet,
+       And me hands is warped from lugging bits of track._
+
+     _Oh, me closes they are tore, and me shoulders they are sore,
+       And I sometimes wish that I had died a 'borning';
+     And me eye is full of dirt, and there's gravel in me shirt,
+       But I'm going back to Siwash in the mor-r-r-r-r-r-r-rning._
+
+One of our own boys is a division superintendent on one of the big
+western roads to-day, and he caught the railroad microbe in the shovel
+gang.
+
+The boys got newspaper positions and clerked in the stores, and one or
+two of them tooted cornets or other disturbances at summer-resort
+hotels. One junior, during my time, aroused the envy of the whole
+college by painting the steeple of the First Baptist Church during
+vacation; and when he finished the job his class numerals were painted
+in big letters on top of the ornamental knob that tipped the spire. At
+least, so he announced, and no rival class had the nerve to investigate.
+
+But the most popular road to prosperity during the summer was the
+canvassing route. About the last of April various smooth young college
+chaps from other schools would drift into Siwash and begin to sign up
+agents for the summer. There were three favorite lines--books,
+stereopticon slides and a patent combination desk, blackboard,
+sewing-table, snow-shovel, trundle-bed and ironing-board--which was sold
+in vast numbers at that time by students all over the country. All
+through May the agents fished for victims. They signed them up with
+contracts guaranteeing them back-breaking profits, and then instructed
+them with great care in a variety of speeches. Speech No. 1,
+introductory. Speech No. 2, to women. Speech No. 3, clinching talk for
+waverers. Speech No. 4, to parents. Speech No. 5, rebuttal to argument
+that victim already has enough reading matter. Speech No. 6, general
+appeal to patriotism and love of progress. Then on Commencement day the
+hopeful young collegians would go forth to argue with the calm and
+unresponsive farmer's wife and sell her something that she had never
+needed and had never wanted, until hypnotized by the classic eloquence
+of a bright-eyed young man with his foot in the crack of the half-opened
+door.
+
+I chose the book game one summer, and went out with about thirty others.
+Twenty-five of them quit at the end of the first week. That was about
+the usual proportion--but the rest of us stuck. I devastated a swath of
+territory fifty miles wide and a hundred miles long. I talked, argued,
+persuaded, plead, threatened and mesmerized. I sold books to men on
+twine binders, to women with their hands in the bread dough, and once,
+after a farmer had come grudgingly out to rescue me from his dog, I sold
+a book to him from a tree. I worked two months, tramped four hundred
+miles, told the same story of impassioned praise for and confidence in
+my book eleven hundred times, and sold sixty-five volumes at a gross
+profit of seventy-nine dollars--my expenses being eighty dollars even.
+But it was worth the effort. I was a shy young thing at the beginning
+of the summer, who believed that strangers would invariably bite when
+spoken to. When school began I was a tanned pirate who believed the
+world belonged to him who could grab it, and who would have walked up to
+a duke and sold him a book on practical farming with as much assurance
+as if it were a subpoena I was serving.
+
+Keg went out with the desk crowd, and it was evident from the first
+minute that he was going to return a plutocrat. He sold a desk to the
+train brakeman on his way to his field, and another to a kind old
+gentleman who incautiously got into conversation with him. He raged
+through four counties like a plague, selling desks in farmhouses, public
+libraries, harness stores, banks and old folks' homes. He was the
+season's sensation and won a prize every month from the proud and happy
+company. When he had finished collecting he took a hasty run to Denver
+on a sight-seeing trip, and came back to Siwash that fall in a parlor
+car, with something over four hundred dollars in his jeans.
+
+Naturally we would have ceased worrying about the probability of keeping
+Keg with us then if we had not done so long before. As a matter of fact,
+he was more prosperous than any of us. He had made his own money and he
+drew his own checks when he pleased, instead of taking them the first of
+the month wrapped up in a cayenne coating composed of parental remarks
+on extravagance and laziness. He gave away all of his little jobs to the
+rest of us first thing, and said he was content with what he had; but,
+pshaw!--when a man has the gift he can't dodge prosperity. Keg had to
+manage the college paper that year because no one else could do it quite
+so well; and it netted him about fifty dollars a month. When the
+glee-club manager got cold feet over the poor prospects, Keg backed a
+trip himself--and I hate to say how much he cleared from it. That was
+the first year we swept the West with our famous football team of
+trained mastodons; and at the earnest solicitation of about a dozen
+daily papers here and there, Keg dashed off something like one hundred
+yards of football dope at five dollars a column--sort of a literary
+hundred-yard dash. He used to write it between bites at the dinner
+table. And then to top off everything, his precious desk company came
+along and stole him from us early in April. It considered him too
+valuable a man to tramp the country selling desks, while there were
+other young collegians who only needed the touch of a magic tongue to
+get them into the great calling. So Keg made a tour of Kiowa and
+Muggledorfer and Hambletonian and Ogallala colleges, lining up
+canvassers at a net profit of something like fifty dollars per
+head--full or empty. When he blew in at the end of the year to spend
+Commencement week with us he was nothing short of an amateur Croesus.
+He bulged with wealth. I remember yet the awe with which the rest of us,
+hoarding our last nickels at the end of the long and billful year, took
+a peep at the balance in his checkbook and touched him humbly for
+advances, great and small.
+
+Keg had gone out the second evening of Commencement week to bring a
+little pleasure into the barren life of a girl who hadn't been shown any
+attention by any one for upward of four hours. The rest of the boys were
+also away scattering seeds of kindness in a similar manner, and so I was
+alone when Pa Rearick stumped up the walk to the chapter-house porch and
+glared at me.
+
+"I want to see my boy," he said, out of the corner of his beard. He
+seemed to suspect that I had made him into a meat pie or otherwise done
+away with him.
+
+"He's out," I said, not very scared; "but if you want to wait for him,
+won't you make yourself quite at home?"
+
+He took a seat on the porch without a word. I went on smoking a
+cigarette in my most abandoned style and saying all I had to say, which
+was nothing. After a while Pa Rearick glared over at me again in a most
+belligerent manner.
+
+"Is he well?" he asked.
+
+"Finer'n silk," I answered, most disrespectfully.
+
+"Humph!" said he; which, being freely translated, seemed to mean: "If I
+had an impudent, lazy, immoral, shiftless, unlicked cub like you, I'd
+grind him up for hen feed."
+
+Much more silence. I lit another cigarette.
+
+"Does he get enough to eat?"
+
+"When he has time," I said. "He's generally pretty busy."
+
+"Playing the mandolin, I suppose."
+
+"Most of the time," said I. "He runs the college in his odd moments."
+
+"He wouldn't have run the Siwash I went to," said Pa Rearick grimly.
+
+"No," said I, "you egregious timber-head, he'd have spent his time
+limping after Homer." But as I said it only to myself, no one was
+insulted.
+
+"Has he learned anything?" said old Hostilities, after some more
+silence.
+
+"Took the Sophomore Greek prize this year," I said, blowing one of the
+most perfect smoke rings I had ever achieved.
+
+"I don't believe it," said Pa Rearick deliberately.
+
+I blew another ring that was very fair, but it lacked the perfect double
+whirl of the first one. And presently the neatest spider phaeton that
+was owned by a Jonesville livery stable drew up before the house and Keg
+jumped out, telling a delicious chiffon vision to hold old Bucephalus
+until he got his topcoat. Keg was a good dresser, but I never saw him
+quite as letter-perfect and wholly immaculate as he was just then. He
+hurried up the steps, took one look, and yelled "Dad," then made a rush;
+and I went inside to see if I couldn't beat that smoke ring where there
+was not so much atmospheric disturbance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pa Rearick stayed the rest of the week, and after he had interviewed
+certain professors the next day he moved over to the house and stayed
+with us. Mrs. Rearick came down, too, and on this account we didn't see
+quite as much of Keg as we had hoped to. The girl in chiffon didn't,
+either, but that's neither here nor there. She was only a passing fancy,
+anyway. By successive degrees Keg's father viewed the rest of us with
+disapproval, suspicion, tolerance, benevolence, interest and
+friendliness. But I am convinced that it was only on Keg's account. He
+gave us credit for exercising unexpected good taste in liking him. And
+maybe it wasn't interesting to see him thaw and melt and struggle with a
+stiff, wintry smile, as a young man does with his first mustache, and
+finally give himself up unreservedly to fatherly pride. When a father
+has religiously put away these things all his life for fear of spoiling
+a son, and finally finds that that son is unspoilable, even by
+friendliness and parental tenderness, he has a lot of pleasure to
+indulge himself in during his remaining years.
+
+It was like the old fire-eater to call us together before he went and
+punished himself. I suppose it was his sense of justice which was too
+keen for any good use. "I've misjudged my son," he said to us; "and I
+want to make public admission of it. I am perhaps a little out of
+date--a little old-fashioned. The world didn't move so fast when I was a
+boy here. When I was in school we saved our money and studied. My son
+tells me he can't afford to save money--that time is too precious. I
+don't pretend to understand all your ways, but he seems to think you
+have been good to him and I want to thank you for it. My son has made
+his way alone these two years. I threw him out to support himself. When
+I casually mentioned yesterday that times were very hard in the business
+just now, he wanted to put five hundred dollars into it. I want you to
+know I'm proud of him. I hope you young gentlemen will feel free to stop
+and visit us when you come through our town. I must say, times seem to
+have changed."
+
+Right he was. Times have changed. And here I have been dunderheading
+along in just his way, imagining that I was pacing them, instead of
+sitting on the fence and watching them go by. If I can find that little
+Sophomore who insulted me this morning, I'm going to make him come to
+dinner and tell me some more about the way they do things this
+afternoon. As for to-morrow--what does he or any one else know about it?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+FRAPPED FOOTBALL
+
+
+As a rule there is only about one thing to mar the joy of college days
+and nights and early mornings. That is the Faculty. Honestly, I used to
+sit up until long after bedtime every little while trying to figure out
+some real reason for a college Faculty. They interfere so. They are so
+inappropriate. Moreover, they are so confoundedly ignorant of college
+life.
+
+How a professor can go through an assorted collection of brain
+stufferies, get so many college degrees that his name looks like
+Halley's Comet with an alphabet tail, and then teach college students
+for forty years without even taking one of them apart to find out what
+he is made of, beats my time! That's a college professor for you, right
+through. He thinks of a college student only as something to
+teach--whereas, of all the nineteen hundred and eighty-seven things a
+college student is, that is about the least important to his notion. A
+boy might be a cipher message on an early Assyrian brick and stand a far
+better chance of being understood by his professor.
+
+A college Faculty is a collection of brains tied together by a firm
+resolve--said resolve being to find out what miscreant put plaster of
+Paris in the keyhole of the president's door. It is a wet blanket on a
+joyous life; it is a sort of penance provided by Providence to make a
+college boy forget that he's glad he's alive. It's a hypodermic syringe
+through which the student is supposed to get wisdom. It takes the place
+of conscience after you've been destroying college property. When I sum
+it all up it seems to me that a college Faculty is a dark, rainy cloud
+in the middle of a beautiful May morning--at least that's the way the
+Faculty looked to me when I was a humble seeker after the truth in
+Siwash College.
+
+The Faculty was to boys in Siwash what indigestion is to a jolly good
+fellow in the restaurant district. It was always either among us or
+getting ready to land on us. Our Faculty had thirty-two profs and
+thirty-three pairs of spectacles. It also had two good average heads of
+hair and considerable whiskers. It could figure out a perihelion or a
+Latin bill-of-fare in a minute, but you ought to hear it stutter when it
+tried to map out the daily relaxations of a college full of husky young
+hurricanes, who had come to school to learn what life looks like from
+the inside. Fairy tales in the German and tea and wafers with quotations
+looked like a jolly good time to the Faculty; and it couldn't understand
+why some of us liked to put gunpowder in the tea.
+
+Now don't understand me to say that there isn't anything good about a
+college professor. Bless you, no! There's a lot of it. A Faculty is a
+lot of college profs in a state of inflammation, but individually most
+of the Siwash profs were nearly human at times. I look back at some of
+them now with awe. They really knew a lot. They knew so much that most
+of them are there yet; and I go back and look at them with a good deal
+more respect than I used to have. I'll tell you it fills a chap with awe
+to see a man teaching along for twenty years at eighteen hundred dollars
+per, and raising children, and buying books, and going off to Europe now
+and then on that princely sum--and coming through it all happy and
+content with life. I go around them nowadays with my hat off and try to
+persuade them that if it wasn't for my sprained arm I could quote Latin
+almost as well as the stone dog in front of Prexy's house.
+
+And some of them are bully good fellows, too. Nowadays they take me into
+their studies at Commencement and give me good cigars, making sure first
+that there are no undergraduates around. Why, one of the profs I worried
+the most, when I was a cross between a Sophomore and a spotted hyena, is
+as glad to see me nowadays as though I owed him money. He runs a little
+automobile, and I hope I may get laid out in the subway if I haven't
+heard him cuss in real United States when the clutch slipped. And he was
+the chap who used to pick out the passages in Livy that had inflammatory
+rheumatism and make me recite on them, and who always told me that a
+student who smoked cigarettes would be making a wise business move if he
+brought his hat to recitation and left the less important part of his
+head at home.
+
+But, as I was saying, the Faculty at Siwash, like all other Faculties,
+didn't know its place. It wasn't satisfied with teaching us Greek and
+Latin and Evidences of Christianity and tall-brow twaddle of all sorts.
+It had to butt into our athletics and regulate them. Did you ever see a
+farmer regulate a weed patch with a hoe? You know how unhealthy it is
+for the weeds. Well, that was the way the Faculty regulated our
+athletics. It didn't believe in athletics anyway. They were too
+interesting. They might not have been sinful, but they were not literary
+and they were uneconomic. Of course all the professors admitted that
+good outdoor exercise was healthy for college boys, but most of them
+believed that you ought to get it in the college library out of Nature
+books. And so the way they went at the real athletics, to keep them pure
+and healthful, almost drove us into the violent ward.
+
+Those were the days at Siwash when our football team could start out for
+a pleasant stroll through any teams in our section and wonder after it
+had passed the goal line, why those undersized fellows had been jogging
+their elbows all the way down the field. That was the kind of a team we
+built up every fall; and it wasn't half so much trouble to keep other
+teams from beating it as it was to keep the Faculty from blowing it to
+pieces with non-eligibility notices. There was something diabolical
+about that Faculty when it was wrestling with the athletic problem. It
+wasn't human. It was like Mount Etna. You never could tell just when it
+would stop being lovely and quiet, and scatter ruin all over the
+vicinity.
+
+Its idea of regulating athletics at Siwash was to think up excuses for
+flunking every man who weighed over one hundred and fifty-five and could
+have his toes stepped on without saying "Ouch!" And it never got the
+excuses thought up until the night before the most important games. The
+Faculty pretended to be as bland and innocent as Mary's lamb, but no one
+can ever tell me it didn't know what it was about. Men have to have real
+genius to think up the things it did. You couldn't do it accidentally.
+When a Siwash Faculty could moon along happily all fall until
+twenty-four hours before the Kiowa game and then discover with regret
+that our two-hundred-and-twenty-pound center had misspelled three words
+in an examination paper the year before; that our two-hundred-pound
+backs didn't put enough rear-end collisions into their words when they
+read French; and that Ole Skjarsen read Latin with a Norwegian accent
+and was therefore too big an ignoramus to play football, I decline to be
+fooled. I never was fooled. Neither was Keg Rearick. But that is
+hurdling about three chapters.
+
+Honestly, we used to spend one day out of six building up our football
+team and the other five defending it from the Faculty. It positively
+hungered for a bite out of the line-up. It had us helpless. If we didn't
+like the way it ran things we could take our happy young college life up
+by the roots and transplant it to some other school, where the football
+team moved around the field like a parade. Theoretically the Faculty
+could sit around and take our best players off the team, as fast as we
+developed them, for non-attention to studies. But, as a matter of fact,
+it wasn't an easy matter. It beats all how early in the morning you have
+to get up to get ahead of college lads who have got it into their heads
+that the world will gum up on its axle and stop dead still if their
+innocent little pleasures are interfered with.
+
+I remember the fall that the Faculty decided Miller couldn't play
+because he hadn't attended chapel quite persistently enough the spring
+before. Miller was our center and as important to the team that year as
+the mainspring of a watch. The ponderous brain trust that sat on this
+case didn't decide it until the day before the big game with
+Muggledorfer; then they practically ruled that he would have to go back
+to last spring and take his chapel all over again. It took us all night
+to sidestep that outrage, but we did it. The next morning an indignation
+committee of fifty students met the Faculty and presented alibis that
+were invincible. It was demonstrated by a cloud of witnesses that Miller
+had been absent nine times hand-running because he had been sitting up
+nights with a sick chum. The Faculty was inexperienced that year and let
+him play; but, when it found out the next day by consulting the records
+that the chum had attended chapel every one of those nine mornings, it
+got more particular than ever and its heart seemed to harden.
+
+On the day before the Thanksgiving game that year the Faculty held a
+long meeting and decided that our two guards were ineligible. There
+wasn't a word of truth in it. They weighed two hundred and twenty pounds
+apiece and were eligible to the All-American team, but you couldn't make
+the human lexicons look at it that way. They found them deficient in
+trigonometry and canned them off the team. It was an outrage, because
+the two chaps didn't know what trigonometry meant even and couldn't take
+an examination. We had to call the trig. professor out of town by a
+telegram that morning and then have the suspended men demand an
+immediate examination. That worked, too; but every time we managed to
+preserve a glory of old Siwash, the Faculty seemed to get a little more
+crabby and unreasonable and diabolically persisted in its determination
+to regulate athletics.
+
+The next fall it was well understood when football practice began that
+there was going to be war to the knife between the Faculty and the
+football team. We were meek and resigned to trouble, but you can bet we
+were not going to sit around and embrace it. The longest heads in the
+school made themselves into a sort of an unofficial sidestepping
+committee; and we decided that if the Faculty succeeded in massacring
+our football team they would have to outpoint, outfoot, outflank and
+outscheme the whole school. Just to draw their fire, we advertised the
+first practice game as a deadly combat, in which the honor of Old Siwash
+was at stake. It was just a little romp with the State Normal, which had
+a team that would have had to use aeroplanes to get past our ends; but
+the Faculty bit. It held a special session that night and declared the
+center, the two backs and the captain ineligible because they had not
+prepared orations the spring before at the request of the rhetoric
+professor. That was first blood for us. We chased the Normalites all
+over the lot with a scrub team and Keg Rearick sat up nights the next
+week writing the orations. The result was we got four fine new
+dry-cleaned records for our four star players and the Faculty was so
+pleased with their fine work on those orations that we could scarcely
+live with it for a week.
