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 onhis legs FRONTISPIECE. _Page 19_]

AT GOOD OLD SIWASH

PREFACE

Little did I think, during the countless occasions on which I haveskipped blithely over the preface of a book in order to plunge into theplot, 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 theauthor of having his preface read. 

I want this preface to be read, though I have an uneasy premonition thatit is going to be skipped as joyously as ever I skipped a prefacemyself. I want the reader to toil through my preface in order to savehim the task of trying to follow a plot through this book. For if heattempts to do this he will most certainly dislocate something abouthimself very seriously. I have found it impossible, in writing ofcollege days which are just one deep-laid scheme after another, toconfine myself to one plot. How could I describe in one plot the life ofthe student who carries out an average of three plots a day? It isunreasonable. So I have done the next best thing. There is a plot inevery chapter. This requires the use of upwards of a dozen villains, analmost equal number of heroes, and a whole bouquet of heroines. But Ido not begrudge this extravagance. It is necessary, and that settles it. 

Then, again, I want to answer in this preface a number of questions byreaders who kindly consented to become interested in the stories whenthey appeared in the _Saturday Evening Post_. Siwash isn't Michigan indisguise. It isn't Kansas. It isn't Knox. It isn't Minnesota. It isn'tTuskegee, Texas, or Tufts. It is just Siwash College. I built it myselfwith a typewriter out of memories, legends, and contributed tales from ascore of colleges. I have tried to locate it myself a dozen times, but Ican't. I have tried to place my thumb on it firmly and say, "There, darnyou, stay put. " But no halfback was ever so elusive as this infernalcollege. Just as I have it definitely located on the Knox Collegecampus, which I myself once infested, I look up to find it on the Kansasprairies. I surround it with infinite caution and attempt to nail itdown there. Instead, I find it in Minnesota with a strong Norwegianaccent running through the course of study. Worse than that, I oftenfind it in two or three places at once. It is harder to corner than aflea. I never saw such a peripatetic school. 

That is only the least of my troubles, too. The college itself is nevertwice the same. Sometimes I am amazed at its size and perfection, by thegrandeur of its gymnasium and the colossal lines of its stadium. But atother times I cannot find the stadium at all, and the gymnasium hasshrunk until it looks amazingly like the old wooden barn in which weonce built up Sandow biceps at Knox. I never saw such a college to getlost in, either. I know as well as anything that to get to the Eta BitaPie house, you go north from the old bricks, past the new science halland past Browning Hall. But often when I start north from the campus, Ifind my way blocked by the stadium, and when I try to dodge it, I runinto the Alfalfa Delt House, and the Eatemalive boarding club, and otherplaces which belong properly to the south. And when I go south Ifrequently lose sight of the college altogether, and can't for the lifeof me remember what the library tower looks like or whether thetheological school is just falling down, or is to be built next year; orwhether I ought to turn to my right, and ask for directions at Prexie'shouse, or turn to my left and crawl under a freight train which blocks acrossing on the Hither, Yonder and Elsewhere Railroad. If you think itis an easy task to carry a whole college in your head without getting itjumbled, just try it a while. 

Then, again, the Siwash people puzzle me. Professor Grubb is always atrial. That man alternates a smooth-shaven face with a full beard in themost startling manner. Petey Simmons is short and flaxen-haired, longand black-haired, and wide and hatchet-faced in turns, depending on theillustrator. I never know Ole Skjarsen when I see him for the samereason. As for Prince Hogboom, Allie Bangs, Keg Rearick and the rest ofthem, nobody knows how they look but the artists who illustrated thestories; and as I read each number and viewed the smiling faces ofthese students, I murmured, "Goodness, how you have changed!"

So I have struggled along as best I could to administer the affairs of acollege 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 areinterested in the college when you have read these few stories, supposeyou hunt for it wherever college boys are full of applied deviltry andcollege girls are distractingly fair; where it is necessary to winfootball games in order to be half-way contented with the universe;where the spring weather is too wonderful to be wasted on CollegeAlgebra or History of Art; and where, whatever you do, or whoever youlike, or however you live, you can't forget it, no matter how long youwork or worry afterward. 

There! I can't mark it on the map, but if you have ever worried acollege 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 morefood this year? Am I going to draw my pay this month? Am I going to doany more breathing after I get this lungful used up? All foolishquestions, pal. Very silly conversation. Pshaw!

Am I going to the game, you ask me? Is the sun going to get upto-morrow? You couldn't keep me away from that game if you put aprotective tariff of seventy-eight per cent ad valorem, whatever thatmeans, on the front gate. I came out to this town on business, and I'llhave to take an extra fare train home to make up the time; but what ofthat? I'm going to the game, and when the Siwash team comes out I'mgoing to get up and give as near a correct imitation of a Roman mob anda Polish riot as my throat will stand; and if we put a crimp in thelarge-footed, humpy-shouldered behemoths we're going up against thisafternoon, I'm going out to-night and burn the City Hall. Any Siwash manwho is a gentleman would do it. I'll probably have to run like thunderto beat some of them to it. 

You know how it is, old man. Or maybe you don't, because you made allyour end runs on the Glee Club. But I played football all through mycollege course and the microbe is still there. In the fall I thinkfootball, talk football, dream football, even though I haven't had asuit on for six years. And when I go out to the field and see little oldSiwash lining up against a bunch of overgrown hippos from a universitywith a catalogue as thick as a city directory, the oldmud-and-perspiration smell gets in my nostrils, and the desire to getunder the bunch and feel the feet jabbing into my ribs boils up sostrong that I have to hold on to myself with both hands. If you've neversat on a hard board and wanted to be between two halfbacks with yourhands on their shoulders, and the quarter ready to sock a ball into yoursolar plexus, and eleven men daring you to dodge 'em, and nine thousandfriends and enemies raising Cain and keeping him well propped up in thegrandstands--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 theodds? A broken bone feels just as grand to a scrub as to a star. Isometimes think a scrub gets more real football knowledge than a varsityman, because he doesn't have to addle his brain by worrying aboutholding his job and keeping his wind, and by dreaming that he hasfumbled a punt and presented ninety-five yards to the hereditary enemiesof his college. I played scrub football five years, four of 'em underBost, the greatest coach who ever put wings on the heels of atwo-hundred-pound hunk of meat; and while my ribs never lasted longenough to put me on the team, what I didn't learn about the game youcould put in the other fellow's eye. 

Say, but it's great, learning football under a good coach. It's thefinest training a man can get anywhere on this old globule. Football isonly the smallest thing you learn. You learn how to be patient when whatyou want to do is to chew somebody up and spit him into the gutter. Youlearn to control your temper when it is on the high speed, with thethrottle jerked wide open and buzzing like a hornet convention. Youlearn, by having it told you, just how small and foolish andinsignificant you are, and how well this earth could stagger alongwithout 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 upuntil you mistake it for a planet, and regard whatever you say as avolcanic disturbance. 

I suppose you think, like the rest of the chaps who never came out topractice but observed the game from the dollar-and-a-half seats, thatbeing coached in football is like being instructed in German orcalculus. You are told what to do and how to do it, and then yourecite. Far from it, my boy! They don't bother telling you what to doand how to do it on a big football field. Mostly they tell you what todo and how you do it. And they do it artistically, too. They use plentyof language. A football coach is picked out for his ready tongue. Hemust be a conversationalist. He must be able to talk to a greenhorn, with fine shoulders and a needle-shaped head, until that greenhorn wouldpick up the ball and take it through a Sioux war dance to get away fromthe conversation. You can't reason with football men. They're notlogical, most of them. They are selected for their heels and shouldersand their leg muscles, and not for their ability to look at you withluminous eyes and say: "Yes, Professor, I think I understand. " The wayto make 'em understand is to talk about them. Any man can understand youwhile you are telling him that if he were just a little bit slower hewould have to be tied to the earth to keep up with it. That hurts hispride. And when you hurt his pride he takes it out on whatever is infront of him--which is the other team. Never get in front of a footballplayer when you are coaching him. 

But this brings me to the subject of Bost again. Bost is still coachingSiwash. 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 tothe same man twice. There's a record for you! He's a little man, Bostis. He played end on some Western team when he only weighed one hundredand forty. Got his football knowledge there. But where he got hisvocabulary is still a mystery. He has a way of convincing a man that adill pickle would make a better guard than he is, and of making that manso jealous of the pickle that he will perform perfectly unreasonablefeats 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 aman rub himself in the stung place for an hour; and oh, how mad he canmake you while he is telling you pleasantly that while the little fellowplaying against you is only a prep and has sloping shoulders and weighsone hundred and eleven stripped, he is making you look like a bale ofhay that has been dumped by mistake on an athletic field. And when hegets a team in the gymnasium between halves, with the game going wrong, and stands up before them and sizes up their insect nerve and rubberbackbone and hereditary awkwardness and incredible talent in doing thewrong thing, to say nothing of describing each individual blunder inthat queer nasal clack of his--well, I'd rather be tied up in a greatbig frying-pan over a good hot stove for the same length of time, anyday in the week. The reason Bost is a great coach is because his mendon't dare play poorly. When they do he talks to them. If he would onlyhit them, or skin them by inches, or shoot at them, they wouldn't mindit so much; but when you get on the field with him and realize that ifyou miss a tackle he is going to get you out before the whole gang andtell you what a great mistake the Creator made when He put joints inyour arms instead of letting them stick out stiff as they do any othersignpost, you're not going to miss that tackle, that's all. 

When Bost came to Siwash he succeeded a line of coaches who had beentelling the fellows to get down low and hit the line hard, and had beenshowing them how to do it very patiently. Nice fellows, those coaches. Perfect gentlemen. Make you proud to associate with them. They couldtake a herd of green farmer boys, with wrists like mules' ankles, and byThanksgiving they would have them familiar with all the rudiments of thegame. By that time the season would be over and all the schools in thevicinity would have beaten us by big scores. The next year the lastyear's crop of big farmer boys would stay at home to husk corn, and thecoach would begin all over on a new crop. The result was, we were a dubschool at football. Any school that could scare up a good rangy halfbackand a line that could hold sheep could get up an adding festival at ourexpense any time. We lived in a perpetual state of fear. Some day wefelt that the normal school would come down and beat us. That would bethe limit of disgrace. After that there would be nothing left to do butdisband 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 onehow to play football. He was just interested in making the player afraidnot to play it. When you went down the field on a punt you knew that ifyou missed your man he would tell you when you came back that two stonehitching-posts out of three could get past you in a six-foot alley. Ifyou missed a punt you could expect to be told that you might catch ahaystack by running with your arms wide open, but that was no way tocatch a football. Maybe things like that don't sound jabby when twodozen men hear them! They kept us catching punts between classes, andtackling each other all the way to our rooms and back. We simply had toplay football to keep from being bawled out. It's an awful thing to havea coach with a tongue like a cheese knife swinging away at you, and toknow that if you get mad and quit, no one but the dear old Coll. Willsuffer--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 propercollege and you can't swear on its campus, whatever else you do. Swearing is only a lazy man's substitute for thinking, anyway; and Bostwasn't lazy. He preferred the descriptive; he sat up nights thinking itout. 

We began to see the results before Bost had been tracing our pedigreesfor two weeks. First game of the season was with that little old dinkyNormal School which had been scaring us so for the past five years. Wehad 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 startedout that year in the same old way. First half ended 0 to 0, with ourboys pretty satisfied because they had kept the ball in Normal'sterritory. Bost led the team and the substitutes into the overgrown barnwe used for a gymnasium, and while we were still patting ourselvesapprovingly in our minds he cut loose:

"You pasty-faced, overfed, white-livered beanbag experts, what do youmean 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 statuaryexhibit? Does any one of you imagine for a holy minute that he knows thedifference between a football game and ushering in a church? Don't foolyourselves. You don't; you don't know anything. All you ever knew aboutfootball 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 afootball from a duck's egg for more than a week! Bah! If I ever turnedthe Old Folks' Home loose on you doll babies they'd run up a centurywhile you were hunting for your handkerchiefs. Jackson, what do yousuppose a halfback is for? I don't want cloak models. I want a man whocan 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'resupposed 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. Wheredid you ever learn that sweet, lovely way of falling down on your nosewhen a real man sneezes at you? Did you ever hear of sand? Eat it! Eatit! Fill yourself up with it. I want you to get in that line this halfand 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 onwheels and haul you. Next time you grow fast to the ground I'm going toviolate 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 oughtto be sorting eggs. That ball isn't red hot. You don't have to let go ofit as soon as you get it. Don't be afraid, nobody will step on you. Thisisn't a rude game. It's only a game of post-office. You needn't act sonervous about it. Maybe some of the big girls will kiss you, but itwon't hurt. "

Bost stopped for breath and eyed us. We were a sick-looking crowd. Youcould almost see the remarks sticking into us and quivering. We had comein feeling pretty virtuous, and what we were getting was a hideoussurprise. 

"Now I want to tell this tea-party something, " continued Bost. "Eitheryou're going out on that field and score thirty points this last half orI'm going to let the girls of Siwash play your football for you. I'mtired of coaching men that aren't good at anything but falling downscientifically when they're tackled. There isn't a broken nose amongyou. Every one of you will run back five yards to pick out a soft spotto fall on. It's got to stop. You're going to hold on to that ball thishalf and take it places. If some little fellow from Normal crosses hisfingers 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 outof you this half, and if you don't get 'em--well, you just dare to comeback here without them, that's all. Now get out on that field and jostlesomebody. Git!"

Did we git? Well, rather. We were so mad our clothes smoked. We wouldhave quit the game right there and resigned from the team, but we didn'tdare to. Bost would have talked to us some more. And we didn't dare notto make those thirty points, either. It was an awful tough job, but wedid it with a couple over. We raged like wild beasts. We scared thosegentle Normalites out of their boots. I can't imagine how we ever got itinto our heads that they could play football, anyway. When it was allover we went back to the gymnasium feeling righteously triumphant, andhad another hour with Bost in which he took us all apart withoutanæsthetics, and showed us how Nature would have done a better job ifshe had used a better grade of lumber in our composition. 

That day made the Siwash team. The school went wild over the score. Bostrounded up two or three more good players, and every afternoon helashed us around the field with that wire-edged tongue of his. OnSaturdays we played, and oh, how we worked! In the first half we wereafraid of what Bost would say to us when we came off the field. In thesecond half we were mad at what he had said. And how he did drive usdown the field in practice! I can remember whole cross sections of histalk yet:

"Faster, faster, you scows. Line up. Quick! Johnson, are you waiting fora 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 menwent past you that time. If you can't touch 'em drop 'em a souvenircard. Line up. Faster, faster! Oh, thunder, hurry up! If you ran afuneral, center, the corpse would spoil on your hands. Wow! Fumble! Dropon that ball. Drop on it! Hogboom, you'd fumble a loving-cup. Use yourhand 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 hadyou all the time. Now try that signal again--low, you linemen; there'sno girls watching you. Snap it; snap it. Great Scott! Say, Hogboom, comehere. 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 thatball to take forward. Have you got to get a legal permit to start thoselegs of yours? You'd make a good vault to store footballs in, but you'retoo 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 tohold its sweaters. It was mad all the time, and it played the gamecarnivorously. Siwash was delirious with joy. The whole school turnedout for practice, and to see those eleven men snapping through signalsup and down the field as fast as an ordinary man could run justcongested us with happiness. You've no idea what a lovely time of theyear autumn is when you can go out after classes and sit on a pine seatin the soft dusk and watch your college team pulling off end runs in aspretty formation as if they were chorus girls, while you discuss lazilywith your friends just how many points it is going to run up on theneighboring schools. I never expect to be a Captain of Industry, but itcouldn't make me feel any more contented or powerful or complacent thanto be a busted-up scrub in Siwash, with a team like that to watch. I'mpretty sure of that. 

But, happy as we were, Bost wasn't nearly content. He had ideals. Ibelieve one of them must have been to run that team through a couple ofbrick flats without spoiling the formation. Nothing satisfied him. Hewas particularly distressed about the fullback. Hogboom was a goodfellow and took signal practice perfectly, but he was no fiend. Helacked the vivacity of a real, first-class Bengal tiger. He wouldn'teat any one alive. He'd run until he was pulled down, but you neverexpected him to explode in the midst of seven hostiles and ricochet downthe field for forty yards. He never jumped over two men and on toanother, and he never dodged two ways at once and laid out three menwith stiff arms on his way to the goal. It wasn't his style. He was goodfor two and a half yards every time, but that didn't suit Bost. He wasafter statistics, and what does a three-yard buck amount to when youwant 70 to 0 scores?

The result of this dissatisfaction was Ole Skjarsen. Late in SeptemberBost disappeared for three days and came back leading Ole by a rope--atleast, he was towing him by an old carpet-bag when we sighted him. Bostfound him in a lumber camp, he afterward told us, and had to explain tohim what a college was before he would quit his job. He thought it wassomething good to eat at first, I believe. Ole was a timid youngNorwegian giant, with a rick of white hair and a reënforced concretephysique. He escaped from his clothes in all directions, and was sogreen and bashful that you would have thought we were cannibals from theway he shied at us--though, as that was the year the bright hat-ribbonscame in, I can't blame him. He wasn't like anything we had ever seenbefore in college. He was as big as a carthorse, as graceful as a drayand as meek as a missionary. He had a double width smile and a thinlittle old faded voice that made you think you could tip him over andshine your shoes on him with impunity. But I wouldn't have tried it fora month's allowance. His voice and his arms didn't harmonize worth acent. They were as big as ordinary legs--those arms, and they ended inhands that could have picked up a football and mislaid it among theirfingers. 

No wonder Ole was a sensation. He didn't look exactly like footballmaterial to us, I'll admit. He seemed more especially designed for lightderrick work. But we trusted Bost implicitly by that time and we gavehim 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 infootball armor, and set to work to teach him the game. 

Bost went right to work on Ole in a businesslike manner. He tossed himthe football and said: "Catch it. " Ole watched it sail past and thentore after it like a pup retrieving a stick. He got it in a few minutesand 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 heconversed. 

"You cotton-headed Scandinavian cattleship ballast, catch that ball inyour arms when I throw it to you, and don't let go of it!" shriekedBost, shooting it at him again. 

"Oll right, " said Ole patiently. He cornered the ball after a shortstruggle 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 thanever. 

"Drop it, you Mammoth Cave of ignorance!" yelled Bost. "If I had yourhead 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 justlike it. You had to tell him to do a thing. You then had to show him howto do it. You then had to tell him how to stop doing it. After that youhad to explain that he wasn't to refrain forever--just until he had todo it again. Then you had to persuade him to do it again. He was asgood-natured as a lost puppy, and just as hard to reason with. In threenights Bost was so hoarse that he couldn't talk. He had called Oleeverything in the dictionary that is fit to print; and the knowledgethat Ole didn't understand more than a hundredth part of it, and didn'tmind that, was wormwood to his soul. 

For all that, we could see that if any one could teach Ole the game hewould make a fine player. He was as hard as flint and so fast on hisfeet that we couldn't tackle him any more than we could have tackled ajack-rabbit. He learned to catch the ball in a night, and as fordefense--his one-handed catches of flying players would have made aNational League fielder envious. But with all of it he was perfectlyuseless. 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 aclose-coupled, next year's model scootcart. If we could have rigged up adriver's seat and chauffeured Ole, it would have been all right. Butevery other method of trying to get him to understand what he wasexpected to do was a failure. He just grinned, took orders, executedthem, and waited for more. When a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound man takesa football, wades through eleven frantic scrubs, shakes them all off, and then stops dead with a clear field to the goal before him--becausehis instructions ran out when he shook the last scrub--you can bepardoned for feeling hopeless about him. 

That was what happened the day before the Muggledorfer game. Bost hadbeen working Ole at fullback all evening. He and the captain had steeredhim up and down the field as carefully as if he had been a sea-goingyacht. It was a wonderful sight. Ole was under perfect control. Headvanced the ball five yards, ten yards, or twenty at command. Nothingcould 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 forinstructions. 

When he stopped the last time, with nothing before him but the goal, andasked placidly, "Vere skoll I take das ball now, Master Bost?" I thoughtthe coach would expire of the heat. He positively steamed withsuppressed emotion. He swelled and got purple about the face. We werealarmed and were getting ready to hoop him like a barrel when he foundhis tongue at last. 

"You pale-eyed, prehistoric mudhead, " he spluttered, "I've spent a weektrying to get through that skull lining of yours. It's no use, you fieldboulder. Where do you keep your brains? Give me a chance at them. I justwant to get into them one minute and stir them up with my finger. Tothink that I have to use you to play football when they are paying fivedollars and a half for ox meat in Kansas City. Skjarsen, do you knowanything at all?"

"Aye ban getting gude eddication, " said Ole serenely. "Aye tank I bancollege faller purty sune, I don't know. I like I skoll understand alldas har big vorts yu make. "

"You'll understand them, I don't think, " moaned Bost. "You couldn'tunderstand 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 duyust 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 themiddle of the field? What would Muggledorfer do to you if you stoppedthere?"

"Yu ent tal me to go on, " said Ole sullenly. "Aye go on, Aye gass, pootyqveek den. "

"You bet you'll go on, " said Bost. "Now, look here, you sausagematerial, to-morrow you play fullback. You stop everything that comes atyou 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 tostop with it. Get that? Can I get that into your head without a drilland a blast? If you dare to stop with that ball I'll ship you back tothe 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 iton 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 coachwas an innocent child beside Bost--and that was the reason why Ole wasgoing 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'sremarks had gotten through his hide at last. He was pretty slow, Olewas, but he had begun getting mad the night before and had kept at thejob all night and all morning. By afternoon he was seething, mostly inNorwegian. The injustice of being called a muttonhead all week for notobeying orders, and then being called a mudhead for stopping for orders, churned his soul, to say nothing of his language. He only averaged oneEnglish word in three, as he told us on the way out that to-day he wasgoing to do exactly as he had been told or fill a martyr's grave--onlythat wasn't the way he put it. 

The Muggledorfers were a pruny-looking lot. We had the game won when ourteam came out and glared at them. Bost had filled most of the positionswith regular young mammoths, and when you dressed them up in footballarmor they were enough to make a Dreadnought a little nervous. TheMuggleses kicked off to our team, and for a few plays we plowed alongfive or ten yards at a time. Then Ole was given the ball. He wenttwenty-five yards. Any other man would have been crushed to earth infive. He just waded through the middle of the line and went down thefield, a moving mass of wriggling men. It was a wonderful play. Theydisinterred him at last and he started straight across the field forBost. 

"Aye ent mean to stop, Master Bost, " he shouted. "Dese fallers har, deysquash me down--"

We hauled him into line and went to work again. Ole had performed sowell that the captain called his signal again. This time I hope I may beroasted in a subway in July if Ole didn't run twenty-five yards withfour Muggledorfer men hanging on his legs. We stood up and yelled untilour teeth ached. It took about five minutes to get Ole dug out, and thenhe started for Bost again. 

"Honest, Master Bost, Aye ent mean to stop, " he said imploringly. "Ayeyust tal you, dese fallers ban devils. Aye fule dem naxt time--"

"Line up and shut up, " the captain shouted. The ball wasn't over twentyyards from the line, and as a matter of course the quarter shot it backto Ole. He put his head down, gave one mad-bull plunge, laid a windrowof Muggledorfer players out on either side, and shot over the goal linelike a locomotive. 

We rose up to cheer a few lines, but stopped to stare. Ole didn't stopat 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. Olewas disappearing up the campus and across the street. The Muggledorferteam was nonplussed and sort of indignant. To be bowled over by acyclone, and then to have said cyclone break up the game by running awaywith the ball was to them a new idea in football. It wasn't to those ofus who knew Ole, however. One of us telephoned down to the _Leader_office where Hinckley, an old team man, worked, and asked him to headoff 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 aslight argument with a thirteen-inch shell. He was also mad. 

"What was that you asked me to stop?" he snorted, pinning himselftogether. "Was it a gorilla or a high explosive? When did you fellowsbegin importing steam rollers for the team? I asked him to stop. Iordered him to stop. Then I went around in front of him to stop him--andhe ran right over me. I held on for thirty yards, but that's no way totravel. I could have gone to the next town just as well, though. Whatsort of a game is this, and where is that tow-headed holy terror boundfor?"

We gave the answer up, but we couldn't give up Ole. He was too valuableto lose. How to catch him was the sticker. An awful uproar in the streetgave us an idea. It was Ted Harris in the only auto in town--one of theearliest 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 pioneerautomobiles you've got something coming. Take it all around, a good, swift man, running all the time, could almost keep ahead of one. Wepumped up a tire, fixed a wire or two, and cranked up a few times; andthe upshot of it was we were two miles out on the state road before wecaught sight of Ole. 

He was trotting briskly when we caught up with him, the ball under hisarm, and that patient, resigned expression on his face that he alwayshad 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--thoseold machines could roar some, too. "What do you mean by running off withour 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 theroad, and jumped out to stop him. When the attempt was over three of uspicked up the fourth and put him aboard. Ole had tramped on us and hadclimbed over the auto. 

Force wouldn't do, that was plain. "Where are you going, Ole?" wepleaded as we tore along beside him. 

"Aye ent know, " he panted, laboring up a hill; "das ban fule game, Ayetenk. "

"Come on back and play some more, " we urged. "Bost won't like it, yourrunning all over the country this way. "

"Das ban my orders, " panted Ole. "Aye ent no fule, yentlemen; Aye knowven Aye ban doing right teng. Master Bost he say 'Keep on running!' Ayegass I run till hal freeze on top. Aye ent know why. Master Bost heknow, I tenk. "

"This is awful, " said Lambert, the manager of the team. "He's takenBost literally again--the chump. He'll run till he lands up in thosepine 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 whostarted him can stop him. "

We left Ole still plugging north and ran back to town. The game wasstill hanging fire. Bost was tearing his hair. Of course, theMuggledorfer fellows could have insisted on playing, but they weren'tanxious. Ole or no Ole, we could have walked all over them, and theyknew it. Besides, they were having too much fun with Bost. They weresitting around, Indian-like, in their blankets, and every three minutestheir captain would go and ask Bost with perfect politeness whether hethought they had better continue the game there or move it on to thenext town in time to catch his fullback as he came through. 

"Of course, we are in no hurry, " he would explain pleasantly; "we'rejust here for amusement, anyway; and it's as much fun watching you tryto catch your players as it is to get scored on. Why don't you hobblethem, Mr. Bost? A fifty-yard rope wouldn't interfere much with that gayyoung Percheron of yours, and it would save you lots of time roundinghim 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 replyto make. When I got there he was blue in the face. It didn't take himhalf a second to decide what to do. Telling the captain of the Siwashteam to go ahead and play if Muggledorfer insisted, and on no account touse that 32 double-X play except on first downs, he jumped into themachine and we started for Ole. 

There were no speed records in those days. Wouldn't have made anydifference if there were. Harris just turned on all the juice his olddouble-opposed motor could soak up, and when we hit the wooden crossingson the outskirts of town we fellows in the tonneau went up so high thatwe changed sides coming down. It wasn't over twenty minutes till wesighted 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. Wecaught up and Bost hopped out, still mad. 

"Where in Billy-be-blamed are you going, you human trolley car?" hespluttered, sprinting along beside Skjarsen. "What do you mean bybreaking up a game in the middle and vamoosing with the ball? Do youthink 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 careto stop, " he said. "Aye kent suit you, Master Bost. You tal me Aye skolldu a teng, den you cuss me for duing et. You tal me not to du a teng andyou cuss me some more den. Aye tenk I yust keep on a-running, lak yutal 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 wasfifteen yards behind and losing at every step. He had wasted too muchbreath on oratory. We picked him up in the car and set him alongside ofOle 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 keepon runnin'. Fallers ent got breath to call me fule ven Aye run. Aye tenkdas best vay. "

We picked Bost up again thirty yards behind. Maybe he would have runbetter if he hadn't choked so in his conversation. In another minute welanded him abreast of Ole again. He got out and sprinted for the thirdtime. He wabbled as he did it. 

"Ole, " he panted, "I've been mistaken in you. You are all right, Ole. Inever saw a more intelligent fellow. I won't cuss you any more, Ole. Ifyou'll stop now we'll take you back in an automobile--hold on there aminute; can't you see I'm all out of breath?"

"Aye ban gude faller, den?" asked Ole, letting out another link ofspeed. 

"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 throughhis skull, " said Harris eagerly. In another minute he had stopped. Wepicked up Bost again and ran up to him. He surveyed us long andcritically. 

"Das ban qveer masheen, " he said finally. "Aye tenk Aye lak Aye skoll beriding back in it. Aye ent care for das futball game, Aye gass. It bantu much running in it. "

We took Ole back to town in twenty-two minutes, three chickens, a dogand a back spring. It was close to five o'clock when he ran out on thefield again. The Muggledorfer team was still waiting. Time was no objectto them. They would only play ten minutes, but in that ten minutes Olemade three scores. Five substitutes stood back of either goal and askedhim with great politeness to stop as he tore over the line. And he didit. If any one else had run six miles between halves he would havestopped a good deal short of the line. But as far as we could see, ithadn't winded Ole. 

Bost went home by himself that night after the game, not stopping evento assure us that as a team we were beneath his contempt. The nextafternoon he was, if anything, a little more vitriolic than ever--butnot with Ole. Toward the middle of the signal practice he pulled himselftogether 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 annoyyou too much, would you mind running the same way the rest of the teamdoes? I don't insist on it, mind you, but it looks so much better to theaudience, you know. "

"Jas, " said Ole; "Aye ban fule, Aye gass, but yu ban tu polite to sayit. "

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 societywith the aid of a baseball bat, a sausage-making machine, a stick ofdynamite and a corn-sheller? What's that? You say you belong to theUp-to-Date Wood-choppers and have taken the josh degree in the NobleOrder of Prong-Horned Wapiti? Forget it. Those aren't initiations. Theyare rest cures. I went into one of those societies which give horse-playinitiations for middle-aged daredevils last year and was bored to deathbecause I forgot to bring my knitting. They are stiff enough for fatbusiness men who never do anything more exciting than to fall over thelawn mower in the cellar once a year; but, compared with a genuine, eighteen-donkey-power college frat initiation with a Spanish Inquisitionattachment, the little degree teams, made up of grandfathers, feel likea 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 collegeboys use nowadays. It doesn't seem to be the fashion to grease thelandscape with freshmen any more. Initiations are getting to be as safeand sane as an ice-cream festival in a village church. When a frat wantsto submit a neophyte to a trying ordeal it sends him out on the campusto climb a tree, or makes him go to a dance in evening clothes with ared necktie on. A boy who can roll a peanut half a mile with atoothpick, or can fish all morning in a pail of water in front of thecollege chapel without getting mad and trying to thrash any one isconsidered to be lion-hearted enough to ornament any frat. These aremollycoddle times in all departments. I'm glad I'm out of college and amcatching street cars in the rush hours. That is about the only job leftthat feels like the good old times in college when muscles were made tojar 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 aboutit. The freshman could tell at any stage of the game that something wasbeing done to him. They just ate him alive, that was all. Why, atSiwash, where I was lap-welded into the Eta Bita Pies, any fraternitywhich initiated a candidate and left enough of him to appear in chapelthe next morning was the joke of the school. Even the girls'fraternities gave it the laugh. The girls used to do a little quietinitiating themselves, and when they received a sister into membershipyou could generally follow her mad career over the town by a trail ofhairpins, "rats" and little fragments of dressgoods. 

Those were the days when the pledgling of a good high-pressure fratwrote to his mother the night before he was taken in and telegraphed herwhen he found himself alive in the morning. There used to beconsiderable rivalry between the frats at Siwash in the matter of givinga freshman a good, hospitable time. I remember when the Sigh Whoopsilonshung young Allen from the girder of an overhead railroad crossing, andlet the switch engines smoke him up for two hours as they passedunderneath, there was a good deal of jealousy among the rest of us whohadn't thought of it. The Alfalfa Delts went them one better by tyingroller skates to the shoulders and hips of a big freshman football starand hauling him through the main streets of Jonesville on his back, behind an automobile, and the Chi Yi's covered a candidate with plasterof Paris, with blow-holes for his nose, sculptured him artistically, andleft him before the college chapel on a pedestal all night. The DeltaKappa Sonofaguns set fire to their house once by shooting Roman candlesat 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 theirchimney. They had been trying to let him down into the fireplace, andwhen he got stuck they had poked at him with a clothes pole until theyhad mussed him up considerably. This just shows you what a gay life theyoung scholar led in the days when every ritual had claws on, and therewas 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 ourinitiation "A little journey to the pearly gates, " and once or twice itlooked for a short time as if the victim had mislaid his return ticket. Treat yourself to an election riot, a railway collision and a subwayexplosion, all in one evening, and you will get a rather sketchy idea ofwhat 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 doesexactly as he is told and the members don't get careless and somethingthat wasn't expected doesn't happen--as did when we tied Tudor Snyder tothe south track while an express went by on the north track, and thenhad the time of our young lives getting him off ahead of a wild freightwhich we hadn't counted on. All we ever aimed at was to make theinitiate so thankful to get through alive that he would love Eta BitaPie forever, and I must say we usually succeeded. It is wonderful what ayoung fellow will endure cheerfully for the sake of passing it on tosome one else the next year. I remember I was pretty mad when my EtaBita Pie brethren headed me up in a barrel and rolled me downhill into acreek without taking the trouble to remove all the nails. It seemed likewanton carelessness. But long before my nose was out of splints and myhide would hold water I was perfecting our famous "Lover's Leap" for thenext year's bunch. That was our greatest triumph. There was an abandonedrock quarry north of town with thirty feet of water in the bottom and afifty-foot drop to the water. By means of a long beam and a system ofpulleys we could make a freshman walk the plank and drop off into thewater in almost perfect safety, providing the ropes didn't break. Itcreated a sensation, and the other frats were mad with jealousy. We tookevery man we wanted the next fall before the authorities put a stop tothe scheme. That shows you just how repugnant the idea of beinginitiated is to the green young collegian. 