+
+That was only a skirmish, however. We knew very well that the sacred
+cause of education would come right back at us and we decided to be
+elsewhere when it struck its next blow for progress. We talked it all
+over with Bost, the coach, and the result was that a week before the
+Muggledorfer game, the last week in September, Bost gave out his line-up
+for the season in chapel. There were a good many surprises in the
+line-up to some of us. It seemed funny that Miller shouldn't make the
+team out and that Ole Skjarsen should have been left off; but the best
+of men will slump, as Bost explained, and he had picked the team that he
+thought would do the most good for Siwash. It was a team that I wouldn't
+have hired to chase a Shanghai rooster out of a garden patch, but the
+blind and happy Faculty didn't stop to reason about its excellence. It
+held a meeting the night before the Muggledorfer game and suspended nine
+of the men for inattention to chapel, smoking cigarettes during vacation
+and other high crimes. The whole school roared with indignation. Bost
+appeared before the Faculty meeting and almost shook his fist in Prexy's
+face. He told the Faculty that it was the greatest crime of the
+nineteenth century; and the Faculty told him in very high-class language
+to go chase himself. So Bost went sorrowfully out and put in the regular
+team as substitutes. The next day we whipped Muggledorfer 80 to 0.
+
+[Illustration: Our peculiar style of pushing a football right through
+the thorax of the whole middle west
+                    _Page 205_]
+
+I think that would have discouraged the Faculty if it hadn't been for
+Professor Sillcocks. Did I ever tell you about Professor Sillcocks? It's
+a shame if I haven't, because every one is the better and nobler for
+hearing about him. He was about a nickel's worth of near-man with
+Persian-lamb whiskers and the disposition of a pint of modified milk.
+Crickets were bold and quarrelsome beside him. He knew more musty
+history than any one in the state and he could without flinching tell
+how Alexander waded over his knees in blood; but rather than take off
+his coat where the world would have seen him he would have died. He was
+just that modest and conventional. He had to come to his classes through
+the back of the campus up the hill; and they do say that one day, when
+half a dozen of the Kappa Kap Pajama girls were sitting on the low stone
+wall at the foot of the hill swinging their feet, he cruised about the
+horizon for a quarter of an hour waiting for them to go away in order
+that he might go up the hill without scorching his collar with blushes.
+That was the kind of a roaring lion Professor Sillcocks was.
+
+Well, to get back from behind Robin Hood's barn, Professor Sillcocks had
+a great hobby. He believed that college boys should indulge in
+athletics, but that they should do it with their fingers crossed. Those
+weren't his exact words, but that was what he meant. It was noble to
+play games, but wicked to want to win. In his eyes a true sport was a
+man who would start in a foot race and come in half a mile behind
+carrying the other fellow's coat. Our peculiar style of pushing a
+football right through the thorax of the whole Middle West nearly made
+him shudder his shoes off and every fall in chapel he delivered a talk
+against the reprehensible state of mind that finds pleasure in the
+defeat of others. We always cheered those talks, which pleased him; but
+he never could understand why we didn't go out afterward and offer
+ourselves up to some high-school team as victims. It pained him greatly.
+
+Naturally Professor Sillcocks participated with great enthusiasm in the
+work of pruning our line-up, and after the Faculty had thrown up its
+hands he climbed right in and led a new campaign. We had to admire the
+scientific way in which he went about it, too. For a man whose most
+violent exercise consisted of lugging books off a top shelf, and who had
+learned all he knew about football from the Literary Pepsin or the
+Bi-Weekly Review, he got onto the game in wonderful style. Somehow he
+managed to learn just who were our star players--what they played and
+how badly they were needed--and then he went to work to quarantine these
+players.
+
+First thing we knew the Millersburg game, which was always a fierce
+affair, arrived; and on the morning of the game Bumpus and Van
+Eiswaggon, our two star halfbacks, got notices to forget there was such
+a game as football until they had taken Freshman Greek over again--they
+being Seniors and remembering about as much Greek as their hats would
+hold on a windy day. I'll tell you that mighty near floored us; but
+virtue will pretty nearly always triumph, and when you mix a little luck
+into it, it is as slippery to corner as a corporation lawyer. We had the
+luck. There were two big boners, Pacey and Driggs, in college who wore
+whiskers. There always are one or two landscape artists in college who
+use their faces as alfalfa farms. We took Bumpus and Van Eiswaggon and
+the leading man of a company that was playing at the opera house that
+night over to these two Napoleons of mattress stuffing and they kindly
+consented to be imitated for one day only. Old Booth and Barrett had a
+tremendous layout of whiskers in his valise and before he got through he
+had produced a couple of mighty close copies of Pacey and Driggs. That
+afternoon the two real whisker kings went out in football suits and ran
+signals with the team until their wind was gone. Then they went back
+into the gym and their improved editions came out. Most of the college
+cried when they found that the two eminent authorities on tonsorial art
+were going to try to interfere with Millersburg's ambition, but those of
+us who were on to the deal simply prayed. We prayed that the whiskers
+wouldn't come off. They didn't, either. It was a grand game. We won, 20
+to 0; and the school went wild over Pacey and Driggs. Even Prexy came
+out of it for a little while and went into the gym to shake hands with
+them. It took lively work to detain him until we could get them stripped
+and laid out on the rubbing boards. They were the heroes of the school
+for the rest of the year and, being honest chaps, they naturally
+objected. But we persuaded them that they had saved the college with
+their whiskers; and before they graduated we begged a bunch from each of
+them to frame and hang up in the gym some day when the incident wasn't
+quite so fresh.
+
+Naturally, by this time, we believed that the Faculty ought to consider
+itself lucky to be allowed to hang around the college. Professor
+Sillcocks looked rather depressed for a day or two, but he soon cheered
+up and seemed to forget the team's existence. We swam right along,
+beating Pottawattamie, scoring sixty points on Ogallala and getting into
+magnificent condition for the Kiowa game on Thanksgiving. That was the
+game of the year for us. Time was when Kiowa used to beat us and look
+bored about it, but that was all in the misty past. For two years we had
+tramped all the lime off her goal lines; and maybe we weren't crazy to
+do it again! As early as October we used to sit up nights talking over
+our chances, and as November wore along the suspense got as painful as a
+good lively case of too much pie. We watched the team practise all day
+and dreamed of it all night. And then the blow fell.
+
+It wasn't exactly a blow. It was more like a dynamite explosion. School
+let out the day before Thanksgiving, and when announcement time came in
+chapel Professor Sillcocks got up and begged permission to make a few
+remarks. Then this little ninety-eight-pound thinking machine, who
+couldn't have wrestled a kitten successfully, paralyzed half a thousand
+husky young students and a whole team of gladiators with the following
+remarks:
+
+"I have long held, young gentlemen, that the pursuit of athletic
+exercises for the mere lust of winning is one of the evils of college
+life. It does not strengthen the mind or build up one's manhood. It does
+not encourage that sporting spirit which leads a man to smile in defeat
+or to give up his chances of winning rather than take an undue
+advantage. It does not make for gentleness, mildness or generosity. I
+have, young gentlemen, endeavored to make you see this in the past year
+by all the poor means at my disposal. I have not succeeded. But this
+morning I propose to bring it to you in a new way. As chairman of the
+credentials committee which passes upon the eligibility of your football
+players I have decided that the entire team is ineligible. If you ask
+for reasons, I have them. They may not, perhaps, suit you, but they suit
+me. These players are ineligible because they play too well. With them
+you cannot hope to be defeated and I am determined that the Siwash
+football team shall be defeated to-morrow. Your college experience must
+be broadened. Your football team, I understand, has not been defeated in
+three years. This is monstrous. All of you, except the Seniors, are
+totally uneducated in the art of taking defeat. This education I propose
+to open to you to-morrow. I have made it more certain by suspending all
+of what you call your second team and your scrubs--I believe that is
+correct. And the Faculty joins me, young gentlemen, in assuring you that
+if the game with Kiowa College is abandoned--abrogated--called off, I
+believe you express it--football will cease permanently at Siwash. Young
+gentlemen, accept defeat to-morrow as an opportunity and try to
+appreciate its great benefits. That is all."
+
+That last was pure sarcasm. Imagine an executioner carving off his
+victim's head and murmuring politely, "That is all," to the said victim
+when he had finished! There we were, wiped out, utterly
+extinguished--legislated into disgrace and defeat--and all by a smiling
+villain who said "That is all" when he had read the death sentence!
+
+There wasn't a loophole in the decree. Sillcocks had carved the entire
+football talent of the school right out of it with that little list of
+his. We would have to play Kiowa with a bunch of rah-rah boys who had
+never done anything more violent than break a cane on a grandstand seat
+over a touchdown. The chaps who were butchered to make a Roman holiday
+didn't have anything at all on us. We were going to be tramped all over
+by our deadly rival in order to afford pleasure to a fuzzy-faced old
+fossil who had peculiar ideas and had us to try them out on.
+
+I guess, if the students had had a vote on it that day, Professor
+Sillcocks would have been elected resident governor of Vesuvius. We
+seethed all day and all that night. The board of strategy met, of
+course, but it threw up its hands. It didn't have any first aid to the
+annihilated in its chest. Besides, Professor Sillcocks hadn't played the
+game. He had just grabbed the cards. It was about to pass resolutions
+hailing Sillcocks as the modern Nero, when Rearick began to come down
+with an idea. Nowadays people pay him five thousand dollars apiece for
+ideas, but he used to fork them out to us gratis--and they had twice the
+candle-power. As soon as we saw Rearick begin to perspire we just
+knocked off and sat around, and it wasn't two minutes before he was
+making a speech.
+
+"Fellows," he said, "we're due for a cleaning to-morrow. It's official.
+The Faculty has ordered it. If I had a Faculty I'd put kerosene on it
+and call the health department; but that's neither here nor there. We've
+got to lose. We've got to let Kiowa roll us all over the field; and if
+we back out we've got to give up football. Now some of you want to
+resign from college and some of you want to burn the chapel, but these
+things will not do you any good. Kiowa will beat us just the same.
+Therefore I propose that if we have to be beaten we make it so emphatic
+that no one will ever forget it. Let's make it picturesque and
+instructive. Let's show the Faculty that we can obey orders. Let's play
+a game of football the way Sillcocks and his tools would like to see it.
+You let me pick the team now, and give me to-night and to-morrow morning
+to drill them, and I'll bet Kiowa will never burn any property
+celebrating."
+
+Bost was there with his head down between his knees and he said he
+didn't care--Rearick or Sillcocks or his satanic majesty could pick the
+team. As for himself, he was going to leave college and go to herding
+hens somewhere over two thousand miles from the Faculty. So we left it
+to Rearick and went home to sleep and dream murderous dreams about
+meeting profs in lonesome places.
+
+The first thing I saw next morning when I went out of the house was a
+handbill on a telegraph pole. It was printed in red ink. It implored
+every Siwash student to turn out to the game that afternoon. "New
+team--new rules--new results!" it read. "The celebrated Sillcocks system
+of football will be played by the Siwash team. Attendance at this game
+counts five chapel cuts after Thanksgiving. Admission free. Tea will be
+served. You are requested to be present."
+
+Were we present? We were--every one of us that wasn't tied down to a
+bed. There was something promising in that announcement. Besides, the
+greenest of us were taken in by that chapel-cut business. Besides, it
+was free! College students are just like the rest of the world. They'd
+go to their great-grandmother's funeral if the admission was free. Our
+gang put on big crepe bows, just to be doing something, and marched into
+the stadium that afternoon with hats off. It was packed. Talk about
+promotion work. Rearick had pasted up bills until all Jonesville was red
+in the face. And the Faculty was there, too. Every member was present.
+They sat in a big special box and Sillcocks had the seat of honor. He
+looked as pleased as though he had just reformed a cannibal tribe. I
+suppose the programs did it. They announced once more that the
+celebrated Sillcocks system of football as worked out by the coach and
+Mr. Keg Rearick would be played in this game by the Siwash team. The
+whole town was there too, congested with curiosity. In one big bunch
+sat all the Siwash men who had ever played football, in their best
+clothes and with their best girls. They were the guests of honor at
+their own funeral.
+
+The Kiowa team came trotting out--behemoths, all of them--ready to get
+revenge for three painful years. They had heard all about the massacre
+and regarded it as the joke of the century on Siwash. They also regarded
+it as their providential duty to emphasize the joke--to sharpen up the
+point by scoring about a hundred and ten points on the scared young
+greenhorns who would have to play for us. All our ex-players stood up
+and gave them a big cheer when they came. So did everybody else. It's
+always a matter of policy to grin and joke while you're being dissected.
+Nothing like cheerfulness. Cheerfulness saved many a martyr from worry
+while he was being eaten by a lion.
+
+Then our gymnasium doors opened and the brand-new and totally innocent
+Siwash football team came forth. When we saw it we forgot all about
+Kiowa, the Faculty, defeat, dishonor, the black future and the
+disgusting present. We stood up and yelled ourselves hoarse. Then we sat
+down and prepared to enjoy ourselves something frabjous.
+
+Rearick had used nothing less than genius in picking that team. First in
+line came Blakely, a mandolin and girl specialist, who had never done
+anything more daring than buck the line at a soda fountain. He had on
+football armor and a baseball mask. Then came Andrews. Andrews
+specialized in poetry for the Lit magazine and commonly went by the name
+of Birdie, because of an unfortunate sonnet that he had once written.
+Andrews wore evening dress, and carried a football in a shawl strap.
+Then came McMurty and Boggs, sofa-pillow punishers. They roomed together
+and you could have tied them both up in Ole Skjarsen's belt and had
+enough of it left for a handle. James, the champion featherweight fusser
+of the school, followed. He carried a campchair and a hot-water bottle.
+Petey Simmons, five feet four in his pajamas, and Jiggs Jarley, champion
+catch-as-catch-can-and-hold-on-tight waltzer in college, came next. Then
+came Bain, who weighed two hundred and seventeen pounds, had been a
+preacher, and was so mild that if you stood on his corns he would only
+ask you to get off when it was time to go to class. He was followed by
+Skeeter Wilson, the human dumpling, and Billings, who always carried an
+umbrella to classes and who had it with him then. Behind these came a
+great mob of camp-followers with chairs, books, rugs, flowers, lunch
+tables, tea-urns and guitars. It was the most sensational parade ever
+held at Siwash; and how we yelled and gibbered with delight when we got
+the full aroma of Rearick's plan!
+
+The Kiowa men looked a little dazed, but they didn't have time to
+comment. The toss-up was rushed through and the two teams lined up, our
+team with the ball. It would have done your eyes good to see Rearick
+adjust it carefully on a small doily in the exact center of the field,
+mince up to it and kick it like an old lady urging a setting hen off the
+nest. A Kiowa halfback caught it and started up the field. Right at him
+came Birdie Andrews, hat in hand, and when the halfback arrived he bowed
+and asked him to stop. The runner declined. McMurty was right behind and
+he also begged the runner to stop. Boggs tried to buttonhole him.
+Skeeter Wilson, who was as fast as a trolley car, ran along with him for
+twenty-five yards, pleading with him to listen to reason and consent to
+be downed. It was no use. The halfback went over the goal line. The
+Kiowa delegation didn't know whether to go crazy with joy or disgust.
+Our end of the grandstand clapped its hands pleasantly. Down in the
+Faculty box one or two of the professors, who hadn't forgotten
+everything this side of the Fall of Rome, wiggled uneasily and got a
+little bit red behind the ears.
+
+The teams changed goals and Rearick kicked off again. This time he
+washed the ball carefully and changed his necktie, which had become
+slightly soiled. The other Kiowa half caught the ball this time; he
+plowed into our boys so hard that McMurty couldn't get out of the way
+and was knocked over. Our whole team held up their hands in horror and
+rushed to his aid. They picked him up, washed his face, rearranged his
+clothes and powdered his nose. He cried a little and wanted them to
+telegraph his mother to come, but a big nurse with ribbons in her
+cap--it was Maxwell--came out and comforted him and gave him a stick of
+candy half as large as a barber-pole.
+
+By this time you could tell the Faculty a mile off. It was a bright red
+glow. Every root-digger in the bunch had caught on except Sillcocks. He
+was intensely interested and extremely grieved because the Kiowa men did
+not enter into the spirit of the occasion. As for the rest of the crowd,
+it sounded like drowning men gasping for breath. Such shrieks of pure
+unadulterated joy hadn't been heard on the campus in years. When the
+teams lined up again Kiowa had got thoroughly wise. They had held a
+five-minute session together, had taken off their shin, nose and ear
+guards, had combed their hair and had put on their hats. The result was
+what you might call picturesque. You could hear ripping diaphragms all
+over the stadium when they tripped out on the field. The two teams lined
+up and Rearick kicked off again. This time he had tied a big loop of
+ribbon around the ball; when it landed a Kiowa man stuck his forefinger
+through the loop and began to sidle up toward our goal, holding an
+imaginary skirt. Our team rushed eagerly at him, Billings and his
+umbrella in the lead. On every side the Kiowa players bowed to them and
+shook hands with them. The critical moment arrived. Billings reached the
+runner and promptly raised his umbrella over him and marched placidly on
+toward our goal. Hysterics from the bleachers. The Kiowa man didn't
+propose to be outdone. He stopped, removed his derby and presented the
+ball to Billings. Billings put his hand on his heart and declined. The
+Kiowa man bowed still lower and insisted. Billings bumped the ground
+with his forehead and wouldn't think of it. The Kiowa man offered the
+ball a third time, and we found afterward that he threatened to punch
+Billings' head then and there if he didn't take it. Billings gave in and
+took the ball.
+
+"Siwash's ball!" we yelled joyfully. The two teams lined up for a
+scrimmage. Right here a difficulty arose that threatened to end the
+game. The opposing players insisted on gossiping with their arms around
+each other's necks. They would not get down to business. The referee
+raved--he was an imported product, with no sense of humor, and was
+rapidly getting congestion of the brain. "Don't hit in the clinches!"
+yelled some joker. For five minutes the teams gossiped. Then our quarter
+gave his signal--the first two bars of "Oh Promise Me"--and passed the
+ball to Wilson, who was fullbacking.
+
+It was twice as interesting as an ordinary game because nobody knew what
+Wilson would do; in fact, he didn't seem to know himself. He stood a
+minute dusting off the ball carefully and manicuring his soiled nails.
+The Kiowa team and our boys strolled up, arm in arm. Wilson still
+hesitated. The Kiowa captain offered to send one of his men to carry the
+ball. Wilson wouldn't think of causing so much trouble. Our captain
+suggested that the ball be taken to our goal. The Kiowa captain
+protested that it had been there twice already. Some one suggested that
+they flip for goals. The captains did it. Siwash won. Calling a
+messenger boy, our captain sent him over to Kiowa's goal with the ball,
+while the two teams sat down in the middle of the field and the Kiowa
+captain set 'em up to gum.