Of course, fraternity initiations are supposed to be conducted for theamusement of the chapter and not of the candidate. But you can't alwaysentirely tell what will happen, especially if the victim is husky andunimpressionable. Sometimes he does a little initiating himself. Andthat reminds me that I started out to tell a story and not to give alecture on the polite art of making veal salad. Did I ever tell you ofthe time when we initiated Ole Skjarsen into Eta Bita Pie, and how theceremony 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 itnow and cut as many corners as I can. 

[Illustration: There wasn't a college anywhere around us that didn'thave Ole's hoofmarks all over its pride _Page 33_]

As I have told you before, Ole Skjarsen was a little slow in graspingthe real beauties of football science. It took him some time to uncoilhis mind from the principles of woodchopping and concentrate it on thefull duty of man in a fullback's position. He nearly drove us to asanitarium during the process, but when he once took hold, mercy me, howhe did progress from hither to yon over the opposition! He was thewonder fullback of those times, and at the end of three years therewasn't a college anywhere that didn't have Ole's hoofmarks all over itspride. Oh, he was a darling. To see him jumping sideways down a footballfield with the ball under his arm, landing on some one of the oppositionat every jump and romping over the goal line with tacklers hanging tohim like streamers would have made you want to vote for him forGovernor. Ole was the greatest man who ever came to Siwash. Prexy hadalways been considered some personage by the outside world, but he wasonly a bump in the background when Ole was around. 

Of course we all loved Ole madly, but for all that he didn't make afrat. He didn't, for the same reason that a rhinoceros doesn't getinvited to garden parties. He didn't seem to fit the part. Not only hisclothes, but also his haircuts were hand-me-down. He regarded a fork asa curiosity. His language was a sort of a head-on collision betweenNorwegian and English in which very few words had come out undamaged. Insocial conversation he was out of bounds nine minutes out of ten, and itkept three men busy changing the subject when he was in full swing. Hecould dodge eleven men and a referee on the football field withouttrying, but put him in a forty by fifty room with one vase in it, and hecouldn't dodge it to save his life. 

No, he just naturally didn't fit the part, and up to his senior year nofraternity had bid him. This grieved Ole so that he retired fromfootball just before the Kiowa game on which all our young hearts wereset, and before he would consent to go back and leave some more of hispriceless foot-tracks on the opposition we had to pledge him to three ofour proudest fraternities. Talk of wedding a favorite daughter to thegreasy villain in the melodrama in order to save the homestead! Nocrushed father, with a mortgage hanging over him in the third act, couldhave felt one-half so badly as we Eta Bita Pies did when we had pledgedOle and realized that all the rest of the year we would have to climbover him in our beautiful, beamed-ceiling lounging-room and parade himbefore the world as a much-loved brother. 

But the job had to be done, and all three frats took a melancholypleasure in arranging the details of the initiation. We decided to makeit a three-night demonstration of all that the Siwash frats had learnedin the art of imitating dynamite and other disintegrants. The AlfalfaDelts were to get first crack at him. They were to be followed on thesecond night by the Chi Yi Sighs, who were to make him a brother, deador alive. On the third night we of Eta Bita Pie were to take the remainsand decorate them with our fraternity pin after ceremonies in whichbeing 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 dothe real work. The other frats couldn't touch it. They might scratch himup a bit, but they lacked the ingenuity, the enthusiasm--I might say thepoetic temperament--to make a good job of it. We determined to put on aninitiation which would make our past efforts seem like the effort of anold ladies' home to start a rough-house. It was a great pleasure, Iassure you, to plan that initiation. We revised our floor work and addedsome cellar and garret and ceiling and second-story work to it. We beganthe program with the celebrated third degree and worked gradually fromthat up to the twenty-third degree, with a few intervals of simpleassault and battery for breathing spells. When we had finished dopingout the program we shook hands all around. It was a masterpiece. Itwould have made Battenberg lace out of a steam boiler. 

Ole was initiated into the Alfalfa Delts on a Wednesday night. We heardechoes of it from our front porch. The next morning only three of theAlfalfa Delts appeared at chapel, while Ole was out at six A. M. , roaming about the campus with the Alfalfa Delt pin on his necktie. Thenext night the Chi Yi Sighs took him on for one hundred and seventeenrounds 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 morningwe couldn't find so much as a scratch on him. He was wearing the Chi Yipin beside the Alfalfa Delt pin, and he was as happy as a baby with abottle 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 aboutthree 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 toourselves. Anybody could break up a Chi Yi initiation, and the AlfalfaDelts were a set of narrow-chested snobs with automobile callousesinstead of muscles. We ate a hasty dinner on Friday evening and set allthe scenery for the big scrunch. Then we put on our old clothes andwaited for Ole to walk into our parlor. 

He wasn't due until nine, but about eight o'clock he came creaking upthe steps and dented the door with his large knuckles in a bashful way. He looked larger and knobbier than ever and, if anything, moreembarrassed. We led him into the lounging-room in silence, and he satdown twirling his straw hat. It was October, and he had worn the thingever since school opened. Other people who wore straw hats in Octoberget removed from under them more or less violently; but, somehow, no onehad felt called upon to maltreat Ole. We hated that hat, however, anddecided 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 thegrate. Ole upset four or five of us who couldn't get out of the way andrescued the hat, which was blazing merrily. 

"Ent yu gat no sanse?" he roared angrily. "Das ban a gude hat. " Helooked at it gloomily. "Et ban spoiled now, " he growled, tossing theremains into a waste-paper basket. "Yu ban purty fallers. Vat for yu dodat?"

The basket was full of papers and things. In about four seconds it wasall ablaze. Wilbur tried to go over and choke it off, but Ole pushed himback with one forefinger. 

"Yust stay avay, " he growled. "Das basket ent costing some more as myhat, I gass. "

We stood around and watched the basket burn. We also watched a curtainblaze up and the finish on a nice mahogany desk crack and blister. Itwas all very humorous. The fire kindly went out of its own accord, andsome 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 andwent over to Ole. "Mr. Skjarsen, " he said severely, "you are here to beinitiated into the awful mysteries of Eta Bita Pie. It is not fittingthat you should enter her sacred boundaries in an unfettered condition. Submit to the brethren, that they may blindfold you and bind you forthe ordeals to come. " Gee, but we used to use hand-picked language whenwe were unsheathing our claws!

Ole growled. "Ol rite, " he said. "But Aye tal yu ef yu fallers burn dashar 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 andhobbled him about the ankles with a dog chain. Then we blindfolded himand put a pillowslip over his head for good measure. Things began tolook brighter. Even a demon fullback has to have one or two limbsworking in order to accomplish anything. When all was fast Bangs gaveOle a preliminary kick. "Now, brethren, " he roared, "bring on theMacedonian guards and give them the neophyte!"

Now I'm not revealing any real initiation secrets, mind you, and maybewhat I'm telling you didn't exactly happen. But you can be perfectlysure that something just as bad did happen every time. For an hour weabused that two hundred and twenty pounds of gristle and hide. It was asmuch fun as roughhousing a two-ton safe. We rolled him downstairs. Hebroke out sixty dollars' worth of balustrade on the way and he didn'tseem to mind it at all. We tried to toss him in a blanket. Ever have atwo-hundred-and-twenty-pound man land on you coming down from theceiling? We got tired of that. We made him play automobile. Ever playautomobile? They tie roller skates and an automobile horn on you andpush you around into the furniture, just the way a real automobile runsinto things. We broke a table, five chairs, a French window, aone-hundred-dollar vase and seven shins. We didn't even interest Ole. When a man has plowed through leather-covered football players for threeyears his head gets used to hitting things. Also his heels will fly outno matter how careful you are. We took him into the basement andperformed our famous trick of boiling the candidate in oil. Of course wewanted to scare him. He accommodated us. He broke away and hoppedstiff-legged all over the room. That wasn't so bad, but, confound it, hehopped on us most of the time! How would you like to initiate a bronzestatue that got scared and hopped on you?

We got desperate. We threw aside the formality of explaining the deepsignificance of each action and just assaulted Ole with everything inthe house. We prodded him with furnace tools and thumped him withcordwood and rolling-pins and barrel-staves and shovels. We walked overhim, a dozen at a time. And all the time we were getting it worse thanhe was. He didn't exactly fight, but whenever his elbows twitched somefellow's face would happen to be in the way, and he couldn't move hisknee without getting it tangled in some one's ribs. You could hear thethunders 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 ofus unwounded. The house was a wreck. Wilbur had a broken nose. "Chick"Struthers' kneecap hurt. "Lima" Bean's ribs were telescoped, and therewasn't a good shin in the house. We quit in disgust and sat aroundlooking at Ole. He was sitting around, too. He happened to be sitting onBangs, who was yelling for help. But we didn't feel like starting anyrelief expedition. 

Ole was some rumpled, and his clothes looked as if they had been fedinto a separator. But he was intact, as far as we could see. He wasstill tied and blindfolded, and I hope to be buried alive in abranch-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 inorder 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 Piebe made the laughing-stock of the college? If we can't initiate thathuman quartz mill by force let's do it by strategy. I've got a plan. Youjust let me have Ole and one man for an hour and I'll make him so gladto 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 seehim put his head in the lion's mouth, so to speak. I hated it worse thanany of the others because he picked me for his assistant. We went inand found Ole dozing in the corner. Petey prodded him. "Get up!" hesaid. 

Ole got up cheerfully. Petey took the dog chain off of his legs. Then hethrew his sub-cellar voice into gear. 

"Skjarsen, " he rumbled, "you have passed right well the first test ofour noble order. You have faced the hideous dangers which were inreality but shams to prove your faith, and you have borne yoursufferings patiently, thus proving your meekness. "

I let a couple of grins escape into my sweater-sleeve. Oh, yes, Ole hadbeen 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 incollege. It was six notes--a sort of insidious, inviting thing that youcould slide across two blocks, past all manner of barbarians, and into afrat brother's ear without disturbing any one at all. Petey gave itseveral times. "Now, Skjarsen, " he said, "you are to follow thatwhistle. Let no obstacle discourage you. Let no barrier stop you. If youcan prove your loyalty by following that whistle through the outsideworld 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 withmelodious thumps. We hugged each other, slipped behind a tree andwhistled again. 

Ole charged across the yard and into the tree. The line held. I heardhim say something in Norwegian that sounded secular. By that time wewere across the street. There was a low railing around the parking, andwhen we whistled again Ole walked right into the railing. The line heldagain. 

Oh, I'll tell you that Petey boy was a wonder at getting up ideas. Thinkof it! Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Christopher Columbus, old BillArchimedes and all the rest of the wise guys had overlooked this simplelittle discovery of how to make a neophyte initiate himself. It was toogood to be true. We held a war dance of pure delight, and we whistledsome more. We got behind stone walls, and whistled. We climbedembankments, and whistled. We slid behind blackberry bushes and ashpiles and across ditches and over hedge fences, and whistled. We were sohappy we could hardly pucker. Think of it! There was Ole Skjarsen, themost uncontrollable force in Nature, following us like a yellow pup withhis dinner three days overdue. It was as fascinating as guiding abattleship by wireless. 

We slipped across a footbridge over Cedar Creek, and whistled. Olemissed 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 theother bank, owing to a beautiful collection of old barrel-hoops, corsets, crockery and empty tomato cans which decorated the spot. Didyou 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 youhave seen a green elephant. But it's a fine sight, I assure you. WhenOle got out of the creek we whistled him dexterously into a barnyard andright into the maw of a brindle bull-pup with a capacity of one smallman in two bites--we being safe on the other side of the fence, beyondthe reach of the chain. Maybe that was mean, but Eta Bita Pie is not tobe trifled with when she is aroused. Anyway, the bull got the worst ofit. 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 thepup squarely abeam and dropped a beautiful goal with him. We went aroundto see the dog the next day. He looked quite natural. You would almostthink he was alive. 

It was here that we began to smell trouble. I had my suspicions when wewhistled again. There was a pretty substantial fence around thatbarnyard, but Ole didn't wait to find the gate. 

He came through the fence not very far from us. He was conversing underthat 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 dasblindfold 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 thekind of noise a man makes when he walks into a horse-trough at fullspeed. 

"Gee!" said Petey nervously. "I guess we've given him enough. He'sgetting sort of peevish. I don't believe in being too cruel. Let's takehim 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 tryingto 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 gotout 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 thefrat 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 inthat rich, nutty dialect of his to stop and have our heads pounded onthe bricks. 

I shudder yet when I think of all the things he promised to do to us. Wewent down that street like a couple of Roman gladiators pacing a hungrybear, and, by tangling Ole up in the parkings again, managed to get homea few yards ahead. 

There was an atmosphere of arnica and dejection in the house when we gotthere. Ill-health seemed to be rampant. "Did you lose him?" asked Bangshopefully from behind a big bandage. 

"Lose him?" says I with a snort. "Oh, yes, we lost him all right. Heloses just like a foxhound. That's him, falling over the front stepsnow. You can stay and entertain him; I'm going upstairs. "

Everybody came along. We piled chairs on the stairs and listened whileOle 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 toreënforce it with concrete and boiler iron. Ole wore part of the framein 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 yustcan tal das haus by har skagaroot smell. Come on, yu leetle fallers! Ayebet Aye inittyate yu some, tu!"

By this time he had found the stairs and was plowing through thefurniture. We retired to the third floor. When twenty-seven fellows goup a three-foot stairway at once it necessarily makes some noise. Oleheard us and kept right on coming. 

We grabbed a bureau and a bed and barricaded the staircase. There was aladder to the attic. I was the last man up and my heart was giving myribs all kinds of massage treatment before I got up. We hauled up theladder just as Ole kicked the bureau downstairs, and then we watched himcharge over our beautiful third-floor dormitory, leaving ruin in hiswake. 

Maybe he would have been satisfied with breaking the furniture. But, ofcourse, a few of us had to sneeze. Ole hunted those sneezes all over thethird floor. He couldn't reach them, but he sat down on the wreckunderneath them. 

"Aye ent know vere yu fallers ban, " he said, "but Aye kin vait. Aye haryu, yu Baked Pies! Aye gat yu yet, by yimminy! Yust come on down ven yuban ready. "

Oh, yes, we were ready--I don't think. It was a perfectly lovelypredicament. Here was the Damma Yappa chapter of Eta Bita Pie penned upin a deucedly-cold attic with one lone initiate guarding the trapdoor. Nice story for the college to tell when the police rescued us! Nice endof our reputation as the best neophyte jugglers in the school! Makes meshiver now to think of it. 

We sat around in that garret and listened to the clock strike in thelibrary tower across the campus. At eleven o'clock Ole promised to killthe first man who came down. That bait caught no fish. At twelve hebegged 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 muchcolder in Norway, where he came from, and that, as we would freezefirst, we might as well come down. 

At two o'clock we were all stiff. At three we were kicking the plasteroff of the joists, trying to keep from freezing to death. At four abunch of Sophomores were all for throwing Petey Simmons down as asacrifice. Petey talked them out of it. Petey could talk a stone doginto wagging its tail. 

We sat in that garret from ten P. M. Until the year after the greatpyramid wore down to the ground. At least that was the length of timethat seemed to pass. It must have been about five o'clock when Peteystopped 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 fineideas will wreck this frat. "

"As I was saying, " continued Petey cheerfully, "it may not succeed, butit will not hurt any one but me if it doesn't. I'm going to be theDaniel in this den. But first I want the officers of the chapter to comeup around the scuttle-hole with me. "

Five of us crept over to the hole and looked down. "Aye har yu, yuleetle 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 allsecret societies use--"Mr. Skjarsen--for as such we must still callyou--the final test is over. You have acquitted yourself nobly. You havebeen faithful to the end. You have stood your vigil unflinchingly. Youhave followed the call of Eta Bita Pie over every obstacle and throughevery suffering. "

"Aye ban following him leetle furder, if Aye had ladder, " said Ole in abloodthirsty voice. "Ven Aye ban getting at yu, Aye play hal vid yuBaked Pies!"

"And now, " said Petey, ignoring the interruption, "the final ceremony isat hand. Do not fear. Your trials are over. In the dark recesses of thissecret chamber above you we have discussed your bearing in the trialsthat have beset you. It has pleased us. You have been found worthy tocontinue toward the high goal. Ole Skjarsen, we are now ready to receiveyou 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 signto shut up. 

"Ole Skjarsen, son of Skjar Oleson, stand up!" he said, sinking hisvoice 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, andthe officers, the leading lights of Siwash, crouching around a scuttleand shivering their teeth loose, we initiated Ole Skjarsen. It wasimpressive, I can tell you. When it came to the part where the neophyteswears to protect a brother, even if he has to wade in blood up to hisnecktie, 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'tvery sanguine. You might interest a man-eater by initiating him, butwould you destroy his appetite? There was no grand rush for the ladder. 

As Ole stood waiting, however, Petey swung himself down and landedbeside him. He cut the ropes that bound his wrists, jerked off thepillowslip and cut off the blindfold. Then he grabbed Ole's mastodonicpaw. 

"Shake, brother!" he said. 

Nobody breathed for a few seconds. It was darned terrifying, I can tellyou. Ole rubbed his eyes with his free hand and looked down at themorsel hanging on to the other. 

"Shake, Ole!" insisted Petey. "You went through it better than I didwhen I got it. "

I saw the rudiments of a smile begin to break out on Ole's face. It grewwider. 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 armuntil 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 andmade 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 withpleasure if it wasn't for the towns that the colleges are in. I don'tmean that a town around a college hasn't its uses. Wherever you find atown you can find lunch counters and theaters with galleries from whichyou can learn the drama at a quarter a throw, and street cars that canbe tampered with, and wooden sidewalks that burn well on celebrationnights, and nice girls who began being nice four college generations agoand never forgot how. All of these things about a town are mighty handywhen it comes to getting a higher education in a good, live collegewhere you don't have to tunnel through three feet of moss to find thecollege customs. But even all this can't reconcile me to the way a townbutts into college affairs. It is something disgusting. 

You know it yourself, Bill. Didn't you go to Yellagain where the policearrested the whole Freshman class for painting the Sophomores green?Well, it's the same way all over. No sooner does a college town get bigenough to support a rudimentary policeman who peddles vegetables whenhe isn't putting down anarchy than it gets busy and begins to regulatethe college students. And the bigger it gets the more regulating itwants to do. Why, they tell me that at the University of Chicago therehasn'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 lainfor ages and no college class has had spirit enough to haul it out onthe street-car tracks. That's what regulating a college does for it. There are more policemen in Chicago than there are students in theUniversity. If you give your yell off the campus you have to get apermit from the city council. It's worse than that in Philadelphia, theytell me. Why, there, if a college student comes downtown with aflareback coat and heart-shaped trousers and one of those nifty littlepompadour hats that are brushed back from the brow to give the brains achance to grow, they arrest him for collecting a crowd and disturbingtraffic. No, sir, no big-town college for me. Getting college life inthose places reminds me of trying to get that world-wide feeling onice-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 talkabout college towns. They don't know their places. Take Jonesville, where Siwash is, for instance. When Siwash College was founded by "thatnoble band of Christian truth seekers, " as the catalogue puts it, Jonesville was a mud-hole freckled with houses. The railroad trainswhistled "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 offhome to dinner from force of habit. The only thing they ever regulatedthere was the clock. They regulated that once a year and usually foundthat 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 thefirst forty years they didn't do much regulating around the college. Thestudents just let the town stay there because it was quiet. The citizensused to elect town marshals over seventy years old, so their gray hairswould protect them from the students, and when the boys had won a debateor a ball game and wanted to burn a barn or two to cheer up theatmosphere at evening, nothing at all was said--at least out loud. Jonesville was meek enough, you bet. Why, back in the seventies thestudents used to vote at town elections, and once for a joke they allvoted for old "Apple Sally" for president of the village board. Made herserve, too. Talk about regulating! Did you ever see a farmer's dog goout and try to regulate a sixty-horse-power automobile? That's about asmuch as Jonesville would have regulated us thirty years ago. 

But, of course, having a real peppery college in its midst, Jonesvillecouldn't help but grow. People came and started boarding-houses. Therehad to be restaurants and bookstores and necktie emporiums, too, andpretty soon the railroad built a couple of branches into town andstarted the division shops. Then Jonesville woke up and walked rightpast old Siwash. In ten years it had street cars, paved streets, water-works, a political machine and a city debt, as large as the lawwould allow. And worse than that, it had a police force. It had nineofficers in uniform, most of whom could read and write and swing bigclubs with a strictly American accent. Nice sort of a thing to turnloose in a quiet college town. This was long before my time, but theytell me that the students held indignation meetings for a week after thefirst arrest was made. You see, the students at Siwash always had theirown rules and lived up to them strictly. The Faculty put them on theirhonor and that honor was never abused. Students were not allowed to burnthe college buildings nor kill the professors. These rules were neverbroken, and naturally the boys felt rather insulted when the city turnedloose a horde of blue-coated busybodies to interfere with things thatdidn't concern them. 

Still, Siwash got along very well even after the police force wasorganized. You see, after a town has had a college in its middle forabout fifty years, pretty much everybody in town has attended it at onetime or another. None of the police had diplomas, but it was no uncommonthing to see an ex-member of a college debating society deliveringgroceries, or an ex-president of his class getting up in an engine cabto take the flyer into the city. For years every police magistrate wasan 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. Thepolice would arrest nine or ten of the ringleaders. The next morning theprisoners would appear before Squire Jennings, who climbed up on the oldcollege building with his class flag in '54 and kept a rival class awayby tearing down the chimney and throwing the bricks at them. Naturally, nothing very deadly happened. The good old fellow would lecture thecrowd and let them off with a stern warning. Maybe two or three Seniorswould come home late at night from their frat hall and take a woodenIndian cigar sign along with them just for company. One of those Indiansis 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, butit wasn't anything serious. They would telephone Frank Hinckley, who waseditor of the city daily, and just convalescing from four years ofcollege life himself, and he would come down and bail them out, andSquire Jennings would kick them out of court next morning. Frank was thepatron saint of the students for years when it came to bail. He used tosay he had all the fun of being a doctor and getting called out nightswithout having to try to collect any fees. Frank was no Croesus thosedays and I've seen him go bail for fifteen students at one hundreddollars apiece, when his total assets amounted to a dress suit, threehundred and forty-five photographs and his next week's salary. 

By the time I had come to college, getting arrested had gotten to be aregular formality. A Freshman would go up Main Street at night, tryingto hide a nine-foot board sign under his spring overcoat. HalvorSkoogerson, a pale-eyed guardian of the peace, who was studying up to bea naturalized, would arrest him for theft, riot, disorderly conduct, suspicious appearance and intoxication, not understanding why any soberman would want to carry a young lumber-yard home under his coat atnight. The prisoner would telephone for Hinckley, who would crawl out ofbed, come downtown cussing, and bail away in sleepy tones. The nextmorning the freshie would go up before Squire Jennings, who would askhim in awful accents if he realized that the state penitentiary was onlyfour hours away by fast train, and that many a man was boarding therewho would blush to be seen in the company of a man who had stolen anine-foot sign and carried it down Main Street, interfering withpedestrians, when there was a perfectly good alley which ought to beused for such purposes. Then he would warn the culprit that the nexttime he was caught lugging off a billboard or a wooden platform or acorncrib he would be compelled to put it back again before he gotbreakfast; after which he would tell him to go along and try studyingfor a change, and the Freshman would go back to college and join thehero brigade. It was a mighty meek man in Siwash who couldn't getarrested those days. Even the hymn singers at the Y. M. C. A. Hadcriminal records. It got so, finally, that whenever we had a nightshirtparade in honor of any little college victory the line of march wouldlead right through the police station. We knew what was coming and wouldsave 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 wasto run the town. But one night Squire Jennings put his other foot intothe grave and died entirely; and before any of us realized what washappening a special election had been held and Malachi Scroggs had beenelected police magistrate. 

Malachi Scroggs was a triple extract of grouch who lived on the northside two miles away from college in a big white house with one of thoseold-fashioned dog-house affairs on top of it. He was an acrimoniousquarrel all by himself. Sunlight soured when it struck him. I have seena fox terrier who had been lying perfectly happy on the sidewalk, get upafter Scroggs had passed him and go over and bite an automobile tire. Helived on gloom and law-suits and the last time he smiled was 1878--thatwas when a small boy fell nineteen feet out of a tree while robbing hisorchard, and the doctor said he would never be able to rob any moreorchards. 

This was the kind of mental astringent Malachi was. Naturally, he lovedthe gay and happy little college boys. Oh, how he loved us! He hadcomplained to the police regularly during each celebration for twentyyears and he had expressed the opinion, publicly, that a college boy wasa cross between a hyena and a grasshopper with a fog-horn attachmentthrown in free of charge. He wasn't a college man himself, yousee--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'tmind that. It's no credit to carry an interlinear translation of yourtemperament on your face. So long as he kept in his own yard andquarreled with his own dog for not feeding on Freshmen moreenthusiastically, we got along as nicely as the Egyptian Sphinx and JohnL. Sullivan. Even when he was elected police magistrate we didn'tobject. In fact, we didn't bumpity-bump to the situation until we wentup against him in court. 

Part of the Senior class had been having a little choir practice in oneof the town restaurants. It was a lovely affair and there wasn't a morecheerful crowd of fellows on earth than they were when they marched downthe street at one A. M. Eighteen abreast and singing one of the dear oldsongs in a kind of a steam-siren barytone. 

Now they had never attempted to regulate mere noise in Jonesville, butthat night a brand-new policeman had gone on the courthouse beat, andblamed if he didn't arrest the whole bunch for disturbing thepeace--when they hadn't broken a single thing, mind you. They werepretty mad about it at first; but after all it was only a joke, and whenHinckley got down to bail them out they were singing with great feelinga song which Jenkins, the class poet, had just composed, and which ranas 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 theband. Even the desk sergeant enjoyed it. 

When the bunch lined up the next morning in police court there was JudgeScroggs. They felt as if they ought to treat him nicely, he being anewcomer and all of them being very familiar with the ropes; and Emmons, the class president, started explaining to him that it was all amistake. Scroggs bit him off with a voice that sounded like a terriersnapping at a fly. 

"We're here to correct these mistakes, " he said. "You were all singingon 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 themdrop one thousand and one feet into space they couldn't have felt moreshocked. Even the clerk and the desk sergeant were amazed. They tried tohelp explain, but the human vinegar-cruet turned around and spat thefollowing through his clenched teeth:

"Gentlemen, I have been appointed to sit on this bench and I don't needany 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. Therewere the leading lights of the school, including the president of theSenior class, the chairman of the Junior promenade, two halfbacks, thepitcher on the baseball team and the president of the Y. M. C. A. , allon the works for ten days, along with as choice an assortment of plaindrunks and fancy resters as you could find in ninety miles of mainlinerailroad. The students fairly went mad and bit at the air. Even theFaculty got busy and Prexy dropped over to the police court to squareit. He came out a minute later very white around the mouth. I don't knowwhat Old Maledictions said to him, but it was a great sufficiency, Iguess. He seemed as insulted as Lord Tennyson might have been if themilkman had pulled his whiskers. 

There wasn't a thing to be done. The Faculty appealed to the mayor, butold Scroggs had some regular Spanish-bit hold on him in the way of ashort-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 theirtime. When they got out they were sights. They weren't strong onsanitation in workhouses in those days. Even their friends shook handswith them with tongs. Think of sixteen proud monarchs of the campusmaking brick in striped suits, with a cross foreman who used to haulashes from the college campus lording it over them and tracing theirancestry 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 thefirst time Scroggs enjoyed college boys. Soaking students got to be hisspecialty. We did our blamedest to behave, but you can't break off thehabits of generations in a week or two. Soon after the Seniors got outthe Mock Turtles, a Sophomore society, capacity thirty thousand quarts, absent-mindedly tipped over a street car on their way home and werejugged for thirty days. They had to enlarge the workhouse to take careof them, and four of our best football players were retired fromcirculation all through October. Think what that meant! The wholecollege went up, just before the game with Hambletonian, and knelt onthe sidewalk before Judge Scroggs' house. He set the dog on us. Saidafterwards 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 favoritestunt of putting the horse in the herdic and hauling him home, and itcost them twenty-nine days--just enough to break up the club. The wholebasket-ball team got thirty days because they took the bronze statue offthe fountain in the public square one night, laid him on the car tracksin some old clothes, and had the ambulance force trying to resuscitatehim. Nobody had ever objected to this little joke before, but it cost usthe state championship and two of the team left school when they gotout. Said they'd come to Siwash for a college education, not for acourse of etymology in a workhouse. 

It was terrible. We scarcely dared to cut out our mufflers enough towhistle to each other on the street. By spring we were desperate. We hadlost the basket-ball championship. The glee club was ruined. Muggledorfer had bumped us in football--that was the year before OleSkjarsen came to school--and college spirit at Siwash had been gummed upuntil it could have been successfully imitated by afour-thousand-year-old mummy. Our college meetings resembled theoverflow from a funeral around the front steps. We used to shut down allthe windows, say "shsh" nine times, and then write out our college yellon curl papers and burn the papers. You could have swapped Siwash offfor a correspondence school without noticing any difference in thereverberations. That was Petey Simmons' first year in college--as amatter of fact, he was a Senior prep. I've told you more or less aboutPetey before. He was the only son of one of these country bankers whomanage to get as much fun out of a half million as a New Yorker couldout of a whole railroad. Petey was a little chap who had always had whathe wanted and would cheerfully sit up all night thinking up new thingsto want. He wasn't a Freshman yet, but he could give points to all thecollege in the matter of explosive clothes and nifty ways of beingexpensive to Dad. He couldn't get along without coat-cut underwear longbefore we had heard of it, and you could tell by looking at his shoesjust what the rest of the school would be wearing in two years. That wasPetey 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 himselfin college spirit. He proposed his sixty-five-dollar banjo formembership in the club and went in with it of course. He was electedyell-master before he had been in school two weeks, and if you ever wantto know how much noise can come out of a comparatively small orifice youshould have seen him emitting riot and pandemonium in the second half ofa lively football game. Naturally, it worried Petey almost to death tosee the dear old Coll. Disintegrating under the Scroggs Inquisition, andhe used to sit around the frat house with his head on his hands forhours, smoking his pipe, which had the largest bowl in school, andcombing his convolutions for a plan. Then, along in March, heelectrified the whole school by taking Martha Scroggs to the collegepromenade. 

Martha was old Malachi's daughter. We hadn't known it, but she had beenin school all that year. She was a quiet girl who was designed like atall problem in plane geometry. While it was possible for a clock to runin the same room with her, still she was not what you might call apicnic to look at. She was the kind of girl a man would look at once andthen go off and admire the scenery, even if it only consisted of aninety-acre cornfield and a grain elevator. Martha was only abouteighteen, and I never could understand how she got on to the styles ofthirty-six years ago and wore them as fluently as she did. 

Naturally, Martha had gotten along in her studies without being pesteredby society to any extent. I sometimes think this helped old Scroggs tohate us. She was his only child, and he had taken all the affection andinterest that most people distribute over their entire acquaintanceshipand concentrated it on her. They had grown up together since she becamea motherless baby, and they did say that while you could bombard the oldman 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 thebiggest social spasm of the college year, with her sleeves bulging inthe wrong place, and nothing but her own hair on her head. But whatcaused the real sensation was the fact that Petey had been released fromthe workhouse the day before. Yes, sir--just turned out with seven moredays to serve. He had thrown a brick at a Sophomore who was trying tocatch him and dye his hair the Sophomore colors, and the brick hadannihilated 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 thathadn't been dedicated and unlimited woe among the girls, for he was aClass A fusser. 

Petey was non-committal about his insanity. He had the best eye forbeauty in the college, and yet he had been taking Miss Scroggs around tochurch socials and town affairs for two months. But college boys aren'tslow, whatever you want to say about them. We had faith in Petey and webacked up his game. We gave Martha the time of her young life at theProm. --pulled off three imitation rows over her program--and then weturned in that winter and gave her a good, hot rush--which is atechnical college expression for keeping a girl dated up so that shedoesn'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 gotacquainted with Martha. She was a good fellow clear through and had asmile that illuminated her plain face like a torchlight parade. Ofcourse, after you get out of school you learn that beauty is only skindeep and seldom affects the brain; but this is a wonderful discovery fora college boy to make when there are so many raving beauties about himthat he has to take a nap in the afternoon in order to dream about allof them. At any rate, we took Martha to everything that came along, oneof us or another, and before a month we didn't have to pretend very muchto scrap for her dances, even if you did have to lug her around the roomby main strength--she was as heavy on her feet as a motor-bus. 

April came and the first baseball game with it, and Saunders, ourpitcher, managed to draw a thirty-day sentence for stealing a steamroller one noon and racing off down the avenue with a fat cop inpursuit. We nearly fell dead once more when Saunders came walking intochapel three days later. He had been released by Judge Scroggs with awarning never under any circumstances to do anything of any sort at anytime any more, and been assured that he was nothing more than hangman'smeat. But he had been released! That night he took Martha Scroggs to theAlfalfa Delt hop. And the next day he held Muggledorfer down to two hitsand 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 wholeaffair to him. But he wouldn't talk at all. If anything, he seemed alittle sore about the whole thing. Martha didn't loosen up, either. Shejust smiled and told those of us who knew her well enough to askquestions that Saunders was a lovely boy and that she had had that datewith him for ages--flies' ages, I guess she meant, for Alice Marsters, one of the beauties of the school, stayed home from the dance afterannouncing that she was going with Saunders, and never seemed able toremember him by sight after that. 

About a week afterward Maxwell, the college orator, a very solemn memberof the Siwash brain trust, was arrested for ever so little a thing. Ibelieve he so far forgot himself as to help give the college yell onMain Street the night his literary society won a debate. Anyway, he gotten days, and he was due in three days to orate for Siwash against thewhole Northwest. It was the biggest event of the school year--theoratorical contest. We'd won seven of them--more than any other schoolin the sixteen states--and we stood a good show with Maxwell. We werecrazy to win. Of course nobody ever goes to the contests; but we allstay up all night to hear the results, and when we win, which we do onceevery other college generation, we try to make the celebration biggerthan the stories of other celebrations that have been handed down. We'dbeen planning this celebration all winter and had everything combustiblein Jonesville spotted. 

Some of us were for going out and burning up the workhouse, but beforewe 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 rehearsehis oration, which he couldn't do in the workhouse, owing to anaccountable prejudice the tramps and other prisoners had againstoratory, he took the evening off and went driving with MarthaScroggs--about as queer a thing for him to do as it would be for thePope to take a young lady to the theatre. But we didn't ask anyquestions. 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 ofeverything that wasn't nailed down. And when the police got done chasingus they had nineteen of the brightest and best sons of Siwash bottled upin 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' fencefor it--but, as usual, the wrong men got pinched. There was theintercollegiate track meet due in two weeks, and there, in the list offelons, were Evans, our crack sprinter, Petersen, our hammer heaver, andyours truly, who could pole vault about as high as they run elevators inEurope, 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 oratoricalcontest--it just meant no bonfire for another year--but we had ourhearts set on that track meet. We were up against our lifelongrivals--Muggledorfer, the State Normal, Kiowa, Hambletonian, and all therest of them. We had to win--I don't know why. Beats all how many thingsyou have to do in college that don't seem so absolutely necessary a fewyears afterward. Anyhow, if we three point-gobblers had to spend thenext ten days in the works instead of rounding into form, the pointsSiwash would win in that meet could be added up by a three-year-old boywho was a bad scholar. It was so desperate that we hired a lawyer andlaid the case before him that night as we sat in our horrid cells--theywouldn't take Hinckley for bail any more. 

"Get a continuance, " said he. And the next morning he appeared with usbefore the awful presence and demanded the continuance on the score ofimportant evidence, lack of time to perfect a defense, otherengagements, poor crops, Presidential election, and goodness knowswhat--regular lawyer style, you know. 

Old Scroggs glared at us the way an unusually hungry tiger might look ata lamb that was being taken away to get a little riper. "I cannot objectto a reasonable continuance, " he said sourly. "And I don't deny that youwill need all the defense you can get. The case is an atrocious one, andI propose to do my small part toward putting down arson and riot in thisunhappy town. You will appear two weeks from this morning. "

The field meet was two weeks from that afternoon! And we didn't have aghost of a defense!

We three scraped up the required bail and went back to college feelingcheerful as a man who has been told that his hanging has been postponeduntil his wedding morning. Of course we sent for Petey Simmons. Hearrived 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. Theold man's told her that if she runs around with any more of thisdisgraceful, disgusting and nine other epitheted college bunch he'llshow her the door. Says he's been worked and he's through. Says he'sgoing to give you the limit and, if possible, he's going to give youenough to keep you in all vacation instead of letting you loose on adefenseless world all summer. That's how strong you are up at theScroggs house. "

There you were! Siwash College, the pride of six decades, mollycoddledby an old parody on a gorilla with a grouch against the solar system! Wetrained these two weeks in hopes that a chariot of fire would come upand take the old man down, but there was nothing doing. He remainedabnormally healthy and supernaturally mad. On the morning before thefatal day we all wrote letters home, explaining that we had securedelegant jobs in various emporiums over the city and wouldn't be homeuntil late in the summer. Then we shivered a shake or two apiece and gotready to retire from this vain world for somewhere between thirty andninety days. Just about that time Petey Simmons blew down to thecollege, bursting with information. He demanded a meeting of theAthletic Council at once and of us three sterling athletes as well. Wewere all in order in ten minutes. 

"Fellows, it's this way, " said Petey. "Martha Scroggs is very loyal tothe college, as you all know. She has done her very best with oldFireworks, but it hasn't made a dent in him. No little old party orbuggy ride is going to get any one out this time. There's just onechance, she says, and she's taken it. This morning she confessed to herfather that she is engaged to one of the men who is to come up for trialto-morrow morning. They think the old man will be well enough tounmuzzle before noon, but he's been acting like a bad case of dog-daysall morning. He's given her twenty-four hours to name the man--andMartha thinks that by night he'll be resting comfortably enough topromise to let him off to-morrow. And she has given us the privilege ofchoosing the man she's engaged to. Now, it's up to this council to pickout the lucky chap. It's our only hope, fellows. We'll have onepoint-winner anyway--unless the old man eats him alive to-morrow. "

Evans and Petersen turned pale--they had real fiancées in college. Buteach stepped forward nobly and offered himself for the sacrifice. Istepped out, too, though I was so young at that time that I didn't knowany more how to go about being engaged to a girl than I did about myGreek lessons. Then the council began to discuss the choice. And justthere the trouble began. 

It all came about through the frats, of course. Frats are a good thingall right, but they stir up more trouble in a college than a Turk's ninewives can make for him. Ashcroft was president of the council. He was anAlfalfa Delt. So was Evans. Ashcroft hung out for Evans like a bulldoghanging to a tramp. Beeman, a council member, was a Sigh Whoop and sowas Petersen. Beeman argued that Petersen could win more points than therest of the school put together and that it would be unpatriotic, unmanly, disgraceful and un-Siwash-like not to select him. Bailey, thethird member, was an Eta Bita Pie, and while sub-Freshmen are notsupposed to be anything with Greek letters on, we understood each other, and I was to be initiated the next fall. Bailey pointed out causticallythat to imprison a sub-Freshman would be to ruin his reputation, breakhis spirit and disgrace the school--that one world's record was worthfifty points, and that, if allowed to, I would pole-vault so high thenext day that I would have to come down in a parachute. The result wasthe council broke up in one big row and Martha Scroggs spent theafternoon unengaged. 

About five o'clock Bailey came over to the track, where we were goingthrough the last sad rites, and hauled me aside. 

"Take off those togs, kid, " he said. "I've got a stunt. These yaps aregoing 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 alittle man and beg off for to-day, and then you're going to break thepole-vault record. See?"

Unfortunately, I did. I liked the job just as well as I would likegetting 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 engagedman ought to look or act, but I went home, put on the happiest duds Ihad, and shinned up the street about eight o'clock. 

The man-eating dog of the Scroggses was somewhere else, gorging himselfon another unfortunate, and I got to the front door all right. I rangthe bell. Some one opened the door. It was Judge Scroggs. He looked atme as one might look at a bug which had wandered on to the table and wastrying 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 refuseto come out? Mine did. I only wish I could have slunk with it. I startedtalking twice. My tongue went all right, but I couldn't slip in theclutch and make any sound. 

"Well, " roared Scroggs, "what is it?"

That jarred me loose. "Mr. Scroggs, " I sputtered, "I am engaged to yourdaughter. I want to marry her. I want your permission. I--I'll be goodto 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 wereolder than I, but if I looked as scared as they did I wish somebody hadshot me. In the corner was another student. His name was Driggs. Hisspecialty was cotillons. 

We four sat and looked at each other with awful suspicions. Somethingwas excessively wrong. I felt indignant. Can't a fellow go to see hisfiancée without being annoyed by a Roman mob? I noticed Petersen andEvans looked indignant, too. We took it out by staring Driggs almostinto the collywobbles. Who was he anyway, and why was he billy-goatingaround?

Old Scroggs had called Martha. He sat and looked at us so peculiarlythat I got gooseflesh all over. Here I was, a Freshman so green that thecows looked longingly at me, and up against the job of saving thecollege, winning out for the frat and becoming engaged to a girl Ididn't know before a whole roomful of rivals. I wasn't up to the job. Ifonly I had gone to the works! They seemed a haven of sweet peace justthen. 

Martha Scroggs came into the room. She looked at the quartet. We lookedat her with hunted looks. Scroggs looked at all of us. 

"Martha, " he said at last, "each one of these four young idiots says heis engaged to you. Which of them shall I throw out?"

The jig was up! The college was ruined! Each one of us had the samebright thought!

For a moment I thought Martha was going to faint. She looked at the mobwith a dazed expression. You could almost see her brain grabbing forsome explanation. It was just for a moment, though. My, but that girlwas a wonder! She gulped once or twice. Then she smiled in an inspiredsort of way. 

"None of them, Papa, " she said ever so sweetly. "I am engaged to all ofthem. "

The eruption of Vesuvius was only a little sputter to what followed. Fora moment we had hopes that old Scroggs would explode. I think if he hadhad us there alone he would have tried to hang us. But every tyrant hashis 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 longand then she retired into her pocket-handkerchief and turned on aregular equinoctial. Scroggs looked more uncomfortable than we felt. Hetook her in his arms and there was a family reconciliation. Every littlewhile Martha would look over his shoulder at us four hopefuls sitting upagainst the wall as lively as wooden Indians, and then she would buryher face in her handkerchief again and shake her shoulders and writhewith grief--or maybe it was something else. Martha always did have apretty 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 likeprojectiles fired from a very loud gun. We cussed each other all theway home--we three athletes. We would have cussed Driggs, but he sneakedthe other way and we lost him. 

The next morning we went up to police court in our old clothes. JudgeScroggs looked at us sourly when our turn came. 

"Young men, " he said, "my daughter has admitted that she has beenfoolish enough to engage herself provisionally to all of you, with theidea of choosing the hero in this afternoon's games. I do not admire hertaste. I think she is indeed reckless to fall in love with collegianswhen there are so many honest cab drivers and grocery boys to choosefrom. But I have, in the interests of peace, consented to allow you tocompete this afternoon. You are discharged. I do this the more willinglybecause I have seen you here before and shall again. You may go. "

We did go, and when we got through that afternoon the knobby-leggedathletes from our rival schools looked like quarter horses plowing homejust ahead of the next race. Siwash won by an enormous lead and we threewere the stars of the meet. Why shouldn't we be when our fiancée sat ina box in the grandstand and cheered us impartially? More than that, oldScroggs sat with her and I have an idea that he got excited, too, in thebreath-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 dormantbrain cells in his head. The rest of the rioters got out of theworkhouse right away, and that fall he retired from the bench, declaringthat if he was to have a college student for a son-in-law, as lookedextremely likely, he needed to put in all of his time at home protectinghis property. In honor of his retirement we had a pajama parade whichwas nine blocks long and forty-two blocks loud, and a platoon of sixpolicemen 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. Heseemed 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 walkaround his own house without falling over Petey Simmons. Just two yearsago I got cards to Petey's wedding. He and Martha are living in Chicagoin one of those flats where you have seven hundred and eighty-ninedollars' worth of bath-room, and eighty-nine cents' worth of livingroom, and which you have to lease by measure just as you would buy avest. If Petey hangs on long enough he is going to be a big man in thebanking 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 wouldtell me who this fourth man is that I'm engaged to. He doesn't seem tobe on the track team and I didn't catch his name. I don't mind having tomake up an excuse for being engaged to four men right on the spur ofthe moment if it is necessary, but I'd at least like to know theirnames. "

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 terribleaffair with a girl in the next town, it seems, and had a date to bringher to the games. He was one of the nineteen criminals, and was soterror-stricken at the idea of being compelled to desert his hypnotizerthat when the news of the engagement business leaked out he took a longchance and went up and announced himself. It worked, but we caught himtwo nights later and shaved his hair on one side as a gentle warning notto do it again. 

CHAPTER IV

A FUNERAL THAT FLASHED IN THE PAN

Honest, Bill, sometimes when I sit down in these sober, plug-awaydays--when we are kind to the poor dumb policemen and don't dare wearstraw hats after the first of September--and think about the good oldcollege times, I wonder how we ever had the nerve to imitate insanitythe way we did. Here I am, rubbing noses with thirty, outgrowing mybelts 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 yearsago 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 overflowmeeting in a nursery. In about ten minutes you'll be tearing yourcoat-tails out of my hands because you have to go back home before theeldest kid asks for a story. Are you the loafer who spent all one nightgetting 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 thistable over on you now you'd get mad and go home instead of handing me avolume of George Barr McCutcheon in the watch-pocket. You're not thegood old lunatic you used to be, and neither am I. 

Yes, times have changed. I don't feel as unfettered as I used to. Thereare a few things nowadays that I don't care to do. When I come home atnight I take my shoes off and tiptoe to my room instead of standingoutside 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 windowon Saturday night, expecting some early-rising friend to put a pocketfulof breakfast in it as he came past from boarding-club. I am a slave toconventions and so are you, you slant-shouldered, hollow-chested, four-eyed, flabby-spirited pill-roller, you! The city makes more mummiesout 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 wonderwhat it is in college that makes a fellow want to stick his finger intoconventions and customs and manners, to say nothing of the revisedstatutes, and stir the whole mess 'round and 'round! When you're incollege, college life seems big and all the rest of the world so smallthat what you want to do as a student seems to be the only importantthing in life--no matter if what you want to do is only to put afree-lunch sign over the First Methodist Church. What does the collegestudent care for the U. S. A. , the planet or the solar system? Why, atSiwash, I remember the biggest man in the world was Ole Skjarsen. Nextto him was Coach Bost, then Rogers, captain of the football team, andthen Jensen, the quarter. After him came Frankling, of the AlfalfaDelts, whose father picked up bargains in railroads instead of gloves;then came Prexy, and after him the President of the United States and afew scattered celebrities, tailing down to the Mayor of Jonesville andits leading citizens--mere nobodies. 

That's how important the outside world seemed to us. Is it any wonderthat when we wanted to go downtown in pajamas and plug hats we paddledright along? Or that when we wanted to steal a couple of actors and tiethem in a barn, while two of us took their places, we did not hesitateto do so? We felt perfectly free to do just what we pleased. The collegeunderstood us, and what the world thought never entered our heads. 

Those were certainly nightmarish times for the Faculty of a small buthusky college filled with live wires who specialized in appliedmischief. It beats all what peculiar things college students can do andnot think anything of it at all; and it's funny how closely wisdom andblame foolishness seem to be related. I remember after I had spent twohours putting my Polykon down on a concrete foundation so that I couldrecite John Stuart Mill by the ream, it seemed as if I couldn't livehalf an hour longer without a certain kind of pie that was kept incaptivity a mile away downtown at a lunch-counter. And, moreover, Icouldn't eat that pie alone. A college student doesn't know how tomasticate without an assistant or two. When I think of the hours andhours I have spent traveling around at midnight and battering on thedoors of perfectly respectable houses, trying to drag some student outand take him a mile or two away downtown after pie, I am struck withawe. When I came to this town I walked two days for a job and then sataround with my feet on a sofa cushion for three days. I'll bet I'vewalked twice as far hunting up some devoted friend to help me godowntown and eat a piece of pie. And that pie seemed three times asimportant as the easy lessons for beginners in running the earth that Ihad been absorbing all the evening. 

You needn't grin, Bill. You were just as bad. I remember you were thebiggest math. Shark in college. You could do calculus problems that tookall the English letters from A to Z and then slopped over into the Greekalphabet; and everybody predicted that you would be a great man ifanybody ever found any use for calculus. And yet the chief ambition ofyour life was to find a way of tampering with the college clock so thatit would run twice as fast as its schedule. You used to sit around andfigure all evening over it and declare that if you could only do it onceand watch the profs. Letting out classes early and going home to supperat one P. M. You would consider your life well spent. Sounds fiddlingnow, doesn't it? But I admired you for it then. I really looked up toyou, Bill, as a man with a firm, fixed purpose, while I was just atrifler who would be satisfied to steal the hands of the clock or jollyit 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 froma Dago stand. Since then he's gone up so fast that every time I see himI insult him by congratulating him on getting the place he's just beenpromoted from. But what was Rearick's hobby at Siwash? Stealing hatpins. He had four hundred hatpins when he graduated, and he never could seeanything wrong in it. Guess he's got them yet. Perkins is in Congressalready. He out-debated the whole Northwest and wrote pieces on subjectsso heavy that you could break up coal with them. But I never saw him soearnest in debate as he was the night he talked old Bill Morrison intoletting him drive his hack for him all evening. He told me he had drivenevery hack in town but Bill's, and that Bill had baffled him for twoyears. It cost him four dollars to turn the trick, but he was happierafter it than he was when he won the Siwash-Muggledorfer debate. Said hewas ready to graduate now--college held nothing further for him. Perkins' brains weren't addled, because he has been working them doubleshift ever since. He just had the college microbe, that's all. It getsinto your gray matter and makes you enjoy things turned inside out. Youremember "Prince" Hogboom's funeral, don't you?

What year was it? Why, ninety-ump-teen. What? That's right, you got outthe year before. I remember they held your diploma until you paid forthe library cornerstone that your class stole and cut up intopaper-weights. Well, by not staying the next year you missed the mostunsuccessful funeral that was ever held in the history of Siwash oranywhere else. It was one of the very few funerals on record in whichthe corpse succeeded in licking the mourners. I've got a small scar fromit 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 manfor a month, and all of these Hale and Jarhard and Stencilmania fellowsgive me an ashy taste in my mouth when I talk with them. It's about asmuch fun talking college days with a fellow from another school as it isto talk ranching with a New England old maid; and when I get hold of aSiwash 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 whileI 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 thingto do, but we were desperate men. It was spring--in May--and not one ofus had a cut left. You know how unimportant your cuts are in the fallwhen you know that you can skip classes ten times that year withoutgetting called up on the green carpet and gimleted by the Faculty. Tencuts 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 adog fight. I've even known a fellow to cut a class in the fall becausehe had to go back to the room and put on a clean collar. But, oh, howdifferent it is in May, when you haven't a cut left to your name and theFaculty has been holding meetings on you, anyway; when classroom is ajail and the campus just outside the window is a paradise, green andsunshiny and fanned by warm breezes--excuse these poetries. And you cansit in your class in Evidences of Christianity--of which you knew asmuch as a Chinese laundryman does of force-feed lubrication--and lookout of the window and see your best girl sitting on the grass with somesmug oyster who has saved up his cuts. How I used to hate these chapswho saved up their cuts till spring and then took my girl out walkingwhile I went to classes! Is there anything more maddening, I'd like toknow, than to sit before a big, low window trying to follow a psychologyrecitation closely enough to get up when called on, and at the same timewatch five girls, with all of whom you are dead in love, strollingslowly off into the bright distance with five job-lot male beings whoare dull and uninteresting and just cold-blooded enough to save theircuts 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 theworld was worth achieving--that was to get out of classes. Most of ushad used up our cuts long ago. The Faculty is never any too patient inthe spring, anyhow, and a lot of us were on the ragged edge. I rememberfeeling very confidently that if I went up before that brain trust inthe Faculty room once more and tried to explain how it was that I wasgiving absent treatment to my beloved studies, said Faculty would takethe 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 andenjoys everything connected with a college except the few triflingrecitations which take up his time and interfere with his plans. It hungover five of us who were trying to plan some way of going over toHambletonian College to see our baseball team wear deep paths aroundtheir diamond. We were certain to win, and as the Hambletonians hadn'tfound this out there was a legitimate profit to be made from ourknowledge--profit we yearned for and needed frightfully. I wonder ifthese Wall Street financiers and Western railroad men really think theyknow anything about hard times? Why, I've known times to be so hard inMay that three men would pool all their available funds and then toss upto see which one of them would eat the piece of pie the total sumbought. I've known Seniors to begin selling their personal effects inApril--a pair of shoes for a dime, a dress suit for five dollars--and togo home in June with a trunk full of flags and dance programs andnothing else. I've known students to buy velveteen pants in the springand go around with big slouch hats and very long hair--not because theywere really artistic and Bohemian, but because it was easier to buy thetrousers and have them charged than it was to find a quarter for ahaircut. 

That's how busted live college students with unappreciative dads can getin the spring. That's how busted we were; and there was Hambletonian, twenty miles away, full of money and misguided faith in their team. Ifwe could scrape up a little cash we could ride over on our bicycles andtransfer the financial stringency to the other college with no troubleat all. But it was a midweek game and not one of us had a cut left. Thatwas why we murdered Hogboom. 

It happened one evening when we were sitting on the front porch of theEta Bita Pie house. That was the least expensive thing we could do. Wehad been discussing girls and baseball and spring suits, and thecomparative excellence of the wheat cakes at the Union Lunch Counter andJim's place. But whatever we talked about ran into money in the end andwe had to change the subject. There's mighty little a poor man can talkabout in spring in college, I can tell you. We discussed around for anhour or two, bumping into the dollar mark in every direction, andfinally got so depressed that we shut up and sat around with our headsin our hands. That seemed to be about the only thing to do that didn'trequire money. 

"We'll have to do something desperate to get to that game, " said Hogboomat last. Hogboom was a Senior. He ranked "sublime" in football, "excellent" in baseball, "good" in mandolin, "fair" in dancing, and fromthere down in Greek, Latin and Mathematics. 

"Intelligent boy, " said Bunk Bailey pleasantly; "tell us what it mustbe. Desperate things done to order, day or night, with care andthoroughness. Trot out your desperate thing and get me an axe. I'll doit. "

"Well, " said Hogboom, "I don't know, but it seems to me that if one ofus was to die maybe the Faculty would take a day off and we could goover to Hambletonian without getting cuts. "

"Fine scheme; get me a gun, Hogboom. " "Do you prefer drowning orlynching?" "Kill him quick, somebody. " "Look pleasant, please, while theoperator is working. " "What do you charge for dying?" Oh, we guyed himgood and plenty, which is a way they have at old Harvard and middle-agedSiwash and Infant South Dakota University and wherever two students aregathered together anywhere in the U. S. A. 

Hogboom only grinned. "Prattle away all you please, " he said, "but Imean it. I've got magnificent facilities for dying just now. I'llconsider a proposition to die for the benefit of the cause if youfellows will agree to keep me in cigarettes and pie while I'm dead. "

"Done, " says I, "and in embalming fluid, too. But just demonstrate thistheorem, Hoggy, old boy. How extensively are you going to die?"

"Just enough to get a holiday, " said Hogboom. "You see, I happen to havea chum in the telegraph office in Weeping Water, where I live. Now if Iwere to go home to spend Sunday and you fellows were to receive atelegram that I had been kicked to death by an automobile, would youhave 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 havesense enough left to suggest that college dismiss on Tuesday and hold amemorial meeting?"

"We would, " we chuckled. 

"And would you have foresight enough to suggest that it be held in themorning so that you could rush away to Weeping Water in the afternoon toattend the funeral?"

"Yes, indeed, " we said, so mildly that the cop two blocks away strolleddown to see what was up. 

"And then would you be diplomatic enough to produce a telegram sayingthat the report was false, just too late to start the afternoonclasses?"

"You bet!" we whooped, pounding Hogboom with great joy. Then we sat downas unconcernedly as if we were planning to go to the vaudeville the nextafternoon and arranged the details of Hogboom's assassination. As I wasremarking, positively nothing looks serious to a college boy until afterhe has done it. 

That was on Friday night. On Saturday we killed Hogboom. That is, hekilled himself. He got permission to go home over Sunday and retired toan upper back room in our house, very unostentatiously. He had alreadywritten to his operator chum, who had attended college just long enoughto take away his respect for death, the integrity of the telegraphservice and practically everything else. The result was that at nineo'clock that evening a messenger boy rang our bell and handed in atelegram. It was brief and terrible. Wilbur Hogboom had been submergedin the Weeping Water River while trying to abduct a catfish from hishappy 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 itsolemnly and then tiptoed up to Hogboom with it. He turned pale when hesaw the yellow slip. 

"What is it?" he asked hurriedly. "How did it happen?"

"You were drowned, Hoggy, old boy, " Wilkins said. "Drowned in yourlittle old Weeping Water River. They have got you now and you're alldamp and drippy, and your best girl is having one hysteric afteranother. Don't you think you ought to throw that cigarette away and showsome respect to yourself? We've all quit playing cards and are going tobed early in your honor. "

"Well, I'm not, " said Hogboom. "It's the first time I have ever beendead, and I'm going to stay up all night and see how I feel. Anotherthing, I'm going down and telephone the news to Prexy myself. I've hadnothing but hard words out of him all my college course, and if he can'tthink up something nice to say on an occasion like this I'm going togive him up. "

Hogboom called up Prexy and in a shaking voice read him the telegram. Wesat around, choking each other to preserve the peace, and listened tothe following cross section of a dialogue--telephone talk is sointeresting when you just get one hemisphere of it. 

"Hello! That you, Doctor? This is the Eta Bita Pie House. I've some verysad news to tell you. Hogboom was drowned to-day in the Weeping WaterRiver. We've just had a telegram--Yes, quite dead--No chance of amistake, 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 somuch of him--He was always so frank in his admiration of you--Yes, hewas honorable--Yes, and brilliant, too--Of course, we valued him forhis good fellowship, but, as you say, he was also an earnest boy--It'sawful--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 thecollege--I guess you just address telegram to his folks at WeepingWater--That's how we're sending ours--Good-night--Yes, a finefellow--Good-night. "

Hogboom hung up the 'phone and went upstairs, where he lay for an houror two with his face full of pillows. The rest of us weren't so gay. Wecould see the humor of the thing all right, but the awful fact that wewere murderers was beginning to hang over our heads. It was easy enoughto kill Hogboom, but now that he was dead the future looked tolerablycomplicated. Suppose something happened? Suppose he didn't stay dead?There's no peace for a murderer, anyway. We didn't sleep much thatnight. 

The next day it was worse. We sat around and entertained callers allday. Half a hundred students called and brought enough woe to fit out aDemocratic headquarters on Presidential election night. They all hadsomething nice to say of Hoggy. We sat around and mourned and gloomedand agreed with them until we were ready to yell with disgust. 

Hogboom was the most disgracefully lively corpse I ever saw. He insistedon sitting at the head of the stairs where he could hear every good wordthat was said of him, and the things he demanded of us during the daywould have driven a stone saint to crime. Four times we went downtownfor 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 yearwhen street-car fare is a problem of financial magnitude. We had toborrow money from the cook before night. Hoggy had us helpless, and hewas taking a mean and contemptible advantage of the fact that he was acorpse. Half a dozen times we were on the verge of letting him come tolife. It would have served him right. 

Old Siwash was just naturally submerged in sorrow when Monday morningcame. The campus dripped with sadness. The Faculty oozed regret at everypore. We loyal friends of Hogboom were looked on as the chief mournersand it was up to us to fill the part. We did our best. We talked withthe soft pedal on. We went without cigarettes. We wiped our eyeswhenever we got an audience. Time after time we told the sad story andexhibited the telegram. By noon more particulars began to come in. Prexygot an answer to his telegram of condolence. The funeral, the telegramsaid, would be on Tuesday afternoon. There was great and universal griefin Weeping Water, where Hogboom had been held in reverent esteem. Hoggy's chum in the telegraph office simply laid himself out on thattelegram. Prexy read it to me himself and wiped his eyes while he didit. He was a nice, sympathetic man, Prexy was, when he wasn't discussingcuts or scholarship. 

Getting the memorial meeting was so easy we hated to take it. TheFaculty met to pass resolutions Monday afternoon, and when ourdelegation arrived they treated us like brothers. It was just likeentering the camp of the enemy under a flag of truce. Many a time I'vegone 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 hadin fact decided on this already. They would, of course, dismiss collegeall day. It was, perhaps, best to hold the memorial in the morning if somany of us were going out to Weeping Water. It was nice so many of uscould go. Prexy was going. So was the mathematics professor, old"Ichthyosaurus" James, a very fine old ruin, whom Hogboom hated with afrenzy worthy of a better cause, but who, it seemed, had worked up agreat regard for Hogboom through having him for three years in the sametrigonometry class. 

We went out of Faculty meeting men and equals with the professors. Theywalked 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 embodimentof Comanche cruelty and cunning. We talked of Hogboom all the way to thecorner. Wonderful how deeply the Faculty loved the boy; and with whatSpartan firmness they had concealed all indications of it through hiscareer!

When Monday night came we began to breathe more easily. Of course therewas some kind of a deluge coming when Hogboom appeared, but that washis affair. We didn't propose to monkey with the resurrection at all. Hecould do his own explaining. To tell the truth, we were pretty sore atHogboom. He was making a regular Roman holiday out of his demise. Itkept four men busy running errands for him. We had to retail him everycompliment that we had heard during the day, especially if it came fromthe Faculty. We had to describe in detail the effect of the news uponsix or seven girls, for all of whom Hogboom had a tender regard. Heinsisted upon arranging the funeral and vetoed our plans as fast as wemade them. He was as domineering and ugly as if he was the only man whohad ever met a tragic end. He acted as if he had a monopoly. We hatedhim cordially by Monday night, but we were helpless. Hoggy claimed thatbeing dead was a nerve-wearing and exhausting business, and that if hedidn't get the respect due to him as a corpse he would put on his plughat and a plush curtain and walk up the main street of Jonesville. Andas he was a football man and a blamed fool combined we didn't see anyway of preventing him. 

However, everything looked promising. We had made all the necessaryarrangements. The students were to meet in chapel at nine o'clock in themorning and eulogize Hogboom for an hour, after which college was to bedismissed for the day in order that unlimited mourning could be indulgedin. There were to be speeches by the Faculty and by students. Maxfield, the human textbook, was to make the address for the Senior class. Wechuckled when we thought how he was toiling over it. Noddy Pierce, ofour crowd, was to talk about Hogboom as a brother; Rogers, of thefootball team, was to make a few grief-saturated remarks. So wasPerkins. Every one was confidently expecting Perkins to make the effortof his life and swamp the chapel in sorrow. He was in the secret and heafterward said that he would rather try to write a Shakespearean tragedyoffhand than to write another funeral oration about a man who he knewwas at that moment sitting in a pair of pajamas in an upper room half amile away and yelling for pie. 

As a matter of fact, there were so many in the secret that we were deadafraid that it would explode. We had to put the baseball team on so thatthey would be prepared to go over to Hambletonian at noon. The game hadbeen called off, of course, and Hambletonian had been telegraphed. But Iwas secretary of the Athletic Club and had done the telegraphing. So Iaddressed the telegram to my aunt in New Jersey. It puzzled the dear oldlady for months, I guess, because she kept writing to me about it. Wehad to tell all the fellows in the frat house and every one of theconspirators let in a friend or two. There were about fifty students whoweren't as soggy with grief as they should have been by Monday night. 

I blame Hogboom entirely for what happened. He started it when heinsisted that he be smuggled into the chapel to hear his own funeralorations. 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 Hogboomwas, no undertaker's job for me. He was the limit. He put on a bluebath-robe and got as far as the door on his promenade downtown before wegave in and promised to do anything he wanted. We had to break into thechapel and stow him away in a little grilled alcove in the attic on theside of the auditorium where he could hear everything. Soundsuncomfortable, but don't imagine it was. That nervy slavedriver made uslug over two dozen sofa pillows, a rug or two, a bottle of moisture andthree pies to while away the time with. That was where we first began tothink of revenge. We got it, too--only we got it the way Samson did whenhe jerked the columns out from under the roof and furnished the materialfor a general funeral, with himself in the leading rôle. 