+
+By this time people were being removed from the stadium in all
+directions. There was a sort of purple aurora over the Faculty box that
+suggested apoplexy. The learned exponents of revised football looked
+about as comfortable as a collection of expiring beetles mounted on
+large steel pins--that is, all but Professor Sillcocks. He was beaming
+with pleasure. I never saw a man so entirely wrapped up in manly sports
+as he was just then. Evidently the new football suited him right down to
+the ground. He clapped his hands at every new atrocity; and whenever
+some Siwash man put his arm around a Kiowan and helped him tenderly on
+with the ball, he turned around to the populace behind him and nodded
+his head as if to say: "There, I told you so. It can be done. See?"
+
+When the Kiowa center kicked off for the next scrimmage he introduced a
+novelty. He produced a large beanbag, which I presume Rearick had
+slipped him, kicked it about four feet and then hurriedly picked it up
+and presented it to one of our men. All of our boys thanked him
+profoundly and then lined up for the scrimmage. Immediately the Kiowa
+captain put his right hand behind him. Our captain guessed "thumbs up."
+He was right and we took the ball forward five yards. Deafening applause
+from the stadium. Then our captain guessed a number between one and
+three. Another five yards. Shrieks of joy from Siwash and desperate
+cries of "Hold 'em!" from the Kiowa gang. Then the Kiowa captain
+demanded that our captain name the English king who came after Edward
+VI. That was a stonewall defense, because Rearick had flunked two years
+running in English history. Kiowa took the ball, but the umpire butted
+in. It was an offside play, he declared, because it wasn't a king at
+all. It was a queen and it was Siwash's ball and ten yards. That made an
+awful row. The Kiowa captain declared that the whole incident was "very
+regrettable," but the umpire was firm. He gave us the ball; and on the
+very next down Rearick conjugated a French verb perfectly for a
+touchdown.
+
+All of this was duly announced to the stadium and the excitement was
+intense. I guess there were as many as two hundred Chautauqua salutes
+after that touchdown. Both teams had tea together and our rooters'
+chorus sang "Juanita," while old Professor Grubb got up, with rage
+printed all over his face in display type, and went home. He never went
+near the stadium again as long as he lived, I understand.
+
+It was a most successful occasion up to this point, but somehow college
+boys always overdo a thing. The strain was telling on the two teams;
+for, when you come right down to it, no Siwash man loves a Kiowa man
+any more fervently than a bull pup loves a cat. The teams lined up again
+and began playing "ring-around-a-rosy" to find who should make the next
+touchdown, when something happened. Klingel, the
+two-hundred-and-ten-pound Kiowan guard, started it. He was just about as
+good a fellow as a white rhinoceros, and an hour of entire civilization
+was about all he could possibly stand. He had the beanbag and he was
+tired of it. Beanbags meant nothing to him. He couldn't grasp their
+solemn beauty. He offered it to Petey Simmons. Petey declined, with
+profuse thanks. Klingel insisted. Petey bowed very low and swore that
+rather than make another touchdown on Kiowa he would suffer wild horses
+to tear him into little bits. Then Klingel began to get offside.
+
+"You hear what I say, you little shrimp!" he said politely. "If you
+don't take this thing and quit your yawping I'm going to make you do
+it."
+
+"Listen, you overfed mountain of pork!" said Petey, with equal
+cordiality. "If you don't like that beanbag eat it. It would do you
+good. You don't know beans anyway."
+
+Then Klingel, without further argument, hit Petey in the eye and laid
+him out.
+
+[Illustration: "If you don't like that beanbag eat it"
+                    _Page 220_]
+
+Wow! Talk about irritating a hornet convention. Klingel was a great
+little irritator. The whole game had been torture for our real team,
+cooped up among the ruffles in the stadium; and when they saw little
+Petey go down they gave one simultaneous roar and vaulted over the
+railing. It was a close race, but Ole Skjarsen beat Hogboom out by a
+foot. He hit Klingel first. Hogboom hit him second, third, fifth and
+thirty-fourth. Then the two teams closed together and for five minutes a
+cyclone of dust, dirt, sweaters, collars, arms, legs, hair and bright
+red noses swept up and down the field. The grandstand went crazy. The
+five hundred Kiowa rooters grabbed their canes and started in. They met
+about seven hundred Siwash patriots and then the whole universe
+exploded.
+
+The police interfered and about half an hour later the last Siwash
+student was pried off the last Kiowan. It was the most disgraceful riot
+in the history of the college. I don't think there was a whole suit of
+clothes on the field when it was over; and the Siwash man who didn't
+have two or three knobs on his head wasn't considered loyal. The girls
+all cried. The Faculty went home in cabs, the mayor declared martial law
+and the Kiowa gang walked out of town to the crossing and took the train
+there to avoid further hard feelings. We were all ashamed of ourselves
+and I think the two schools liked each other a little better after that.
+Anyway, we regarded the whole affair as only logical.
+
+The Faculty held a meeting that lasted all the next day. Then it
+adjourned and did absolutely nothing at all except to pile upon us more
+theses, themes and special outrages that semester than any body of
+students had ever been inflicted with in a like period. The profs
+wouldn't speak to us. They regarded us as beneath notice. But when the
+real Kiowa game was scheduled by mutual consent, two weeks afterward,
+there wasn't a remark from headquarters. We played Kiowa and spread them
+all over the map--and not a Faculty member was in town that day.
+
+I understand Professor Sillcocks is not yet thoroughly persuaded that
+his style of football wasn't a success. "But for that unfortunate riot,
+which comes from playing with less cultured colleges," he remarked to a
+Senior the next spring, "that would have been the most successful
+exhibition of mental control and inherent gentility ever seen at
+Siwash."
+
+True, very true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CUPID--THAT OLD COLLEGE CHUM
+
+
+Well! Well! Well! Here's another magazine investigator who has made a
+great discovery. Listen to this, Sam: "Co-education, as found in
+American colleges, is amazingly productive of romance, and the great
+number of marriages resulting between the men and women in
+co-educational schools indicates all too plainly that love-making
+occupies an important part of the courses of study."
+
+Those are his very words. Isn't he the Christopher Columbus, though! Who
+would have thought it? Who would have dreamt that there were any mutual
+admiration societies in co-educational colleges? I am amazed. What won't
+these investigators discover next? Why, one of them is just as likely as
+not to get wise to the fact that there is a hired-girl problem. You
+can't keep anything away from these gimlet-eyed scientists.
+
+Oh, sure! I knew it was just about time for some kind of an off-key
+noise from you, you grouchy old leftover. Just because you graduated
+from one of those paradises in pants, where they import a carload of
+girls from all over the country to one dance a year and worry along the
+rest of the time with chorus girls and sweet young town girls who began
+bringing students up by hand about the time Wm. H. Taft was a Freshman,
+you think you are qualified to toss in a few hoots about co-education.
+Back away, Sam! That subject is loaded. I've had palpitations on a
+college campus myself; and I want to tell you right here that it beats
+having them at a stage door, or at a summer resort, or in a parlor just
+around the corner from nine relatives, or in one of those short-story
+conservatories, or in the United States mails, forty ways for Sunday;
+and, besides, it's educational. We co-educationalists get a four years'
+course in close-coupled conversation and girl classification while you
+fellows in the skirtless schools are getting the club habit and are
+saving up for the privilege of dancing with other fellows' fiancees at
+the proms once a year.
+
+Honestly, I never could see just why a fellow should wait until he is
+through college before he begins to study the science of how to make
+some particular girl believe that if Adam came back he would look at him
+and say: "Gee, it swells me all up to think that chap is a descendant of
+mine!"
+
+And I may be thick in my thought dome, but I never could see any
+objection to marrying a classmate, either, even though I didn't do it
+myself. I admit co-educational schools are strong on matrimony. Haven't
+I dug up for thirty-nine wedding presents for old Siwash students
+already? And don't I get a shiver that reaches from my collar-button
+down to my heels every time I get one of those thick, stiff,
+double-barreled envelopes, with "Kindly dig," or words to that effect,
+on the inside? Usually they come in pairs--the bid to the next wedding
+and the bill for the last present. Why, out of sixty-five ninety-umpters
+with whom I graduated, six couples are already holding class reunions
+every evening; and just the other day another of the boys, who thought
+he would look farther, came back after having made a pretty thorough
+inspection all over the civilized world, and camped outside of the home
+of a girl in our class until she admitted that he looked better to her
+than any of the rising young business men who had bisected her orbit in
+the last ten years. They're to be married this spring and I'm going back
+to the wedding. Incidentally I'm going to help pay for three more silver
+cups. We give a silver cup to each class baby and each frat baby, and
+I've been looking around this past year for a place where we can buy
+them by the dozen.
+
+Weddings! Why, man, a co-educational college is a wedding factory. What
+of it? As far as I can see, Old Siwash produces as many governors,
+congressmen and captains of industry to the graduate as any of the
+single-track schools. And I notice one thing more. You don't find any of
+our college couples hanging around the divorce courts. There is a
+peculiar sort of stickiness about college marriages. They are for
+keeps. When a Siwash couple doesn't have anything else agreeable to talk
+about it can sit down and have a lovely three months' conversation on
+the good old times. It takes a mighty acrimonious quarrel to stand a
+college reunion around a breakfast table. Take it from me, you lonesome
+old space-waster, with nothing but a hatrack to give you an affectionate
+welcome when you come home at night, there is no better place on earth
+to find good wife material than a college campus. Of course I don't
+think a man should go to college to find a wife; but if his foot should
+slip, and he should marry a girl whose sofa pillows have the same
+reading matter on them as there is on his, there's nothing to yell for
+help about. Ten to one he's drawn a prize. Girls who go through
+co-educational colleges are extra fine, hand-picked, sun-ripened,
+carefully wrapped-up peaches--and I know what I'm talking about.
+
+How do I know? Heavens, man! didn't I go through the Siwash peach
+orchard for four years? Don't I know the game from candy to carriages?
+Didn't I spend every spring in a light pink haze of perfect bliss? And
+wasn't all the Latin and Greek and trigonometry and athletic junk
+crowded out of my memory at the end of every college year by the face of
+the most utterly, superlatively marvelous girl in the world? And wasn't
+it a different face every spring? Oh, I took the entire course in
+girlology, Sam! I never skipped a single recitation. I got a Summa Cum
+Laudissimus in strolling, losing frat pins, talking futures and
+acquiring hand-made pennants. And the only bitter thought I've got is
+that I can't come back.
+
+You'll never realize, my boy, how old Pa Time roller-skates by until you
+go back to a co-ed college ten years afterward. Here, in the busy mart
+of trade, I'm a promising young infant who has got to "Yes, sir" and
+"No, sir" to the big ones, and be good and get to work on time for
+thirty years before I will be trusted to run a monopoly alone on a quiet
+day; but back on the Siwash Campus, Sam, I'm a patriarch. That's one
+reason why I don't go back. I'm married and I don't care to be madly
+sought after, but also I don't care to make a hit as a fine old antique
+for a while yet, thank you. When I am forty, and have gummed up my
+digestion in the dollar-herding game until I wheeze for breath when I
+run up a column of figures, I'll go back and have a nice comfy time in
+the grandpa class. But not now. The only difference between a
+thirty-year-old alumnus and the mummy of Rameses, to a college girl, is
+in favor of the mummy. It doesn't come around and ask for dances.
+
+I suppose, Sam, you think you've been all lit up under the upper
+left-hand vest pocket over one or two girls in your time, but I don't
+believe a fellow can fall in love so far over his ears anywhere in the
+world as he can in Siwash College. That's only natural, for the finest
+girls in the world go to Siwash--except one girl who went to another
+school by accident and whom I ran across about three years ago wearing
+an Alfalfa Delt pin. I'll take you up to the house to see her some time.
+She was too nice a girl to wear an Alfalfa Delt pin and I just naturally
+had to take it off and put on an Eta Bita Pie pin; and somehow in the
+proceedings we got married--and all I have to say about it is three
+cheers for the universe!
+
+Anyway, as I was saying, it was as easy to fall in love at Siwash as it
+was to forget to go to chapel. We got along all right in the fall. We
+liked the girls enormously and were always smashing up some football
+team just to please them. And, of course, we kept ourselves all stove up
+financially during the winter hauling them to parties and things in
+Jonesville's nine varnished cabs. It took about as much money to support
+those cabs as it does to run a fleet of battleships. But it was in the
+spring that the real fireworks began. Suddenly, about the first
+Wednesday after the third Friday in April, the ordinary Siwash man
+discovers that some girl whom he has known all year isn't a girl at all,
+but a peachblow angel who is just stopping on earth to make a better man
+of him and show him what a dull, pifflish thing Paradise would be
+without her. Life becomes a series of awful blank spots, with walks on
+the campus between them. He can't get his calculus because he is busy
+figuring on a much more difficult problem; he is trying to figure
+whether three dances with some other fellow mean anything more to Her
+than charity. He gets cold chills every time he reflects that at any
+minute a member of some royal family may pass by and notice Her, and
+that he will have to promote international spasms by hashing him. He
+realizes that he has misspent his life; that football is a boy business;
+that frats are foolish, and that there ought to be a law giving every
+college graduate a job paying at least two thousand dollars a year on
+graduation. He is nervous, feverish, depressed, inspired, anxious,
+oblivious, glorified, annihilated, encouraged and all cluttered up with
+emotion. The planet was invented for the purpose of letting Her dig Her
+number three heels into it on spring afternoons. Sunshine is important
+because Her hair looks better with the light on it. Every time She
+frowns the weather bureau hangs out a tornado signal, and every time She
+smiles somebody puts a light-blue sash around the horizon and a double
+row of million-candle-power calcium lights clear down the future, as far
+as he can see.
+
+That's what love does to a college boy in spring. It's a kind of
+rose-colored brainstorm, but it very seldom has complications. By the
+next fall, the ozone is out of the air; and after a couple has gone
+strolling about twice, football and the sorority rushes butt in--and
+it's all over. Freshman girls are a help, too. Beats all how much
+assistance a Freshman girl can be in forgetting a Senior girl who isn't
+on the premises! Even in the spring-fever period we didn't get engaged
+to any extent. The nearest I ever came to it was to ask the light of my
+life for ninety-several if she would wear my frat pin forever and ever
+until next fall. And, let me tell you, there wasn't any local of the
+Handholders' Union on the Siwash Campus. That's another place where you
+soubrette worriers have us figured out wrong. Rushing a Siwash girl was
+about as distant a proposition for us as trying to snuggle up to the
+planets in the telescopic astronomy course. For cool, pleasant and
+skillful unapproachability, a co-ed girl breaks all records. We just
+worshiped them as higher beings, and I find that a lot of Siwash boys
+who have married Siwash girls are still a little bit dazed about the
+whole affair. They can't figure how they ever had the nerve to start
+real businesslike negotiations.
+
+This very high-class insulation in our love affairs caused us fellows a
+lot of woe once in a while. You never could tell whether or not a girl
+was engaged to some fellow back home. We didn't get impertinent enough
+to ask. I think there ought to be a law compelling a girl who comes to
+college engaged to some rising young merchant prince in the country
+store back home to wear an engagement ring around her neck, where it can
+be easily seen. More than once, a Siwash man who had been conservative
+enough to worship the same girl right through his college course and who
+had proposed to her on the last night of school, when the open season
+for thou-beside-me talk began, has found that all the time some chap has
+been writing her a letter a day and that she has only regarded the
+Siwash man as a kind friend, and so on. Never will I forget when
+Frankling got stung that way! Of course we didn't generally know when a
+tragedy of this sort happened, but in his case he brought it on himself.
+If he hadn't made a furry-eared songbird out of himself when Ole
+Skjarsen drew his girl at the Senior class party--
+
+You want to know about this girl lottery business, you say? Well, it's
+plain that I shall have to begin right back at the beginning of the
+Siwash social system and educate you a little at a time. Now this class
+party drawing is an institution which has been handed down at Siwash
+ever since the ancients went to school before the war. You see, at
+Siwash, as at most colleges, there is the fraternity problem. The frat
+men give parties to the sorority girls as often as the Dean of Women
+will stand for it, and every one gets gorgeously acquainted and
+extremely sociable. The non-fratters go to the Y. M. C. A. reception at
+the beginning of each year and to the Commencement exercises, and that's
+about all. Of course they pick up lots of friends among the non-sorority
+girls; and I guess D. Cupid solders up about as many jobs among them as
+he does among the others. But there isn't much chance for these two
+tribes to mix. That was why the class lottery was invented. It has been
+a custom at Siwash, ever since there has been a Siwash, for each class
+to hold a party each year. Now class parties are held in order that pure
+and perfect democracy may be promoted, and it is necessary to take
+violent measures to shuffle up the people and get every one interested.
+So they draw for partners. The class which is about to effervesce
+socially holds a meeting. At this meeting the names of all the men are
+put in one hat and the names of all the girls in another. Then two
+judges of impregnable honesty draw out a name from each hat
+simultaneously and read them to the class.
+
+When I was at Siwash a class party was the most exciting event in
+college. For uncertainty and breath-grabbing anxiety they made the
+football games seem as tame as a church election. Of course everybody
+can't be a Venus de Milo or an Apollo with a Beveled Ear, as Petey
+Simmons used to call him. Every class has its middle-aged young ladies,
+who are attending college to rest up from ten or fifteen years of
+school-teaching, and its tall young agriculturalists with restless
+Adam's apples, whose idea of being socially interesting is to sit all
+evening in the same chair making a noise like one of those $7.78-suit
+dummies. That's what made the class lotteries so interesting. The
+plow-chasers drew the prettiest girls in the class and the most
+accomplished fusser among the fellows usually drew a girl who would make
+the manager of a beauty parlor utter a sad shriek and throw up his job.
+Of course every one was bound in honor to take what came out of the hat.
+Nobody flinched and nobody renigged, but there was a lot of suppressed
+excitement and well-modulated regret.
+
+I have been reasonably wicked since I left college. Once or twice I
+have slapped down a silver dollar or thereabout and have watched the
+little ball roll round and round a pocket that meant a wagon-load of
+tainted tin for me; and once in a while I have placed five dollars on a
+pony of uncertain ability and have watched him go from ninth to second
+before he blew up. But I never got half the heart-ripping suspense out
+of these pastimes that I did out of a certain few party drawings, when I
+waited for my name to come out and wondered, while I looked across the
+hall at the girl section, whether I was going to draw the one girl in
+the world, any one of four or five mighty interesting runners-up, or the
+fat little girl in the corner with ropy hair and the general look of a
+person who had had a bright idea a few years before and had been
+convalescing from it ever since.