By the time we got Hogboom planted in his luxurious nest, about threeA. M. , we were ready to do anything. Some of us were for giving thewhole snap away, but Pierce and Perkins and Rogers objected. They wantedto 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. Itwas a grand and tear-spangled occasion. There were three grades ofemotion plainly visible. There was the resigned and almost pleasedexpression of the students who weren't in on the deal and who saw avacation looming up for that afternoon; the grieved and sympatheticsorrow of the Faculty who were attempting to mourn for what they hadalways called a general school nuisance; and there was the phenomenallysolemn 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 mancan 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 thefirm opinion that, if Hoggy were removed from this world by amasterpiece of justice of some sort, the general tone of civilizationwould go up fifty per cent. Yet Bates got up that morning andcried--yes, sir, actually cried. Cried into a large pocket handkerchiefthat wasn't water-tight, either. That's more than Hoggy would ever havedone for him. And Prexy was so sympathetic and spoke so beautifully ofyoung 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 thelast three years loving Hogboom--whereas he had spent most of the timetrying to get some good excuse for rooting him out of school. You knowhow 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 hadalways disagreed, but it was all over now; and the way he laid it on wassimply wonderful. I thought of Hoggy up there behind the grilling, swelling with pride and satisfaction as Maxfield told how brave, howtender, how affectionate and how honorable he was, and I wished I wasdead, too. Being dead with a string to it is one of the finest thingsthat can happen to a man if he can just hang around and listen topeople. 

Pierce got up. He was the college silver-tongue, and we settled back tolisten to him. Previous speakers had made Hoggy out about as fine as SirPhilip Sidney, but they were amateurs. Here was where Hoggy went upbeside A. Lincoln and Alexander if Pierce was anywhere near himself. 

There is no denying that Pierce started out magnificently. But prettysoon I began to have an uneasy feeling that something was wrong. He waseloquent enough, but it seemed to me that he was handling the deceased alittle too strenuously. You know how you can damn a man in nine ways andthen pull all the stingers out with a "but" at the end of it. That waswhat Pierce was doing. "What if Hogboom was, in a way, fond of hisease?" he thundered. "What if the spirit of good fellowship linked armswith him when lessons were waiting, and led him to the pool hall? He mayhave been dilatory in his college duties; he may have wasted hisallowance on billiards instead of in missionary contributions. He mayhave owed money--yes, a lot of money. He may, indeed, have been alittle selfish--which one of us isn't? He may have frittered away timefor which his parents were spending the fruit of their early toil--butyouth, friends, is a golden age when life runs riot, and he is only halfa man who stops to think of petty prudence. "

That was all very well to say about Rameses or Julius Cæsar or someother deceased who is pretty well seasoned, but I'll tell you it madethe college gasp, coming when it did. It sounded sacrilegious and to meit sounded as if some one who was noted as an orator was going to getthumped by the late Mr. Hogboom about the next day. I perspired a lotfrom nervousness as Pierce rumbled on, first praising the departed andthen landing on him with both oratorical feet. When he finally sat downand mopped his forehead the whole school gave one of those long breathsthat you let go of when you have just come up from a dive under coldwater. 

Rogers followed Pierce. Rogers wasn't much of a talker, but he surpassedeven his own record that day in falling over himself. When he tried toillustrate how thoughtful and generous Hogboom was he blundered into thestory of the time Hoggy bet all of his money on a baseball game atMuggledorfer, and of how he walked home with his chum and carried thelatter's coat and grip all the way. That made the Faculty wriggle, I cantell you. He illustrated the pluck of the deceased by telling howHogboom, as a Freshman, dug all night alone to rescue a man imprisonedin a sewer, spurred on by his cries--though Rogers explained in hishalting way, it afterward turned out that this was only the famous"sewer racket" which is worked on every green Freshman, and that thecries for help came from a Sophomore who was alternately smoking a pipeand yelling into a drain across the road. Still, Rogers said, itillustrated Hogboom's nobility of spirit. In his blundering fashion hewent on to explain some more of Hoggy's good points, and by the time hesat down there wasn't a shred of the latter's reputation left intact. The whole school was grinning uncomfortably, and the Faculty was actingas if it was sitting, individually and collectively, on seventeen greatgross of red-hot pins. 

By this time we conspirators were divided between holy joy and a fearthat the thing was going to be overdone. It was plain to be seen thatthe Faculty wasn't going to stand for much more loving frankness. Piercewhispered to Tad Perkins, Hogboom's chum, and the worst victim of hisposthumous whims, to draw it mild and go slow. Perkins was to make thelast talk, and we trembled in our shoes when he got up. 

We needn't have feared for Perkins. He was as smooth as a Tammanyorator. He praised Hogboom so pathetically that the chapel began to showacres of white handkerchiefs again. Very gently he talked over hiscareer, his bravery and his achievements. Then just as poetically andgently he glided on into the biggest lie that has been told sinceAnanias short-circuited retribution with his unholy tale. 

"What fills up the heart and the throat, fellows, " he swung along, "isnot the loss we have sustained; not the irreparable injury to all ourcollege activities; not even the vacant chair that must sit mutelyeloquent beside us this year. It's something worse than that. Perhaps Ishould not be telling this. It's known to but a few of his most intimatefriends. The saddest thing of all is the fact that back in Weeping Waterthere is a girl--a lovely girl--who will never smile again. "

Phew! You could just feel the feminine side of the chapelstiffen--Hogboom was the worst fusser in college. He was chronically inlove 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, andspring was only half over at that. This was the best of all; our revengewas 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 athome and waited and dreamed while her knight fought his way to glory incollege; who treasured his vows and wore his ring and--"

"'Tain't so, you blamed idiot!" came a hoarse voice from above. If thechapel had been stormed by Comanches there couldn't have been more of acommotion. A thousand pairs of eyes focused themselves on the grill. Itsagged in and then disappeared with a crash. The towsled head of Hogboomcame out of the opening. 

"I'll fix you for that, Tad Perkins!" he yelled. "I'll get even with youif it takes me the rest of my life. I ain't engaged to any Weeping Watergirl. You know it, you liar! I've had enough of this--" You couldn'thear any more for the shrieks. When a supposedly dead man sticks hishead out of a jog in the ceiling and offers to fight his Mark Antony itis bound to create some commotion. Even the professors turned white. Asfor the girls--great smelling salts, what a cinch! They fainted inwindrows. Some of us carried out as many as six, and you had betterbelieve we were fastidious in our choice, too. 

There had never been such a sensation since Siwash was invented. Betweenthe panic-stricken, the dazed, the hilarious, the indignant and theguilty wretches like myself, who were wondering how in thunder there wasgoing to be any explaining done, that chapel was just as coherent as amadhouse. And then Hogboom himself burst in a side door, and it tookseven of us to prevent him from reducing Perkins to a paste andfrescoing him all over the chapel walls. Everybody was rattled butPrexy. I think Prexy's circulation was principally ice water. When therow was over he got up and blandly announced that classes would take upimmediately and that the Faculty would meet in extraordinary sessionthat noon. 

How did we get out of it? Well, if you want to catch the last car, oldman, I'll have to hit the high spots on the sequel. Of course, it was atremendous scandal--a memorial meeting breaking up in a fight. We allstood to be expelled, and some of the Faculty were sorry they couldn'thang us, I guess, from the way they talked. But in the end it blew overbecause there wasn't much of anything to hang on any one. The telegramswere all traced to the agent at Weeping Water, and he identified thesender as a long, short, thick, stout, agricultural-looking man in aplug hat, or words to that effect. What's more, he declared it wasn'this duty to chase around town confirming messages--he was paid to sendthem. Hogboom had a harder time, but he, too, explained that he had comehome from Weeping Water a day late, owing to a slight attack ofappendicitis, and that when he found himself late for chapel he hadclimbed 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 wasbeing reviled by his friends under the supposition that he was dead andunable to defend himself. Nobody believed Hogboom, but nobody couldsuggest any proof of his villainy--so the Faculty gave him an extrafive-thousand-word oration by way of punishment, and Hogboom madePerkins write it in two nights by threats of making a clean breast. PoorHoggy came out of it pretty badly. I think it broke both of hisengagements, and what between explaining to the Faculty and studying tomake a good showing and redeem himself, he didn't have time to work upanother before Commencement--while the rest of us lived in mortal terrorof exposure and didn't enjoy ourselves a bit all through May, though itwas some comfort to reflect on what would have happened if the schemehad worked--for Hambletonian beat us to a frazzle that afternoon. 

That's what we got for monkeying with a solemn subject. But, pshaw! Whocares in college? What a student can do is limited only by what he canthink up. Did I ever tell you what we did to the English Explorer? Takeanother 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 goodthing in a college course. I learned a lot of real knowledge in schoolmyself that I wouldn't have missed for anything, though I have forgottenit now. But what irritate me are the people who think that the educationyou get in a modern American super-heated, cross-compound college comesto you already canned in neat little textbooks sold by the trust at onehundred per cent profit, and that all you have to do is to go to yourroom with them, fill up a student lamp with essence of General Educationand take the lid off. 

Honest, lots of them think that. It might have been so, too, in the goodold days when there was only one college graduate for each town and hehad to do the heavy thinking for the whole community. But, pshaw! theeasiest job in the world nowadays is to stuff your storage battery fullof Greek verbs and obituaries in English literature, and the hardest jobis to get it hitched up to something that will bring in the yellowbacks, the chopped-wood furniture, the automobile tires and the largemajorities in the fall elections. I've seen brilliant boys at oldSiwash go out of college knowing everything that had ever happened inthe world up to one hundred years ago, and try to peddle hexameters inthe wholesale district in Chicago. And I've seen boys who slid throughthe course just half a hair's breadth ahead of the Faculty boot, go outand do the bossing for a whole Congressional district in five years. They hadn't learned the exact chemical formula of the universe, but theyhad learned how to run the blamed thing from practicing on the collegeduring study hours. 

Not that I'm knocking on knowledge, you understand. Knowledge is, ofcourse, a grand thing to have around the house. But nowadays knowledgealone isn't worth as much as it used to be, seems to me. A man has tomix it up with imagination, and ingenuity, and hustle, and nerve, andthe science of getting mad at the right time, and a fourteen-year courseof study in understanding the other fellow. The college professors lumpall this in one course and call it applied deviltry. They don't put itdown 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 Greekand Analit. And Diffy. Cal. , and the other studies--whatever theywere--that I took in good old Siwash. 

You remember Petey, of course. He went through Siwash in four years andeight suspensions, and came out fresh--as fresh as when he went in, which is saying a good deal. Every summer during his career the Facultywent to a rest cure and tried to forget him. He was as handy to havearound school as a fox terrier in a cat show. There are two varieties ofcollege students--the midnight-oil and the natural-gas kind; and Peteywas a whole gas well in himself. Not that he didn't study. He was thehardest 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 hisexamination papers. He used to pass medium fair in Horace; sub-passablein Trig. , and extraordinary mediocre in Polikon. But his marks inImagination, the Psychological Moment and Dodging Consequences were plusperfect, extra magnificent, and superlatively some, respectively. 

I saw Petey last year. He is in Chicago now. You have to bribe adoorkeeper and bluff a secretary to get to him--that is, you do if youare an ordinary mortal. But if you give the Siwash yell or the Eta BitaPie whistle in the outside office he will emerge from his office outover the railing in one joyous jump. He came to Chicago ten years agoequipped with a diploma and a two-year tailor-bill back at Jonesvillethat he had been afraid to tell his folks about. If he had been amidnight-oil graduate he would have worn out three pairs of shoeshunting for a business house which was willing to let an earnest youngscholar enter its employ at the bottom and rise gradually to the top asthe century went by. But Petey wasn't that kind. He had been used torunning the whole college and messing up the universe as far as onecould see from the Siwash belfry if things didn't suit him. So he pickedout the likeliest-looking institution on Dearborn Street and offered ita position as his employer. He was on the payroll before the presidentgot over his daze. Two weeks later he promoted the firm to a moreresponsible job--that of paying him a bigger salary--and a year ago thegeneral manager gave up and went to Europe for two years; said he wouldtake a positive pleasure in coming back and looking at the map ofChicago after Petey had done it over to suit himself. 

Imagination was what did it. You can't take Imagination in any collegeclassroom, but you can get more of it on the campus in four years thanyou can anywhere else in the world. You've got to have a mighty goodimagination to get into any real warm trouble--and by the time you havegotten out of it again you have had to double its horse-power. That wasPetey's daily recreation. In the morning he would think up an absolutelyair-tight reason for being expelled from Siwash as a disturber, ananarchist, a superfluosity and a malefactor of great stealth. That nighthe would go to his room and figure out an equally good proof thatnothing had happened or that whatever had happened was an act ofProvidence and not traceable to any student. Figuring out ways forselling bonds in carload lots was just recreation to him after afour-year course of this sort. 

But to back in on the main track. I whistled outside of Petey's officethe other day and went in with him past two magnates, three salesmen anda bank president. I sat with my feet on a mahogany table--I wanted toput them on an oak desk, but Petey declared mahogany was none too goodfor a Siwash man--and we spent an hour talking over the time when Peteymanufactured excitement in wholesale lots at Siwash, with me for hisfirst assistant and favorite apprentice. Those are my proudest memories. I won my track S. And got honorably mentioned in three Commencementexercises; but when I want to brag of my college career do I mentionthese things? Not unless I have a lot of time. When I want to paralyzean alumnus of some rival college with admiration and envy, I tell himhow Petey and I manufactured a real Wild West college--buildings, Faculty, bad men and all--for one day only, for the benefit of anEnglishman who had gotten fifteen hundred miles inland without noticingthe general color scheme of the inhabitants. 

We met this chap accidentally--a little favor of Providence, which had aspecial pigeonhole for us in those days. Our team had been using theKiowa football team as a running track on their own field thatafternoon, and the score was about 105 to 0 when the timekeeper turnedoff the massacre. Naturally all Siwash was happy. I will admit we weretoo happy to be careful. About two hundred of us made the hundred-miletrip home by local train that night, and I remember wondering, when theboys dumped the stove off the rear platform and tied up the conductor inhis 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 isgenerally doing something that will keep the grand jury busy for thenext few months. 

I was in the last car, and had just finished telling "Prince" Hogboomthat if he poked any more window-lights out with his cane he would haveto finish the year under an assumed name, when Petey crawled over twomobs of rough-housers and came up to me. He was seething withindignation. It was breaking out all over him like a rash. Petey wasexcitable anyway. 

"What do you suppose I've found in the next car?" he said, fizzing likean escape valve. 

"Prof?" said I, getting alarmed. 

"Naw, " said Petey; "worse than that. A chap that has never heard ofSiwash. Asked me if it was a breakfast food. He's an Englishman. I'mag'in' the English. " He stopped and began kicking a water tank around torelieve 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 stopthinking as soon as they've got their education. He's the editor of amissionary publication, he told me, and he is writing some articles onHeathen America. Honest, it almost made me boil over when he asked me ifanything 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 himhe wasn't fifty miles from a college this minute, and he said, 'Oh, Isay 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. Theydon't use slang over there, you know. "

"Well, then, I spoofed him, " said Petey, grinning. "He said it wasremarkable how very few revolvers he had seen, and then he wanted toknow why there was no shooting on the train with so much disorder. He'spretty well posted now. I'd go a mile out of my way to help a poor dumbchap like him. I told him this was the Y. M. C. A. Section of Siwash andthat the real rough students were coming along on horseback. I said theyweren'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 thecourse of study consisted of mining, draw poker, shooting from the hip, broncho-busting, sheep-shearing, History of Art, bread-making andEvidences of Christianity. "

"Did he admit by that time that you were a good, free-handed liar?" Iasked. 

"Admit nothing, " said Petey; "he took it all down in his notebook andremarked that in a wild country like this, remote from civilization, aknowledge 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 plughat this minute. He's so interested he is going to stop over for a dayor two and write up the college for his magazine. I've invited him tostay at the Eta Bita Pie House with us, and we're going to show him areal Wild West school if we have to shoot blank cartridges at the cookto do it. "

"Petey, " said I solemnly, "some day you'll bump an asteroid when you goup in the air like this. This friend of yours will take one look atSiwash 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'splace against your dress suit, " said Petey promptly. "And you better nottake it, either. "

"Done!" says I. "I bet you my hunting-case suit against your earthlypossessions that you can't tow old Britannia-rules-the-waves aroundSiwash for a day without disclosing the fact that you are the bestcatch-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. Thisis a great big contract. It's going to be my masterpiece, and I needhelp. "

"I'm with you clear to Faculty meeting, as usual, " says I. "But what'sthe use? He'll catch on. "

"Leave that to me, " said Petey. "Anyway, he won't catch on. When I toldhim we had a checkroom for pappooses in the Siwash chapel he wrote itdown and asked if the Indians ever massacred the professors. He wouldn'tcatch 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 minutelater. We found him in the car ahead, sitting on the edge of the seatand looking as if he expected to be eaten alive, without salt, anyminute. You could have told that he was from extremely elsewhere atfirst glance. He was as different as if he had worn tattoo-marks fortrousers. He was a stout party with black-rimmed eyeglasses, sidewhiskers that you wouldn't have believed even if you had seen them, andslabs of iron-gray hair with a pepper-and-salt traveling cap stuck ontop of his head like a cupola. He was beautifully curved and his blackpreacher uniform looked as if it had been put on him by a paperhanger. Iforgot to tell you that his name was the Reverend Ponsonby Diggs. He hadto tell it to me four times and then write it down, for the way hehandled his words was positively heartless. He clipped them, beheadedthem, disemboweled them and warped them all out of shape. Have you everheard a real ingrowing Englishman start a word in the roof of his mouthand 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 outand 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 usas a rescue brigade. "Reahly, you know, this is extraordinary, " hesputtered. "I have never seen such disorder. What will the authoritiesdo?"

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 inAmerican jokes. "You don't mean to say they will derail the train!" hesaid 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 goingto save breath. I assured Diggsey that derailing was the kindest thingever done to trains by Siwash students, but that as his hosts we wouldstand by him, whatever happened. Then Petey slipped away to arrange thecast and I kept on answering questions. Say! that man was a regularmagazine gun, loaded with interrogation points. Was there any danger tolife on these trains? Would it be possible for him to take a ride in astage-coach? Were train robbers still plentiful? Had gold ever beenfound around Siwash? Were the Indians troublesome? Did we have regularschool buildings or did we live in tents? Had not the railroad had adistinctly--er--civilizing influence in this region? Was it not, afterall, remarkable that the thirst for learning could be found even in thiswild 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 wasto find professors who wouldn't get drunk, and how we had to let the menand women recite on alternate days after a few of the hen students hadbeen winged by stray bullets. I had never heard of Greek, I said, but Iassured him that we studied Latin and that we had a professor to whomCæsar was as easy as print. I told him how hard we worked to get alittle 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 timethey were in college; but, try as I would, I couldn't make the answersas ridiculous as his questions. He had me on the mat, two points downand fighting for wind all the time. His thirst for knowledge waswonderful and his objection to believing what his eyes must have toldhim was still more wonderful. There he was, half-way across the countryfrom New York, and he must have looked out of the car windows on theway; but he hadn't seen a thing. I suppose it was because he wasn'tlooking for anything but Indians. 

All this time Petey was circulating about the car, taking aside membersof the Rep Rho Betas and talking to them earnestly. The Rep Rho Betaswere the Sophomore fraternity and were the real demons of the college. Each year the outgoing Sophomore class initiated the twenty Freshmen whowere most likely to meet the hangman on professional business and passedon the duties of the fraternity to them. The fraternity spent its timein pleasure and was suspected of anything violent which happened in thecounty. Petey was highbinder of the gang that year and was very far gonein crime. 

We were due home about ten P. M. , and just before they untied theconductor Petey hauled me off to one side. 

"It's all fixed, " he said; "it's glorious. We'll just make Siwash into aWild West show for his benefit. The Rep Rho Betas will entertain himdays and he'll stay at the Eta Pie House nights. I'm putting the EtaBites on now. You've got to get him off this train before we get to thestation and keep him busy while I arrange the program. Just give me anhour before you get him there. That's all I ask. "

Now I never was a diplomat, and the job of lugging a fat old foreigneraround a dead college town at night and trying to make him think he wasin peril of his life every minute was about three numbers larger thanmy size. I couldn't think of anything else, so I slipped the word to OleSkjarsen that Diggs was a Kiowa professor who was coming over to getnotes on our team and tip them off to Muggledorfer College. I judgedthis would create some hostility and I wasn't mistaken. Ole began toclimb over his fellow-students and I was just able to beat him to hisprey. 

"Come on, " I whispered. "Skjarsen's on the warpath. He says he wants tobite up a stranger and he thinks you'll do. "

"Oh, my dear sir, " said the Reverend Ponsonby, jumping up and grabbing ahatbox, "you don't mean to tell me that he will use violence?"

"Violence nothing!" I yelled, picking up four pieces of baggage. "Hewon't use violence. He'll just eat you alive, that's all. He's awfulthat way. Come, quick!"

"Oh, my word!" said Diggsey, grabbing his other five bundles and pilingout of the car after me. 

The train was slowing down for the crossing west of Jonesville, and Ijudged it wouldn't hurt the great collector of Western local color toroll a little. So I yelled, "Jump for your life!" He jumped. I swung offand went back till I met him coming along on his shoulder-blades, with aprocession of baggage following him. He wasn't hurt a bit, but he lookedinteresting. I brushed him off, cached the baggage--all but a suitcaseand the hatbox which he hadn't dropped for a minute--and we began toedge unostentatiously into Jonesville. 

For an hour or more we dodged around in alleys and behind barns, whileup on the campus the boys burned a woodshed, an old fruit-stand, half ahundred drygoods boxes and half a mile of wooden sidewalk by way ofcelebration. 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 cadetsdrilled with out of the armory and banged away, I was happy. But how Idid long to be close up to that fire! It was a cold night in earlyNovember, and as I lay behind woodsheds, with my teeth wearingthemselves out on each other, I felt like an early Christianmartyr--though it wasn't cold they suffered from as a rule. As for theReverend Pubby, he wanted to creep away to the next town and then startfor England disguised as a chorus girl, or anything; but I wouldn't lethim. We sneaked around till nearly midnight and then crept up the alleyto the Eta Bita Pie House, wondering if we would ever get warm again. 

I've seen some grand transformation scenes, but I never saw anythingmore impressive than the way the Eta Bita Pie House had been done overin two hours. We always prided ourselves on our house. It cost fifteenthousand dollars, exclusive of the plumber's little hold-up and theOriental rugs, and it was full of polished floors and monogramsilverware and fancy pottery and framed prints, and otherbang-up-to-date incumbrances. But in two hours thirty boys can change awhole lot of scenery. They had spread dirt and sand over the floor, hadripped out the curtains and chased the pictures. They had poked out awindow-light or two, had unhung a few doors, and had filled the cornerswith saddles, old clothes, flour barrels and dogs. You never saw so manydogs. The whole neighborhood had been raided. They were hanging roundeverywhere, homesick and miserable; and one of the Freshmen had beengiven the job of cruising around and kicking them just to keep themtuned up. 

A dozen of the fellows were playing poker on an old board table in themiddle of the big living-hall when we came in. Their clothes werehand-me-downs from Noah's time, and every one of them was outraging someconvention or other. Our boys always did go in for amateur theatricalspretty strongly, and the way our most talented members abused theEnglish language that night when they welcomed the Reverend Pubby was asgood as a book. 

"Proud ter meet you, " roared Allie Bangs, our president, taking off hishat and making a low bow. "Set right in and enjoy yourself. White chipsis a dime, limit is a dollar and no gunplay goes. "

When Pubby had explained for the third time that he had never had thepleasure of playing the game, Bangs finally got on to the curves in hispronunciation and understood him. 

"What! Never played poker!" he whooped. "Hell a humpin', where was youraised? You sure ain't a college man? Any lop-eared galoot that didn'tplay poker in Siwash would get run out by the Faculty. You ought to seeour president put up his pile and draw to a pair of deuces. What!--aReverend! I beg your pardon, friend. 'S all right. Jest name the gameyou're strong at and we'll try to accommodate you later on. Here, youfellows, 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 theall-firedest row that this shack has ever seed. Come right along, Reverend. "

[Illustration: "Har's das spy'" he yelled "Kill him, fallers, he ban aspy!" _Page 132_]

That tour was a great triumph for Bangs. We always did admire hisacting, but he outdid himself that night. The rest of us just kept quietand let him handle the conversation, and I must say it sounded desperateenough to be convincing. Of course he slipped up occasionally and stuckin words that would have choked an ordinary cow-gentleman, but Diggseywas that dazed he wouldn't have suspected if they had been Latin. Ithought it would be more or less of a job to explain how we were livingin a fifteen-thousand-dollar house instead of dugouts, but Bangs neverhesitated a minute. He explained that the house belonged to amillionaire 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 barnwith the horses. The boys had filled their rooms full of junk and one ofthem had even tied a pig to his bed--while the way Bangs clearedrubbish out of the bathtub and promised to have some water heated in themorning was convincingly artless. He had just finished explaining that, owing to the boiler-plate in the walls, the house was practically Indianproof, when an awful fusillade of shots broke out from the kitchen. Bangs disappeared for a moment, gun in hand, and I watched our guesttrying to make himself six inches narrower and three feet shorter. Idon't know when I ever saw a chap so anxious to melt right down into acorner and be mistaken for a carpet tack. 

"'S all right, " said Bangs, clumping in cheerfully. "Jest the cookhaving 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 gitsthat way he insists on trying to shoot cockroaches with his gun. Heain't never killed one, but he's gotten two Chinamen and a mule, andwe'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 fornineteen 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'llfind a comb somewheres round. Just you turn in if you feel like it, andwhen you hear Wall-Eye Denton and Pete Pearsall trying to massacre eachother in the next room it's time to git up. "

Pubby said he would retire at once, and we left him looking scared butrelieved. I'll bet he sat up all night taking notes and expecting thingsto happen. We sat up, too, but for a different reason. You can't imaginehow much work it took to get that house running backward. And it was anawful job to do the Wild West stunt, too. We sat and criticised eachother's dialect and actions until there were as many as three freefights going on at once. One man favored the Bret Harte style of badman; another adhered to the Henry Wallace Phillips brand; while stillanother insisted on following the Remington school. We compromised on amixture and then spent the rest of the night learning how to forget ourtable manners. 

The result was magnificent. I shall never forget the Reverend Pubby'spained but fascinated expression as he sat at breakfast the next morningand watched thirty hungry savages shoveling plain, unvarnished grub intotheir faces. The breakfast couldn't have gone better if we had had adress rehearsal. Our guest couldn't eat. He was afraid to talk. He justheld on to his chair, and we could see him stiffen with horror everytime some eater would rise up so as to increase his reach and spear apiece of bread six feet away with his fork. The breakfast was adisgusting display of Poland-China manners and was successful in everyparticular. 

We confidently expected Petey Simmons to turn up during the meal andtell us what to do next. He had spent the night with his odoriferousRep Rho Beta brothers cooking up the rest of the plot and had promisedto run up at breakfast. But no Petey appeared. We strung the meal alongas far as we could toward dinner and then took up the job of keeping theReverend Pubby contented and in the house until the life-saving crewarrived. Did you ever try to lie all morning with a slow-speedimagination? That's what we had to do. We explained to Pubby that thestudents caroused all night and never came to college in the morning; wetold him it was against the rules for strangers to go on the campus inthe morning; we told him it was dangerous to go out-of-doors because ofthe Alfalfa Delta, who were suspected of being cannibals; we told himforty thousand things, most of which contradicted each other. If ithadn't been for the boys who kindly started a fight whenever hisreverence had tangled Bangs and me up hopelessly on some question wecouldn't have survived the inquisition. As it was, I perspired about abarrel 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 toyell for mercy and put on our civilized clothes when we heard a terrificriot from outside. Then Petey came in. 

If there ever was a sure-enough Wild Westerner it was Petey thatafternoon. He had on the whole works--two-acre hat, red woolen shirt, spurs, and even chaps--nice hairy ones. I discovered next day that hehad swiped my fine bearskin rug and cut it up to make them. In his belthe 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-largevoices, and when he turned the full organ on you would have thought oldMount Vesuvius had wakened up and rumbled into the room. 

"Howdy, Reverend, " he thundered. "We jest come along to take you on alittle ride over to college. Got a nice gentle cow-pony out here. Shebucks as easy as a rockin'-horse. Don't mind about your clothes. Justhop right on. The boys is some anxious to get along, it being mostclasstime. "

We followed the two of them out to the back yard. There were seven RepRho Betas on seven moth-eaten ponies which they had dug up from goodnessknows where. The rigs they had on represented each fellow's idea of whata cowboy looked like, and would have made a real cowpuncher hang himselffor 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 inagony for fear they would fall off and compel him to explain that theywere 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 aprehistoric plug _Page 125_]

I guess the Reverend Pubby had never done much in the Centaur line, forhe came very near balking entirely right there. It took us five minutesto explain that there was no other way of getting out to Siwash andthat 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 wasinsulted. And then after he had consented we spent another five minuteshoisting him aboard a prehistoric plug and telling him how to stick on. Then the line filed out through the alley with a regular ghost-danceyell, while we detained Petey. We were about to massacre him for leavingus to sweat all morning, but we forgot all about it when Petey told uswhat he had been doing. He admitted that, in order not to annoy theprofs and cause unnecessary questions, he had taken the liberty to builda temporary Siwash College for this special occasion. 

Yes, sir; nothing less than that. You remember Dillpickle Academy, theextinct college in the west part of town? It had been closed for yearsbecause the only remaining student had gotten lonesome. But most of theequipment was still there, and Petey had borrowed it of the caretakerfor one day only, promising to give it back as good as new in themorning. Petey could have borrowed the great seal away from theDepartment of State. He and his Rep Rho Betas had let a lot of studentsinto the deal, had been working all morning, and Siwash was ready forbusiness 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 rushfor the new Siwash College--special one-day stand, benefit performance. We got there before the escorting committee and had a fine view of thegrand entry. The Reverend Pubby had fallen off four times, and the lastmile 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 sketchyhorsemanship in anything better than a mile-an-hour gait. 

Old Dillpickle Academy was busier than it had ever been in real lifewhen we got there. Fully fifty students were on the scene. They weredecked out in cowboy clothes, hand-me-downs, big straw hats, blankets--any old thing. One thing that impressed me was the number ofbooks they were carrying. At Siwash we always refused to carry booksexcept when absolutely necessary. It seemed too affected--as if you weretrying to learn something. But out there at near-Siwash every man had atleast six books. I saw geographies, spellers, Ella Wheeler Wilcox'spoems, Science and Health, and the Congressional Record. Learning wasjust naturally rampant out there. Students were studying on the fence. They were walking up and down the campus "boning" furiously. They wereeven studying in the trees. You get fifty college boys to turn actorsfor a day and you will see some mighty mixed results. There was "Bay"Sanderson, for instance. "Bay's" idea of being a wild and Westernstudent was to sit on the front gate with a long knife stuck in hisbelt and read detective stories. He did it all through the performance, and whenever the guest was led past him he would turn the book downcarefully, pull the knife out of his belt and whoop three times assolemn as a judge. 

You never saw any one so interested as the Reverend Ponsonby Diggs. Hiseyes stuck out like incandescent globes. He had been pretty well joltedup, and he yelled in a low, polite way every time he made a quickmovement, but his thirst for information was still vigorous. As headhost 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 inthe 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, " saidPetey proudly. 

"Reahly, now?" said the Reverend; "I say, reahly? And these cows! MightI ask if these cows are a part of the college?"

"Sure thing, " said Petey. "Sophomore roping class uses 'em. Great classto watch. "

"I say now, this is extraordinary, " said the Reverend. "You don't meanto tell me you tie up cows?"

"Rope 'em and tie 'em and brand 'em, " said Petey. "What's college for ifit ain't to learn you things?"

"I say now, this is extraordinary, " said the Reverend. I gave him fourmore "extraordinaries" before I did something violent. He'd used twohundred that morning. "Might I see the class at work?" he inquired. 

Petey didn't even hesitate. "Sorry, Reverend, " says he. "But theProfessor of Roping and Branding has been drunk for a week. Class ain'tworking now. "

The college bell tapped three times. "That's cleaning-up bell, " saidPetey. 

"Oh, I say now, " said the Reverend, hauling out his notebook. "What'scleaning-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 andclay in, and eating lunches and stuff around, it gets pretty messybefore the end of the week. We make the Freshmen clean it out. Therethey 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 crownedheads of Europe. 

Just then a fine assortment of sounds broke out in the old building. Thedoors burst open and a young red-headed Mick from the seventh ward nearby rode a pony down the steps and away for dear life. Behind him came adouble-sized gent with yard-wide mustaches. He was dressed in a redshirt, overalls and firearms. He was a walking museum of weapons. Peteytold 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 ofan irritable arsenal for one afternoon only. 

"That's the janitor, " said Petey in an awestruck whisper. "Get behind atree, quick. He's sure some vexed. He hates to have the boys ride theirponies into classroom. "

We got a fine view of the janitor as he swept past. He was a regularvolcano in pants. Never have I heard the English language more richlyembossed with profanity. Firing a fat locomotive up the grades aroundSiwash with bad coal gives a man great talent in expression. We listenedto him with awe. Pubby was entranced. He asked me if it would be safe totake anything down in his notebook, and when I promised to protect himhe wrote three pages. 

By this time the campus was filling up. Word had gotten around the realcollege that the big show of the season was being pulled off up atDillpickle, and the students were arriving by the dozen. We were gettingpretty nervous. The new arrivals weren't coached, and sooner or laterthey were bound to give the snap away. We decided to introduce our guestto the president. If we could keep things quiet another half hour allwould be safe, Petey assured us. 

We took the Reverend up to the main entrance, Petey's thinker workinglike a well-oiled machine all the way. He pointed out the tree wherethey hanged a horse thief, and Pubby made us wait till he had gotten aleaf from it. The Senior classes at Dillpickle had had the custom ofhauling boulders on to the campus as graduation presents. Peteyexplained that each boulder marked the resting place of some studentwhose career had been foreshortened accidentally, and he describedseveral of the tragedies--invented them right off the reel. Pubby was sointerested he didn't care who saw his notebook. When Petey told him howa pack of timber wolves had besieged the school for nine days andnights, four years before, he almost cried because there was nophotograph of the scene handy. We had to promise him a wolf skin tocomfort him. 

Dillpickle Academy was a plain old brick building, with one of thosecupolas which were so popular among schools and colleges forty yearsago. 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 buildingwas a wide stone porch. Inside we could see half a dozen dogs and ahorse. Pubby looked a bushel of exclamation points when Petey explainedthat they belonged to the president. He looked a lot more when he saw acounter with a fine assortment of chewing tobacco and pipes on it. That, Petey whispered to me, was his masterpiece. He had borrowed thewhole 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 realityto find out whether Kennedy, an old grad who had consented to play thepart, 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 copson 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 bearrested by six lowly cops on its own campus, in the act of showing adistinguished visitor how it ran the earth, and was particular Hadeswith the trigger-finger! Bangs was showing Pubby the window throughwhich the Professor of Arithmetic had thrown him the term before, and Itold Petey. He sat down and cried. 

"After all this work and just as we had it cinched!" he moaned. "I'llquit school to-morrow and devote my life to poisoning policemen. Thishas made an anarchist of me. "

There was nothing to do. We couldn't very well explain that the collegewould now have to run away and hide because some enthusiastic Freshmanhad fired a horse-pistol on the streets of Jonesville. I looked at thecrowd of fantastic students getting ready to bolt for the fence. Ilooked at our victim, fairly punching words into his notebook. It wasthe brightest young dream that was ever busted by a fat loafer in brassbuttons. Then I saw Ole Skjarsen and had my one big inspiration. 

"Excuse me, " I said, rushing over to Pubby, "but you'll have to moseyright 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. NaturallyOle heard him and saw those whiskers. "Har's das spy!" he yelled. "Killhim, fallers; he ban a spy!" We dashed around the building, Olefollowing 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 wereno less than a hundred Siwash students behind us, and, though no one butOle Skjarsen had any interest in us, they were all trying to break thesprint record in our direction, it being the line of least resistance. And, say! We certainly had misjudged the Reverend Ponsonby Diggs. He mayhave been fat, but how he could run! His work was phenomenal. I think hemust have been on a track team himself at some earlier part of hiscareer, for the way he steamed away from the gang would have remindedyou of the _Lusitania_ racing the Statue of Liberty. He lost his cap. Heshed his long black coat. He rolled over the fence at the rear of thecampus without even hesitating, and the last we saw of him he was goingdown the road out of Jonesville into the west, his legs revolving in ablue haze. Even if we had wanted to stop him, we couldn't have caughthim. And besides, Ole caught Petey and me just outside of the campus andwe had to do some twenty-nine-story-tall explaining to keep from gettingpunched for harboring spies. No one had thought to put him next to thegame. 

That all? Goodness, no! We cleaned up for a week and had been so goodthat the Faculty had about decided that nothing had happened when theReverend Ponsonby Diggs appeared in Jonesville again. He came with aUnited States marshal for a bodyguard, too. He had footed it to the nexttown, it seems, and had wired the nearest British consul that he hadbeen attacked by savages at Siwash College and robbed of all hisbaggage. They say he demanded battleships or a Hague conference, orsomething of the sort, and that the consul's office asked a Governmentofficer to go out and pacify him. They stepped off the train at theUnion Station and went right up to college--only four blocks away. 

Petey and I remained considerably invisible, but the boys tell me thatthe look on the Reverend's face when he arrived at the real Siwash wasworth perpetuating in bronze. He went up the fine old avenue, past thefine new buildings, in a daze; and when our good old Prexy, who had himskinned forty ways for dignity, shook hands with him and handed him alittle 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 thestory. He laughed from four P. M. Until midnight, with only three stopsfor refreshments. The Reverend Pubby Diggs stayed three days as theguest of the Faculty and he didn't get up nerve enough in all that timeto talk business. We saw him at chapel where he couldn't see us, and helooked like a man who had suddenly discovered, while falling out of hisaeroplane, that somebody had removed the earth and had left no addressbehind. His baggage mysteriously appeared at his room in the hotel onthe first night, and when he left he hadn't recovered consciousnesssufficiently to inquire where it came from. I think he went right backto England when he left Siwash, and I'll bet that by now he has almostconcluded that some one had been playing a joke on him. You give thoseEnglishmen 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. Ineed it. I've just read a piece of information in this letter that makesme tired all over. 

What is it? Oh, just another variety of competition smothered with agentlemanly agreement--that's all; another bright-eyed little trustformed and another readjustment of affairs on a business basis. We oldfellows needn't break our necks to get back to Siwash and the frat thisfall, they write me. Of course they'll be delighted to see us and allthat; but there's no burning need for us and we needn't jump any jobs toreport in time to put the brands on the Freshmen and rescue them fromthe noisome Alfalfa Delts and Sigh Whoops--because there isn't going tobe any rescuing this fall. 

They've had an agreement at Siwash. They're going to approach theFreshies under strict rules. No parties. No dinners at the houses. Noabductions. No big, tall talk about pledging to-night or staggeringthrough a twilight life to a frowzy-headed and unimportant old age insome bum bunch. All done away with. Everything nice and orderly. Freshman arrives. You take his name and address. Call on him, attendedby referees. Maintain a general temperature of not more than sixty-fivewhen you meet him on the campus. Buy him one ten-cent cigar during thefall and introduce him to one girl--age, complexion and hypnotic powerto be carefully regulated by the rushing committee. Then you send him alittle engraved invitation to amalgamate with you; and when he answers, per the self-addressed envelope inclosed, you are to love him like abrother for the next three and a half years. Gee! how that makes meache!

Think of it! And at old Siwash, too!--Siwash, where we never considereda pledge safe until we had him tied up in a back room, with our colorson him and a guard around the house! That settles me. I've alwaysyearned to go back and cavort over the campus in the fall when collegeopened; but not for me no more! Why, if I went back there and got intothe rushing game, first thing I knew they'd have me run up before apan-Hellenic council, charged with giving an eligible Freshman more thantwo fingers when I shook hands with him; and I'd be ridden out of townon a rail for rushing in an undignified manner. 

Rushing? What's rushing? Oh, yes; I forgot that you never participatedin 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 toit is joy and inspiration, and to belong to any other means misery andan early tomb; that all the best men in college either belong to yourfrat or couldn't get in; that you're the best fellows on earth, and thatyou're crazy to have him, and that he is a coming Senator; that youcan't live without him; that the other gang can't appreciate him; thatyou never ask men twice; that you don't care much for him anyway, andthat you are just as likely as not to withdraw the spike any minute ifyou should happen to get tired of the cut of his trousers; that yourcrowd can make him class president and the other crowds can make himfine mausoleums; that you love him like real brothers and that he hasalready bound himself in honor to pledge--and that if he doesn't he willregret it all his life; and, besides, you will punch his head if hedoesn't put on the colors. That's rushing for you. 

What's my crowd? Why, the Eta Bita Pie, of course. Couldn't you tellthat from my skyscraper brow? We Eta Bites are so much better than anyother frat that we break down and cry now and then when we think of thepoor chaps who can't belong to us. We're bigger, grander, nobler andtighter about the chest than any other gang. We've turned out moreSenators, Congressmen, Supreme Justices, near-Presidents, captains ofindustry, foreign ambassadors and football captains than any two ofthem. We own more frat houses, win more college elections, know moreabout neckties and girls, wear louder vests and put more cross-hatcheffects on our neophytes than any three of them. We're so immeasurablyahead of everything with a Greek-letter name that every Freshman oftaste and discrimination turns down everything else and waits until wecrook our little finger at him. Of course, sometimes we make a mistakeand ask some fellow that isn't a man of taste and discrimination; heproves it by going into some other frat; and that, of course, keeps allthe 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 brethrenback at Siwash and agree with them how glorious we are, but this notebrings it all back. My! how I'd like this minute to go back about tenyears and cluster around our big grate fire, which used to make theDelta Kaps so crazy with envy. Those were the good old days when we cameback to college in the fall, looked over the haycrop in the Freshmanclass, picked out the likeliest seed repositories, and then proceeded tocarve them out from the clutches of a round dozen rival frats, each onecrazy to get a spike into every new student who looked as if he might bepresident of the Senior class and an authority on cotillons some day. Nonamby-pamby, drop-three-and-carry-one crochet effects about our rushingthose days! We just stood up on our hind legs and scrapped it out. Forconcentrated, triple-distilled, double-X excitement, the first threeweeks of college, with every frat breaking its collective neck to get ahabeas corpus on the same six or eight men, had a suffragette riot inthe House of Parliament beaten down to a dove-coo. 

There was nothing that made us love a Freshman so hard as to have aboutsix 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 reallyappreciate it. And when we could swat half a dozen rival frats over theheart by waltzing a good-looking young chap down the walk to chapel withour colors on his coat, and could watch them turning green and purpleand clawing for air--well, I guess it beat getting elected to Congressor marrying an heiress-apparent for pure, unadulterated, unspeckled joy!

Competition was getting mighty scarce in the country even then. Therewere understandings between railroad magnates and beef kings and biscuitmakers--and even the ministers had a scale of wedding fees. Butcompetition had a happy home on our campus. About the best we had beenable to do had been to agree not to burn down each other's frat houseswhile we were haltering the Freshmen. I've seen nine frats, with a totalof one hundred and fifty members, sitting up nights for a week at a timeworking out plans to despoil each other of a runty little fellow in apancake hat, whose only accomplishment was playing the piano with hisfeet. One frat wanted him and that started the others. 

Of course we'd have got along better if we'd put the whole Freshmanclass in cold storage until we could have found out who the good menwere and who the spoiled fruit might be. We were just as likely to fallin love with a suit of clothes as with a future class orator. We took inone man once because he bought a pair of patent-leather tan shoes in hisJunior year. We argued that, if he had the nerve to wear the things tohis Y. M. C. A. Meetings, there must be some originality in him afterall--and we took a chance. We won. But it's a risky business. Once fivefrats rushed a fellow for a month because of the beautiful clothes hewore--and just after the victorious bunch had initiated him a clothinghouse came down on the young man and took the whole outfit. You can'talways tell at first sight. But then, I don't know but that collegefraternities exercise as much care and judgment in picking brothers aswomen do in picking husbands. Many a woman has married a fine mustacheor a bunch of noble clothes and has taken the thing that wore them onspec. 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 thefall. There were the Alfalfa Delts, who had a house in the same blockwith us and were snobbish just because they had initiated a locomotiveworks, two railroads and a pickle factory. Then there were the SighWhoopsilons, who got to Siwash first and who regarded the rest of uswith the same kindly tolerance with which the Indians regarded DanielBoone. And there were the Chi Yis, who fought society hard and alwayshad their picture taken for the college annual in dress suits. Many'sthe time I've loaned my dress suit to drape over some green young ChiYi, so that the annual picture could show an unbroken row of open-facedvests. And there were the Shi Delts, who were a bold, bad bunch; and theFli Gammas, who were good, pious boys, about as exciting as asmooth-running prayer-meeting; and the Delta Kappa Sonofaguns, who gotevery political office either by electing a member or initiating one;and the Delta Flushes; and the Mu Kow Moos; the Sigma Numerous; and twoor three others that we didn't lie awake nights worrying about. Everyone of these bunches had one burning ambition--that was to initiate thevery best men in the Freshman class every fall. That made it necessaryfor us, in order to maintain our proud position, to disappoint each oneof them every year and to make ourselves about as popular as thedirectors 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 andtimid and nervous and contrary youngsters past all the temptations andpitfalls 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 weeksbefore, is as bad as trying to herd a bunch of whales into a fishpondwith nothing but hot air for gads. It took diplomacy, pugnacity andpsychological moments, I tell you; and it took more: it took ingenuityand inventiveness and cheek and second sight and cool heads in time oftrouble and long heads on the job, from daybreak to daybreak. I'd rathergo out and sell battleships to farmers, so far as the toughness of thejob is concerned, than to tackle the job of persuading a wise younghigh-school product with two chums in another frat that my bunch and hewere made for each other. What did he care for our glorious history? Wehad to use other means of getting him. We had to hypnotize him, dazehim, waft him off his feet; and if necessary we had to get the otherfrats 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 haveto; 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 thatused to roll up around old Eta Bita Pie like a tornado convention andthreaten to engulf the bright, beautiful world and turn it into ahowling desert, peopled only by Delta Kappa Whoops and otherundesirables. I'm far enough away, now, to forget the heart-burstingsuspense 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 theFreshman class president that he cut a date with us and sequesteredhimself in the Shi Delt house in an upper back room, with the horribleintention of pledging himself the next morning. Four of the largest ShiDelts sat on the front porch that evening and the telephone gotparalysis right after supper. They had told the boy that if he joinedthem he would probably have to leave school in his Junior year to becomegovernor; and he didn't want to see any of us for fear we would wake himup. I chuckle yet when I think of those four big bruisers sitting on thefront porch and guarding their property while I was shinning up thecorner post of the back porch, leaving a part of my trousers flutteringon a nail and ordering the youngster in a blood-curdling whisper to handdown his coat, unless he wanted to lose forever his chance of beingcaptain of the football team in his Sophomore year. He weighed thegovernorship against the captaincy for a minute, but the right triumphedand 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 firmthe next morning. When the Shi Delts came in and found that Freshmanpledged to another gang they had a convulsion that lasted a week; and tothis day they don't know how the crime was committed. 

There was another Freshman, I remember, who was led violently astray bythe Chi Yis and was about to pledge to them under the belief that theirgang contained every man of note in the United States. We had to get himover to the house and palm off a lot of our alumni as leading actors andauthors, who had dropped in to dinner, before he was sufficientlyimpressed to reason with us. Of course this is not what the Englishwould call "rully sporting, don't you know!" but in our consciences itwas all classified as revenge. We got the same doses. Pillings, of theMu Kow Moos, pulled one of our spikes out in beautiful fashion once byimpersonating our landlord. He rushed up the steps just as a Freshmanrushee was starting down all alone and demanded the rent for six monthson the spot, threatening to throw us out into the street that minute. The Freshman hesitated just long enough to get his clothes out of thehouse, 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 ofthe men we were just about to land had a great disgust for two of ourmen. What did one of their alumni do but happen craftily over our wayand mention in the most casual manner the undying admiration that theboy had for those two? Of course we sandwiched him between them for aweek--and of course we were pained and grieved when he tossed us intothe discard; but we got even with them the next year. We picked up aneminent young pugilist, who made his headquarters in the next town, andfor a little consideration and a suit of clothes that was a regularcollege yell we got him to hang around the campus for a week. We rushedhim 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 regulatedindignation and then proposed to him. When he told them that he mightconsider coming to school--as soon as he had gone South and had cleanedup a couple of good scraps--they let out an awful shriek and fumigatedthe house. They were nice young chaps, but no judge of a pugilist. Theyexpected to be able to see his hoofs. 

Well, it was this way every year all fall. Ding-dong, bing-bang, giveand take, no quarter and pretty nearly everything fair. As I said, itwasn't considered exactly proper to burn a rival frat house in order todistract the attention of the occupants while they were entertaining aFreshman, but otherwise we did pretty nearly what we pleased to eachother--only being careful to do it first. Of course a lot of things arefair in love and war that would not be considered strictly ethical in agame of croquet. And rushing a Freshman is as near like love asanything I know of. It isn't that we love the Freshman so much. When Ithink of some of the trash we fought over and lost I have to laugh. Butwe couldn't bear the idea of losing him. To sit by and watch anothergang win the affections of a young fellow who you know is designed byNature for your frat and the football team; to note him graduallybreaking off the desperate chumminess that has grown up between you inthe last forty-eight hours; to think that in another day he will have onthe pledge colors of another fraternity and will be lost to you foreverand ever and ever, and then some--what is losing a mere girl to someother fellow compared with that? Of course I realize now that, even if aFreshman does join another frat, you can eventually get chummy with himagain after college days are over if you find him worth crossing thestreet to see; and I find myself lending money to Shi Delts andborrowing 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 oldnerves in college. 

[Illustration: Naturally I was somewhat dazzled _Page 147_]

When I was in school the Alfalfa Delts, the Sigh Whoopsilons and the ChiYis were giving us a horrible race. I'm willing to admit it now, thoughI'd have fought Jeffries before doing it ten years ago. Each fall wasone long whirlwind. The President of the United States in anoffice-seekers' convention would have had a placid time compared withthe Freshmen. We didn't exactly use real axes on each other and wedidn't actually tear any Freshman in two pieces, but we came as near thelimit 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 youentertained them some frat with a better quartet worked outside thehouse. If you took them out to call the parlor would fill up withriffraff in no time; and if you took your eye off your victim for aminute he was gone--some other gang had got him. I sometimes think someof the crowds knew how to palm Freshmen the way magicians do, from theway they disappeared. 

Even the girls took a hand in it. When I was a Sophomore I was intrustedwith the task of leading a Freshman three blocks down to Browning Hallto call on one of our solid girls, and before I had gone a block twoSenior girls met us. They were bare acquaintances of mine, being strongDelta Kap. Allies, and they usually managed to see me only after asevere effort; but this time you'd have thought I was a whole regimentof fiancés. They literally fell on my neck. It was cruel of me, theydeclared, to be so unsociable. There I was, a football hero--I'd justbroken my rib on the scrub team--and every girl in school was dying totell me how grand it was to suffer for one's college; and yet I wouldn'tso much as hint that I wanted to come to the sorority parties--and lotsmore talk of the same kind. Naturally I was somewhat dazzled and I'dwalked about half a block with the prettiest one before I noticed thatthe other one was steering Freshie the other way. I turned around andnever even said "Good day" to that girl; but it was too late. About adozen Delta Kaps appeared out of the ground and tried to look surprisedas they gathered around that scared little Freshman and engulfed him. Wenever saw him again--that is, in his innocent condition--and the boyswouldn't even trust me with the pledges we were rushing around for baitthe rest of the fall term. Bait? Oh, yes. Sometimes we'd pledge a man onthe quiet and leave him out a week or two, so that plenty of frats couldbid him--made them appreciate his worth, you know, and got every onewell acquainted. 

By the time I was a Senior the competition was desperate. We spent thesummers scouring the country for prospects and we spent the first weekof school smuggling our trophies into our houses and pledging them, without giving the other fellow a look in--that is, we tried to. We cameback 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 inChicago. It was brief and erratic, like Snooty himself, and read asfollows:

 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 tocollege--age, weight, complexion, habits and time of arrival unknown. That telegram qualified Snooty for the paresis ward. We didn't even knowwhat Smith his millionaire father was. The world is full of Smiths whoare pestered by automobile agents. All we knew was the fact that we hadto find him, grab him, sequester him where no meddling Alfalfa Delt orChi Yi could find him, and make him fall in love with us inside offorty-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 haveto 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 threeminutes--and then got busy. It was matriculation day. There were half adozen trains to come yet from Chicago on various roads. We had to meetthem all, pick out the right man by his aura or by the way the porterlooked 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. Wesent 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 prepschool how to register and find a room, and pick out textbooks; andincidentally how to distinguish a crowd of magnificent young studentleaders from eleven wrangling bunches of miscellaneous thickheads, whowouldn't like anything better than to rope in a couple of good men toteach them the ways of the world. We were succeeding in this to thequeen's taste, having accidentally dropped in on our porch with thepair, when young Crawford rushed up green with despair and took therushing committee inside. He almost cried when he told us. He'd watchedthe train as carefully as he could, he said, but he couldn't beeverywhere at once; and so a couple of Mu Kow Moos had got Smith. Heknew it because he had heard them ask what his name was and he had toldthem Smith. He'd pretty nearly wrecked his brain trying to think of anexcuse to butt in, but they had taken the boy away and he'd run all theway to the house to see if something couldn't be done. 

Petey Simmons had listened, sitting crosslegged on the windowseat, whichwas a habit of his. Petey was a Senior and his deep studies in rhetoricduring his four years in the frat had given him a great power ofexpression. He turned to the despairing Crawford and reduced him to acinder 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'dwrite to her mother for permission to cheer her up. Which way did theygo?"

"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. Webrought in those big prep school boys and tried to give them the time oftheir lives, but our hearts weren't in it. We were thinking of those MuKow Moos--that frat of all others--blissfully towing home a prize they'dstumbled onto and didn't know anything about! We thought of thosebeautifully designed air-castles we were hoping to move into and we gotpumpkins in our throats. Stung on the first day of school by a bunchthat had to wear their pins on their neckties to keep from beingmistaken for a literary society! Oh, thunder! We went in to dinner allsmeared up with gloom. Then the door opened and Petey came in. He wasfive feet five, Petey was, but he stooped when he came under thechandelier. 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 perambulatingnational bank, with a wheelbarrow of spending-money every month. He waswell-enough dressed and all that, but he didn't loom up in anymountainous fashion as to looks. He was runty and his hair was a kind ofdiscouraged red. He had freckles, too, and he was so bashful that hisvoice blushed when he used it. He didn't have a word to say untildinner, when he said "thank you" to Sam, the waiter. Altogether he wasso meek that he had us worried; but then, as Allie Bangs said, you can'talways tell about these multimillionaires. Some of them didn't have thenerve of a mouse. He'd seen millionaires in New York, he said, who wereafraid of cab drivers. 

"And besides, " said Petey, when a few of us were talking it over afterdinner, "I'd never have got him if he hadn't been so meek. I wasdetermined that no Mu Kow Moo was going to hang anything on us; and whenI saw the three of them coming I waded right in. Allison and Briggs, those two dumb Juniors, were doing the steering. It was like takingcandy from the baby. I just fell right into them and took about fiveminutes to tell those two how glad I was to see them back. I introducedmyself to Smith; and--would you believe it?--he was still carrying hissuitcase! I grabbed it and apologized for not having carried it all theway up from the station. You should have seen those yaps scowl. Theywanted to shred me up, but I never noticed them again. I pointed out allthe 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 walkahead; and I shoved him right into the middle of the walk and madeAllison and Briggs fall behind. I had a piece of luck just then. OldPete and his sawed-off cab came by and I flagged him in a minute. Ishoved Smith in and got in after him. Then I told the two babes that Icould take care of Smith all right and that there was no need of theirwalking clear up to the house. After that I shut the door and we cameaway. If looks could kill I'd be tuning up my harp this minute. Say, ifI didn't have any more nerve than those two I'd get a permit from thecity to live. And all the time Smith never made a kick. I had himhypnotized. 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 thenSymington came in with some astounding news. The Alfalfa Delts had a mannamed 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 havehim benevolently assimilated before twenty-four hours. Naturally thiscreated a tremendous lot of emotion around our house. It was a serioussituation. We might have the right Smith and then again we might have aSmith 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 youngaffections. 

Did you ever snuggle up to a young captain of industry and ask him whohis father was and whether he was important enough in the business worldto be indicted by the Government for anything? That was the job wetackled that night. Smith was meek enough, but somehow even Petey'snerve had its limits. We approached the subject from every corner of thecompass. We led up to it, we beat around it--and finally we gotdesperate and led the boy up to it. But he was too shy to come down withthe information. Yes, he lived in Chicago. Oh, on the North Side. Yes, he guessed the stock market was stronger. Yes, the Annex was a greathotel. No, he didn't know whether they were going to put a tower on theBoard of Trade or not. Yes, the lake Shore Drive was dusty insummer. --[Good!]--He wouldn't care to live on it. --[Bah!]--Altogether hewas as unsatisfactory to pump as a well full of dusty old brickbats. Just then Rawlins, who had been scouting around seeing what he could runagainst in the dark of the moon, arrived with the stunning informationthat the Chi Yis had a man named Smith, of Oak Park, at their house andthat every corner of the lawn was guarded by picked men!

When we got this news most of us went upstairs and bathed our heads incold water. Oak Park sounded even more suspicious than Chicago. It's asolid mahogany suburb and everybody there is somebody or other. You haveto 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 inschool. 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 keepour 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. Itmeant that at least one frat wasn't sure of its man. Maybe neither onewas. Our scouts had reported that, from what they could pick up, neitherSmith 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 aguileless sixty-five-dollar-a-month operator against a bunch of craftyyoung diplomatists? They had read our telegram and were after the sameSmith that we were. 

By morning the suspense around the house could have been shoveled outwith a pitchfork. If one of the other frats had the right Smith and knewit, and had pledged him during the night, there was positively no use inliving 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 comfortus much. It was too confoundedly puzzling. Maybe we had the heir to asubtreasury 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 hisfather 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 heardthe 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 againand asked Central excitedly why she had cut him off. Central said shehadn'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 upcontentedly and we all turned handsprings over the library table. Fiftyper 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 theAlfalfa Delts, a ponderous personage, who wore a silk hat on Sunday anddid instructing, came over and asked if we had a man named Smith withus. He was to be a pupil of his, he said, and he wanted to arrange hiswork. Of course Matheson was hoping to get a green man at the door, buthe didn't have any luck. Bangs himself let him in and let him read twoor three magazines through in the library while we turned some morehandsprings--in the dining room this time. The Alfalfa Delts werefishing, too. It was a fair field and no favors. 

After a while Bangs told Matheson that the man named Smith presented hiscompliments and said it was all a mistake. His tutor's name was notMatheson, but Muttonhead. That sent Matheson away as pleasant as youplease. 

All that day we sat around and beat off the enemy and got beaten offourselves. Our Smith got a Faculty notice to appear at once andregister--that is, it got as far as the door. We sent it back to the ChiYi 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: "Socareless of father!" Blanchard called up the fire department and sent itover to the Chi Yi house, hoping to be able to slip over and cut outSmith in the confusion that followed; but the game was too old. The ChiYis 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 abook to the cook; and in the proceedings that followed we discoveredthat the book had a ten-dollar bill in it. All around, it was anentertaining but profitless day. By night, there wasn't another idealeft in the three camps. We sat exhausted, each clutching its Smith andglaring at the other two. 

As far as our Smith was concerned we almost wished some one would stealhim. He was about as interesting as a pound of baking powder. What withfishing for his Bradstreet rating, and inventing lies to keep him fromgoing out and seeing the town, and watching the horizon for predatoryAlfalfa Delts and Chi Yis, we were plumb worn out. We were so skittishthat, when the bell rang about eight o'clock, we let it ring four timesmore before we answered it; and when the ringer claimed to be an EtaBita Pie from Muggledorfer who had come over to attend Siwash, we madehim repeat pretty nearly the whole ritual before we would consider hiscredentials good. 

He got in at last, slightly peevish at our unbrotherly welcome, and tookhis place in the library circle. We were explaining the whole situationto him, when Allie Bangs gave an earnest yell and stood on his head inthe corner. 

"What did you say your name was?" he asked the visitor after he had beenset 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 goingto organize a Smith Club. Do you hear? Don't let me catch you forgettingyour name now--and listen closely. "

It was all as simple as beating a standpat Congressman. Maxwell was astranger, of course. He was to pin his Eta Bita Pie pin on hisundershirt and go forth in the morning a brand-new Smith, green andguileless. It was to occur to him just before chapel that a Smith Clubought to be formed and he was to post a notice to that effect. He wouldget a couple of well-known non-fraternity Smiths interested and havethem visit the houses and see the Chicago Smiths. With all the Smiths insession that night he ought to have no difficulty in finding out whichwas the son of old man Smith. He could be lowdown and vulgar enough toask right out if he wished. If he found out he was to cut out that Smithand bring him to our house--if he had to bind and gag him. If he didn'the was to bring all three--if he could. 

There was a quiet and most reassuring tone in Maxwell's voice as hesaid: "I can. " They evidently had their little troubles at Muggledorfer, too. 

"After we get them here, " said Bangs earnestly, "we'll just pledge allthree. We'll surely get the right one that way and perhaps the other twowill not be so bad. "

Upstairs, Petey Simmons was wearily explaining to our Smith for theninth time that Freshmen were not allowed to appear on the campus forthe first three days; and that it was considered good form to keepindoors until the Sophomore rush; and that there wasn't a room left intown anyway, and he might as well stay with us a while; and that thepolice were looking for college students downtown and locking them up, as they did each fall, to show their authority. Blanchard relieved himof his task and he came downstairs mopping his brow. Then we went towork and planned details until midnight. It was to be the plot of thecentury and every wheel had to mesh. 

We spent the next day in a cold perspiration. Neither Alfalfa Delt norChi Yi paraded any pledged Freshmen. They were still hunting for theright Smith, too--evidently. They fell for the Smith Club plan with suchsuspicious eagerness that it was plain each bunch had some nasty, low-lived scheme up its sleeves. We were righteously indignant. It wasour game and they ought not to butt in. But Maxwell only smiled. He wasa Napoleon, that boy was. He just waved us aside. "I'll run this littlething the way we do at Muggledorfer, " he explained. "You fellows canplay a few lines of football pretty well, but when it comes tosurrounding a Freshman and making a Greek out of him, I wouldn't takelessons from old Ulysses himself. " And so we left him alone and heldeach 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 aroom in an out-of-the-way part of town and his plan was to take themover there after the meeting to discuss the future good of the SmithClub. Then about a dozen of us would slide gently over there--and acurtain would have to be drawn over the woe that would ensue for theother gangs. Meanwhile, all we had to do was to sit around the house andgnaw our fingers. Maxwell called for our Smith last and he had the othertwo in tow. Oh, no; we didn't invite them in. Two Alfalfa Delts andthree Chi Yis were sitting on our porch, visiting us. Three Chi Yis andtwo Eta Bita Pies were sitting on the Alfalfa Delt porch. Four EtaBites and two Alfalfa Delts were calling on the Chi Yi house. It was acritical moment and none of us was taking chances. We couldn't keep ourSmiths from wandering, but we could make sure they didn't wander intothe wrong place. 

Maxwell led his flock of Smiths away and we all sat and talked to eachother in little short bites. The Chi Yis were nervous as rabbits. Theylooked at their watches every five minutes. The Alfalfa Delts listenedto us with one ear and swept the other around the gloom. The night wascharged with plots. Innumerable things seemed trembling in the immediatefuture. When the visitors excused themselves a little later, and wentaway very hurriedly, we learned with pleasure from one of our boys, whohad 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 fourteenChi Yis, who had dropped in casually. First blood for us! Maxwell hadevidently succeeded in segregating his Smiths. We expected a telephonecall 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 ourearnest request and informed us that the young carouser who had rentedher room had not been there that evening; and that if we were his rowdyfriends 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 theother hand were riotous. Every one of them had a pleasant greeting forus. They slapped us on the back and asked us how we were coming on inour rushing. Matheson was particularly vicious. He came over to Bangsand put his arm around him in a friendly way. "I am going to have dinnerwith my pupil to-night, " he said triumphantly. "He wants me to come overand get his trunk. Says he's got a good room now and he's much obligedto you fellows for your trouble. Have you heard that there's anotherSmith in school--son of a big Chicago man? There's some great materialhere this fall, don't you think?"

Bangs tripped on Matheson's pet toe and went away. Something horriblehad happened. How we hated those Alfalfa Delts! They had stung usbefore, but this was a triple-expansion, double-back-action, high-explosive sting, with a dum dum point. We hurt all over; and theworst of it was, we hadn't really been stung yet and didn't know whereit was going to hit us. Did you ever wait perfectly helpless while alarge, taciturn wasp with a red-hot tail was looking you over?

The Alfalfa Delts frolicked up and down college that day, Smithless butblissful. We consoled ourselves with a couple of corking chaps whom theDelta Flushes had been cultivating, and put the ribbons on them inrecord time. Ordinarily we would have been perfectly happy about this, but instead we were perfectly miserable. We detailed four men at a timeto be gay and carefree with our pledges; and the rest of us sat aroundand listened to our bursting hearts. Of all the all-gone and utterlyhopeless feelings, there is nothing to compare with the one you havewhen your frat--the pride of the nation--has just been tossed into thediscard by some hollow-headed Freshman. 