+
+Talk about excitement and consequences! Those drawings kept us on the
+jump until the parties were pulled off. Generally the proud beauties who
+had been drawn by the midnight-oil destroyers did not know them, and
+some one had to steer the said destroyers around to be introduced. What
+with dragging bashful young chaps out to call and then seeing that they
+didn't freeze up below the ankles and get sick on the night of the
+party; and what with teaching them the rudiments of waltzing and giving
+them pointers on lawn ties; or how to charter a good seaworthy hack in
+case the girl lived on an unpaved street; and bracing up the fellows who
+had drawn blanks, and going to call on the blanks we had drawn and
+getting gloriously snubbed--give me a wall-flower for thorns!--well, it
+was no cinch to run a class party. But they were grand affairs, just the
+same, and promoted true fellowship, besides furnishing amusement for the
+whole college in the off season. And, besides, I always remember them
+with gratitude for what they did to Frankling.
+
+You know there are two kinds of fussers in college. There is the chap
+like Petey Simmons, for instance, whose heart was a directory of Siwash
+girls; and there is the fellow who grabs one girl and stakes out claim
+boards all around her for the whole four years. That was Frankling's
+style. He was what we always called a married man. He and Pauline
+Spencer were the closest corporation in college. They entered school in
+the same class, and he called on her every Friday night at Browning Hall
+and took her to every party and lecture and entertainment for the next
+three and a half years--except, of course, the class parties. It was one
+of our chief delights to watch Frankling grind his teeth when some
+lowbrow--as he called them--drew her name. She always had rotten
+luck--you never saw such luck! Once Ettleson drew her. He was a tall,
+silent farmer, who wore boots and a look of gloom; and he marched her
+through a mile of mud to the hall without saying a word, handed her to
+the reception committee and went over to a corner, where he sat all
+evening. But that wasn't so bad as the Junior she drew. His name was
+Slaughter. His father had a dairy at the edge of Jonesville and
+Slaughter decided that, as the night was cold and rainy, a carriage
+would be appropriate. So he scrubbed up the milk wagon thoroughly, put a
+lot of nice, clean straw on the floor, hung a lantern from the top for
+heat and drove her down to the party in state. She was game and didn't
+make a murmur, but Frankling made a pale-gray ass of himself. As I said,
+I never liked Frankling. He had a nasty, sneering way of looking at the
+whole school, except his own crowd. His father owned the locomotive
+works and he always went to Europe for his summers. He was one of those
+unnecessary individuals who are solemnly convinced that if you don't do
+things just as they do something is lacking in your mind; and, though he
+was perfectly bred, he was only about half as pleasant to have around as
+a well-behaved hyena.
+
+I never could see what Miss Spencer saw in him, unless it was the
+locomotives. As far as we could tell--we never got much chance to
+judge--she was a real nice girl. She was a little haughty and never had
+much to say, and always acted as if she was a princess temporarily off
+the job. But she was a good scout, and proved it at the class parties by
+making it as pleasant as she could for the nervous nobodies who took
+her; while the yellow streak in Frankling was so broad there wasn't
+enough white in him to look like a collar. That's why the whole college
+went crazy with delight over the Ole Skjarsen affair.--Last station,
+ladies and gents. Story begins here.
+
+When we were Seniors Ole Skjarsen was the chief embarrassment of the
+class. As a football player he was a wonder, but as a society
+fritterling he was one long catastrophe. He just couldn't possibly get
+hep--that was all. He was as companionable and as good-natured as a St.
+Bernard pup and just as inconvenient to have around. He dressed like a
+vaudeville sketch, and the number of things he could do in an hour,
+which are not generally done in low-vest and low-neck circles, was
+appalling. However we all loved Ole because of his grand and historic
+deeds on the team, and we took him to our parties and never so much as
+fell out of our chairs when he took off his coat in order to dance with
+more comfort and energy. The girls were as loyal as we were and danced
+with him as long as their feet held out, and we made them leather hero
+medals and really had a lot of fun out of the whole business--all except
+Frankling. It just about killed him to have to mingle with Ole socially;
+and when the time for the Senior class party drew near he got so nervous
+that he called a meeting of a few of us fellows and made a big kick.
+
+"I tell you, fellows, this has got to stop!" he declared. "We've
+encouraged this lumber-jack until he has gotten too fresh for any use.
+Why, he'll ask any girl in the college to dance with him, and he goes
+and calls on them, too. Now, it's up to us to show him his place. I'm
+dead against putting his name in the hat for the party. He'll be sure to
+draw a girl who will be humiliated by having to go with him; and I have
+a little too much regard for chivalry and courtesy to allow him to do
+it. We'll just have to hint to him that he'd better have another
+engagement the night of the class party, that's all."
+
+Thereupon we all rose joyously up and told Frankling to go jump in the
+creek. And he called us muckers and declared we were ignorant of the
+first principles of social ethics. He said that Skjarsen might be near
+enough our level to be inoffensive, but as for him he declined to have
+anything to do with the class party. Thereupon we gave three cheers, and
+that made him so mad that he left the meeting and fell over three chairs
+trying to do it with speed and dignity. Altogether it was a most
+enjoyable occasion. We'd never gotten quite so much satisfaction out of
+him before.
+
+The drawing took place the next week and, sure enough, Frankling
+declined to allow his name to be put in the hat. We put Ole's name in
+and were prepared to have him draw a Class A girl; but what happened
+knocked the props out from under us. His name came fourth and he drew
+the mortgaged and unapproachable Miss Spencer.
+
+We didn't know whether to celebrate or prepare for trouble. It seemed
+reasonable that Miss Spencer would back up Frankling and reduce Ole to
+an icicle when he asked her to go with him. But the next morning, when
+we saw Frankling, we were so happy that we forgot to worry. He was one
+large paroxysm. I never saw so much righteous indignation done up in one
+bundle. He cornered the class officers and declared in passionate tones
+that they had committed the outrage of the century. They had insulted
+one of the finest young women in the college. They had made it advisable
+for all persons of culture to remain away from Siwash. The disgrace must
+not be allowed. He didn't speak as a friend, but as a disinterested
+party who wanted justice done; and he proposed to secure it.
+
+We took all this quite humbly and asked him why he didn't see Ole
+himself and order him to unhand the lady. From the way he turned pale,
+we guessed he had done that already. Ole weighed two-twenty in his
+summer haircut and was quick-tempered. We then asked him why he didn't
+buy Ole off. We also asked him why he didn't shut down the college, and
+why he didn't have Congress pass a law or something, and if his head had
+ever pained him before. He was tearing off his collar in order to answer
+more calmly and collectedly when Ole came into the room. Ole had combed
+his hair and shined his shoes, and he had on the pink-and-blue necktie
+that he had worn the month before to the annual promenade with a rented
+dress suit. He seemed very cheerful.
+
+"Vell, fallers," says he, "das leetle Spencer gal ban all rite. She say
+she go by me to das party. Ve ban goin' stylish tu, Aye bet yu." Then
+he saw Frankling and went over to him with his hand out. "Don't yu care,
+Master Frankling," he said, with one of his transcontinental smiles.
+"Aye tak yust sum good care by her lak Aye ban her steddy faller." Phew!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ole took Miss Spencer to the party. There isn't a bit of doubt but that
+he took her in style. He put more care and exertion into the job than
+any of the rest of us and he got more impressive results. Ole has his
+ideas about dress. Ordinarily he wore one of those canned suits that you
+buy in the coat-and-pants emporiums, giving your age and waist measure
+in order to get a perfect fit. He wore a celluloid collar with it and a
+necktie that must have been an heirloom in the family; and he wore a
+straw hat most of the year. He wore each one till it blew away and then
+got another. This rig was good enough for Ole in ordinary little social
+affairs, but when it came to dances and receptions he blossomed out in
+evening clothes. He had made a bargain with a second-hand clothes-man
+downtown--split his wood all winter for the use of a dress suit that had
+lost its position in a prominent family and was going downhill fast. You
+know how the tailors work the dress suit racket. They can't exactly
+change the style of a suit--it's got to be open-faced and have
+tails--but they work in some little improvement like a braid on or off,
+or an extra buttonhole, or a flare in the vest each year; so that a
+really bang-up-to-date chap would blush all over if he had to wear a
+last year's model. I notice the automobile makers are doing the same
+stunt. They can't improve their cars any more, so they put four doors on
+one year, cut 'em in two the next and take them off the year after.
+
+This hasn't anything to do with Ole except that that dress suit of his
+was behind the times one hundred and two counts. It had been a fat man's
+suit in the first place. It fitted him magnificently at the shoulders.
+He and the suit began to leave each other from that point down. At the
+waist it looked like a deflated balloon. The top of the trousers fitted
+him about as snugly as a round manhole in the street. The legs flapped
+like the mainsail of a catboat that's coming about. They ended some time
+before his own legs did and there was quite a little stretch of yarn
+sock visible before the big tan shoes began. Ole had two acres of feet
+and he polished his shoes himself, with great care. They were not so
+large as an ordinary ballroom, but somehow he used them so skillfully
+that they gave the effect of covering the entire space. Four times
+around Ole's feet constituted a pretty fair encore at our dances; and
+I've seen him pen up as many as three couples in a corner with them when
+he got those feet tangled.
+
+That was Ole's formal costume. But he didn't regard it with awe. Any one
+could wear a dress suit. It seemed to him that a Senior party to which
+he was to escort Miss Spencer was too important to pass airily off with
+the same old suit. He had another card up his sleeve.
+
+"Aye ent tal yu," he explained when we asked him anxiously what it was
+he proposed to wear. "Yust vait. Aye ban de hull show, Aye tank. Yu
+fallers yust put on your yumpin'-yack suits. Aye mak yu look lak torta
+cent."
+
+Of course we waited. We didn't have anything else to do. We worried a
+little, but we had gotten used to Ole, anyway--and what was the
+difference? It would be a little hard on Miss Spencer, but it would be
+magnificently horrible to Frankling, who considered that a collar of the
+wrong cut might endanger a man's whole future career. So we resigned
+ourselves and attended to our own troubles.
+
+The night of the party was a cold, clear January evening. There was snow
+on the ground and it was packed hard on the sidewalks. This was nuts for
+the oil-burners. They walked their girls to the hall. Four of the
+reckless ones clubbed together and hired a big closed carriage affair
+from the livery stable. It happened to be a pallbearers' carriage during
+the daytime, but they didn't know the difference and the girls didn't
+tell them; and what you don't know will never cause your poor old brain
+to ache. We frat fellows blew our hard-worked allowances for varnished
+cabs and thereby proved ourselves the biggest suckers in the bunch. To
+this day I can't see why a girl who can dance all night, and can stroll
+all afternoon of a winter's day, has to be hauled three blocks in a
+two-horse rig every time she goes to a party. The money we spent on cabs
+while I was at Siwash would have built a new stadium, painted every frat
+house in town and endowed a chair of United States languages. But,
+there!--I'm on my pet hobby again. How it did hurt to pay for those
+hacks!
+
+I got there late with my girl--she was a shy little conservatory
+student, who evidently regarded conversation as against the rules--and I
+found the usual complications that had to be sorted out at the beginning
+of every class party. Stiffy Short was sore. He was short five dances
+for his girl--had been working on her program for a week--and he accused
+the fellows of dodging because she couldn't dance; and was threatening
+to be taken sick and spend the evening in the dressing room smoking
+cigarettes. Miss Worthington, one of our Class A girls, didn't have a
+dance, because Tullings, who had drawn her, had presumed that she was to
+sit and talk with him all evening. Petey Simmons was in even worse. His
+girl couldn't dance, but insisted on doing so. She had done it the year
+before, too. Petey had been training up for two weeks by tugging his
+dresser around the room. Then there was Glenallen. We always had to form
+a committee of national defense against Glenallen. He couldn't dance,
+either, and he would insist on hitching his chair out towards the middle
+of the room. I've seen him throw as many as four couples in a night. And
+there was a telephone call from Miss Morse, class secretary and
+first-magnitude star. Her escort hadn't shown up. He never did show up.
+When we went around to lynch him the next day he explained desperately
+that at the last minute he found he had forgotten to get a lawn necktie.
+You know how a little thing like a lawn necktie that ain't can wreck an
+evening dress, unless you are an old enough head to cut up a
+handkerchief and fold the ends under.
+
+We had gotten things pretty well straightened out before we discovered
+that Ole was missing. That would never do. If Miss Spencer needed
+rescuing we were the boys to do it. Three of us rushed down the stairs
+to send a carriage over to Browning Hall, and that minute Ole arrived at
+the party.
+
+He had worn his very best--the suit he was proudest of and the one he
+knew couldn't be duplicated. It was his lumber-camp rig--corduroy
+trousers, big boots and overshoes, red flannel shirt, canvas pea-jacket
+and fur cap. He came marching up the walk like the hero in a
+moving-picture show and we thought he was alone till he reached the
+door. Then we saw Miss Spencer. She was seated in state behind him on
+one of those hand-sledges the farmers use for hauling cordwood. There
+were evergreen boughs behind her and all around her, and she was so
+wrapped up in a huge camp blanket that all we could see of her was her
+eyes.
+
+We gave Ole three cheers and carried Miss Spencer upstairs on the
+evergreen boughs. The two were the hits of the party. We never had a
+better one. The incident broke more ice than we could have chopped out
+in a month with all the dull-edged talk we had been handing around.
+Every one had a good laugh by way of a general introduction and then we
+all turned in and made things hum. The wall-flowers got plucked.
+Somebody taught the president of the Y. M. C. A. how to waltz and poor
+Henry Boggs forgot for two hours that he had hands and feet, and that
+they were beyond his control. It was a tremendous success; we were so
+enthusiastic by the time things broke up that we told the cabmen to go
+hang and all walked home to the Hall, the men fighting for a chance to
+pull on the sledge-rope with Ole.
+
+Hold on, Sam. Put down your hat. This isn't the end, thank you. It's
+just the prologue. Of course we all expected, when Ole unloaded Miss
+Spencer at the Hall and she bade him good evening, and thanked him for
+her delightful time and so on, that the incident would be closed. Never
+dreamed of anything else. Lumber-jack suits and cordwood sledges are
+fine for novelties, but they can't come back, you know--once is enough.
+And that's why we fell dead in rows when Ole, straw hat and all, walked
+over to Lab. from chapel with Miss Spencer the next day--and she didn't
+call for the police. We couldn't have stared any harder if the college
+chapel had bowed and walked off with her. And we hadn't recovered from
+the blow when Friday night rolled around and those of us who went to
+call at the Hall found Ole seated in Frankling's particular corner,
+entertaining Miss Spencer with an average of one remark a minute, which,
+so far as we could hear, consisted generally of "Aye tank so" and "No,
+ma'am."
+
+By this time we had decided that Frankling was sulking and that Miss
+Spencer was showing him that if she wanted to be friendly with Ole, or
+the town pump, or the plaster statue of Victory in the college library,
+she had a perfect right to. I guess she showed him all right, too, for
+after a couple of weeks he surrendered and then the queerest rivalry
+Siwash had ever seen began. Frankling, son of the locomotive works,
+authority on speckled vests and cotillons, was scrapping with Ole
+Skjarsen, the cuffless wonder from the lumber camps, for the affections
+of the prettiest girl in college. No wonder we got so interested that
+spring that most of us forgot to fall in love ourselves.
+
+I don't to this day believe that Miss Spencer meant a word of it. I
+think that she was simply good-natured, in the first place, and that,
+when Frankling began to bite little semicircular pieces out of the air,
+she began mixing her drinks, so to speak, just for the excitement of the
+thing. Anyway, Frankling walked over to chapel with her and Ole lumbered
+back. Frankling took her to the basket-ball games and Ole took her to
+the Kiowa debate and slept peacefully through most of it. Frankling
+bought a beautiful little trotting horse and sleigh and took Miss
+Spencer on long rides. In Siwash, young people do not have chaperons,
+guards, nurses nor conservators. That was a knockout, we all thought;
+but it never feazed Ole. He invited Miss Spencer to go street-car riding
+with him and she did it. Some of us found them bumping over the line in
+one of the flat-wheeled catastrophes that the Jonesville Company called
+cars--and Miss Spencer didn't even blush. She bowed to us just as
+unconcernedly as if she wasn't breaking all long-distance records for
+eccentricity in Siwash history.
+
+Frankling dodged the whole college and got wild in the eyes. He looked
+like an eminent statesman who was being compelled to act as barker in a
+circus against his will. It must have churned up his vitals to do his
+sketch act with Ole; but when you have had one of those four-year cases,
+and it has gotten tangled up in your past and future, you can't always
+dictate just what you are going to do. It was plain to see that Miss
+Spencer had Frankling hooked, haltered, hobbled, staked out,
+Spanish-bitted, wrapped up and stamped with her name and laid on the
+shelf to be called for; and it was just as evident that she considered
+he would be all the nicer if she walked around on him for a while and
+massaged his disposition a little with her little French heels.
+
+So Frankling continued to divide time with Ole, and all the fellows whom
+he had insulted about their neckties and all the girls whom he had
+forgotten to dance with sat around in perfect content and watched the
+show.
+
+[Illustration: He invited Miss Spencer to go street-car riding with him
+                    _Page 246_]
+
+We all thought it would wear out after a few weeks. But it didn't. The
+semester recess came and, when college assembled again, Ole cut
+Frankling out for the athletic ball as neatly as if he had been in the
+girl game all his life. Frankling countered with the promenade two weeks
+later, but he went clear to the ropes when Miss Spencer came out one
+fine morning at chapel with Ole's football charm--the one he had won the
+year the team had annihilated two universities and seven assorted
+colleges. He came back gamely and decorated her with fraternity hatpins,
+cuff buttons, belt buckles and side combs; and on the strength of it he
+got three Friday evenings in a row. That might have jarred any one but
+Ole. But he came up smiling and took Miss Spencer to a Y. M. C. A.
+social, where he bought her four dishes of ice cream and had to be
+almost violently restrained from offering her the whole freezer.
+
+Winter wore out and spring came. Frankling brought the whole resources
+of the locomotive works into play. He got a private car and took a party
+off to the Kiowa baseball game, with Miss Spencer as guest of honor. He
+bombarded her with imported candy and American beauties, and cluttered
+up the spring with a series of whist parties, which butted into the
+social calendar something frabjous. Ole plowed right along with his own
+peculiar style of argument. He met the private-car business with a straw
+ride and his prize offering was a hunk of spruce gum from his pine
+woods, as big as your two fists; and, so far as we could see, the gum
+got exactly the same warmth of reception as the candy--though it didn't
+disappear with anywhere near the rapidity.