I took my head out of my hands just before dinner and went down thestreet to keep a rushing engagement. I had to pass the Alfalfa Delthouse. It hurt like barbed wire, but I had to look. I was that miserablethat it couldn't have bothered me much more, anyway, to see that wildlyhappy bunch. But I didn't see it. I saw instead a crowd of fellows onthe porch who made our dejection look like disorderly conduct. There wasenough gloom there to fit out a dozen funerals, and then there wouldhave been enough left for a book of German philosophy. The crowd lookedat me and I fancied I heard a slight gnashing of teeth. I didn'thesitate. I just walked right up to the porch and said: "Howdedo? Lovelyevening!" says I. "How many Smiths have you pledged to-day?"

The gang turned a dark crimson. Then Matheson got up and came down tome. 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 yourwhole crowd. You're lowdown skates--that's what you are. You'redishonorable and sneaky. You're cads! We'll get even. I give youwarning. We'll get even if it takes a hundred years. "

"Thanks!" says I. "Hope it takes twice as long. " Then I went back homeand let my date take care of itself. 

 * * * * *

We went through dinner in a daze and sat around, that night, like abunch of vacant grins on legs. Our grins were vacant because we didn'tknow why we were grinning. We'd stung the Alfalfa Delts. We didn't knowwhy 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 wereextremely likely to burst at the seams. 

It turned up about nine o'clock. There was a commotion at the front doorand Maxwell came in. He was followed by an avalanche of Smiths. Therewas our Smith, and a tall, lean Smith, and a Smith who waddled when hewalked. They were all dirty and dusty; they all wore our pink-and-bluepledge ribbons on their coat lapels and when they got in the house theygave the Eta Bita Pie yell and sang about half of the songbook. Maxwellhad not only pledged them, but he had educated them. 

After we had stopped carrying the bunch about on our shoulders, and hadput the roof of the house back, and had righted the billiard table, andpersuaded the cook to come down out of a tree in the back yard, weallowed Maxwell to tell his story. 

"It was perfectly simple, " he said. "Didn't expect to be kidnapped, ofcourse; but it's all in the day's work. You've no idea what a job I hadgetting colors to pin on these chumps. If it hadn't been for my pinkgarters and a blue union suit I'd put on yesterday--"

We stopped Maxwell and backed him up to the starting pole again. But hewas no story-teller. He skipped like a cheap gas engine. We had to takethe story away from him piece by piece. He'd dodged his Smiths down aside street, it seems, on the plea that there weren't any more Smithscoming--and they might as well go over to his room. All would have beenwell if one Smith hadn't got an awful thirst. There was a corner drugstore on the way to the room and while the quartet were insulting theirdigestions with raspberry ice-cream soda a college man with a wicked eyecame by. A few minutes later, just as they were crossing the railroadviaduct near Smith's home, two closed carriages drove up and six huskyvillains fell upon them, shouting: "Chi Yi forever!" And after dumpingthem 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'tseem to care much whether I was kidnapped or not. It would bind us fourcloser together after we escaped; and, besides, I have never foundkidnapping to pay--too much risk. Anyway, they drove us nothing lessthan twenty miles and bundled us into an old deserted house. The leadertold us, with a whole lot of unnecessary embroidery, that we were tostay 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 gangdisguised as Chi Yis. The Alfalfa Delts would send another gang out thenext day, rout the bogus Chi Yis and allow the poor Freshies to fall ontheir necks and pledge up. That used to be popular at Muggledorfer. 

"I did the talking and let my knees knock together considerably. I toldthem that we'd been too badly shaken up to think, but if they would letus alone that night we'd try to learn to love them by morning. So theyput us upstairs and warned us that every window was guarded; then we laydown together and I began at the first chapter and pumped those chapsfull of Eta Bita Pie all night. 

[Illustration: With our colors on and four particularly wicked-lookingchair legs in our hands _Page 167_]

"It was six o'clock when they finally pledged. When the gang came upthey found us adamant. 'Never!' said I. 'We'll pledge Alfalfa Delt ordie martyrs to a holy cause!' Of course they didn't dare givethemselves away. They couldn't even shout for joy. All they could do wasto wait for the rescuing party. I spent the day teaching the boys thesongs and the yell in whispers; and about three o'clock I got my grandinspiration about the colors and rigged them out. Then I dug my own pinout and put on my vest and about four o'clock the rescuing party droveup. Say, you'd have laughed to see that fight! Ham-actors in Richard theThird 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 Deltsburst open the door just as I got the chorus going on that grand oldsong:

 "_'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 particularlywicked-looking chair legs in our hands, they gave one simultaneousgasp--and say, boys, I don't believe in ghosts, but I don't see yet howthey disappeared so instantaneously! And anyway, for Heaven's sake, bring out the prog. We drilled eight miles to a railroad station and myvest 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, theywere 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 andthe lean one made the debating team; while our own particular firstedition Smith won the catch-as-catch-can chess championship of thecollege three years later. 

Just the same, I'd like to get one fair crack at that Smith who went toJarhard. 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, thatsometimes I'm afraid to go to sleep at night for fear I'll find myselfin an ethnological museum when I wake up the next morning, with peoplemaking funny cracks about the strange clothes I was wearing when theycaught me. 

I'm not constitutionally a back number myself either. I come as nearwearing next year's styles as most fellows, and I had my wrist brokencranking an automobile before most Americans believed the things wouldgo. I was tired of this hand-chopped furniture fad years ago, and if youhand me any slang that I can't catch on the fly you'll have to make itup right now. But there's no use talking. No one man can keep up withthis world all by himself. Sometimes I get to thinking I'm so far aheadthat I can afford to sit down and get a breath or two, and when I get upI have to eat dust for the next year trying to catch up. 

Take colleges, for instance. I've been conceited enough to think thatthese flappy little college boys, with their front hair brushed backdown 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 duringa salad course, perhaps, but as far as looking startled at anything thatmight be said or done around a college campus goes, I've had a notionthat I wasn't in the learning class--which shows how much I knew aboutit. This morning a gosling from the old school--a Sophomore--came in andvisited with me for a few minutes, on the strength of the fact that heknew my baby brother in high school. We hadn't talked a minute before hehanded me "pragmatism" and "zing-slingers. " While I was rolling my eyesand clawing for a foothold he confessed that he was the best glider incollege. When I remarked that I had been somewhat of a glider myself, but that I had preferred the twostep, he laughed and explained that hewas captain of the aviation team--that they had three gliders and werefinishing a monoplane that had a home-made engine with concentriccylinders. 

Can you beat it? There I was, Petey Simmons' best friend, and personallyacquainted with eleven thousand forms of college excitement, listeningto 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 sohumiliated in my life, but there's no getting around the truth. I'vebeen ten years out of college, and when I go back they'll pull thegrandfather clause on me and wheel me in early nights. I'm a back numberand I know the symptoms. When that young Sophomore told me the boys ofEta Bita Pie had just spent twenty dollars apiece on a formal dance andhouse party, I put up the same kind of a lecture to him that my fathergave me when I explained that we simply had to spend five dollars apieceon our party, or belong in the fag end of things. And I suppose when myfather's crowd blew in a couple of dollars for a load of wood, hisfather reminded him that when HE went to college they didn't coddlethemselves with fires in their dormitories. And I suppose that some daythis Sophomore will be telling his son that when he was in college asimple little home-made aeroplane furnished amusement for twentyfellows, and that they never dreamed of dropping over to the coast onSaturdays 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 arock on the wheels of progress--and there's no use trying to ride thedarned thing either. It'll throw you every time. 

When I went to college, Billy--loud pedal on that "I"--things weredifferent. We didn't spend our time fooling with gliders or blowourselves up monkeying with pragmatism. We attended strictly tobusiness. We were there for educational purposes and we had no time tochase humming birds and chicken hawks. Why, the gasoline money of ayoung collegian to-day would have paid my board bills then! We didn'tgo to Japan on baseball tours, or lug telescopes around South Americawhen 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 incollege, and as for wasting our money on motion-picture shows andtaxi-cabs--nonsense. We'd have died first. 

You see I'm getting into practice. Some day I'll have a son, I hope, andhe'll go back to Siwash. Just wait till he comes home at the end of thefirst semester and tries to put across any bills for radium stickpinsand lookophonic conversations with the co-eds at Kiowa. I'll pull aWhen-I-was-at-Siwash lecture on him that will make him feel like aspider on a hot stove. If I've got to be a back number I want to rompright back far enough to have some fun out of it. I'll make him sweat asmuch lugging me up to date as I had to perspire in the old days toilluminate things for Pa. 

After all, there is no question at college more serious than the Paquestion, anyway, Bill. It was always butting into our youthfulambitions 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 ormore away into the supreme importance of certain college necessities. Itisn't because they forget, either. It's because they don't realize thatthe 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. Hewanted 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 forfrat dues; but when it came to paying cab hire, you could jam anappropriation for a post-office in an enemy's district past Joe Cannonin Congress more easily than you could put a carriage bill through him. He just said "no" in nine languages; said that when he went toSiwash--"and it turned out good men then, too, young fellow"--the girlswere glad to walk to entertainments through the mud; and when it wasunusually muddy they weren't averse to being carried a short distance. Ibelieve I would have had to lead disgusted co-eds to parties on footthrough my whole college course if I hadn't happened across an oldcollege picture of father in a two-gallon plug hat. That gave me anidea. I put in a bill for a plug hat twice a year and he paid it withouta murmur. Then I paid my carriage bills with the money. Plug hats hadbeen the peculiar form of insanity prevalent at Siwash in his day and hethought they were still part of the course of study. 

I got along much easier than many of the boys, too. Allie Bangs' Pa madehim buy all his clothes at home, for fear he'd get to looking like someof the cartoons he'd seen in the funny papers. "Prince" Hogboom was awonder of a fullback, and his favorite amusement was to get out at nightand try to pull gas lamps up by the roots. He was a natural born holyterror, but his father thought he was fitted by nature to be amissionary, and so Hoggie had to harness himself up in meek andlong-suffering clothes and attend Bible-study class twice a week. Thecrimes he committed by way of relieving himself after each class wereshocking. Then there was Petey Simmons, who was a perpetual sunbeam andgreatly beloved because it was so easy to catch happiness from him. Andyet Petey went through school with a cloud over his young life, in theshape of a Pa who gave him a thousand dollars a year for expenses andwouldn't allow a single cent of it to be spent for frivolity. And he hada blanket definition for frivolity that covered everything from dancingparties to pie at an all-night lunch counter. By hard work Petey couldspend about four hundred dollars on necessary expenses, and that lefthim six hundred dollars a year to blow in on illuminated manuscripts, student lamps, debating club dues and prints of the old masters. He hadto borrow money from us all through the year, and then hold a greatauction of his art trophies and student lamps, before vacation came, inorder to pay us back. 

But all of these troubles weren't even annoyances beside what KegRearick had to endure. Keg was an affectionate contraction of his realnickname--"Keghead. " He had the worst case of "Pa" I ever heard of. Hewas a regular high explosive--one of these fine, old, hair-triggeredgentlemen, who consider that they have done all the thinking that theworld needs and refuse to have any of their ideas altered or edited inany particular. Keg had had his life laid out for him since the day ofhis birth, and when he left for Siwash--on the precise day announced byhis father eighteen years before--the old man stood him up anddiscoursed with him as follows:

"My son, I am about to give you the finest education obtainable. You areto go down to Siwash and learn how to be a credit to me. Let me impressit on you that that is your only duty. You will meet there companionswho will try to persuade you that there are other things to be done incollege 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 inLatin and Greek. Mathematics I am not so particular about. You are towaste no time on athletics and other modern curses of college. I shallpay your expenses and I shall come down occasionally to see how you areprogressing. And you know me well enough to know that if I find youdeviating from the course I have laid out in any particular, you willreturn home and go into the store at six dollars a week. "

That's the way Keg always repeated it to us. With that affectionatefarewell ringing in his ears he came on down to Jonesville; and when theEta Bita Pies saw his honest features and his particularly likablesmile, they surrounded and assimilated him in something less thanfifteen minutes by the clock. And then his troubles began. Keg's fatherhad come down the week before school and had selected a quiet placeabout three miles from the college--out beyond the cemetery in a nicelonely neighborhood, where there was just about enough company to keepthe telephone poles from getting despondent. Moreover, he hadn't givenKeg any spending money. 

"Education is the cheapest thing in the world, " he roared. "You don'thave to keep your pockets full of dollars to live in the times of Homerand Horace. I've told them to let you have what you need at thebookstore. For the rest, the college library should be your haunt andthe debating society your recreation. " If ever any one was gettingknowledge put down his throat with a hydraulic ram, it certainly was KegRearick. 

It isn't hard to imagine the result. Keg toiled away three miles fromanything interesting and got bluer and gloomier and more anarchisticevery day. Wouldn't have been so bad if nobody had loved him. Lots offellows go through college with no particular friends and emerge in goodhealth and spirits. But we had courted Keg and had tried to make itimpossible for him to live without us. We liked him and we hankered forhis company. We wanted to parade him around the campus and confer himupon the prettiest co-ed in his boarding hall, and teach him to sing agreat variety of interesting songs, with no particular sense to them, and snatch off two or three important offices around school. Instead ofthat he only got to say "howdy" to us between classes, and the rest ofhis time he spent Edward Payson Westoning back and forth from hissuburban lair, without a cent in his pockets and the street-carmotor-men giving him the bell to get off of the track into the mud everyother block. 

We very soon found this wasn't going to do. Keg's spirits were downabout two notches below the absolute zero. If this was college life, hesaid, would somebody kindly take a pair of forceps and remove it. Itached. The upshot was we made Keg steward of the frat-house table, whichpaid his board and room and moved him into the chapter house. Heobjected at first, because of what his father would say when he heard ofit. But he finally concluded that anything he might say would bepleasanter than going all day without hearing anything, so hesurrendered and came along. 

The first night at dinner, when we pushed back our chairs and sang a fewlines by way of getting ready to go upstairs and chink a little assortedlearning into our headpieces, Keg cried for pure joy. He buckled down towork the way a dog takes hold of a root, and inside of a week hecouldn't remember a time in his young existence when he had beenunhappy. He was tossing out Greek declensions to the prof. Like ageyser, and Conny Matthews, our champion Livy unraveler, had shown himhow to hold a Latin verb in his teeth while he broke open the rest ofthe sentence. And, besides that, we had introduced him to all thenicest girls in the college and had assisted the glee club coach todiscover that he had a fine tenor voice. He was a sure-enough find, andfitted 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 itsomewhere. Rearick's father furnished the gloom. He was certainly themost rambunctious, most unreconstructed and most egregious Pa that evertried to turn the sunshine off of a bright young college career. Regularly once a week a letter would come to Keg from him. It alwaysbegan "When I was in college, " and it always wound up by ordering Keg toeat a few assorted lemons for the good of his future. He was to go tomorning prayer, regularly--there hadn't been any for twenty years. Hewas to become as well acquainted as possible with his professors, because of the inspiration it would give him--fancy snuggling up to oldGrubb. He was to take a Sunday-school class at once. He was to rememberabove all things that though it was a disgrace to waste a minute of theprecious college years it was equally a disgrace to go through collegewithout being self-supporting. He should by all means learn to milk atonce. He, Keg's father, had been valet to a couple of very fine Holsteincows while he was in college, and he attributed much of his success tothis fact. He would of course pay Keg's expenses while he had to, but hewould hold it to his discredit. He must at once begin to find work. 

This last command impressed Keg deeply, for he had been sailing alongwith 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 evergot a student boarder they firmly declined to rebate. It's pretty hardto butterfly joyously along with the fancy-vest gang without any otherassets than unlimited credit at the bookstore, so Keg began to prowl fora job. Presently he picked up a laundry route. The laundry wagon was afavorite vehicle on which to ride to fame and knowledge in those days. By getting up early two mornings a week and working late nights, Kegmanaged to put away about six dollars and forty-five cents a week, providing every one paid his laundry bill. He was so pleased and tickledover the idea that he wrote to his father at once explaining that he nowhad 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 nosuch things as laundry wagons in his day. Students were lucky if theyhad a shirt to wear and one to have washed at the same time. He wrote aletter back to Keg that bit him in every paragraph. He was to give upthe frivolous laundry job and get some wood to saw. That and tendingcows were the only real methods of toiling through college. He, Keg'sfather, had received his board and room for milking cows and doingchores, and he had sometimes earned as much as three dollars a weekafter school hours and before breakfast sawing cordwood at seventy-fivecents a cord. It was healthful and classic. He would send his old saw byexpress. And he was further to remember--there were about four morepages to memorize, a headache in every page. 

Good old Keg did his best to be obedient, but he had no chance. In thefirst place, cordwood was phenomenally scarce in Jonesville, and anyway, people had a vicious habit of hindering the cause of education by sawingit at the wood-yards with a steam saw. There were plenty of cows in theoutskirts, but they were either well provided with companions for theirleisure hours, or their owners declined to allow Keg to practice onthem--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 aweek at his frivolous laundry job, some of which cash he was saving upfor a dress suit. And then, one day, Pa Rearick blew in for anothervisit 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 hearingit, although we went out-of-doors at once--one might have thought thatKeg had been caught in a gilded den of sin, playing poker withbody-snatchers. Pa Rearick simply cut loose and bombarded theneighborhood with red-hot adjectives. That he should have brought up ason to do him honor and should have found him dawdling his collegemoments away with loafers; fawning on the idle sons of the rich;tinkling a mandolin instead of walking with Homer; wasting time andmoney instead of trying to earn his way to success--"Bah, " likewise"Faugh, " to say nothing of other picturesque expressions of entiredisgust--from all of which one would judge almost without effort thatKeg was in bad, and in all over. 

I suppose Keg attempted to explain. Possibly some people try to arguewith a funnel-shaped cloud while it is juggling the house and the barnand the piano. Anyway the explanations weren't audible. Presently PaRearick announced, for most of the world to hear, that he was going totake his idle, worthless, disgraced and unspeakable nincompoop of a sonback to his home and set him to weighing out dried apples for the restof his life. Then up rose Keg and spoke quite clearly and distinctly asfollows:

"No, you're not, Dad. "

"Wh-wh-wh-whowhowwy not!" said Pa Rearick, with perfect self-possessionbut some difficulty. 

"Because I like this college and I'm going to stay here, " said Keg. "I'mstanding 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 torepeat all of those few words, but the ukase, when it was completelyout, was the following: Keg was to have a chance to ride home in thecars if he packed up within ten minutes. After that he could walk homeor dance home or play his way home with his mandolin. And he was givento understand that, when he finally arrived, the nearest substitute to afatted calf that would be prepared for dinner would be a plate of coldbeans in the kitchen with the hired man. 

"You may stay here and dawdle with your worthless companions if youdesire, " shouted Pa Rearick to a man in an adjoining county. "The lessonmay be a good one for you. I wash my hands of the whole matter. Butunderstand. Don't write to me for a cent. Not one cent. You've made yourbed. Now lie on it. "

With which he went away, and we tiptoed carefully in to rearrange theshattered atmosphere and comfort Keg. We found him looking thoughtfullyat nothing, with his hands deep in his pockets, from which about sixdollars and seventy-five cents' worth of jingle sounded now and then. Wewaited patiently for him to speak. At last he turned on us and grinnedpensively. 

"Do you know, boys, " he said, "as a bed-maker I can beat the owner ofthat prehistoric old corn-husk mattress out in the suburbs with one handtied behind me. "

 * * * * *

Of course it is a sad thing to be regarded with indignation and disgustby one's only paternal parent, but Keg bore up under it prettymanfully. He dug into his work harder than ever--and he was a goodstudent. 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 timesin a page of Mr. Horace's celebrated metrical salve-slinging. Keg wentinto a literary society, too, and developed such an unholy genius atwadding up the other fellow's words and feeding them back to him that hemade the Kiowa debate in his Freshman year. He also chased locals forthe college paper, made his class football team, got on the track squadand won the Freshman essay prize. In fact, he killed it all year longand likewise he trained all year long with his idle and viciouscompanions--meaning us. 

It beats all how much benefit you can get from training with idle andvicious companions, if you are built that way. Of course we taught himhow 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 andharmless little tricks. But that wasn't half he picked up while he wasloafing away the golden hours of his college course in our chapterhouse. Conny Matthews, whose hobby was Latin verse, plugged him up tosending in translated sonnets from Horace for Freshman themes. NoddyPierce showed him how to grab the weak point in the other fellow'sdebate and hang on to it through the rebuttal, while the enemyfloundered and struggled and splattered disjointed premises all over thehall. Allie Bangs had a bug on fencing, and because he and Keg used totip over everything in the basement trying to skewer each other, theygot to reading up on old French customs of producing artisticconversations and deaths and other things, and eventually they wrote oneof those "Ha" and "Zounds" plays for the Dramatic Club. In fact, there'sno limit to what you can absorb from idle and vicious companions. In oneterm alone I myself picked up banjo playing, pole vaulting, a littleSpanish, a bad case of mumps, and two flunks, simply by associating withthe 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. Itused to make me tired to see the nonchalance with which he would sleuthup to a nice fat thing like a baseball season program, and put away acouple of hundred with a single turn of the wrist and about four days'hard soliciting among the long-suffering Jonesville merchants. I nevercould do it myself. I had the popular desire to work my way throughschool when I entered Siwash, and I pictured myself at the end of mycollege career receiving my diploma in my toil-scarred fist, withouthaving had a cent from home. But pshaw! I was a joke. I mowed one lawnin my Freshman year, after hunting for work for three weeks; and I lostthat engagement because the family decided the hired girl could do itbetter. After that I gave up and took my checks from home like a littleman. In Siwash it is all right to get sent through school, and nobodylooks down on you for it. The boys who make their own way are very kindand never taunt you if you have to lean on Pa. But all the same, youfeel a little bit disgraced. Why, I've seen a cotillon leader run allthe 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 ofthe Interstate Oratorical in my Freshman year had received his laurelwreath and three times three times three times three from the crazystudent body, he excused himself and went off to the house where helived, to fill up the hard-coal heater and pump the water for the nextday's washing. 

As I started to say, some time ago, Keg proved to be a positive geniusin nailing down jobs. He hadn't been with us three months until he hadpresented his laundry route to one of the boys. He didn't have time toattend to it. He had hauled down a chapel monitorship that paid histuition. He got his board and room from us for being steward, and how heever got the fancy eats he gave us out of four dollars per week perappetite is an unsolved wonder. He made twenty-five dollars in one weekby introducing a new brand of canned beans among the hash clubs. He tookorders for bookbinding on Saturdays, and sold advertising programs forthe college functions after school hours. More than once I borrowed tendollars from him that year, while I was living on hope and meeting themailman half-way down the block each morning just before the first ofthe 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 allthe various departments of student bumptiousness, besides absorbingenough information laid down and prescribed by the curriculum to batteran "A" out of old Grubb, who hated to give a top mark worse than mostmen 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 thereare a few hundred joyous loafers who hold down an office or two, andmake one team, and then have only time to take a few hasty peeps at abook while running for chapel; and there are a dozen men who do thedebating and the heavy thinking for half a dozen societies, and makesome athletic team, and get their lessons and make their own living onthe side--and who always have time, somehow, to pick up some new andpleasant pastime, like reading up for an oration on John Randolph, ofRoanoke, or some other eminent has-been. When I think of my wasted yearsin college and of how I was always going to take hold of Psych. AndPolykon 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 maddestis 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 atcommencement time he wrote an affectionate letter home to his volcanicold sire, and told him that he was going to stride forth into theunappreciative world and yank a living away from it that summer. Thatwas the great ambition of almost every Siwash boy. When we weren'tthinking of girls and exams in the blissful spring days, we werestalking 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 summervacation. The farmer boys had a cinch, of course. They were skilledlaborers; and, besides, they came back in the fall in perfect conditionfor the football squad. Some of the town boys became street-carconductors. The new railroad that was built into Jonesville about thattime was a bonanza for us. It was no uncommon thing, the summer of mySophomore year, to find a dozen muddy society leaders shoveling dirt ina construction crew and singing that grand old hymn composed by PeteySimmons, 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 bigwestern roads to-day, and he caught the railroad microbe in the shovelgang. 

The boys got newspaper positions and clerked in the stores, and one ortwo of them tooted cornets or other disturbances at summer-resorthotels. One junior, during my time, aroused the envy of the wholecollege by painting the steeple of the First Baptist Church duringvacation; and when he finished the job his class numerals were paintedin big letters on top of the ornamental knob that tipped the spire. Atleast, so he announced, and no rival class had the nerve to investigate. 

But the most popular road to prosperity during the summer was thecanvassing route. About the last of April various smooth young collegechaps from other schools would drift into Siwash and begin to sign upagents 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 soldin vast numbers at that time by students all over the country. Allthrough May the agents fished for victims. They signed them up withcontracts guaranteeing them back-breaking profits, and then instructedthem with great care in a variety of speeches. Speech No. 1, introductory. Speech No. 2, to women. Speech No. 3, clinching talk forwaverers. Speech No. 4, to parents. Speech No. 5, rebuttal to argumentthat victim already has enough reading matter. Speech No. 6, generalappeal to patriotism and love of progress. Then on Commencement day thehopeful young collegians would go forth to argue with the calm andunresponsive farmer's wife and sell her something that she had neverneeded and had never wanted, until hypnotized by the classic eloquenceof a bright-eyed young man with his foot in the crack of the half-openeddoor. 

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 aboutthe usual proportion--but the rest of us stuck. I devastated a swath ofterritory fifty miles wide and a hundred miles long. I talked, argued, persuaded, plead, threatened and mesmerized. I sold books to men ontwine 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 solda book to him from a tree. I worked two months, tramped four hundredmiles, told the same story of impassioned praise for and confidence inmy book eleven hundred times, and sold sixty-five volumes at a grossprofit of seventy-nine dollars--my expenses being eighty dollars even. But it was worth the effort. I was a shy young thing at the beginningof the summer, who believed that strangers would invariably bite whenspoken to. When school began I was a tanned pirate who believed theworld belonged to him who could grab it, and who would have walked up toa duke and sold him a book on practical farming with as much assuranceas if it were a subpoena I was serving. 

Keg went out with the desk crowd, and it was evident from the firstminute that he was going to return a plutocrat. He sold a desk to thetrain brakeman on his way to his field, and another to a kind oldgentleman who incautiously got into conversation with him. He ragedthrough four counties like a plague, selling desks in farmhouses, publiclibraries, harness stores, banks and old folks' homes. He was theseason's sensation and won a prize every month from the proud and happycompany. When he had finished collecting he took a hasty run to Denveron a sight-seeing trip, and came back to Siwash that fall in a parlorcar, with something over four hundred dollars in his jeans. 

Naturally we would have ceased worrying about the probability of keepingKeg 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 hedrew his own checks when he pleased, instead of taking them the first ofthe month wrapped up in a cayenne coating composed of parental remarkson extravagance and laziness. He gave away all of his little jobs to therest 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 tomanage the college paper that year because no one else could do it quiteso well; and it netted him about fifty dollars a month. When theglee-club manager got cold feet over the poor prospects, Keg backed atrip himself--and I hate to say how much he cleared from it. That wasthe first year we swept the West with our famous football team oftrained mastodons; and at the earnest solicitation of about a dozendaily papers here and there, Keg dashed off something like one hundredyards of football dope at five dollars a column--sort of a literaryhundred-yard dash. He used to write it between bites at the dinnertable. And then to top off everything, his precious desk company camealong and stole him from us early in April. It considered him toovaluable a man to tramp the country selling desks, while there wereother young collegians who only needed the touch of a magic tongue toget them into the great calling. So Keg made a tour of Kiowa andMuggledorfer and Hambletonian and Ogallala colleges, lining upcanvassers at a net profit of something like fifty dollars perhead--full or empty. When he blew in at the end of the year to spendCommencement 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, tooka peep at the balance in his checkbook and touched him humbly foradvances, great and small. 

Keg had gone out the second evening of Commencement week to bring alittle pleasure into the barren life of a girl who hadn't been shown anyattention by any one for upward of four hours. The rest of the boys werealso away scattering seeds of kindness in a similar manner, and so I wasalone when Pa Rearick stumped up the walk to the chapter-house porch andglared at me. 

"I want to see my boy, " he said, out of the corner of his beard. Heseemed to suspect that I had made him into a meat pie or otherwise doneaway 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 acigarette in my most abandoned style and saying all I had to say, whichwas nothing. After a while Pa Rearick glared over at me again in a mostbelligerent manner. 

"Is he well?" he asked. 

"Finer'n silk, " I answered, most disrespectfully. 

"Humph!" said he; which, being freely translated, seemed to mean: "If Ihad an impudent, lazy, immoral, shiftless, unlicked cub like you, I'dgrind 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 timelimping after Homer. " But as I said it only to myself, no one wasinsulted. 

"Has he learned anything?" said old Hostilities, after some moresilence. 

"Took the Sophomore Greek prize this year, " I said, blowing one of themost 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 doublewhirl of the first one. And presently the neatest spider phaeton thatwas owned by a Jonesville livery stable drew up before the house and Kegjumped out, telling a delicious chiffon vision to hold old Bucephalusuntil he got his topcoat. Keg was a good dresser, but I never saw himquite as letter-perfect and wholly immaculate as he was just then. Hehurried 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 therewas not so much atmospheric disturbance. 

 * * * * *

Pa Rearick stayed the rest of the week, and after he had interviewedcertain professors the next day he moved over to the house and stayedwith us. Mrs. Rearick came down, too, and on this account we didn't seequite 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 withdisapproval, suspicion, tolerance, benevolence, interest andfriendliness. But I am convinced that it was only on Keg's account. Hegave us credit for exercising unexpected good taste in liking him. Andmaybe it wasn't interesting to see him thaw and melt and struggle with astiff, wintry smile, as a young man does with his first mustache, andfinally give himself up unreservedly to fatherly pride. When a fatherhas religiously put away these things all his life for fear of spoilinga son, and finally finds that that son is unspoilable, even byfriendliness and parental tenderness, he has a lot of pleasure toindulge himself in during his remaining years. 

It was like the old fire-eater to call us together before he went andpunished himself. I suppose it was his sense of justice which was tookeen for any good use. "I've misjudged my son, " he said to us; "and Iwant to make public admission of it. I am perhaps a little out ofdate--a little old-fashioned. The world didn't move so fast when I was aboy here. When I was in school we saved our money and studied. My sontells me he can't afford to save money--that time is too precious. Idon't pretend to understand all your ways, but he seems to think youhave been good to him and I want to thank you for it. My son has madehis way alone these two years. I threw him out to support himself. WhenI casually mentioned yesterday that times were very hard in the businessjust now, he wanted to put five hundred dollars into it. I want you toknow I'm proud of him. I hope you young gentlemen will feel free to stopand visit us when you come through our town. I must say, times seem tohave changed. "

Right he was. Times have changed. And here I have been dunderheadingalong in just his way, imagining that I was pacing them, instead ofsitting on the fence and watching them go by. If I can find that littleSophomore who insulted me this morning, I'm going to make him come todinner and tell me some more about the way they do things thisafternoon. 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 daysand nights and early mornings. That is the Faculty. Honestly, I used tosit up until long after bedtime every little while trying to figure outsome real reason for a college Faculty. They interfere so. They are soinappropriate. Moreover, they are so confoundedly ignorant of collegelife. 

How a professor can go through an assorted collection of brainstufferies, get so many college degrees that his name looks likeHalley's Comet with an alphabet tail, and then teach college studentsfor forty years without even taking one of them apart to find out whathe is made of, beats my time! That's a college professor for you, rightthrough. He thinks of a college student only as something toteach--whereas, of all the nineteen hundred and eighty-seven things acollege student is, that is about the least important to his notion. Aboy might be a cipher message on an early Assyrian brick and stand a farbetter chance of being understood by his professor. 

A college Faculty is a collection of brains tied together by a firmresolve--said resolve being to find out what miscreant put plaster ofParis in the keyhole of the president's door. It is a wet blanket on ajoyous life; it is a sort of penance provided by Providence to make acollege boy forget that he's glad he's alive. It's a hypodermic syringethrough which the student is supposed to get wisdom. It takes the placeof conscience after you've been destroying college property. When I sumit all up it seems to me that a college Faculty is a dark, rainy cloudin the middle of a beautiful May morning--at least that's the way theFaculty looked to me when I was a humble seeker after the truth inSiwash College. 