+
+As April went by, we Seniors got busy with the first awful preliminaries
+of Commencement. It began to be considered around college that Senior
+Day would settle the affair one way or the other. Senior Day is the last
+event of Commencement Week at Siwash and more engagements have been
+announced formally or otherwise that day than at any other time. If a
+Senior man and girl, who had been making a rather close study of each
+other, walked out on the campus together after the exercises and took in
+the corporation dinner at noon side by side, no one hesitated about
+offering congratulations. They might not be exactly due, but it was a
+sign that there was going to be an awful lot of nice-looking stationery
+spoiled by the two after the sad partings were said. Now we didn't have
+a doubt that either Frankling or Ole would amble proudly down between
+the lilac rows on Class Day with Miss Spencer, under the good old
+pretense of helping her locate the dinner-tables a hundred yards away;
+and betting on the affair got pretty energetic. Day after day the odds
+varied. When Frankling broke closing-time rules at Browning Hall by a
+good thirty minutes some two-to-one money was placed on him. When Ole
+and Miss Spencer cut chapel the next day the odds promptly switched. You
+could get takers on either side at any time, but I think the odds
+favored Ole a little. You can't help boosting your preferences with
+your good money. It's like betting on your college team.
+
+Commencement Week came and, although we were Seniors, we went through it
+without hardly noticing the scenery. We watched Ole and Frankling all
+through Baccalaureate, and when Ole won a twenty-yard dash across the
+church and over several of us, and marched down the street with Miss
+Spencer, it looked as if all was over but the Mendelssohn business. But
+Frankling had her in a box at the class play the next night. How could
+you pay any attention to the glorious threshold of life and the expiring
+gasps of dear college days with a race like that on!
+
+Commencement was on Wednesday and Senior Day was Thursday. Up to
+Wednesday night it was an even break--steen points all. One of the two
+had won. We hadn't a doubt of it. But, if both men had been born poker
+players, drawing to fill, in a jack-pot that had been sweetened nine
+times, you couldn't have told less to look at them. Frankling was as
+glum as ever and Ole had the same reenforced concrete expression of
+innocence that he used to wear while he was getting off the ball behind
+somebody's goal line, after having carried it the length of the field.
+We were discussing the thing that night on the porch of the Eta Bita Pie
+house and were putting up a few final bets when Ole came up, carpet-bag
+in hand and his diploma under his arm, and bade us good-by. He was going
+out on the midnight train--going away for good.
+
+For a minute you could have heard the grass growing. If Ole was going
+away that night it meant just one thing: the cruel Miss Spencer had
+tossed him over and he was bumping the bumps downward into a cold and
+cheerless future. We were so sorry we could hardly speak for a minute.
+Then Allie Bangs got up and put his arm as far across Ole's shoulder as
+it would go.
+
+"By thunder, I'm sorry, old chap!" he said huskily.
+
+For a man who had just had an air-castle fall on his neck, Ole didn't
+talk very dejectedly. "Vy yu ban sorry?" he demanded. "Aye got gude yob
+St. Paul vay. De boss write me Aye skoll come Friday. Aye ent care to be
+late first t'ing."
+
+"But, Ole--" Bangs began. Then he stopped. You can't bawl out a question
+about another man's love affairs before a whole mob.
+
+"Yu fallers ban fine tu me," Ole began again. "Aye lak yu bully! Ven yu
+come by St. Paul, take Yim Hill's railroad and come to Sven Akerson's
+camp, femt'n mile above Lars Hjellersen's gang. Aye ban boss of Sven's
+camp now. Aye gat yu gude time and plenty flapyack."
+
+He turned to go. Allie and I got up and walked firmly down the walk with
+him. We were going to be relieved of our suspense if we had to buy the
+information.
+
+"Now, Ole," said Allie, grabbing his carpet-bag, "you know we're not
+going to let you go down to the train alone. Besides, we want to know
+if everything is all right with you. You know we love you. We're for
+you, Ole. You--you and Miss Spencer parting good friends?"
+
+"Yu bet!" said Ole enthusiastically. "She ban fine gur'rl, Aye tal yu.
+Sum day Aye ban sending her deerskin from lumber camp."
+
+Bangs braced up again. "Er--you and Miss Spencer--er--not engaged, are
+you?" he said, the way a fellow goes at it when he is diving into cold
+water. Ole looked around in perfect good humor. "Get married by each
+odder?" he said. "Yee whiz! no, Master Bangs. She ban nice gur'rl. It
+ent any nicer in Siwash College. But she kent cook. She kent build fire
+in woodstove. She kent wash. She kent bake flatbrot. She kent make
+close. She yust ban purty, like picture. Vat for Aye vant to marry
+picture gallery? Aye ban tu poor faller fur picture gallery, Aye tank."
+
+"But, Ole," says I, jumping in, "you've been rushing the girl all winter
+as if your life depended on it. What did you mean by that?"
+
+Ole turned around patiently and sat down on the steps of the First
+Methodist Church, which happened to be passing just then. "Vell, Aye tal
+yu," he explained. "Miss Spencer she ban nice tu me. She go tu class
+party 'nd ent give dam vat das Frankling faller say. Aye ent forget dat,
+Aye tal yu; 'nd, by yimminy Christmas! Aye show her gude time all
+right."
+
+We took Ole to the station and sat down to rest three times on the way
+back. So all that terrific performance was a reward for Miss Spencer! "O
+gratitude!" says the poet, "how many crimes are committed in thy name!"
+
+We were so dazed that night that it didn't occur to us to wonder why
+Miss Spencer stood for all the gratitude. But the next day, when the
+exercises were over, that young lady stepped down from the platform and
+was met by a tall chap whom she later introduced to us as a friend of
+the family from her home town. You can always spot these family friends
+by the way the girl blushes when she introduces them. Miss Spencer wore
+a fine new diamond ring and we knew what it meant. It was just another
+case where the girl came to school and the man stayed at home and built
+a seven-room house on a prominent corner four blocks from his hardware
+store and waited--and tried not to get any more jealous than possible. I
+suppose Miss Spencer used Ole as a sort of parachute to let Frankling
+down easily at the last. Anyway, we wiped the whole affair off the slate
+after that. She wasn't one of us, anyway. Made us shiver to think of
+her. What if one of us had sailed in the Freshman year and cut Frankling
+out!
+
+[Illustration: You can always spot these family friends
+                    _Page 252_]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+VOTES FROM WOMEN
+
+
+Do I believe in woman's suffrage? Certainly, if you do, Miss Allstairs.
+As I sit here, where I couldn't help seeing you frown if I didn't please
+you, I favor anything you favor. If you want the women to vote just hand
+me the ax and show me the man who would prevent them. If you think the
+women should play the baseball of our country it's all right with me.
+I'll help pass a law making it illegal for Hans Wagner to hang around a
+ball park except as water-boy. If you believe that women ought to wear
+three-story hats in theaters--
+
+No, I'm not making fun of you. I hope I may never be allowed to lug a
+box of Frangipangi's best up your front steps again if I am. If you want
+the women to vote, Miss Allstairs, just breathe the word, and I'll go
+out and start a suffragette mob as soon as ever I can find a brick. And
+I would be a powerful advocate, too. You can't tell me that women
+wouldn't be able to handle the ballot. You can't tell me they would get
+their party issues mixed up with their party gowns. I've seen them vote
+and I've seen them play politics. And let me tell you, when woman gets
+the vote man will totter right back to the kitchen and prepare the
+asparagus for supper, just to be out of harm's way. His good old
+arguments about the glory of the nation, the rising price of wheat and
+the grand record of those sterling patriots who have succeeded in
+getting their names on the government payroll won't get him to first
+base when women vote. He'll have to learn the game all over again, and
+the first ninety-nine years' course of study will be that famous
+subject, "Woman."
+
+How do I know so much about it? Just as I told you. I've been through
+the mill. I've seen women vote. I've tried to get them to vote my way.
+I've never herded humming birds or drilled goldfishes in close
+formation, but I'd take the job cheerfully. It would be just a rest cure
+after four years' experience in persuading a large voting body of
+beautiful and fascinating young women to vote the ticket straight and to
+let me name the ticket.
+
+Oh, no! I never lived in Colorado, and I never was a polygamist in Utah,
+thank you. I'm nothing but an alumnus of Siwash College, which, as you
+know, is co-educational to a heavenly degree. I'm just a young alumnus
+with about eighty-nine gray hairs scattered around in my thatch. Each
+one of those gray hairs represents a vote gathered by me from some
+Siwash co-ed in the cause of liberty and progress and personal friends.
+Eighty-nine was my total score. Took me four years to get 'em, working
+seven days in the week and forty weeks in the year. I'm no
+brass-finished and splash-lubricated politician, but I'll bet I could
+go out in any election and cord up that many votes with whiskers on them
+in three days. "Votes for Women" is a fine sentiment and very
+appropriate, Miss Allstairs, but "Votes from Women" has always been the
+motto under which I have fought and been bled--I beg your pardon; that
+just slipped out accidentally. Of course there was nothing of the sort
+possible. Now there isn't the slightest use of your getting angry and
+making me feel like an Arctic explorer in a linen suit. If you insist
+I'll go out on the front porch and sit there a few weeks until you
+forgive me, but that's the very best I can do for you. I will positively
+not erase myself from your list of acquaintances. When a man has been
+hanging around the world in a bored way for thirty-two years, just
+waiting for Fate to catch up with its assignments and trundle you along
+within my range in order to give the sun a rest--
+
+Oh, well--if you forgive me of course I'll stop anything you say. Though
+really, now, that wasn't joshing. It came from the depths. Anyway, as I
+was saying, "Votes from Women"--excuse me, please; I fell off there once
+and I'm going to go slow--"Votes from Women" was the burning question
+back at Siwash when I infested the campus. The women had the votes
+already--no use agitating that. The big question was getting 'em back
+when we needed them. You see, the Faculty always insisted on regulating
+athletics more or less and on organizing things for us--didn't believe
+we mere college youths could get an organization together according to
+Hoyle, or whoever drew up the rules of disorder in college societies,
+without the help of some skyscraper-browed professor. So they saw fit to
+organize what they called a general athletic association. Every student
+who paid a dollar was enrolled as a member, with a vote and the
+privilege of blowing a horn in a lady or gentleman like manner at all
+college games. And just to assure a large membership, the faculty made a
+rule that the dollar must be paid by all students with their tuition at
+the beginning of the year. That, of course, enrolled the whole college,
+girls and all, in the Athletic Association. And it was the Athletic
+Association that raised the money to pay for the college teams and hired
+the coaches and greased old Siwash's way to glory every fall during the
+football season.
+
+Now this didn't bother any for a few years. The men went to the meetings
+and voted, and the girls stayed at home and made banners for the games.
+Everything was lovely and comfortable. Then one day, in my Freshman year
+just before the election, there was a crack in the slate and the Shi
+Delts saw a chance to elect one of their men president--it wasn't their
+turn that year, but you never could trust the Shi Delts politically any
+farther than you could kick a steam roller. They put up their man and
+there was a little campaign for about three hours that got up to eleven
+hundred revolutions a minute. We clawed and scratched and dug for votes
+and were still short when Reilly got an idea and rushed over to Browning
+Hall. Five minutes before the polls closed he appeared, leading
+twenty-seven Siwash girls, and the trouble was over. They voted for our
+man and he was elected by four votes. But, incidentally, we tipped over
+a can of--no, wait a minute. I've simply got to be more classical.
+What's the use of a college diploma if you have to tell all you know in
+baseball language? Let's see--you remember that beautiful Greek lady who
+opened a box under the impression that there was a pound of assorted
+chocolate creams in it and let loose a whole international museum of
+trouble? Dora Somebody--eh? Oh, yes, Pandora. I always did fall down on
+that name. Anyway, the box we opened in that election would have made
+Pandora's little grief repository look like a box of pink powder. The
+kind you girls--oh, very well. I take it back. Honestly, Miss Allstairs,
+you'll get me so afraid of the cars in a minute that I'll have to ditch
+this train of thought and talk about art. Ever hear me talk about art?
+Well, it would serve you right if you did. I talked about art with a
+kalsominer once, and he wanted to fight me for the honor of his
+profession.
+
+However, as I was saying, the women voted at Siwash that fall and I
+guess they must have liked the taste, for the first thing we knew we had
+the woman vote to take care of all the time. The next fall pretty nearly
+every girl in the college turned out to class meetings, and the way
+they voted pretty nearly drove us mad. They seemed to regard it as a
+game. They fussed about whether to vote on pink paper or blue paper;
+voted for members of the Faculty for class president; one of them voted
+for the President of the United States for president of the Sophomore
+class; wanted to vote twice; came up to the ballot box and demanded
+their votes back because they had changed their minds; went away before
+election and left word with a friend to vote for them. Took us an hour,
+right in football practice time, to get the ticket through in our class;
+and what with lending pencils and chasing girls who carried their
+ballots away with them, and getting called down for trying to see that
+everything went along proper and shipshape and according to program, we
+boys were half crazy when it was all over.
+
+But the girls liked it enormously. It was a novelty for them, and we saw
+right there that it was a case of organize the female vote or have
+things hopelessly muddled up before the end of the year. In the
+interests of harmony things had to be done in a businesslike manner.
+Certain candidates had to be put through and certain factions had to be
+gently but firmly stepped on. Harmony, you know, Miss Allstairs, is a
+most important thing in politics. Without harmony you can't do a thing.
+Harmony in politics consists of giving the insurgents not what they ask
+for, but something that you don't want. I was a grand little harmonizer
+in my day too. I ran the oratorical league the year before it went
+broke and then traded the presidency to the Chi Yi-Delta Whoop crowd for
+the editorship of the Student Weekly. That's harmony. They were happy
+and so was I. When I saw how hard they had to hustle to pay the
+association debts the next fall I was so happy I could hardly stand it.
+
+No, Miss Allstairs, that was not meanness on my part. It was politics.
+There is a great deal of difference between meanness and politics. One
+is lowdown and contemptible and nasty, and the other is expedient. See?
+Why, some of the most generous men in the world are politicians. Time
+and again I've seen Andy Hoople, the big politician of our town, pay a
+man's fare to Chicago so that he could go up there and rest during the
+last week of a political campaign and not bother himself and get all
+worried over the way things were going--and the man would be on the
+other side too.
+
+Anyway, to--wait a minute; I'm going to hook over some French now. Look
+out, low bridge--to rendezvous to our muttons--how's that? In a good
+many ways there are worse jobs than that of persuading a pretty girl to
+vote the right way. Sometimes I liked the job so well that I was sorry
+when election came. But, on the whole, it was hard, hard work. We tried
+arguments and exhortation and politics, and you might as well have shot
+cheese balls at the moon. Never touched 'em. I talked straight logic to
+a girl for an hour once, showing her conclusively that it was her duty
+as a patriotic Siwash student to vote for a man who could give a strong
+mind and a lot of money to the debating cause; and then she remarked
+quite placidly that she would always vote for the other man for whatever
+office he wanted, because he wore his dress suit with such an air. I had
+to take her clear downtown and buy her ice cream and things before she
+could understand the gravity of the case at all--
+
+No, indeed, Miss Allstairs, I didn't bribe her. You must be very careful
+about charging people with bribery. Bribery is a very serious offense.
+It's so serious that nowadays it's a very grave thing to charge a
+politician with it. I think it will be made a crime soon. I bought ice
+cream for this girl because she could understand things better while she
+was eating ice cream. It made her think better. Of course, you can't do
+that with a man in real politics. You have to give him an office or a
+contract or something in order to get his mind into a cheerful
+condition. You can argue so much better with a man when he is cheerful.
+No, indeed. I wouldn't bribe a fly. Nobody would. There isn't any
+bribing any more anyway. Illinois has taught the world that.
+
+But that was the least of our troubles. After you had persuaded a girl
+to vote right you had to keep her persuaded. Now most any man might be
+able to keep one vote in line, but that wasn't enough. Some of us had to
+keep four or five votes all ready for use, for competition was pretty
+swift and there were a tremendous number of co-eds in school. You never
+saw such a job as it was. No sooner would I have Miss A. entirely
+friendly to my candidate for the editorship of the Weekly than Miss B.
+would flop over and show marked signs of frost--and then I would have to
+drop everything and walk over from chapel with her three mornings
+hand-running, and take her to a play, and make a wild pass about not
+knowing whether any one would go to the prom with me or not. And then
+just as she would begin to smile when she saw me Miss A. would pass me
+on the street and look at me as if I had robbed a hen-roost. And just as
+I was entirely friendly with both of them it would occur to me that I
+hadn't called on Miss C. for three weeks and that Bannister, of the
+Alfalfa Delts, was waiting for Miss D. after chapel every morning and
+would doubtless make a lowdown, underhanded attempt to talk politics to
+her in the spring. For a month before each election I felt like a giddy
+young squirrel running races with myself around a wheel. Some college
+boys can keep on terms of desperate and exclusive friendliness with a
+dozen girls at a time--Petey Simmons got up to eighteen one spring when
+we won the big athletic election--but four or five were as many as I
+could manage by any means, and it kept me busted, conditioned and all
+out of training to accomplish this. And when election-time approached
+and it came to talking real politics, and the girl you had counted on
+all winter to swing her wing of the third floor in Browning Hall for
+your candidate would suddenly remember in the midst of a businesslike
+talk on candidates and things that you had cut two dances with her at
+the prom, and you couldn't explain that you simply had to do it because
+you had to keep your stand-in with a girl on the first floor who had the
+music-club vote in her pocket-book--well, I may get out over Niagara
+Falls some day on a rotten old tight-rope, with a sprained ankle and a
+fellow on my shoulders who is drunk and wants to make a speech, standing
+up--but if I do I won't feel any more wobbly and uncertain about the
+future than I used to feel on those occasions.
+
+Of course it was entirely impossible for the few dozen college
+politicians to make personal friends and supporters of all the girls in
+Siwash. We didn't want to. There are girls and girls at Siwash, just as
+there are everywhere else. Maybe a third of the Siwash girls were pretty
+and fascinating and wise and loyal, and nine or ten other exceedingly
+pleasant adjectives. And perhaps another third were--well, nice enough
+to dance with at a class party and not remember it with terror. And then
+there was another third which--oh, well, you know how it goes
+everywhere. They were grand young women, and they were there for
+educational purposes. They took prizes and learned a lot, and this was
+partly because there were no swarms of bumptious young collegians
+hanging around them and wasting their time. Far be it from me, Miss
+Allstairs, to speak disparagingly of a single member of your sex--you
+are all too good for us--but, if you will force me to admit it, there
+were girls at Siwash--ex-girls--who would have made a true and loyal
+student of art and beauty climb a high board--certainly, I said I wasn't
+going to say anything against them, and I'm not. Anyway, it's no great
+compliment to be admired for your youth and beauty alone. Age has its
+claims to respect too--oh, very well; I'll change the subject.
+
+As I was saying, we couldn't influence all the co-ed vote personally,
+but we handled it very systematically. Every popular girl in the school
+had her following, of course, at Browning Hall. So we just fought it out
+among the popular girls. Before elections they'd line up on their
+respective sides, and then they'd line up the rest of the co-ed vote. On
+a close election we'd get out every vote, and we'd have it accounted
+for, too, beforehand. The real precinct leaders had nothing on us. It
+took a lot of time and worry; but it was all very pleasant at the end.
+The popular girls would each lead over her collection of slaves of
+Horace and Trig, and Counterpoint and Rhetoric, and we'd cheer politely
+while they voted 'em. Then we'd take off our hats and bow low to said
+slaves, and they would go back to their galleys after having done their
+duty as free-born college girls, and that would be over for another
+year. Everything would have continued lovely and comfortable and darned
+expensive if it hadn't been for Mary Jane Hicks, of Carruthers' Corners,
+Missouri.
+
+No, I've never told you of Mary Jane Hicks. Why? The real reason is
+because when we fellows of that period mention her name we usually cuss
+a little in a hopeless and irritable sort of way. It's painful to think
+of her. It's humiliating to think that twenty-five of the case-hardened
+and time-seasoned politicians of Siwash should have been double-crossed,
+checkmated, outwitted, out-generaled, sewed up into sacks and dumped
+into Salt Creek by a red-headed, freckled-nosed exile from a Missouri
+clay farm; and a Sophomore at that--say, what am I telling you this for,
+Miss Allstairs? Honestly, it hurts. It's nice for a woman to hear, I
+know, but I may have to take gas to get through this story.
+
+[Illustration: It was a blow between the eyes
+                    _Page 268_]
+
+This Mary Jane Hicks came to Siwash the year before it all happened and
+was elected to the unnoticeables on the spot. She was a dumpy little
+girl, with about as much style as a cornplanter; and I suspect that she
+bade her pet calf a fond good-by when she left the dear old farm to come
+and play tag with knowledge on the Siwash campus. Nobody saw her in
+particular the first year, except that you couldn't help noticing her
+hair any more than you can help noticing a barn that's burning on a
+damp, dark night. It was explosively red and she didn't seem to care.
+She always had her nose turned up a little--just on principle, I guess.
+And when you see a red-headed girl with a freckled nose that turns up
+just locate the cyclone cellars in your immediate vicinity, say I.
+
+Well, Mary Jane Hicks went through her Freshman year without causing any
+more excitement than you could make by throwing a clamshell into the
+Atlantic Ocean. She drew a couple of classy men for the class parties
+and they reported that she towed unusually hard when dancing. She voted
+in the various elections under the protecting care of Miss Willoughby,
+who was a particular friend of mine just before the Athletic election,
+and that's how I happened to meet her. I was considerably grand at that
+time--being a Junior who had had a rib smashed playing football and was
+going to edit the college paper the next year--but the way she looked at
+me you would have thought that I was the fractional part of a peeled
+cipher. She just nodded at me and said "Howdedo," and then asked if the
+vest-pocket vote was being successfully extracted that day. That was
+nervy of her and I frowned; after which she remarked that she objected
+to voting without being told in advance that the cause of liberty was
+trembling in the voter's palm. I remember wondering at the time where
+she had dug up all that rot.
+
+Miss Hicks voted at all the elections along with the rest of the herd,
+and as far as I know no rude collegian came around and broke into her
+studies by taking her anywhere. Commencement came and we all went home,
+and I forgot all about her. The next fall was a critical time with the
+Eta Bita Pie-Fly Gam-Sigh Whoopsilon combination, because we had
+graduated a large number of men and we had to pull down the fall
+elections with a small voting strength. So I went down to college a day
+early to confer with some of the other patriotic leaders regarding
+slates and other matters concerning the good of the college.
+
+I hadn't more than stepped off the train until I met Frankling, the
+president of the Alfalfa Delts, and Randolph, of the Delta Kappa
+Sonofaguns, and Chickering, of the Mu Kow Moos, in close consultation.
+It was very evident that they were going to do a little high-class
+voting too. And before night I discovered that the Shi Delts and the
+Delta Flushes and the Omega Salves had formed a coalition with the
+independents, and that there was going to be more politics to the square
+inch in old Siwash that year than there had been since the year of the
+big wind--that's what we called the year when Maxwell was boss of the
+college and swept every election with his eloquence.
+
+There were any number of important elections coming off that fall. There
+were all the class elections, of course, and the Oratorical election,
+and a couple of vacancies to fill in the Athletic Association, and a
+college marshal to elect, and goodness knows what all else to nail down
+and tuck away before we could get down to the serious job of fighting
+conditions that fall. I was so busy for the first three days, wiring up
+the new students and putting through a trade on the Athletic
+secretaryship with the Delta Kap gang, that I couldn't pay any attention
+to the class elections. But they were pretty safe anyway. It was only
+about a day's job to put through a class slate. The Junior election came
+first, and we had arranged to give it to Miss Willoughby. We always
+elected women presidents of the Junior class at Siwash. Little
+Willoughby had a cinch because, of course, our crowd backed her
+hard--and we were strong in Juniors--and, besides she had a good
+following among the girls. So we just turned the whole thing over to the
+girls to manage and thought no more about it, being mighty hard pressed
+by the miserable and un-American bipartisan combination on the Athletic
+offices.
+
+School opened on Tuesday. The Junior class election came off on Thursday
+afternoon and a Miss Hamthrick was elected president. I would have bet
+on the college bell against her. It was the shockingest thing that had
+happened in politics for five years. Miss Hamthrick was a conservatory
+student. Even when you shut your eyes and listened to her singing she
+didn't sound good-looking. Davis drew her for the Sophomore class party
+the year before and exposed himself to the mumps to get out of going.
+Not only was she elected president, but the rest of the offices went
+to--no, I'll not describe them. I'm sort of prejudiced anyway. They made
+Miss Hamthrick seem beautiful and clever by comparison.
+
+It was a blow between the eyes. The worst of it was we couldn't
+understand it. I went over to see Miss Willoughby about it, and she came
+down all powdery and beautiful about the eyes and nose and talked to me
+as haughtily as if I had done it myself. She said she had trusted us,
+but it was evident that all a woman could hope for in politics was the
+privilege of being fooled by a man. She even accused me of helping elect
+the Hamthrick lady, said she wished me joy, and asked if it had been a
+pretty romance. That made me tired, and I said--oh, well, no use
+remembering what I said. It was the last thing I ever had a chance to
+say to Miss Willoughby anyway. I was pretty miserable over
+it--politically, of course, I mean, Miss Allstairs. You understand. Now
+there's no use saying that. It wasn't so. College girls are all very
+well, and one must be entertained while getting gorged with knowledge;
+but really, when it comes to more serious things, I never--
+
+All right, I'll go on with my story. The next day we got a harder blow
+than ever. The Freshman class election came off on a snap call, and
+about half the class, mostly girls, elected a lean young lady with
+spectacles and a wasp-like conversation to the presidency. We raised a
+storm of indignation, but they blandly told us to go hence. There was
+nothing in the Constitution of the United States to prevent a woman
+from being president of the Freshman class, and there didn't seem to be
+any other laws on the subject. Besides, the Freshman class was a
+brand-new republic and didn't need the advice of such an effete monarchy
+as the Senior class. While we were talking it all over the next day the
+Sophomores met, and after a terrific struggle between the Eta Bita Pies,
+the Alfalfa Delts and the Shi Delts, Miss Hicks was elected president by
+what Shorty Gamble was pleased to term "the gargoyle vote." I wouldn't
+say that myself of any girl, but Shorty had been working for the place
+for a year, and when the twenty girls who had never known what it was to
+have a sassy cab rumble up to Browning Hall and wait for them cast their
+votes solidly and elected the Missouri Prairie Fire he felt justified in
+making comments.
+
+By this time it was a case of save the pieces. The whole thing had been
+as mysterious as the plague. We were getting mortal blows, we couldn't
+tell from whom. All political signs were failing. The game was going
+backward. A lot of the leaders got together and held a meeting, and some
+of them were for declaring a constitutional monarchy and then losing the
+constitution. My! But they were bitter. Everybody accused everybody else
+of double-crossing, underhandedness, gum-shoeing, back-biting, trading,
+pilfering and horse-stealing. I think there was a window or two broken
+during the discussion. But we didn't get anywhere. The next day the
+Senior class elected officers, and every frat went out with a knife for
+its neighbor. A quiet lady by the name of Simpkins, who was one of the
+finest old wartime relics in school, was elected president.
+
+That night I began putting two and two and fractional numbers together
+and called in calculus and second sight on the problem. I remembered
+what the Hicks girl had said to me the year before. That was more than
+the ordinary girl ought to know about politics. I remembered seeing her
+doing more or less close-harmony work with the other midnight-oil
+consumers--and the upshot was I went over to Browning Hall that night
+and called on her.
+
+She came down in due time--kept me waiting as long as if she had been
+the belle of the prom--and she shook hands all over me.
+
+"My dear boy," she said, sitting down on the sofa with me, "I'm so
+delighted to renew our old friendship."
+
+Now, I don't like to be "my dear boyed" by a Sophomore, and there never
+had been any old friendship. I started to stiffen up--and then didn't. I
+didn't because I didn't know what she would do if I did.
+
+"How are all the other good old chaps?" she said as cordially as could
+be. "My, but those were grand days."
+
+[Illustration: "How are all the other good old chaps?" she said
+                    _Page 270_]
+
+I didn't see any terminus in that conversation. Besides, she looked
+like one of those most uncomfortable girls who can guy you in such an
+innocent and friendly manner that you don't know what to say back. So I
+brushed the preliminaries aside and jumped right into the middle of
+things. "Miss Hicks," says I, "why are you doing all this?"
+
+"Singular or plural you?" she asked. "And why am I or are we doing what,
+and why shouldn't we?"
+
+"Help," said I, feeling that way. "Do you deny that you haven't been
+instrumental in upsetting the whole college with those fool elections?"
+
+"I am a modest young lady," said she, "so, of course, I deny it.
+Besides, this college isn't upset at all. I went over this morning and
+every professor was right side up with care where he belonged. And,
+moreover, you must not call an election a fool because it doesn't do
+what you want it to. It can't help itself."
+
+"Miss Hicks," says I, feeling like a fly in an acre of web, "I am a
+plain and simple man and not handy with my tongue. What I mean is this,
+and I hope you'll excuse me for living--do you admit that you had a hand
+in those class elections?"
+
+Miss Hicks looked at me in the friendliest way possible. "It is more
+modest to admit it than to declare it, isn't it?" she asked.
+
+"Certainly," says I; "and this leads right back to question Number
+One--Why did you do it?"
+
+"And this leads back to answer Number One--Why shouldn't I?" she asked
+again.
+
+"Why, don't you see, Miss Hicks," says I, "that you've elected a lot of
+girls that never have been active in college work, and that don't
+represent the student body, and--"
+
+"Don't go to the proms?" she suggested.
+
+"I didn't say it and I'd die before I did," said I virtuously. "But
+what's your object?"
+
+"Education," said Miss Hicks mildly. "I'm paying full tuition and I want
+to get all there is out of college. I think politics is a fascinating
+study. I didn't get a chance to do much at it last year, but I'm
+learning something about it every day now."
+
+"But what's the good of it all?" I protested. "You'll just get the
+college affairs hopelessly mixed up--"
+
+"Like the Oratorical Association was last year?" she inquired gently.
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" said I, getting entirely red. "Let's not get personal. What
+can we do to satisfy you?"
+
+"You've been satisfying us beautifully so far," said Miss Hicks.
+
+"Who's us?" I asked.
+
+"I don't in the least mind telling you," said Miss Hicks. "It's the
+Blanks."
+
+"The Blanks!" I repeated fretfully. "Never heard of 'em."
+
+"I know it," said Miss Hicks, "but you named them yourselves. What do
+you say you've drawn when you draw a homely girl's name out of the hat
+as a partner for a class party?"
+
+"Oh!" said I.
+
+"We're the Blanks," said Miss Hicks, "and we feel that we haven't been
+getting our full share of college atmosphere. So we're going into
+politics. In this way we can mingle with the students and help run
+things and have a very enjoyable time. It's most fascinating. All of us
+are dippy over it."
+
+"Oh," said I again. "You mean you're going to ruin things for your own
+selfish interests?"
+
+"My dear boy," said Miss Hicks--my, but that grated--"we're not going to
+ruin anything. And we may build up the Oratorical Association."
+
+That was too much. I got up and stood as nearly ten feet as I could.
+"Very well," said I. "If there's no use of arguing on a reasonable basis
+we may as well terminate this interview. But I'll just tell you there's
+no use of your going any further. Now we know what we have to fight,
+we'll take precious good care that you do not do any more mischief."
+
+"Oh, very well," said Miss Hicks--she was infuriatingly
+good-natured--"but I might as well tell you that we're going to get the
+Athletic offices, the prom committee, the Oratorical offices and the
+Athletic election next spring."
+
+"Ha, ha!" said I loudly and rudely. Then I took my hat and went away.
+Miss Hicks asked me very eagerly to drop in again. Me? I'd as soon have
+dropped on a Mexican cactus. It couldn't be any more uncomfortable.
+
+I went away and called our gang together and we seethed over the
+situation most all night. They voted me campaign leader on the strength
+of my service, and the next day we got the rest of the frats together,
+buried the hatchet and doped out the campaign. It was the pride and
+strength of Siwash against a red-headed Missouri girl, weight about
+ninety-five pounds; and we couldn't help feeling sorry for her. But she
+had brought it on herself. Insurgency, Miss Allstairs, is a very wicked
+thing. It's a despicable attempt on the part of the minority to become
+the majority, and no true patriot will desert the majority in his time
+of need.
+
+I'm not going to linger over the next month. I'll get it over in a few
+words. We started out to exterminate Miss Hicks. We put up our candidate
+for the Oratorical Association presidency. The hall was jammed when the
+time came, and before anything could be done Miss Hicks demanded that no
+one be allowed to vote who hadn't paid his or her dues. Half the fellows
+we had there never had any intention of getting that far into Oratorical
+work, and backed out; but the rest of us paid up. There had never been
+so much money in the treasury since the association began. Then the
+Blanks nominated a candidate and skinned us by three votes. When we
+thought of all that money gone to waste we almost went crazy.
+
+But that was just a starter. We were determined to have our own way
+about the Junior prom. What do wall-flowers know about running a prom?
+We worked up an absolute majority in the Junior class, only to have a
+snap meeting called on us over in Browning Hall, in which three
+middle-aged young ladies who had never danced a step were named. The
+roar we raised was terrific, but the president sweetly informed us that
+they had only followed precedent--we'd had to do the same thing the year
+before to keep out the Mu Kow Moos. We appealed to the Faculty, and it
+laughed at us. Unfortunately, we didn't stand any too well there anyway,
+while most of the Blanks were the pride and joy of the professors.
+Anyway, they told us to fight our own battles and they'd see that there
+was fair play. Oh, yes. They saw it. They passed a rule that no student
+who was conditioned in any study could vote in any college election.
+That disenfranchised about half of us right on the spot. If ever anarchy
+breaks out in this country, Miss Allstairs, it will be because of
+college Faculties.
+
+We made a last stand on the Athletic Association treasurership. It
+looked for a while as if it was going to be easy. We threw all the rules
+away and gave a magnificent party for all the girls we thought we could
+count on. It was the most gorgeous affair on record, and half the dress
+suits in college went into hock afterward for the whole semester. The
+result was most encouraging. The girls were delighted. They pledged
+their votes and support and we counted up that we had a clear majority.
+We went to bed that night happy and woke up to find that Miss Hicks had
+entertained the non-fraternity men in the gymnasium that night and had
+served lemonade and wafers. She had alluded to them playfully as slaves,
+and they had broken up about fifty chairs demonstrating that they were
+not. When the election came off she had the unattached vote solid, and
+we lost out by a comfortable majority. An estimable lady, who didn't
+know athletics from croquet, was elected. And when the reception
+committee of the prom was announced the next day it was composed
+exclusively of men who would have had to be led through the grand march
+on wheels.
+
+After that we gave up. I tried to resign as campaign manager, but the
+boys wouldn't let me. They admitted that no one else could have done any
+better, and, besides, they wanted me to go over and see Miss Hicks
+again. They wanted me to ask her what her crowd wanted. When I thought
+of her pleasant conversational hatpin work I felt like resigning from
+college; but there always have to be martyrs, and in the end I went.
+
+Miss Hicks received me rapturously. You would have thought we had been
+boy and girl friends. She insisted on asking how all the folks were at
+home, and how my health had been, and hadn't it been a gay winter, and
+was I going to the prom, and how did I like her new gown? While I was at
+it I thought I might as well amuse myself, too, so I asked her to marry
+me. That was the only time I ever got ahead of her. She refused
+indignantly, and I laughed at her for getting so fussed up over a little
+thing.
+
+"Marriage is a sacred subject," she said very soberly.
+
+"So was politics," said I, "until you came along. If you won't talk
+marriage let's talk politics. What do you girls want?"
+
+"Oh, I told you a while ago," she said.
+
+"But, Great Scott!" said I. "Aren't you going to leave a thing for us
+fellows who have done our best for the college?"
+
+"Now you put it that way," she said quite kindly, "I'll think it over.
+We might find something for you to do. There's a couple of janitorships
+loose."
+
+"Hicksey," says I.
+
+"Miss Hicks," says she.
+
+"I beg your pardon--my dear girl, then," said I. "I've come over to the
+bunch to confess. You've busted us. We're on the mat nine points down
+and yelling for help. We don't want to run things. We only want to be
+allowed to live. We surrender. We give up. We humbly ask that you
+prepare the crow and let us eat the neck. Isn't there any way by which
+we can get a little something to keep us busy and happy? We're in a
+horrible situation. Aren't you even going to let us have the Athletic
+Association next spring?"
+
+"I was thinking of running that myself," said Miss Hicks thoughtfully.
+
+I let out an impolite groan.
+
+"But I'll tell you what you might do," said Miss Hicks. "You boys might
+try to win my crowd away from me. You see, you've played right into my
+hand so far. You haven't paid any attention to my supporters. Now, if
+you were to go after them the way you do the other girls in the college
+I shudder to think what might happen to me."
+
+"You mean take them to parties and theaters?"
+
+"Why not?" asked Miss Hicks. "You see, they're only human. I'll bet you
+could land every vote in the bunch if you went at it scientifically."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Oh, I know they're not pretty," said Miss Hicks. "But they cast the
+most bee-you-ti-ful votes you ever saw."
+
+"What you mean," I said, "is that if we don't show those girls a
+superlatively good time this winter we won't get a look at the election
+next spring?"
+
+"They'd be awfully shocked if you put it that way," said Miss Hicks;
+"and I wouldn't advise you to talk to them about it. Their notions of
+honor are so high that I had to pay for the lemonade for the independent
+men myself at the last election."
+
+"Oh, very well," says I, taking my hat, "we'll think it over."
+
+"You might wear blinders, you know," she suggested.
+
+"Oh, go to thunder!" said I as earnestly as I could.