The Faculty was to boys in Siwash what indigestion is to a jolly goodfellow in the restaurant district. It was always either among us orgetting ready to land on us. Our Faculty had thirty-two profs andthirty-three pairs of spectacles. It also had two good average heads ofhair and considerable whiskers. It could figure out a perihelion or aLatin bill-of-fare in a minute, but you ought to hear it stutter when ittried to map out the daily relaxations of a college full of husky younghurricanes, who had come to school to learn what life looks like fromthe inside. Fairy tales in the German and tea and wafers with quotationslooked like a jolly good time to the Faculty; and it couldn't understandwhy some of us liked to put gunpowder in the tea. 

Now don't understand me to say that there isn't anything good about acollege professor. Bless you, no! There's a lot of it. A Faculty is alot of college profs in a state of inflammation, but individually mostof the Siwash profs were nearly human at times. I look back at some ofthem now with awe. They really knew a lot. They knew so much that mostof them are there yet; and I go back and look at them with a good dealmore respect than I used to have. I'll tell you it fills a chap with aweto see a man teaching along for twenty years at eighteen hundred dollarsper, and raising children, and buying books, and going off to Europe nowand then on that princely sum--and coming through it all happy andcontent with life. I go around them nowadays with my hat off and try topersuade them that if it wasn't for my sprained arm I could quote Latinalmost 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 intotheir studies at Commencement and give me good cigars, making sure firstthat there are no undergraduates around. Why, one of the profs I worriedthe most, when I was a cross between a Sophomore and a spotted hyena, isas glad to see me nowadays as though I owed him money. He runs a littleautomobile, and I hope I may get laid out in the subway if I haven'theard him cuss in real United States when the clutch slipped. And he wasthe chap who used to pick out the passages in Livy that had inflammatoryrheumatism and make me recite on them, and who always told me that astudent who smoked cigarettes would be making a wise business move if hebrought his hat to recitation and left the less important part of hishead 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 andLatin 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 afarmer regulate a weed patch with a hoe? You know how unhealthy it isfor the weeds. Well, that was the way the Faculty regulated ourathletics. It didn't believe in athletics anyway. They were toointeresting. They might not have been sinful, but they were not literaryand they were uneconomic. Of course all the professors admitted thatgood outdoor exercise was healthy for college boys, but most of thembelieved that you ought to get it in the college library out of Naturebooks. And so the way they went at the real athletics, to keep them pureand healthful, almost drove us into the violent ward. 

Those were the days at Siwash when our football team could start out fora pleasant stroll through any teams in our section and wonder after ithad passed the goal line, why those undersized fellows had been joggingtheir elbows all the way down the field. That was the kind of a team webuilt up every fall; and it wasn't half so much trouble to keep otherteams from beating it as it was to keep the Faculty from blowing it topieces with non-eligibility notices. There was something diabolicalabout that Faculty when it was wrestling with the athletic problem. Itwasn't human. It was like Mount Etna. You never could tell just when itwould stop being lovely and quiet, and scatter ruin all over thevicinity. 

Its idea of regulating athletics at Siwash was to think up excuses forflunking every man who weighed over one hundred and fifty-five and couldhave his toes stepped on without saying "Ouch!" And it never got theexcuses thought up until the night before the most important games. TheFaculty pretended to be as bland and innocent as Mary's lamb, but no onecan ever tell me it didn't know what it was about. Men have to have realgenius to think up the things it did. You couldn't do it accidentally. When a Siwash Faculty could moon along happily all fall untiltwenty-four hours before the Kiowa game and then discover with regretthat our two-hundred-and-twenty-pound center had misspelled three wordsin an examination paper the year before; that our two-hundred-poundbacks didn't put enough rear-end collisions into their words when theyread French; and that Ole Skjarsen read Latin with a Norwegian accentand was therefore too big an ignoramus to play football, I decline to befooled. I never was fooled. Neither was Keg Rearick. But that ishurdling about three chapters. 

Honestly, we used to spend one day out of six building up our footballteam and the other five defending it from the Faculty. It positivelyhungered for a bite out of the line-up. It had us helpless. If we didn'tlike the way it ran things we could take our happy young college life upby the roots and transplant it to some other school, where the footballteam moved around the field like a parade. Theoretically the Facultycould sit around and take our best players off the team, as fast as wedeveloped 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 haveto get up to get ahead of college lads who have got it into their headsthat the world will gum up on its axle and stop dead still if theirinnocent little pleasures are interfered with. 

I remember the fall that the Faculty decided Miller couldn't playbecause he hadn't attended chapel quite persistently enough the springbefore. Miller was our center and as important to the team that year asthe mainspring of a watch. The ponderous brain trust that sat on thiscase didn't decide it until the day before the big game withMuggledorfer; then they practically ruled that he would have to go backto last spring and take his chapel all over again. It took us all nightto sidestep that outrage, but we did it. The next morning an indignationcommittee of fifty students met the Faculty and presented alibis thatwere invincible. It was demonstrated by a cloud of witnesses that Millerhad been absent nine times hand-running because he had been sitting upnights with a sick chum. The Faculty was inexperienced that year and lethim play; but, when it found out the next day by consulting the recordsthat the chum had attended chapel every one of those nine mornings, itgot more particular than ever and its heart seemed to harden. 

On the day before the Thanksgiving game that year the Faculty held along meeting and decided that our two guards were ineligible. Therewasn't a word of truth in it. They weighed two hundred and twenty poundsapiece and were eligible to the All-American team, but you couldn't makethe human lexicons look at it that way. They found them deficient intrigonometry and canned them off the team. It was an outrage, becausethe two chaps didn't know what trigonometry meant even and couldn't takean examination. We had to call the trig. Professor out of town by atelegram that morning and then have the suspended men demand animmediate examination. That worked, too; but every time we managed topreserve a glory of old Siwash, the Faculty seemed to get a little morecrabby and unreasonable and diabolically persisted in its determinationto regulate athletics. 

The next fall it was well understood when football practice began thatthere was going to be war to the knife between the Faculty and thefootball team. We were meek and resigned to trouble, but you can bet wewere not going to sit around and embrace it. The longest heads in theschool made themselves into a sort of an unofficial sidesteppingcommittee; and we decided that if the Faculty succeeded in massacringour football team they would have to outpoint, outfoot, outflank andoutscheme the whole school. Just to draw their fire, we advertised thefirst practice game as a deadly combat, in which the honor of Old Siwashwas at stake. It was just a little romp with the State Normal, which hada team that would have had to use aeroplanes to get past our ends; butthe Faculty bit. It held a special session that night and declared thecenter, the two backs and the captain ineligible because they had notprepared orations the spring before at the request of the rhetoricprofessor. That was first blood for us. We chased the Normalites allover the lot with a scrub team and Keg Rearick sat up nights the nextweek writing the orations. The result was we got four fine newdry-cleaned records for our four star players and the Faculty was sopleased with their fine work on those orations that we could scarcelylive with it for a week. 

That was only a skirmish, however. We knew very well that the sacredcause of education would come right back at us and we decided to beelsewhere when it struck its next blow for progress. We talked it allover with Bost, the coach, and the result was that a week before theMuggledorfer game, the last week in September, Bost gave out his line-upfor the season in chapel. There were a good many surprises in theline-up to some of us. It seemed funny that Miller shouldn't make theteam out and that Ole Skjarsen should have been left off; but the bestof men will slump, as Bost explained, and he had picked the team that hethought would do the most good for Siwash. It was a team that I wouldn'thave hired to chase a Shanghai rooster out of a garden patch, but theblind and happy Faculty didn't stop to reason about its excellence. Itheld a meeting the night before the Muggledorfer game and suspended nineof the men for inattention to chapel, smoking cigarettes during vacationand other high crimes. The whole school roared with indignation. Bostappeared before the Faculty meeting and almost shook his fist in Prexy'sface. He told the Faculty that it was the greatest crime of thenineteenth century; and the Faculty told him in very high-class languageto go chase himself. So Bost went sorrowfully out and put in the regularteam as substitutes. The next day we whipped Muggledorfer 80 to 0. 

[Illustration: Our peculiar style of pushing a football right throughthe thorax of the whole middle west _Page 205_]

I think that would have discouraged the Faculty if it hadn't been forProfessor Sillcocks. Did I ever tell you about Professor Sillcocks? It'sa shame if I haven't, because every one is the better and nobler forhearing about him. He was about a nickel's worth of near-man withPersian-lamb whiskers and the disposition of a pint of modified milk. Crickets were bold and quarrelsome beside him. He knew more mustyhistory than any one in the state and he could without flinching tellhow Alexander waded over his knees in blood; but rather than take offhis coat where the world would have seen him he would have died. He wasjust that modest and conventional. He had to come to his classes throughthe back of the campus up the hill; and they do say that one day, whenhalf a dozen of the Kappa Kap Pajama girls were sitting on the low stonewall at the foot of the hill swinging their feet, he cruised about thehorizon for a quarter of an hour waiting for them to go away in orderthat 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 hada great hobby. He believed that college boys should indulge inathletics, but that they should do it with their fingers crossed. Thoseweren't his exact words, but that was what he meant. It was noble toplay games, but wicked to want to win. In his eyes a true sport was aman who would start in a foot race and come in half a mile behindcarrying the other fellow's coat. Our peculiar style of pushing afootball right through the thorax of the whole Middle West nearly madehim shudder his shoes off and every fall in chapel he delivered a talkagainst the reprehensible state of mind that finds pleasure in thedefeat of others. We always cheered those talks, which pleased him; buthe never could understand why we didn't go out afterward and offerourselves up to some high-school team as victims. It pained him greatly. 

Naturally Professor Sillcocks participated with great enthusiasm in thework of pruning our line-up, and after the Faculty had thrown up itshands he climbed right in and led a new campaign. We had to admire thescientific way in which he went about it, too. For a man whose mostviolent exercise consisted of lugging books off a top shelf, and who hadlearned all he knew about football from the Literary Pepsin or theBi-Weekly Review, he got onto the game in wonderful style. Somehow hemanaged to learn just who were our star players--what they played andhow badly they were needed--and then he went to work to quarantine theseplayers. 

First thing we knew the Millersburg game, which was always a fierceaffair, arrived; and on the morning of the game Bumpus and VanEiswaggon, our two star halfbacks, got notices to forget there was sucha game as football until they had taken Freshman Greek over again--theybeing Seniors and remembering about as much Greek as their hats wouldhold on a windy day. I'll tell you that mighty near floored us; butvirtue will pretty nearly always triumph, and when you mix a little luckinto it, it is as slippery to corner as a corporation lawyer. We had theluck. There were two big boners, Pacey and Driggs, in college who worewhiskers. There always are one or two landscape artists in college whouse their faces as alfalfa farms. We took Bumpus and Van Eiswaggon andthe leading man of a company that was playing at the opera house thatnight over to these two Napoleons of mattress stuffing and they kindlyconsented to be imitated for one day only. Old Booth and Barrett had atremendous layout of whiskers in his valise and before he got through hehad produced a couple of mighty close copies of Pacey and Driggs. Thatafternoon the two real whisker kings went out in football suits and ransignals with the team until their wind was gone. Then they went backinto the gym and their improved editions came out. Most of the collegecried when they found that the two eminent authorities on tonsorial artwere going to try to interfere with Millersburg's ambition, but those ofus who were on to the deal simply prayed. We prayed that the whiskerswouldn't come off. They didn't, either. It was a grand game. We won, 20to 0; and the school went wild over Pacey and Driggs. Even Prexy cameout of it for a little while and went into the gym to shake hands withthem. It took lively work to detain him until we could get them strippedand laid out on the rubbing boards. They were the heroes of the schoolfor the rest of the year and, being honest chaps, they naturallyobjected. But we persuaded them that they had saved the college withtheir whiskers; and before they graduated we begged a bunch from each ofthem to frame and hang up in the gym some day when the incident wasn'tquite so fresh. 

Naturally, by this time, we believed that the Faculty ought to consideritself lucky to be allowed to hang around the college. ProfessorSillcocks looked rather depressed for a day or two, but he soon cheeredup and seemed to forget the team's existence. We swam right along, beating Pottawattamie, scoring sixty points on Ogallala and getting intomagnificent condition for the Kiowa game on Thanksgiving. That was thegame of the year for us. Time was when Kiowa used to beat us and lookbored about it, but that was all in the misty past. For two years we hadtramped all the lime off her goal lines; and maybe we weren't crazy todo it again! As early as October we used to sit up nights talking overour chances, and as November wore along the suspense got as painful as agood lively case of too much pie. We watched the team practise all dayand dreamed of it all night. And then the blow fell. 

It wasn't exactly a blow. It was more like a dynamite explosion. Schoollet out the day before Thanksgiving, and when announcement time came inchapel Professor Sillcocks got up and begged permission to make a fewremarks. Then this little ninety-eight-pound thinking machine, whocouldn't have wrestled a kitten successfully, paralyzed half a thousandhusky young students and a whole team of gladiators with the followingremarks:

"I have long held, young gentlemen, that the pursuit of athleticexercises for the mere lust of winning is one of the evils of collegelife. It does not strengthen the mind or build up one's manhood. It doesnot encourage that sporting spirit which leads a man to smile in defeator to give up his chances of winning rather than take an undueadvantage. It does not make for gentleness, mildness or generosity. Ihave, young gentlemen, endeavored to make you see this in the past yearby all the poor means at my disposal. I have not succeeded. But thismorning I propose to bring it to you in a new way. As chairman of thecredentials committee which passes upon the eligibility of your footballplayers I have decided that the entire team is ineligible. If you askfor reasons, I have them. They may not, perhaps, suit you, but they suitme. These players are ineligible because they play too well. With themyou cannot hope to be defeated and I am determined that the Siwashfootball team shall be defeated to-morrow. Your college experience mustbe broadened. Your football team, I understand, has not been defeated inthree years. This is monstrous. All of you, except the Seniors, aretotally uneducated in the art of taking defeat. This education I proposeto open to you to-morrow. I have made it more certain by suspending allof what you call your second team and your scrubs--I believe that iscorrect. And the Faculty joins me, young gentlemen, in assuring you thatif the game with Kiowa College is abandoned--abrogated--called off, Ibelieve you express it--football will cease permanently at Siwash. Younggentlemen, accept defeat to-morrow as an opportunity and try toappreciate its great benefits. That is all. "

That last was pure sarcasm. Imagine an executioner carving off hisvictim's head and murmuring politely, "That is all, " to the said victimwhen he had finished! There we were, wiped out, utterlyextinguished--legislated into disgrace and defeat--and all by a smilingvillain who said "That is all" when he had read the death sentence!

There wasn't a loophole in the decree. Sillcocks had carved the entirefootball talent of the school right out of it with that little list ofhis. We would have to play Kiowa with a bunch of rah-rah boys who hadnever done anything more violent than break a cane on a grandstand seatover a touchdown. The chaps who were butchered to make a Roman holidaydidn't have anything at all on us. We were going to be tramped all overby our deadly rival in order to afford pleasure to a fuzzy-faced oldfossil 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, ProfessorSillcocks would have been elected resident governor of Vesuvius. Weseethed all day and all that night. The board of strategy met, ofcourse, but it threw up its hands. It didn't have any first aid to theannihilated in its chest. Besides, Professor Sillcocks hadn't played thegame. He had just grabbed the cards. It was about to pass resolutionshailing Sillcocks as the modern Nero, when Rearick began to come downwith an idea. Nowadays people pay him five thousand dollars apiece forideas, but he used to fork them out to us gratis--and they had twice thecandle-power. As soon as we saw Rearick begin to perspire we justknocked off and sat around, and it wasn't two minutes before he wasmaking 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 itand call the health department; but that's neither here nor there. We'vegot to lose. We've got to let Kiowa roll us all over the field; and ifwe back out we've got to give up football. Now some of you want toresign from college and some of you want to burn the chapel, but thesethings 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 emphaticthat no one will ever forget it. Let's make it picturesque andinstructive. Let's show the Faculty that we can obey orders. Let's playa 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 morningto drill them, and I'll bet Kiowa will never burn any propertycelebrating. "

Bost was there with his head down between his knees and he said hedidn't care--Rearick or Sillcocks or his satanic majesty could pick theteam. As for himself, he was going to leave college and go to herdinghens somewhere over two thousand miles from the Faculty. So we left itto Rearick and went home to sleep and dream murderous dreams aboutmeeting profs in lonesome places. 

The first thing I saw next morning when I went out of the house was ahandbill on a telegraph pole. It was printed in red ink. It imploredevery Siwash student to turn out to the game that afternoon. "Newteam--new rules--new results!" it read. "The celebrated Sillcocks systemof football will be played by the Siwash team. Attendance at this gamecounts five chapel cuts after Thanksgiving. Admission free. Tea will beserved. You are requested to be present. "

Were we present? We were--every one of us that wasn't tied down to abed. There was something promising in that announcement. Besides, thegreenest of us were taken in by that chapel-cut business. Besides, itwas free! College students are just like the rest of the world. They'dgo to their great-grandmother's funeral if the admission was free. Ourgang put on big crêpe bows, just to be doing something, and marched intothe stadium that afternoon with hats off. It was packed. Talk aboutpromotion work. Rearick had pasted up bills until all Jonesville was redin 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. Helooked as pleased as though he had just reformed a cannibal tribe. Isuppose the programs did it. They announced once more that thecelebrated Sillcocks system of football as worked out by the coach andMr. Keg Rearick would be played in this game by the Siwash team. Thewhole town was there too, congested with curiosity. In one big bunchsat all the Siwash men who had ever played football, in their bestclothes and with their best girls. They were the guests of honor attheir own funeral. 

The Kiowa team came trotting out--behemoths, all of them--ready to getrevenge for three painful years. They had heard all about the massacreand regarded it as the joke of the century on Siwash. They also regardedit as their providential duty to emphasize the joke--to sharpen up thepoint by scoring about a hundred and ten points on the scared younggreenhorns who would have to play for us. All our ex-players stood upand gave them a big cheer when they came. So did everybody else. It'salways a matter of policy to grin and joke while you're being dissected. Nothing like cheerfulness. Cheerfulness saved many a martyr from worrywhile he was being eaten by a lion. 

Then our gymnasium doors opened and the brand-new and totally innocentSiwash football team came forth. When we saw it we forgot all aboutKiowa, the Faculty, defeat, dishonor, the black future and thedisgusting present. We stood up and yelled ourselves hoarse. Then we satdown and prepared to enjoy ourselves something frabjous. 

Rearick had used nothing less than genius in picking that team. First inline came Blakely, a mandolin and girl specialist, who had never doneanything more daring than buck the line at a soda fountain. He had onfootball armor and a baseball mask. Then came Andrews. Andrewsspecialized in poetry for the Lit magazine and commonly went by the nameof 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 togetherand you could have tied them both up in Ole Skjarsen's belt and hadenough of it left for a handle. James, the champion featherweight fusserof the school, followed. He carried a campchair and a hot-water bottle. Petey Simmons, five feet four in his pajamas, and Jiggs Jarley, championcatch-as-catch-can-and-hold-on-tight waltzer in college, came next. Thencame Bain, who weighed two hundred and seventeen pounds, had been apreacher, and was so mild that if you stood on his corns he would onlyask you to get off when it was time to go to class. He was followed bySkeeter Wilson, the human dumpling, and Billings, who always carried anumbrella to classes and who had it with him then. Behind these came agreat mob of camp-followers with chairs, books, rugs, flowers, lunchtables, tea-urns and guitars. It was the most sensational parade everheld at Siwash; and how we yelled and gibbered with delight when we gotthe full aroma of Rearick's plan!

The Kiowa men looked a little dazed, but they didn't have time tocomment. The toss-up was rushed through and the two teams lined up, ourteam with the ball. It would have done your eyes good to see Rearickadjust 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 thenest. A Kiowa halfback caught it and started up the field. Right at himcame Birdie Andrews, hat in hand, and when the halfback arrived he bowedand asked him to stop. The runner declined. McMurty was right behind andhe 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 fortwenty-five yards, pleading with him to listen to reason and consent tobe downed. It was no use. The halfback went over the goal line. TheKiowa delegation didn't know whether to go crazy with joy or disgust. Our end of the grandstand clapped its hands pleasantly. Down in theFaculty box one or two of the professors, who hadn't forgotteneverything this side of the Fall of Rome, wiggled uneasily and got alittle bit red behind the ears. 

The teams changed goals and Rearick kicked off again. This time hewashed the ball carefully and changed his necktie, which had becomeslightly soiled. The other Kiowa half caught the ball this time; heplowed into our boys so hard that McMurty couldn't get out of the wayand was knocked over. Our whole team held up their hands in horror andrushed to his aid. They picked him up, washed his face, rearranged hisclothes and powdered his nose. He cried a little and wanted them totelegraph his mother to come, but a big nurse with ribbons in hercap--it was Maxwell--came out and comforted him and gave him a stick ofcandy half as large as a barber-pole. 

By this time you could tell the Faculty a mile off. It was a bright redglow. Every root-digger in the bunch had caught on except Sillcocks. Hewas intensely interested and extremely grieved because the Kiowa men didnot 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 pureunadulterated joy hadn't been heard on the campus in years. When theteams lined up again Kiowa had got thoroughly wise. They had held afive-minute session together, had taken off their shin, nose and earguards, had combed their hair and had put on their hats. The result waswhat you might call picturesque. You could hear ripping diaphragms allover the stadium when they tripped out on the field. The two teams linedup and Rearick kicked off again. This time he had tied a big loop ofribbon around the ball; when it landed a Kiowa man stuck his forefingerthrough the loop and began to sidle up toward our goal, holding animaginary skirt. Our team rushed eagerly at him, Billings and hisumbrella in the lead. On every side the Kiowa players bowed to them andshook hands with them. The critical moment arrived. Billings reached therunner and promptly raised his umbrella over him and marched placidly ontoward our goal. Hysterics from the bleachers. The Kiowa man didn'tpropose to be outdone. He stopped, removed his derby and presented theball to Billings. Billings put his hand on his heart and declined. TheKiowa man bowed still lower and insisted. Billings bumped the groundwith his forehead and wouldn't think of it. The Kiowa man offered theball a third time, and we found afterward that he threatened to punchBillings' head then and there if he didn't take it. Billings gave in andtook the ball. 

"Siwash's ball!" we yelled joyfully. The two teams lined up for ascrimmage. Right here a difficulty arose that threatened to end thegame. The opposing players insisted on gossiping with their arms aroundeach other's necks. They would not get down to business. The refereeraved--he was an imported product, with no sense of humor, and wasrapidly getting congestion of the brain. "Don't hit in the clinches!"yelled some joker. For five minutes the teams gossiped. Then our quartergave his signal--the first two bars of "Oh Promise Me"--and passed theball to Wilson, who was fullbacking. 

It was twice as interesting as an ordinary game because nobody knew whatWilson would do; in fact, he didn't seem to know himself. He stood aminute dusting off the ball carefully and manicuring his soiled nails. The Kiowa team and our boys strolled up, arm in arm. Wilson stillhesitated. The Kiowa captain offered to send one of his men to carry theball. Wilson wouldn't think of causing so much trouble. Our captainsuggested that the ball be taken to our goal. The Kiowa captainprotested that it had been there twice already. Some one suggested thatthey flip for goals. The captains did it. Siwash won. Calling amessenger 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 Kiowacaptain set 'em up to gum. 

By this time people were being removed from the stadium in alldirections. There was a sort of purple aurora over the Faculty box thatsuggested apoplexy. The learned exponents of revised football lookedabout as comfortable as a collection of expiring beetles mounted onlarge steel pins--that is, all but Professor Sillcocks. He was beamingwith pleasure. I never saw a man so entirely wrapped up in manly sportsas he was just then. Evidently the new football suited him right down tothe ground. He clapped his hands at every new atrocity; and wheneversome Siwash man put his arm around a Kiowan and helped him tenderly onwith the ball, he turned around to the populace behind him and noddedhis 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 anovelty. He produced a large beanbag, which I presume Rearick hadslipped him, kicked it about four feet and then hurriedly picked it upand presented it to one of our men. All of our boys thanked himprofoundly and then lined up for the scrimmage. Immediately the Kiowacaptain put his right hand behind him. Our captain guessed "thumbs up. "He was right and we took the ball forward five yards. Deafening applausefrom the stadium. Then our captain guessed a number between one andthree. Another five yards. Shrieks of joy from Siwash and desperatecries of "Hold 'em!" from the Kiowa gang. Then the Kiowa captaindemanded that our captain name the English king who came after EdwardVI. That was a stonewall defense, because Rearick had flunked two yearsrunning in English history. Kiowa took the ball, but the umpire buttedin. It was an offside play, he declared, because it wasn't a king atall. It was a queen and it was Siwash's ball and ten yards. That made anawful row. The Kiowa captain declared that the whole incident was "veryregrettable, " but the umpire was firm. He gave us the ball; and on thevery next down Rearick conjugated a French verb perfectly for atouchdown. 

All of this was duly announced to the stadium and the excitement wasintense. I guess there were as many as two hundred Chautauqua salutesafter that touchdown. Both teams had tea together and our rooters'chorus sang "Juanita, " while old Professor Grubb got up, with rageprinted all over his face in display type, and went home. He never wentnear the stadium again as long as he lived, I understand. 

It was a most successful occasion up to this point, but somehow collegeboys 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 manany more fervently than a bull pup loves a cat. The teams lined up againand began playing "ring-around-a-rosy" to find who should make the nexttouchdown, when something happened. Klingel, thetwo-hundred-and-ten-pound Kiowan guard, started it. He was just about asgood a fellow as a white rhinoceros, and an hour of entire civilizationwas about all he could possibly stand. He had the beanbag and he wastired of it. Beanbags meant nothing to him. He couldn't grasp theirsolemn beauty. He offered it to Petey Simmons. Petey declined, withprofuse thanks. Klingel insisted. Petey bowed very low and swore thatrather than make another touchdown on Kiowa he would suffer wild horsesto tear him into little bits. Then Klingel began to get offside. 

"You hear what I say, you little shrimp!" he said politely. "If youdon't take this thing and quit your yawping I'm going to make you doit. "

"Listen, you overfed mountain of pork!" said Petey, with equalcordiality. "If you don't like that beanbag eat it. It would do yougood. You don't know beans anyway. "

Then Klingel, without further argument, hit Petey in the eye and laidhim out. 

[Illustration: "If you don't like that beanbag eat it" _Page 220_]

Wow! Talk about irritating a hornet convention. Klingel was a greatlittle irritator. The whole game had been torture for our real team, cooped up among the ruffles in the stadium; and when they saw littlePetey go down they gave one simultaneous roar and vaulted over therailing. It was a close race, but Ole Skjarsen beat Hogboom out by afoot. He hit Klingel first. Hogboom hit him second, third, fifth andthirty-fourth. Then the two teams closed together and for five minutes acyclone of dust, dirt, sweaters, collars, arms, legs, hair and brightred noses swept up and down the field. The grandstand went crazy. Thefive hundred Kiowa rooters grabbed their canes and started in. They metabout seven hundred Siwash patriots and then the whole universeexploded. 

The police interfered and about half an hour later the last Siwashstudent was pried off the last Kiowan. It was the most disgraceful riotin the history of the college. I don't think there was a whole suit ofclothes on the field when it was over; and the Siwash man who didn'thave two or three knobs on his head wasn't considered loyal. The girlsall cried. The Faculty went home in cabs, the mayor declared martial lawand the Kiowa gang walked out of town to the crossing and took the trainthere to avoid further hard feelings. We were all ashamed of ourselvesand 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 itadjourned and did absolutely nothing at all except to pile upon us moretheses, themes and special outrages that semester than any body ofstudents had ever been inflicted with in a like period. The profswouldn't speak to us. They regarded us as beneath notice. But when thereal Kiowa game was scheduled by mutual consent, two weeks afterward, there wasn't a remark from headquarters. We played Kiowa and spread themall over the map--and not a Faculty member was in town that day. 

I understand Professor Sillcocks is not yet thoroughly persuaded thathis style of football wasn't a success. "But for that unfortunate riot, which comes from playing with less cultured colleges, " he remarked to aSenior the next spring, "that would have been the most successfulexhibition of mental control and inherent gentility ever seen atSiwash. "

True, very true. 

CHAPTER IX

CUPID--THAT OLD COLLEGE CHUM

Well! Well! Well! Here's another magazine investigator who has made agreat discovery. Listen to this, Sam: "Co-education, as found inAmerican colleges, is amazingly productive of romance, and the greatnumber of marriages resulting between the men and women inco-educational schools indicates all too plainly that love-makingoccupies an important part of the courses of study. "

Those are his very words. Isn't he the Christopher Columbus, though! Whowould have thought it? Who would have dreamt that there were any mutualadmiration societies in co-educational colleges? I am amazed. What won'tthese investigators discover next? Why, one of them is just as likely asnot to get wise to the fact that there is a hired-girl problem. Youcan't keep anything away from these gimlet-eyed scientists. 

Oh, sure! I knew it was just about time for some kind of an off-keynoise from you, you grouchy old leftover. Just because you graduatedfrom one of those paradises in pants, where they import a carload ofgirls from all over the country to one dance a year and worry along therest of the time with chorus girls and sweet young town girls who beganbringing 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 acollege campus myself; and I want to tell you right here that it beatshaving them at a stage door, or at a summer resort, or in a parlor justaround the corner from nine relatives, or in one of those short-storyconservatories, 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 youfellows in the skirtless schools are getting the club habit and aresaving up for the privilege of dancing with other fellows' fiancées atthe proms once a year. 

Honestly, I never could see just why a fellow should wait until he isthrough college before he begins to study the science of how to makesome particular girl believe that if Adam came back he would look at himand say: "Gee, it swells me all up to think that chap is a descendant ofmine!"

And I may be thick in my thought dome, but I never could see anyobjection to marrying a classmate, either, even though I didn't do itmyself. I admit co-educational schools are strong on matrimony. Haven'tI dug up for thirty-nine wedding presents for old Siwash studentsalready? And don't I get a shiver that reaches from my collar-buttondown 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 weddingand the bill for the last present. Why, out of sixty-five ninety-umpterswith whom I graduated, six couples are already holding class reunionsevery evening; and just the other day another of the boys, who thoughthe would look farther, came back after having made a pretty thoroughinspection all over the civilized world, and camped outside of the homeof a girl in our class until she admitted that he looked better to herthan any of the rising young business men who had bisected her orbit inthe last ten years. They're to be married this spring and I'm going backto the wedding. Incidentally I'm going to help pay for three more silvercups. We give a silver cup to each class baby and each frat baby, andI've been looking around this past year for a place where we can buythem by the dozen. 

Weddings! Why, man, a co-educational college is a wedding factory. Whatof it? As far as I can see, Old Siwash produces as many governors, congressmen and captains of industry to the graduate as any of thesingle-track schools. And I notice one thing more. You don't find any ofour college couples hanging around the divorce courts. There is apeculiar sort of stickiness about college marriages. They are forkeeps. When a Siwash couple doesn't have anything else agreeable to talkabout it can sit down and have a lovely three months' conversation onthe good old times. It takes a mighty acrimonious quarrel to stand acollege reunion around a breakfast table. Take it from me, you lonesomeold space-waster, with nothing but a hatrack to give you an affectionatewelcome when you come home at night, there is no better place on earthto find good wife material than a college campus. Of course I don'tthink a man should go to college to find a wife; but if his foot shouldslip, and he should marry a girl whose sofa pillows have the samereading matter on them as there is on his, there's nothing to yell forhelp about. Ten to one he's drawn a prize. Girls who go throughco-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 peachorchard 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? Andwasn't all the Latin and Greek and trigonometry and athletic junkcrowded out of my memory at the end of every college year by the face ofthe most utterly, superlatively marvelous girl in the world? And wasn'tit a different face every spring? Oh, I took the entire course ingirlology, Sam! I never skipped a single recitation. I got a Summa CumLaudissimus in strolling, losing frat pins, talking futures andacquiring hand-made pennants. And the only bitter thought I've got isthat I can't come back. 

You'll never realize, my boy, how old Pa Time roller-skates by until yougo back to a co-ed college ten years afterward. Here, in the busy martof 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 forthirty years before I will be trusted to run a monopoly alone on a quietday; but back on the Siwash Campus, Sam, I'm a patriarch. That's onereason why I don't go back. I'm married and I don't care to be madlysought after, but also I don't care to make a hit as a fine old antiquefor a while yet, thank you. When I am forty, and have gummed up mydigestion in the dollar-herding game until I wheeze for breath when Irun up a column of figures, I'll go back and have a nice comfy time inthe grandpa class. But not now. The only difference between athirty-year-old alumnus and the mummy of Rameses, to a college girl, isin 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 upperleft-hand vest pocket over one or two girls in your time, but I don'tbelieve a fellow can fall in love so far over his ears anywhere in theworld as he can in Siwash College. That's only natural, for the finestgirls in the world go to Siwash--except one girl who went to anotherschool by accident and whom I ran across about three years ago wearingan 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 naturallyhad to take it off and put on an Eta Bita Pie pin; and somehow in theproceedings we got married--and all I have to say about it is threecheers for the universe!