+
+"Come again," she said when she closed the door after me. "I do so enjoy
+these little confidences."
+
+Honestly, Miss Allstairs, when I think of that girl I shrink up until
+I'm afraid I'll fall into my own hat. It ought not to be legal for a
+girl to talk to a man like that. It's inhuman.
+
+We thought matters over for two weeks and tried one or two little raids
+on the enemy with most horrible results to ourselves. Then we gave in.
+We put our pride and our devotion to art in cold storage and took up the
+politicians' burden. We gave those girls the time of their
+young-to-middle-aged lives. We got up dances and crokinole parties and
+concerts for them. We took them to see Hamlet. We had sleighing parties.
+We helped every lecture course in the college do a rushing business. We
+just backed into the shafts and took the bit without a murmur. And maybe
+you think those girls didn't drive us. They seemed determined to make up
+for the drought of all the past. They were as coy and uncertain and as
+infernally hard to please as if they'd been used to getting one proposal
+a day and two on Sunday. Let one of us so much as drop over to Browning
+Hall to pass the time of day with one of the real heart-disturbers, and
+the particular vote that he was courting would go off the reservation
+for a week. It would take a pair of theater tickets at the least to
+square things.
+
+We gave dances that winter at which only one in five girls could dance.
+We took moonlight strolls with ladies who could remember the moon of
+seventy-six, and we gave strawrides to girls who insisted on talking
+history of art and missionary work to us all the way. When I think of
+the tons of candy and the mountains of flowers and the wagonloads of
+latest books that we lavished, and of the hard feelings it made in other
+quarters, and of our loneliness amid all this gayety, and of our frantic
+efforts to make the prom a success, with ten couples dancing and the
+rest decorating the walls, I sometimes wonder whether the college was
+worth our great love for it after all.
+
+But we were winning out. By April it was easy to see this. The Blanks
+thawed with the snow-drifts. They got real friendly and sociable, and
+after the warm weather came on we simply had to entertain them all the
+time, they liked it so. When I think of those beautiful spring days,
+with us sauntering with our political fates about the campus, and the
+nicest girls in the world walking two and two all by themselves--Oh,
+gee! Why, they even made us cut chapel to go walking with them, just as
+if it was a genuine case of "Oh, those eyes!" and "Shut up, you thumping
+heart."
+
+[Illustration: Why, they even made us cut chapel to go walking with them
+                    _Page 280_]
+
+All this time Miss Hicks wouldn't accept any invitation at all. She just
+flocked by herself as usual, and watched us taking her votes away from
+her without any concern apparently. I always felt that she had something
+saved up for us, but I couldn't tell what it was; and anyway, we had
+those votes. By the time the Athletic election came around there wasn't
+a doubt of it.
+
+I must say the women did pretty well during the year. They'd cleaned up
+the Oratorical debt, and somehow there was about three times as much
+money in the Athletic treasury after the football season as there had
+ever been before. But they'd raised a lot of trouble too. No passes.
+Dues had to be paid up. Nobody got any fun out of the class affairs.
+They got up lectures and teas and made the class pay for them. And,
+anyway, we wanted to run things again. We'd felt all year like a bunch
+of last year's sunflowers. Besides, we'd earned it. We'd earned a starry
+crown as a matter of fact, but all we asked was that they give our
+little old Athletic Association back and let us run it once more.
+
+Miss Hicks announced herself as a candidate, and we felt sorry for her.
+Not one of her gang was with her. They were enthusiastically for us.
+We'd planned the biggest party of the year right after the election in
+celebration, and had invited them already. Election day came and we
+hardly worried a bit. The result was 189 to 197 in favor of Miss Hicks.
+Every independent man and every bang-up-to-date girl in college voted
+for her.
+
+Of course it looks simple enough now, but why couldn't we see it then?
+We supposed the real girls knew that it was a case of college
+patriotism. And, of course, it was a low-lived trick for Miss Hicks to
+float around the last day and spread the impression that we'd never
+loved them except for their votes. She simply traded constituencies with
+us, that's all. Take it coming or going, year in or year out, you
+couldn't beat that girl. I'll bet she goes out to Washington state and
+gets elected governor some day.
+
+I went over to Browning Hall the night after the election, ready to tell
+Miss Hicks just what everybody thought of her. I was prepared to tell
+her that every athletic team in college was going to disband and that
+anarchy would be declared in the morning. She came down as pleasant as
+ever and held out her hand.
+
+"Don't say it, please," she said, "because I'm going to tell you
+something. I'm not coming back next year."
+
+"Not coming back!" said I, gulping down a piece of relief as big as an
+apple.
+
+"No," she said, "I'm--I'm going to be married this summer. I've--I've
+been engaged all this year to a man back home, but I wanted to come back
+and learn something about politics. He's a lawyer."
+
+"Well, you learned enough to suit you, didn't you?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, yes," she said with a giggle. "Wasn't it fun, though! My father
+will be so pleased. He's the chairman of the congressional committee out
+at home and he's always told me an awful lot about politics. I've
+enjoyed this year so much."
+
+"Well, I haven't," I said; "but I hope to enjoy next year." And then I
+took half an hour to tell her that, in spite of the fact that she was
+the most arrant, deceitful, unreliable, two-faced and scuttling
+politician in the world, she was almost incredibly nice. She listened
+quite patiently, and at the end she held up her fingers. They'd been
+crossed all the time.
+
+No, that's the last I ever saw of her, Miss Allstairs. She left before
+Commencement. She sent me an invitation to the wedding. I'll bet she
+didn't quite get the significance of the magnificent silver set we
+Siwash boys sent. We sent it to the groom.
+
+That was the end of women dominion at Siwash. There wasn't a rag of the
+movement left next fall. But we boys never entirely forgot what happened
+to us, and it's still the custom to elect a co-ed to some Athletic
+office. They do say that the only way to teach a politician what the
+people want is to bore a shaft in his head and shout it in, but our
+experience ought to be proof to the contrary. Why, all we needed was the
+gentle little hint that Mary Jane Hicks gave us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+SIC TRANSIT GLORIA ALL-AMERICA
+
+
+How did the Siwash game come out Saturday? Forget it, my boy. You'll
+never know in this oversized, ingrowing, fenced-off, insulated
+metropolis till some one writes and tells you. Every fall I ask myself
+that same question all day Saturday and Sunday, and do you suppose I
+ever find a Siwash score in one of those muddy-faced, red-headed,
+ward-gossip parties that they call newspapers in New York? Never, not at
+all, you hopeful tenderfoot from the unimportant West. After you've
+existed in this secluded portion of the universe a few years you'll get
+over trying to find anything that looks like news from home in the daily
+disturbances here. And I don't care whether your home is in Buffalo,
+Chicago or Strawberry Point, Iowa, either. Go down on the East Side and
+beat up a policeman, and you'll get immortalized in ten-inch type. Go
+back West and get elected governor, and ten to one if you're mentioned
+at all they'll slip you the wrong state to preside over.
+
+Excuse me, but I'm considerably sore, just as I am every Sunday during
+the football season. Here I am, eating my heart out with longing to know
+whether good old Siwash has dusted off half a township with
+Muggledorfer again, and what do I get to read? Four yards of Gale; five
+yards of Jarhard; two yards of Ohell; and a page of Quincetown,
+Hardmouth, Jamhurst, Saint Mikes, Holy Moses College and the Connecticut
+Institute of Etymology. Nice fodder for a loyal alumnus eleven hundred
+and then some miles from home, isn't it? Honest, when I first hit this
+seething burg I used to go down to the Grand Central station on Sunday
+afternoon and look at the people coming in from the trains, just because
+some of them were from the West. Once I took a New Yorker up to
+Riverside Park, pointed him west and asked him what he saw. He said he
+saw a ferryboat coming to New York. That was all he had ever seen of the
+other shore. He called it Hinterland. That made me mad and I called him
+an electric-light bug. We had a lovely row.
+
+But we're blasting out a corner for the old coll., even back here. We've
+got things fixed pretty nicely here now, we Siwash men. Down near
+Gramercy Park there's an old-fashioned city dwelling house, four stories
+high and elbow-room wide. It's the Siwash Alumni Club. There are half a
+hundred Siwash men in New York, gradually getting into the king row in
+various lines of business, and we pay enough rent each year for that
+house to buy a pretty fair little cottage out in Jonesville. Whenever a
+Siwash man drops in there he's pretty sure to find another Siwash man
+who smokes the same brand of tobacco and knows the same brand of
+college songs. We've got one legislator, four magazine publishers, two
+railroad officials, a city prosecutor and three bankers on the
+membership roll, and maybe some day we'll have a mayor. Then we'll pass
+a law requiring the boys and girls of New York to spend at least one
+hour a day learning about Siwash College, Jonesville, the big team of
+naughty-nix and the formula for getting credit at the Horseshoe Cafe.
+We'll make it obligatory for every newspaper to publish a full page
+about each Siwash game in the fall, with pictures of the captain, the
+coach and the fullback's right leg. Hurrah for revenge! I see it coming.
+
+Join the club? Why, you don't have to ask to join it. You've got to join
+it. Ten dollars, please, and sign here. When we get a little huskier
+financially we won't charge new-fledged graduates anything for a year or
+two, but we've got to now. The soulless landlord wants his rent in
+advance. You'll find the whole gang there Saturday nights. Just butt
+right in if I'm not around. You're a Siwash man, and if you want to
+borrow the doorknob to throw at a hackman you've a perfect right to do
+it.
+
+I'll tell you, old man, you don't know how nice it is to have a hole
+that you can hunt in this hurricane town, when you're a bright young
+chap with a glorious college past and a business future that you can't
+hock for a plate of beans a day! Leaving college and going into business
+in a big city is like taking a high dive from the hall of fame into an
+ice-water tank. Think of that and be cheerful. You've got a nice time
+coming. Just now you're Rudolph Weedon Burlingame, Siwash
+Naughty-several, late captain of the baseball team, prize orator,
+manager of two proms and president of the Senior class. To-morrow you'll
+be a nameless cumberer of busy streets, useful only to the street-car
+companies to shake down for nickels. To-morrow you're going around to
+the manager of some firm or other with a letter from some customer of
+his, and you're going to put your hand on your college diploma so as to
+have it handy, and you're going to hand him the letter and prepare to
+tell the story of your strong young life. But just before you begin
+you'll go away, because the manager will tell you he's sorry, but he's
+busy, and there are fourteen applicants ahead of you, and anyway he'll
+not be hiring any more men until 1918, and will you please come around
+then, and shut the door behind you, if you don't mind.
+
+Yep, that's what will happen to you. You'll spend your first three days
+trying to haul that diploma out. The fourth day you'll put it in your
+trunk. I've known men to cut 'em up for shaving paper. You'll stop
+trying to tell the story of your life and in about a week you'll be
+wondering why you have been allowed to live so long. In two weeks a
+clerk will look as big as a senator to you and you'll begin to get
+bashful before elevator men. You'll get off the sidewalk when you see a
+man who looks as if he had a job and was in a hurry. You'll envy a
+messenger boy with a job and a future; you'll wonder if managers are
+really carnivorous or only pretend to be. You feel as tall as the Singer
+Building to-day, but you'll shrink before long. You'll shrink until,
+after a long, hard day, with about nine turndowns in it, you'll have to
+climb up on top of the dresser to look at yourself in the glass.
+
+That's what you're going up against. Then the Siwash Club will be your
+hole and you'll hunt it every evening. You'll be a big man there, for we
+judge our members not by what they are, but by what they were at school.
+You'll sit around with the boys after dinner, and the man on your right,
+who is running a railroad, will be interested in that home run you made
+against Muggledorfer, and the man on your left, who won't touch a law
+case for less than five thousand dollars, will tell you that he, too,
+won the Perkins debate once. And he'll treat you as if you were a real
+life-sized human being instead of a job hunter, knee high to a copying
+clerk. You'll be back in the old college atmosphere, as big as the best
+of 'em, and after you've swapped yarns all evening you'll go to bed full
+of tabasco and pepper and you'll tackle the first manager the next
+morning as if he were a Kiowa man and had the ball. And sooner or later
+you'll get old Mr. Opportunity where he can't give you the straight arm,
+and if you don't put a knee in his chest and tame him for life you
+haven't got the real Siwash spirit, that's all.
+
+Funny thing about college. It isn't merely an education. It's a whole
+life in itself. You enter it unknown and tiny--just a Freshman with no
+rights on earth. You work and toil and suffer--and fall in love--and
+climb and rise to fame. When you are a Senior, if you have good luck,
+you are one of the biggest things in the whole world--for there isn't
+any world but the campus at college. Freshmen look up to you and admire
+men who are big enough to talk with you. The Sophomores may sneer at
+faculties and kings, but they wouldn't think of sassing you. The papers
+publish your picture in your football clothes. You dine with the
+professors, and prominent alumni come back and shake you by the hand. Of
+course, you know that somewhere in the dim nebulous outside there is a
+President of the United States who is quite a party in his way, but none
+of the girls mention it when they tell you how grand you looked after
+they had hauled the other team off of you and sewed on your ear. They
+talk about you exclusively because you're really the only thing worth
+talking about, you know.
+
+When Commencement comes you move about the campus like some tall
+mountain peak on legs. The students bring their young brothers up to
+meet you and you try to be kind and approachable. They give you a
+tremendous cheer when you go down the aisle in the chapel to get your
+prizes. You are referred to on all sides as one of the reasons why
+America is great. The professors when they bid you good-by ask you
+anxiously not to forget them. Then Commencement is over and college life
+is past, and there is nothing left in life but to become a senator or
+run a darned old trust. You leave the campus, taking care not to step on
+any of the buildings, and go out into the world pretty blue because
+you're through with about everything worth while; and you wonder if you
+can stand it to toil away making history eleven months in the year with
+only time to hang around college a few weeks in spring or fall. You're
+done with the real life. You're an old man, you've seen it all; and it
+sometimes takes you two weeks or more to recover and decide that after
+all a great career may be almost as interesting in a way as college
+itself. So you buck up and decide to accept the career--and that's where
+you begin to catch on to the general drift of the universe in dead
+earnest.
+
+Take a man of sixty, with a permanent place in Who's Who and a large
+circle of people who believe that he has some influence with the sunrise
+and sunset. Then let him suddenly find himself a ten-year-old boy with
+two empty pockets and an appetite for assets, and let him learn that it
+isn't considered even an impertinence to spank him whenever he tries to
+mix in and air his opinions. I don't believe he would be much more
+shocked than the college man who finds, at the conclusion of a glorious
+four-year slosh in fame, that he is really just about to begin life, and
+that the first thing he must learn is to keep out from under foot and
+say "Yes, sir," when the boss barks at him. It's a painful thing,
+Burlingame. Took me about a year to think of it without saying "ouch."
+
+The saddest thing about it all is that the two careers don't always
+mesh. The college athlete may discover that the only use the world has
+for talented shoulder muscles is for hod-carrying purposes. The society
+fashion plate may never get the hang of how to earn anything but last
+year's model pants; and the fishy-eyed nonentity, who never did anything
+more glorious in college than pay his class tax, may be doing a
+brokerage business in skyscrapers within ten years.
+
+When I left Siwash and came to New York I guess I was as big as the next
+graduate. Of course I hadn't been the one best bet on the campus, but I
+knew all the college celebrities well enough to slap them on the backs
+and call them by pet names and lend them money. That of course should be
+a great assistance in knowing just how to approach the president of a
+big city bank and touch him for a cigar in a red-and-gold corset, while
+he is telling you to make yourself at home around the place until a job
+turns up. Allie Bangs, my chum, went on East with me. We had decided to
+rise side by side and to buy the same make of yachts. Of course we were
+sensible. We didn't expect to crowd out any magnates the first week or
+two. We intended to rise by honest worth, if it took a whole year. All
+we asked was that the fellows ahead should take care of themselves and
+not hold it against us if we ran over them from behind. We didn't think
+we were the biggest men on earth--not yet. That's where we fell down.
+We've never had a chance to since. You've got to seize the opportunity
+for having a swelled head just as you have for everything else.
+
+It took us just six weeks to get a toe-hold on the earth and establish
+our right to breathe our fair share of New York air. At the end of that
+time neither one of us would have been surprised if we had been charged
+rent while waiting in the ante-rooms of New York offices to be told that
+no one had time to tell us that there was no use of our waiting to get a
+chance to ask for anything. Talk about a come-down! It was worse than
+coming down a bump-the-bumps with nails in it. It was three months
+before we got jobs. They were microscopic jobs in the same company, with
+wages that were so small that it seemed a shame to make out our weekly
+checks on nice engraved bank paper--jobs where any one from the
+proprietor down could yell "Here, you!" and the office boy could have
+fired us and got away with it. If I had been hanging on to a rope
+trailing behind a fifty-thousand-ton ocean liner I don't believe I
+should have felt more inconsequential and totally superfluous.
+
+But they were jobs just the same and we were game. I think most college
+graduates are after they get their feelings reduced to normal size. We
+hung on and dug in, and sneaked more work into our positions, and
+didn't quarrel with any one except the window-washer's little boy who
+brought meat for the cats in the basement. We drew the line at letting
+him boss us. And how we did enjoy being part of the big rumpus on
+Manhattan Island. We had a room--it wasn't so much of a room as it was a
+sort of stationary vest--and we ate at those hunger cures where a girl
+punches out your bill on a little ticket and you don't dare eat up above
+the third figure from the bottom or you'll go broke on Friday. By hook
+or crook we always managed to save a dollar from the wreckage each week
+for Sunday, and say, did you ever conduct a scientific investigation
+into just how far a dollar will go providing a day's pleasure in a big
+city? We did that for six months, and if I do say it myself we stretched
+some of those dollars until the eagle's neck reached from Tarrytown to
+Coney Island. We saw New York from roof garden to sub-cellar. We even
+got to doing fancy stunts. We'd dig out our dress suits, go over to one
+of those cafes where you begin owing money as soon as you see the head
+waiter, and put on a bored and haughty front for two hours on a dollar
+and twenty cents, including tips. And what we didn't know about the
+Subway, the Snubway and the Grubway, the Clubway, and the various
+Dubways of New York wasn't worth discovering or even imagining.
+
+We hadn't been conducting our explorations for more than a week when a
+most tremendous thing happened to us. You know how you are always
+running up against mastodons in the big town. You see about every one
+who is big enough to die in scare-heads. Taking a stroll down Fifth
+Avenue with an old residenter and having him tell about the people you
+pass is like having the hall of fame directory read off to you. Well,
+one Sunday night when we were blowing in our little fifty cents apiece
+on one of those Italian table d'hote dinners with red varnish free,
+Allie looked across the room and began to tremble. "Look at that chap,"
+says he.
+
+"Who is he?" I asked, getting interested. "Roosevelt?"
+
+"Roosevelt nothing," he says scornfully. "Man alive, that's Jarvis!"
+
+I just dropped my jaw and stared. Of course you remember Jarvis, the
+great football player. At that time I guess most of the college boys in
+America said their prayers to him. Out West we students used to read of
+his terrific line plunges on the eastern fields and of his titanic
+defense when his team was hard pushed, and wonder if any of us would
+ever become great enough to meet him and shake him by the hand. What did
+we care for the achievements of Achilles and Hector and Hercules and
+other eminent hasbeens, which we had to soak up at the rate of forty
+lines of Greek a day? They had old Homer to write them up--the best man
+ever in the business. But they were too tame for us. I've caught myself
+speculating more than once on what Achilles would have done if Jarvis
+had tried to make a gain through him. Achilles was probably a pretty
+good spear artist, and all that, but if Jarvis had put his
+leather-helmeted head down and hit the line low--about two points south
+of the solar plexus--they would have carted Ac. away in a cab right
+there, invulnerability and all.
+
+That's about what we thought of Jarvis. We had his pictures pasted all
+over our training quarters along with those of the other
+super-dreadnoughts from the colleges that break into literature, and I
+imagine that if he had suddenly appeared back in Jonesville we should
+have put our heads right down and kow-towed until he gave us permission
+to get up. And here we were, sitting in the same cafe with him. I'll
+tell you, I had never felt the glory of living in the metropolis and
+prowling around the ankles of the big chiefs more vividly than right
+there in that room the night we first saw him.
+
+We sat and watched Jarvis while our meat course got cold. There was no
+mistaking him--some people have their looks copyrighted and Jarvis was
+one of them. We would have known it was he if we had seen him in a Roman
+mob. After a while Bangs, who always did have a triple reenforced
+Harveyized steel cheek, straightened up. "I'm going over to speak to
+him," he said.
+
+"Sit still, you fool," says I; "don't annoy him."
+
+"Watch me," says Bangs; "I'm going over to introduce myself. He can't
+any more than freeze me. And after I've spoken to him they can take my
+little old job away from me and ship me back to the hayfields whenever
+they please. I'll be satisfied."
+
+"You ought to bottle that nerve of yours and sell it to the
+lightning-rod pedlers," says I, getting all sweaty. "Just because you
+introduced yourself to a governor once you think you can go as far as
+you like. You stay right here--" But Bangs had gone over to Jarvis.
+
+I sat there and blushed for him, and suffered the tortures of a man who
+is watching his friend making a furry-eared nuisance of himself. There
+was the greatest football player in the world being pestered by a
+frying-sized sprig of a ninth assistant shipping clerk. It was
+preposterous. I waited to see Bangs wilt and come slinking back. Then I
+was going to put on my hat and walk out as if I didn't belong with him
+at all. But instead of that Bangs shook hands with Jarvis, talked a
+minute and then sat down with him. When Bangs is routed out by the Angel
+Gabriel he'll sit down on the edge of his grave and delay the whole
+procession, trying to find a mutual acquaintance or two. That's the kind
+of a leather-skin he is.
+
+Presently Bangs turned around and beckoned to me to come over. More
+colossal impudence. I wasn't going to do it, but Jarvis turned, too, and
+smiled at me. Like a hypnotized man I went over to their table. "I want
+you to meet Mr. Jarvis," said Bangs, with the air of a man who is giving
+away his aeroplane to a personal friend.
+
+"Glad to meet you," said Jarvis kindly.
+
+"M-m-m-mrugh," says I easily and naturally. Then I sat down on the edge
+of a chair.
+
+Well, sir, Jarvis--it was the real Jarvis all right--was as pleasant a
+fellow as you would ever care to meet. There he was talking away to us
+fishworms just as cordially as if he enjoyed it. He didn't seem to be a
+bit better than we were. I've often noticed that when you meet the very
+greatest people they are that way. It's only the fellows who aren't sure
+they're great and who are pretty sure you aren't sure either, who have
+to put up a haughty front. Jarvis offered us cigarettes and put us so
+much at our ease that we stayed there an hour. It was a dazzling
+experience. He told us a lot about the city, and asked us about
+ourselves and laughed at our experiences. And he told us that he often
+dined there and hoped to see us again. When we got safely outside, after
+having bade him good-by without any sort of a break, I mopped my
+forehead. Then I took off my hat. "Bangs," said I, "you're the world's
+champion. Some day you'll get killed for impudence in the first degree,
+but just now I've got ten cents and I'm going to buy you a big cigar and
+walk home to pay for it."
+
+Incredible as it may sound, that was the beginning of a real friendship
+between the three of us. Jarvis seemed to take a positive pleasure in
+being democratic. And he was wonderfully thoughtful, too. He realized
+instinctively that we had about nine cents apiece in our clothes as a
+rule, and he didn't offer to be gorgeous and buy things we couldn't buy
+back. We got to dropping in at the cafe once a week or so and eating at
+the same table with him. Why on earth he fancied eating around with
+grubs like us, when he could have been tucking away classy fare up on
+Fifth Avenue, we couldn't imagine. Some people are naturally Bohemian,
+however. It seemed to delight Jarvis to hear us tell about our team, and
+our college, and our prospects, and how lucky we had been up to date,
+not getting stepped on by any financial magnate or other tall city
+monument. He wasn't a talkative man himself. It was especially hard to
+pry any football talk out of him, probably because he was so modest.
+When we insisted he would finally open up, and tell us the inside facts
+about some great college game that we knew by heart from the newspaper
+accounts. And he would mention all the famous players by their first
+names--you can't imagine how much more alarming it sounded than calling
+a president "Teddy"--and we would just sit there and drink it in, and
+watch history from behind the scenes until suddenly he would stop, look
+absent and shut up like a clam. No use trying to turn him on again.
+Presently he would bid us good night and go away. The first time we
+thought we had offended him and we were miserable for a week. But when
+we ran across him again he seemed as pleased as ever to see us. It was
+just moods, after all, we finally decided, and thought no more about
+it. Great men have a right to have moods if they want to. We admired his
+moods as much as the rest of him, and were only glad they weren't
+violent.
+
+It was a couple of months before we got up courage enough to ask him to
+drop in at our room. Even Allie got timid. He explained that he didn't
+want to break the spell. But finally I braced up myself and invited him
+to drop around with us, and he consented as kindly as you please. Came
+right up to our little three by twice and wouldn't even sit in the one
+chair. Sat on the bed and looked over our college pictures, and chatted
+until Allie asked him if he was going back for the big game that fall.
+Then he said sort of abruptly that he couldn't get away, and a few
+minutes afterward he went home. We thought we'd offended him again, but
+a week afterward he turned up and called on us--we'd asked him to drop
+in any time. We decided that he didn't like to have too much familiarity
+about his football career and we respected him for it. It's all right
+for a man like that to be affable and democratic, but he mustn't let you
+crawl all over him. He's got his dignity to maintain.
+
+As the winter came on Jarvis dropped up to see us quite frequently. He
+never asked us to come and see him and we were really a little
+grateful--for I don't believe I should have had the nerve to go bouncing
+into the apartments of a national hero and hobnob with the mile-a-minute
+class. Anyway we didn't expect it or dream of it. And we didn't ask him
+any more questions about himself. We didn't care to try to elbow into
+his circle. If he chose to come slumming and sit around with us, we were
+more than content. We had seen enough of him already to keep us busy
+paralyzing Siwash fellows for a week when we went back to Commencement.
+"Jarvis? Oh, yes. Fact is, he's a friend of ours. Comes up to our rooms
+right along. We happened to meet him in a cafe. And say, he tells us
+that when he made that fifty-yard run--and so on." We used to practise
+saying things like this naturally and easily. We could just see the
+undergrads at the frat house sitting around in circles and lapping it
+up.
+
+All this time we were plugging away down at the plant, early and late,
+with every ounce of steam we had. There's one good thing about business
+in this Bedlam--when you break in you keep right on going. By the time
+Commencement rolled around we were getting checks with two figures on
+them, and had a better job treed and ready to drop. Ask for a vacation?
+Why, we wouldn't have asked for four days off to go home and help bury
+our worst enemy. That's what business does to the dear old college days
+when it gets a good bite at them. There we were, one year out of Siwash,
+breaking forty-five reunion dates, and never even sitting around with
+our heads in our hands over it. This business bug is a bad, bad biter
+all right. Just let it get its tooth into you, and what do you care if
+some other fellow is smoking your two-quart pipe back in the old chapter
+house? And for that matter, what do you care about anything else until
+you get up far enough to take breath and look around? Sometimes, after a
+couple of weeks of extra hard work, I've taken my mind off invoices long
+enough to wag it around a bit and I've felt like a swimmer coming up
+after a long dive.
+
+We landed those promotions in July and went right after another pair. I
+got mine in August--Allie in September. And along in December they
+called us both up in the office, where the big crash was. He said nice
+things to us about getting a chance to fire our own chauffeurs if we
+kept on tending to business, and first thing we knew we had offices of
+our own in the back of the building, with our names painted on the
+doors, and call-bells that brought stenographers and the same old brand
+of office boys that used to blow us out of the other offices along with
+their cigarette smoke. And we realized then that if we worked like
+thunder for thirty years more and saved our money and made it earn one
+hundred per cent, perhaps some of the real business kings would notice
+us on the street some day. That's about the way the college swelling
+goes down.
+
+All this time we hadn't seen much of Jarvis. He'd stopped coming to the
+cafe and we'd really been so busy that we almost forgot about him. It's
+simply wonderful the things business will drive out of your mind. It
+wasn't until late in the winter that we realized that we'd probably lost
+track of Jarvis for good--that is, until we climbed up into his set and
+discovered him at some dinner that was a page out of the social
+register. We mixed around a lot more now. We went to the
+million-candle-power restaurants every now and then, and ate a good deal
+more than sixty-five cents' worth apiece without batting an eye; and we
+went to see a play occasionally and didn't climb up into the rarefied
+atmosphere to find our seats, either. And whenever we broke in with the
+limousine crowd we kept a bright lookout for Jarvis. We wanted to see
+him and show him that we were coming along. We wanted him to be proud of
+us. I'd have given all my small bank balance to hear him say: "Fine
+work, old man; keep it up." I'll tell you when a big chap like that
+takes an interest in you, it's just as bracing as a hypodermic of
+ginger. Baccalaureates and inspirational editorials can't touch it.
+
+I was holding down the proud position of shipping clerk and Allie was my
+assistant the next spring, and it seemed as if we had to empty that
+warehouse every twenty-four hours and find the men to load the stuff
+with search-warrants. Help was scandalously scarce. We couldn't have
+worked harder if we had been standing off grizzly bears with brickbats.
+I'd just fired the fourth loafer in one day for trying to roll barrels
+by mental suggestion, when the boss came into my office.
+
+"Can you use an extra man?" he asked me.
+
+"Use him?" says I, swabbing off my forehead--I'd been hustling a few
+barrels myself. "Use him? Say, I'll give him a whole car to load all by
+himself, and if he can get the job finished by yesterday he can have
+another to load for to-day."
+
+"Now, see here," said the boss, sitting down; "this is a peculiar case.
+This chap's been at me for a job for months. There's nothing in the
+office. He's a fine fellow and well educated, but he's on his uppers. He
+can't seem to land anywhere. I'm sorry for him. He looks as if he was
+headed for the bread line. He's too good to roll barrels, but it won't
+hurt him. If you'll take him in and use him I'll give him a place as
+soon as I get it; let me know how he pans out."
+
+"Just ask him to run all the way here," I said, and put my nose down in
+a bill of lading. After a while the door opened and some one said, "Is
+this the shipping clerk?" It was the ghost of a voice I used to know and
+I turned around in a hurry. It was Jarvis.
+
+I don't suppose it is strictly business to cry while you are shaking
+hands with a husky you're just putting into harness at one-fifty per. I
+didn't intend to do it, but somehow when your whole conception of fame
+and glory comes clattering down about your ears, and you find you've got
+to order your star and idol to get a hustle on him and load the car at
+door four damquick, you are likely to do something foolish. I just
+stood and sniveled and let my mouth hang open. Neither of us said a
+word, but presently I put my arm around his shoulders and led him out
+into the shipping room. "There's the foreman," I said, in a voice like a
+wet sponge. "And you report here at six o'clock sharp." Then I went and
+hunted up Allie and for once we let business go hang in business hours.
+We couldn't work. We kept clawing for the solid ground and trying to
+readjust society and the universe and the beacon lights of progress all
+afternoon.
+
+When quitting time came we waited for Jarvis. We didn't say anything,
+but we loaded him into a cab and took him up to the old cafe. Then he
+told us his story, while we learned a lot of things about glory we
+hadn't even vaguely suspected before. He was one of the greatest
+football players who ever carried a ball, Jarvis was. Of that there was
+no doubt. He admitted it himself then. I might say he confessed it. He'd
+come to his university without any real preparation--you know even in
+the best regulated institutions of learning they sometimes get your
+marks on tackling mixed with your grades on entrance algebra. He'd spent
+two hours a day on football and the rest of his time being a college
+hero. He'd had to work at it like a dog, he said. How he got by the
+exams, he never knew. It seemed to him as if he must have studied in his
+sleep. By the time he graduated he'd had about every honor that has been
+invented for campus consumption. He belonged to the exclusive
+societies. All kinds of big people had shaken hands with him--asked for
+the privilege. He had a scrapbook of newspaper stories about his career
+that weighed four pounds. He knew the differences between eight kinds of
+wine by the taste and he had a perfect education in forkology,
+waltzology, necktiematics, and all the other branches of social science.
+
+He would never forget, he said, how he felt when he was graduated and
+the university moved off behind him and left him alone. It was up to him
+to keep on being a famous character, he felt. His college demanded it.
+He had to make good. But there he was with a magnificent football
+education and no more football to play. His financial training consisted
+in knowing when his bank account was overdrawn. His folks had pretty
+nearly paralyzed themselves putting him through and he wasn't going to
+draw on them any further. He went to New York because it seemed to be
+almost as big as the university, and he started all alone on the job of
+shouldering his way past the captains of finance up to the place where
+his college mates might feel proud of him some more.
+
+The result was so ridiculous that he had to laugh at it himself. He lost
+five yards every time he bucked an office boy. His college friends kept
+inviting him out and he went until they began offering him help. Then he
+cut the whole bunch. He didn't care to have them watch the struggle.
+He'd been in New York two years when he met us, he said, and he hadn't
+earned enough money to pay his room-rent in that time. There were times
+when he might have got a decent little job at twelve dollars per, or so,
+but he would have had to meet the boys who had looked up to him as a
+world-beater and somehow he just couldn't tackle it. When we had come
+over and paid homage to him he saw we had taken him for a successful man
+of the world, as well as a member of the All-America team, and he hadn't
+been able to resist the desire to let two human beings look up to him
+again. He hadn't invited us to his room, he said, because part of the
+time he didn't have a room; and he even confessed that once or twice
+he'd walked up to our rooms from downtown because he was crazy for a
+smoke and didn't have the price.
+
+I guess there never was a more peculiar dinner party in New York. Part
+of the time I sniveled and part of the time Allie sniveled, and once or
+twice we were all three all balled up in our throats. But after a while
+we braced up and I told Jarvis what the Boss had told me, and we drank a
+toast to the glad new days, and another to success, and another to
+Jarvis, the coming business pillar, and some more to our private yachts
+and country homes, and to Commencement reunions, and this and that. Then
+we chartered a sea-going cab and took Jarvis home with us. We made him
+sleep in the bed while we slept on the floor, and the next morning we
+loaned him a pair of overalls that we had honorably retired and we all
+went down to work together.
+
+The next three months were perfectly ridiculous. We simply couldn't
+order Jarvis around. Suppose you had to ask the Statue of Liberty to get
+a move on and scrub the floors? We couldn't get our ingrained awe of
+that freight hustler out of our systems. Of course when any one was
+around we had to keep up appearances, but when I was alone and I had
+something for Jarvis to do I'd call him in and get at it about this way:
+"Er--say, Jarvis, could you help me out on a little matter, if you have
+the time? You know there's a shipment for Pittsburgh that's got to go
+out by noon. I think the car is at door 6. Those barrels ought to be put
+into the car right away, and if you'd see that they get in there I'd be
+very much obliged to you. I'd attend to it myself, but they've given me
+a lot of stuff to go over here."
+
+Then Jarvis would grin cheerfully and hustle those barrels in before I
+could get over blushing. If you don't believe football has its
+advantages in after life you ought to watch a prize tackle waltzing a
+three-hundred-pound barrel through a car door.
+
+By day we ordered Jarvis about in this fashion, and made him earn his
+one-fifty with the rest of the red-shirted gang. But at six o'clock we
+dropped all that like a hot poker. Nights we were his adoring young
+friends again. We sat together in restaurants and said "sir" to him to
+his infinite disgust, and made him tell over and over again the stories
+of the big games and the grand doings of the old days. When his
+promotion came, three months later, and he went into a small job in the
+office, with a traveling job looming up in the offing, we held a
+celebration that set us back about half the price of a railroad ticket
+home. It meant more to us than it did to him. To him it was three
+dollars more a week, congenial work and a chance. But to us it was the
+release of a great man from grinding captivity--a racehorse rescued from
+the shafts of a garbage cart; a Richard the Lion-hearted hauled from the
+gloomy dungeon, where he had had to peel his own potatoes, and set on
+the road to kingly pomp and circumstance again. Excuse me for this
+frightful mess of language. I can't help getting a little squashy with
+my adjectives when I think of that glorious banquet night.
+
+I'm glad to say that Jarvis kept coming along after that. He developed
+into a first-class salesman, and in a couple of years he came in from
+the road and took a desk in the house with his name on the side in gilt
+letters. When this happened we made him look up every one of his old
+college friends again. He hesitated a little, but we got behind him and
+pushed. We pushed him into his college club and back to Commencement,
+and we really pushed him out of our life--for every one was glad to see
+him, of course, and to his amazement he found that he was still a grand
+old college institution among the alumni. So he trained with his own
+crowd after that, but even now we go over to his club and dine with him
+at least once a year--always on some anniversary or other. And for the
+last two years he has been sending his machine around for us.
+
+Oh, no, you don't! I'm paying for this lunch, young fellow. Don't fight
+any one about paying for your lunch just because you still have the
+price. It's a privilege we older chaps insist on with you newcomers
+anyway. And remember, there is always a bunch of us before the fire at
+the club Saturday evenings, and we don't talk business. While you're
+waiting for that job, don't you dare miss a meeting. And say--one thing
+more. Don't be afraid of those blamed office boys. They're all a bluff.
+I'm getting so I can fire them without even getting pale.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+Minor changes have been made to make punctuation and spelling
+consistent; every other effort has been made to remain true to the
+original book.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of At Good Old Siwash, by George Fitch
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