Anyway, as I was saying, it was as easy to fall in love at Siwash as itwas to forget to go to chapel. We got along all right in the fall. Weliked the girls enormously and were always smashing up some footballteam just to please them. And, of course, we kept ourselves all stove upfinancially during the winter hauling them to parties and things inJonesville's nine varnished cabs. It took about as much money to supportthose cabs as it does to run a fleet of battleships. But it was in thespring that the real fireworks began. Suddenly, about the firstWednesday after the third Friday in April, the ordinary Siwash mandiscovers 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 manof him and show him what a dull, pifflish thing Paradise would bewithout her. Life becomes a series of awful blank spots, with walks onthe campus between them. He can't get his calculus because he is busyfiguring on a much more difficult problem; he is trying to figurewhether three dances with some other fellow mean anything more to Herthan charity. He gets cold chills every time he reflects that at anyminute a member of some royal family may pass by and notice Her, andthat he will have to promote international spasms by hashing him. Herealizes 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 everycollege graduate a job paying at least two thousand dollars a year ongraduation. He is nervous, feverish, depressed, inspired, anxious, oblivious, glorified, annihilated, encouraged and all cluttered up withemotion. The planet was invented for the purpose of letting Her dig Hernumber three heels into it on spring afternoons. Sunshine is importantbecause Her hair looks better with the light on it. Every time Shefrowns the weather bureau hangs out a tornado signal, and every time Shesmiles somebody puts a light-blue sash around the horizon and a doublerow of million-candle-power calcium lights clear down the future, as faras he can see. 

That's what love does to a college boy in spring. It's a kind ofrose-colored brainstorm, but it very seldom has complications. By thenext fall, the ozone is out of the air; and after a couple has gonestrolling about twice, football and the sorority rushes butt in--andit's all over. Freshman girls are a help, too. Beats all how muchassistance a Freshman girl can be in forgetting a Senior girl who isn'ton the premises! Even in the spring-fever period we didn't get engagedto any extent. The nearest I ever came to it was to ask the light of mylife for ninety-several if she would wear my frat pin forever and everuntil next fall. And, let me tell you, there wasn't any local of theHandholders' Union on the Siwash Campus. That's another place where yousoubrette worriers have us figured out wrong. Rushing a Siwash girl wasabout as distant a proposition for us as trying to snuggle up to theplanets in the telescopic astronomy course. For cool, pleasant andskillful unapproachability, a co-ed girl breaks all records. We justworshiped them as higher beings, and I find that a lot of Siwash boyswho have married Siwash girls are still a little bit dazed about thewhole affair. They can't figure how they ever had the nerve to startreal businesslike negotiations. 

This very high-class insulation in our love affairs caused us fellows alot of woe once in a while. You never could tell whether or not a girlwas engaged to some fellow back home. We didn't get impertinent enoughto ask. I think there ought to be a law compelling a girl who comes tocollege engaged to some rising young merchant prince in the countrystore back home to wear an engagement ring around her neck, where it canbe easily seen. More than once, a Siwash man who had been conservativeenough to worship the same girl right through his college course and whohad proposed to her on the last night of school, when the open seasonfor thou-beside-me talk began, has found that all the time some chap hasbeen writing her a letter a day and that she has only regarded theSiwash man as a kind friend, and so on. Never will I forget whenFrankling got stung that way! Of course we didn't generally know when atragedy 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 OleSkjarsen drew his girl at the Senior class party--

You want to know about this girl lottery business, you say? Well, it'splain that I shall have to begin right back at the beginning of theSiwash social system and educate you a little at a time. Now this classparty drawing is an institution which has been handed down at Siwashever since the ancients went to school before the war. You see, atSiwash, as at most colleges, there is the fraternity problem. The fratmen give parties to the sorority girls as often as the Dean of Womenwill stand for it, and every one gets gorgeously acquainted andextremely sociable. The non-fratters go to the Y. M. C. A. Reception atthe beginning of each year and to the Commencement exercises, and that'sabout all. Of course they pick up lots of friends among the non-sororitygirls; and I guess D. Cupid solders up about as many jobs among them ashe does among the others. But there isn't much chance for these twotribes to mix. That was why the class lottery was invented. It has beena custom at Siwash, ever since there has been a Siwash, for each classto hold a party each year. Now class parties are held in order that pureand perfect democracy may be promoted, and it is necessary to takeviolent measures to shuffle up the people and get every one interested. So they draw for partners. The class which is about to effervescesocially holds a meeting. At this meeting the names of all the men areput in one hat and the names of all the girls in another. Then twojudges of impregnable honesty draw out a name from each hatsimultaneously and read them to the class. 

When I was at Siwash a class party was the most exciting event incollege. For uncertainty and breath-grabbing anxiety they made thefootball games seem as tame as a church election. Of course everybodycan't be a Venus de Milo or an Apollo with a Beveled Ear, as PeteySimmons used to call him. Every class has its middle-aged young ladies, who are attending college to rest up from ten or fifteen years ofschool-teaching, and its tall young agriculturalists with restlessAdam's apples, whose idea of being socially interesting is to sit allevening in the same chair making a noise like one of those $7. 78-suitdummies. That's what made the class lotteries so interesting. Theplow-chasers drew the prettiest girls in the class and the mostaccomplished fusser among the fellows usually drew a girl who would makethe 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 suppressedexcitement and well-modulated regret. 

I have been reasonably wicked since I left college. Once or twice Ihave slapped down a silver dollar or thereabout and have watched thelittle ball roll round and round a pocket that meant a wagon-load oftainted tin for me; and once in a while I have placed five dollars on apony of uncertain ability and have watched him go from ninth to secondbefore he blew up. But I never got half the heart-ripping suspense outof these pastimes that I did out of a certain few party drawings, when Iwaited for my name to come out and wondered, while I looked across thehall at the girl section, whether I was going to draw the one girl inthe world, any one of four or five mighty interesting runners-up, or thefat little girl in the corner with ropy hair and the general look of aperson who had had a bright idea a few years before and had beenconvalescing from it ever since. 

Talk about excitement and consequences! Those drawings kept us on thejump until the parties were pulled off. Generally the proud beauties whohad been drawn by the midnight-oil destroyers did not know them, andsome one had to steer the said destroyers around to be introduced. Whatwith dragging bashful young chaps out to call and then seeing that theydidn't freeze up below the ankles and get sick on the night of theparty; and what with teaching them the rudiments of waltzing and givingthem pointers on lawn ties; or how to charter a good seaworthy hack incase the girl lived on an unpaved street; and bracing up the fellows whohad drawn blanks, and going to call on the blanks we had drawn andgetting gloriously snubbed--give me a wall-flower for thorns!--well, itwas no cinch to run a class party. But they were grand affairs, just thesame, and promoted true fellowship, besides furnishing amusement for thewhole college in the off season. And, besides, I always remember themwith gratitude for what they did to Frankling. 

You know there are two kinds of fussers in college. There is the chaplike Petey Simmons, for instance, whose heart was a directory of Siwashgirls; and there is the fellow who grabs one girl and stakes out claimboards all around her for the whole four years. That was Frankling'sstyle. He was what we always called a married man. He and PaulineSpencer were the closest corporation in college. They entered school inthe same class, and he called on her every Friday night at Browning Halland took her to every party and lecture and entertainment for the nextthree and a half years--except, of course, the class parties. It was oneof our chief delights to watch Frankling grind his teeth when somelowbrow--as he called them--drew her name. She always had rottenluck--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 herthrough a mile of mud to the hall without saying a word, handed her tothe reception committee and went over to a corner, where he sat allevening. But that wasn't so bad as the Junior she drew. His name wasSlaughter. His father had a dairy at the edge of Jonesville andSlaughter decided that, as the night was cold and rainy, a carriagewould be appropriate. So he scrubbed up the milk wagon thoroughly, put alot of nice, clean straw on the floor, hung a lantern from the top forheat and drove her down to the party in state. She was game and didn'tmake 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 thewhole school, except his own crowd. His father owned the locomotiveworks and he always went to Europe for his summers. He was one of thoseunnecessary individuals who are solemnly convinced that if you don't dothings just as they do something is lacking in your mind; and, though hewas perfectly bred, he was only about half as pleasant to have around asa well-behaved hyena. 

I never could see what Miss Spencer saw in him, unless it was thelocomotives. As far as we could tell--we never got much chance tojudge--she was a real nice girl. She was a little haughty and never hadmuch to say, and always acted as if she was a princess temporarily offthe job. But she was a good scout, and proved it at the class parties bymaking it as pleasant as she could for the nervous nobodies who tookher; while the yellow streak in Frankling was so broad there wasn'tenough white in him to look like a collar. That's why the whole collegewent 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 theclass. As a football player he was a wonder, but as a societyfritterling he was one long catastrophe. He just couldn't possibly gethep--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 avaudeville sketch, and the number of things he could do in an hour, which are not generally done in low-vest and low-neck circles, wasappalling. However we all loved Ole because of his grand and historicdeeds on the team, and we took him to our parties and never so much asfell out of our chairs when he took off his coat in order to dance withmore comfort and energy. The girls were as loyal as we were and dancedwith him as long as their feet held out, and we made them leather heromedals and really had a lot of fun out of the whole business--all exceptFrankling. 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 nervousthat 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'veencouraged 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 goesand calls on them, too. Now, it's up to us to show him his place. I'mdead against putting his name in the hat for the party. He'll be sure todraw a girl who will be humiliated by having to go with him; and I havea little too much regard for chivalry and courtesy to allow him to doit. We'll just have to hint to him that he'd better have anotherengagement the night of the class party, that's all. "

Thereupon we all rose joyously up and told Frankling to go jump in thecreek. And he called us muckers and declared we were ignorant of thefirst principles of social ethics. He said that Skjarsen might be nearenough our level to be inoffensive, but as for him he declined to haveanything to do with the class party. Thereupon we gave three cheers, andthat made him so mad that he left the meeting and fell over three chairstrying to do it with speed and dignity. Altogether it was a mostenjoyable occasion. We'd never gotten quite so much satisfaction out ofhim before. 

The drawing took place the next week and, sure enough, Franklingdeclined to allow his name to be put in the hat. We put Ole's name inand were prepared to have him draw a Class A girl; but what happenedknocked the props out from under us. His name came fourth and he drewthe mortgaged and unapproachable Miss Spencer. 

We didn't know whether to celebrate or prepare for trouble. It seemedreasonable that Miss Spencer would back up Frankling and reduce Ole toan icicle when he asked her to go with him. But the next morning, whenwe saw Frankling, we were so happy that we forgot to worry. He was onelarge paroxysm. I never saw so much righteous indignation done up in onebundle. He cornered the class officers and declared in passionate tonesthat they had committed the outrage of the century. They had insultedone of the finest young women in the college. They had made it advisablefor all persons of culture to remain away from Siwash. The disgrace mustnot be allowed. He didn't speak as a friend, but as a disinterestedparty who wanted justice done; and he proposed to secure it. 

We took all this quite humbly and asked him why he didn't see Olehimself 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 hissummer haircut and was quick-tempered. We then asked him why he didn'tbuy Ole off. We also asked him why he didn't shut down the college, andwhy he didn't have Congress pass a law or something, and if his head hadever pained him before. He was tearing off his collar in order to answermore calmly and collectedly when Ole came into the room. Ole had combedhis hair and shined his shoes, and he had on the pink-and-blue necktiethat he had worn the month before to the annual promenade with a renteddress suit. He seemed very cheerful. 

"Vell, fallers, " says he, "das leetle Spencer gal ban all rite. She sayshe go by me to das party. Ve ban goin' stylish tu, Aye bet yu. " Thenhe 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 thathe took her in style. He put more care and exertion into the job thanany of the rest of us and he got more impressive results. Ole has hisideas about dress. Ordinarily he wore one of those canned suits that youbuy in the coat-and-pants emporiums, giving your age and waist measurein order to get a perfect fit. He wore a celluloid collar with it and anecktie that must have been an heirloom in the family; and he wore astraw hat most of the year. He wore each one till it blew away and thengot another. This rig was good enough for Ole in ordinary little socialaffairs, but when it came to dances and receptions he blossomed out inevening clothes. He had made a bargain with a second-hand clothes-mandowntown--split his wood all winter for the use of a dress suit that hadlost its position in a prominent family and was going downhill fast. Youknow how the tailors work the dress suit racket. They can't exactlychange the style of a suit--it's got to be open-faced and havetails--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 areally bang-up-to-date chap would blush all over if he had to wear alast year's model. I notice the automobile makers are doing the samestunt. They can't improve their cars any more, so they put four doors onone 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 hiswas behind the times one hundred and two counts. It had been a fat man'ssuit 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 thewaist it looked like a deflated balloon. The top of the trousers fittedhim about as snugly as a round manhole in the street. The legs flappedlike the mainsail of a catboat that's coming about. They ended some timebefore his own legs did and there was quite a little stretch of yarnsock visible before the big tan shoes began. Ole had two acres of feetand he polished his shoes himself, with great care. They were not solarge as an ordinary ballroom, but somehow he used them so skillfullythat they gave the effect of covering the entire space. Four timesaround Ole's feet constituted a pretty fair encore at our dances; andI've seen him pen up as many as three couples in a corner with them whenhe got those feet tangled. 

That was Ole's formal costume. But he didn't regard it with awe. Any onecould wear a dress suit. It seemed to him that a Senior party to whichhe was to escort Miss Spencer was too important to pass airily off withthe same old suit. He had another card up his sleeve. 

"Aye ent tal yu, " he explained when we asked him anxiously what it washe proposed to wear. "Yust vait. Aye ban de hull show, Aye tank. Yufallers yust put on your yumpin'-yack suits. Aye mak yu look lak tortacent. "

Of course we waited. We didn't have anything else to do. We worried alittle, but we had gotten used to Ole, anyway--and what was thedifference? It would be a little hard on Miss Spencer, but it would bemagnificently horrible to Frankling, who considered that a collar of thewrong cut might endanger a man's whole future career. So we resignedourselves and attended to our own troubles. 

The night of the party was a cold, clear January evening. There was snowon the ground and it was packed hard on the sidewalks. This was nuts forthe oil-burners. They walked their girls to the hall. Four of thereckless ones clubbed together and hired a big closed carriage affairfrom the livery stable. It happened to be a pallbearers' carriage duringthe daytime, but they didn't know the difference and the girls didn'ttell them; and what you don't know will never cause your poor old brainto ache. We frat fellows blew our hard-worked allowances for varnishedcabs and thereby proved ourselves the biggest suckers in the bunch. Tothis day I can't see why a girl who can dance all night, and can strollall afternoon of a winter's day, has to be hauled three blocks in atwo-horse rig every time she goes to a party. The money we spent on cabswhile I was at Siwash would have built a new stadium, painted every frathouse 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 thosehacks!

I got there late with my girl--she was a shy little conservatorystudent, who evidently regarded conversation as against the rules--and Ifound the usual complications that had to be sorted out at the beginningof every class party. Stiffy Short was sore. He was short five dancesfor his girl--had been working on her program for a week--and he accusedthe fellows of dodging because she couldn't dance; and was threateningto be taken sick and spend the evening in the dressing room smokingcigarettes. Miss Worthington, one of our Class A girls, didn't have adance, because Tullings, who had drawn her, had presumed that she was tosit and talk with him all evening. Petey Simmons was in even worse. Hisgirl couldn't dance, but insisted on doing so. She had done it the yearbefore, too. Petey had been training up for two weeks by tugging hisdresser around the room. Then there was Glenallen. We always had to forma committee of national defense against Glenallen. He couldn't dance, either, and he would insist on hitching his chair out towards the middleof the room. I've seen him throw as many as four couples in a night. Andthere was a telephone call from Miss Morse, class secretary andfirst-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 desperatelythat 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 anevening dress, unless you are an old enough head to cut up ahandkerchief and fold the ends under. 

We had gotten things pretty well straightened out before we discoveredthat Ole was missing. That would never do. If Miss Spencer neededrescuing we were the boys to do it. Three of us rushed down the stairsto send a carriage over to Browning Hall, and that minute Ole arrived atthe party. 

He had worn his very best--the suit he was proudest of and the one heknew couldn't be duplicated. It was his lumber-camp rig--corduroytrousers, big boots and overshoes, red flannel shirt, canvas pea-jacketand fur cap. He came marching up the walk like the hero in amoving-picture show and we thought he was alone till he reached thedoor. Then we saw Miss Spencer. She was seated in state behind him onone of those hand-sledges the farmers use for hauling cordwood. Therewere evergreen boughs behind her and all around her, and she was sowrapped up in a huge camp blanket that all we could see of her was hereyes. 

We gave Ole three cheers and carried Miss Spencer upstairs on theevergreen boughs. The two were the hits of the party. We never had abetter one. The incident broke more ice than we could have chopped outin 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 weall 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 poorHenry Boggs forgot for two hours that he had hands and feet, and thatthey were beyond his control. It was a tremendous success; we were soenthusiastic by the time things broke up that we told the cabmen to gohang and all walked home to the Hall, the men fighting for a chance topull on the sledge-rope with Ole. 

Hold on, Sam. Put down your hat. This isn't the end, thank you. It'sjust the prologue. Of course we all expected, when Ole unloaded MissSpencer at the Hall and she bade him good evening, and thanked him forher delightful time and so on, that the incident would be closed. Neverdreamed of anything else. Lumber-jack suits and cordwood sledges arefine 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, walkedover to Lab. From chapel with Miss Spencer the next day--and she didn'tcall for the police. We couldn't have stared any harder if the collegechapel had bowed and walked off with her. And we hadn't recovered fromthe blow when Friday night rolled around and those of us who went tocall 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 MissSpencer was showing him that if she wanted to be friendly with Ole, orthe 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, forafter a couple of weeks he surrendered and then the queerest rivalrySiwash had ever seen began. Frankling, son of the locomotive works, authority on speckled vests and cotillons, was scrapping with OleSkjarsen, the cuffless wonder from the lumber camps, for the affectionsof the prettiest girl in college. No wonder we got so interested thatspring 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. Ithink 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 thething. Anyway, Frankling walked over to chapel with her and Ole lumberedback. Frankling took her to the basket-ball games and Ole took her tothe Kiowa debate and slept peacefully through most of it. Franklingbought a beautiful little trotting horse and sleigh and took MissSpencer 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 ridingwith him and she did it. Some of us found them bumping over the line inone of the flat-wheeled catastrophes that the Jonesville Company calledcars--and Miss Spencer didn't even blush. She bowed to us just asunconcernedly as if she wasn't breaking all long-distance records foreccentricity in Siwash history. 

Frankling dodged the whole college and got wild in the eyes. He lookedlike an eminent statesman who was being compelled to act as barker in acircus against his will. It must have churned up his vitals to do hissketch 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 alwaysdictate just what you are going to do. It was plain to see that MissSpencer had Frankling hooked, haltered, hobbled, staked out, Spanish-bitted, wrapped up and stamped with her name and laid on theshelf to be called for; and it was just as evident that she consideredhe would be all the nicer if she walked around on him for a while andmassaged his disposition a little with her little French heels. 

So Frankling continued to divide time with Ole, and all the fellows whomhe had insulted about their neckties and all the girls whom he hadforgotten to dance with sat around in perfect content and watched theshow. 

[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. Thesemester recess came and, when college assembled again, Ole cutFrankling out for the athletic ball as neatly as if he had been in thegirl game all his life. Frankling countered with the promenade two weekslater, but he went clear to the ropes when Miss Spencer came out onefine morning at chapel with Ole's football charm--the one he had won theyear the team had annihilated two universities and seven assortedcolleges. He came back gamely and decorated her with fraternity hatpins, cuff buttons, belt buckles and side combs; and on the strength of it hegot three Friday evenings in a row. That might have jarred any one butOle. 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 bealmost violently restrained from offering her the whole freezer. 

Winter wore out and spring came. Frankling brought the whole resourcesof the locomotive works into play. He got a private car and took a partyoff to the Kiowa baseball game, with Miss Spencer as guest of honor. Hebombarded her with imported candy and American beauties, and clutteredup the spring with a series of whist parties, which butted into thesocial calendar something frabjous. Ole plowed right along with his ownpeculiar style of argument. He met the private-car business with a strawride and his prize offering was a hunk of spruce gum from his pinewoods, as big as your two fists; and, so far as we could see, the gumgot exactly the same warmth of reception as the candy--though it didn'tdisappear with anywhere near the rapidity. 

As April went by, we Seniors got busy with the first awful preliminariesof Commencement. It began to be considered around college that SeniorDay would settle the affair one way or the other. Senior Day is the lastevent of Commencement Week at Siwash and more engagements have beenannounced formally or otherwise that day than at any other time. If aSenior man and girl, who had been making a rather close study of eachother, walked out on the campus together after the exercises and took inthe corporation dinner at noon side by side, no one hesitated aboutoffering congratulations. They might not be exactly due, but it was asign that there was going to be an awful lot of nice-looking stationeryspoiled by the two after the sad partings were said. Now we didn't havea doubt that either Frankling or Ole would amble proudly down betweenthe lilac rows on Class Day with Miss Spencer, under the good oldpretense of helping her locate the dinner-tables a hundred yards away;and betting on the affair got pretty energetic. Day after day the oddsvaried. When Frankling broke closing-time rules at Browning Hall by agood thirty minutes some two-to-one money was placed on him. When Oleand Miss Spencer cut chapel the next day the odds promptly switched. Youcould get takers on either side at any time, but I think the oddsfavored Ole a little. You can't help boosting your preferences withyour good money. It's like betting on your college team. 

Commencement Week came and, although we were Seniors, we went through itwithout hardly noticing the scenery. We watched Ole and Frankling allthrough Baccalaureate, and when Ole won a twenty-yard dash across thechurch and over several of us, and marched down the street with MissSpencer, it looked as if all was over but the Mendelssohn business. ButFrankling had her in a box at the class play the next night. How couldyou pay any attention to the glorious threshold of life and the expiringgasps of dear college days with a race like that on!

Commencement was on Wednesday and Senior Day was Thursday. Up toWednesday night it was an even break--steen points all. One of the twohad won. We hadn't a doubt of it. But, if both men had been born pokerplayers, drawing to fill, in a jack-pot that had been sweetened ninetimes, you couldn't have told less to look at them. Frankling was asglum as ever and Ole had the same reënforced concrete expression ofinnocence that he used to wear while he was getting off the ball behindsomebody'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 Piehouse and were putting up a few final bets when Ole came up, carpet-bagin hand and his diploma under his arm, and bade us good-by. He was goingout on the midnight train--going away for good. 

For a minute you could have heard the grass growing. If Ole was goingaway that night it meant just one thing: the cruel Miss Spencer hadtossed him over and he was bumping the bumps downward into a cold andcheerless 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 asit 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'ttalk very dejectedly. "Vy yu ban sorry?" he demanded. "Aye got gude yobSt. Paul vay. De boss write me Aye skoll come Friday. Aye ent care to belate first t'ing. "

"But, Ole--" Bangs began. Then he stopped. You can't bawl out a questionabout another man's love affairs before a whole mob. 

"Yu fallers ban fine tu me, " Ole began again. "Aye lak yu bully! Ven yucome by St. Paul, take Yim Hill's railroad and come to Sven Akerson'scamp, femt'n mile above Lars Hjellersen's gang. Aye ban boss of Sven'scamp now. Aye gat yu gude time and plenty flapyack. "

He turned to go. Allie and I got up and walked firmly down the walk withhim. We were going to be relieved of our suspense if we had to buy theinformation. 

"Now, Ole, " said Allie, grabbing his carpet-bag, "you know we're notgoing to let you go down to the train alone. Besides, we want to knowif everything is all right with you. You know we love you. We're foryou, 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, areyou?" he said, the way a fellow goes at it when he is diving into coldwater. Ole looked around in perfect good humor. "Get married by eachodder?" he said. "Yee whiz! no, Master Bangs. She ban nice gur'rl. Itent any nicer in Siwash College. But she kent cook. She kent build firein woodstove. She kent wash. She kent bake flatbrot. She kent makeclose. She yust ban purty, like picture. Vat for Aye vant to marrypicture gallery? Aye ban tu poor faller fur picture gallery, Aye tank. "

"But, Ole, " says I, jumping in, "you've been rushing the girl all winteras if your life depended on it. What did you mean by that?"

Ole turned around patiently and sat down on the steps of the FirstMethodist Church, which happened to be passing just then. "Vell, Aye talyu, " he explained. "Miss Spencer she ban nice tu me. She go tu classparty '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 allright. "

We took Ole to the station and sat down to rest three times on the wayback. So all that terrific performance was a reward for Miss Spencer! "Ogratitude!" 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 whyMiss Spencer stood for all the gratitude. But the next day, when theexercises were over, that young lady stepped down from the platform andwas met by a tall chap whom she later introduced to us as a friend ofthe family from her home town. You can always spot these family friendsby the way the girl blushes when she introduces them. Miss Spencer worea fine new diamond ring and we knew what it meant. It was just anothercase where the girl came to school and the man stayed at home and builta seven-room house on a prominent corner four blocks from his hardwarestore and waited--and tried not to get any more jealous than possible. Isuppose Miss Spencer used Ole as a sort of parachute to let Franklingdown easily at the last. Anyway, we wiped the whole affair off the slateafter that. She wasn't one of us, anyway. Made us shiver to think ofher. What if one of us had sailed in the Freshman year and cut Franklingout!

[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 pleaseyou, I favor anything you favor. If you want the women to vote just handme the ax and show me the man who would prevent them. If you think thewomen 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 aball park except as water-boy. If you believe that women ought to wearthree-story hats in theaters--

No, I'm not making fun of you. I hope I may never be allowed to lug abox of Frangipangi's best up your front steps again if I am. If you wantthe women to vote, Miss Allstairs, just breathe the word, and I'll goout and start a suffragette mob as soon as ever I can find a brick. AndI would be a powerful advocate, too. You can't tell me that womenwouldn't be able to handle the ballot. You can't tell me they would gettheir party issues mixed up with their party gowns. I've seen them voteand I've seen them play politics. And let me tell you, when woman getsthe vote man will totter right back to the kitchen and prepare theasparagus for supper, just to be out of harm's way. His good oldarguments about the glory of the nation, the rising price of wheat andthe grand record of those sterling patriots who have succeeded ingetting their names on the government payroll won't get him to firstbase when women vote. He'll have to learn the game all over again, andthe first ninety-nine years' course of study will be that famoussubject, "Woman. "

How do I know so much about it? Just as I told you. I've been throughthe 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 closeformation, but I'd take the job cheerfully. It would be just a rest cureafter four years' experience in persuading a large voting body ofbeautiful and fascinating young women to vote the ticket straight and tolet 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 youknow, is co-educational to a heavenly degree. I'm just a young alumnuswith about eighty-nine gray hairs scattered around in my thatch. Eachone of those gray hairs represents a vote gathered by me from someSiwash 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, workingseven days in the week and forty weeks in the year. I'm nobrass-finished and splash-lubricated politician, but I'll bet I couldgo out in any election and cord up that many votes with whiskers on themin three days. "Votes for Women" is a fine sentiment and veryappropriate, Miss Allstairs, but "Votes from Women" has always been themotto under which I have fought and been bled--I beg your pardon; thatjust slipped out accidentally. Of course there was nothing of the sortpossible. Now there isn't the slightest use of your getting angry andmaking me feel like an Arctic explorer in a linen suit. If you insistI'll go out on the front porch and sit there a few weeks until youforgive me, but that's the very best I can do for you. I will positivelynot erase myself from your list of acquaintances. When a man has beenhanging around the world in a bored way for thirty-two years, justwaiting for Fate to catch up with its assignments and trundle you alongwithin my range in order to give the sun a rest--

Oh, well--if you forgive me of course I'll stop anything you say. Thoughreally, now, that wasn't joshing. It came from the depths. Anyway, as Iwas saying, "Votes from Women"--excuse me, please; I fell off there onceand I'm going to go slow--"Votes from Women" was the burning questionback at Siwash when I infested the campus. The women had the votesalready--no use agitating that. The big question was getting 'em backwhen we needed them. You see, the Faculty always insisted on regulatingathletics more or less and on organizing things for us--didn't believewe mere college youths could get an organization together according toHoyle, or whoever drew up the rules of disorder in college societies, without the help of some skyscraper-browed professor. So they saw fit toorganize what they called a general athletic association. Every studentwho paid a dollar was enrolled as a member, with a vote and theprivilege of blowing a horn in a lady or gentleman like manner at allcollege games. And just to assure a large membership, the faculty made arule that the dollar must be paid by all students with their tuition atthe beginning of the year. That, of course, enrolled the whole college, girls and all, in the Athletic Association. And it was the AthleticAssociation that raised the money to pay for the college teams and hiredthe coaches and greased old Siwash's way to glory every fall during thefootball season. 

Now this didn't bother any for a few years. The men went to the meetingsand voted, and the girls stayed at home and made banners for the games. Everything was lovely and comfortable. Then one day, in my Freshman yearjust before the election, there was a crack in the slate and the ShiDelts saw a chance to elect one of their men president--it wasn't theirturn that year, but you never could trust the Shi Delts politically anyfarther than you could kick a steam roller. They put up their man andthere was a little campaign for about three hours that got up to elevenhundred revolutions a minute. We clawed and scratched and dug for votesand were still short when Reilly got an idea and rushed over to BrowningHall. Five minutes before the polls closed he appeared, leadingtwenty-seven Siwash girls, and the trouble was over. They voted for ourman and he was elected by four votes. But, incidentally, we tipped overa 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 inbaseball language? Let's see--you remember that beautiful Greek lady whoopened a box under the impression that there was a pound of assortedchocolate creams in it and let loose a whole international museum oftrouble? Dora Somebody--eh? Oh, yes, Pandora. I always did fall down onthat name. Anyway, the box we opened in that election would have madePandora's little grief repository look like a box of pink powder. Thekind 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 ditchthis 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 akalsominer once, and he wanted to fight me for the honor of hisprofession. 

However, as I was saying, the women voted at Siwash that fall and Iguess they must have liked the taste, for the first thing we knew we hadthe woman vote to take care of all the time. The next fall pretty nearlyevery girl in the college turned out to class meetings, and the waythey voted pretty nearly drove us mad. They seemed to regard it as agame. They fussed about whether to vote on pink paper or blue paper;voted for members of the Faculty for class president; one of them votedfor the President of the United States for president of the Sophomoreclass; wanted to vote twice; came up to the ballot box and demandedtheir votes back because they had changed their minds; went away beforeelection 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 theirballots away with them, and getting called down for trying to see thateverything went along proper and shipshape and according to program, weboys were half crazy when it was all over. 

But the girls liked it enormously. It was a novelty for them, and we sawright there that it was a case of organize the female vote or havethings hopelessly muddled up before the end of the year. In theinterests of harmony things had to be done in a businesslike manner. Certain candidates had to be put through and certain factions had to begently but firmly stepped on. Harmony, you know, Miss Allstairs, is amost important thing in politics. Without harmony you can't do a thing. Harmony in politics consists of giving the insurgents not what they askfor, but something that you don't want. I was a grand little harmonizerin my day too. I ran the oratorical league the year before it wentbroke and then traded the presidency to the Chi Yi-Delta Whoop crowd forthe editorship of the Student Weekly. That's harmony. They were happyand so was I. When I saw how hard they had to hustle to pay theassociation 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. Oneis lowdown and contemptible and nasty, and the other is expedient. See?Why, some of the most generous men in the world are politicians. Timeand again I've seen Andy Hoople, the big politician of our town, pay aman's fare to Chicago so that he could go up there and rest during thelast week of a political campaign and not bother himself and get allworried over the way things were going--and the man would be on theother side too. 

Anyway, to--wait a minute; I'm going to hook over some French now. Lookout, low bridge--to rendezvous to our muttons--how's that? In a goodmany ways there are worse jobs than that of persuading a pretty girl tovote the right way. Sometimes I liked the job so well that I was sorrywhen election came. But, on the whole, it was hard, hard work. We triedarguments and exhortation and politics, and you might as well have shotcheese balls at the moon. Never touched 'em. I talked straight logic toa girl for an hour once, showing her conclusively that it was her dutyas a patriotic Siwash student to vote for a man who could give a strongmind and a lot of money to the debating cause; and then she remarkedquite placidly that she would always vote for the other man for whateveroffice he wanted, because he wore his dress suit with such an air. I hadto take her clear downtown and buy her ice cream and things before shecould understand the gravity of the case at all--

No, indeed, Miss Allstairs, I didn't bribe her. You must be very carefulabout charging people with bribery. Bribery is a very serious offense. It's so serious that nowadays it's a very grave thing to charge apolitician with it. I think it will be made a crime soon. I bought icecream for this girl because she could understand things better while shewas eating ice cream. It made her think better. Of course, you can't dothat with a man in real politics. You have to give him an office or acontract or something in order to get his mind into a cheerfulcondition. 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 anybribing any more anyway. Illinois has taught the world that. 

But that was the least of our troubles. After you had persuaded a girlto vote right you had to keep her persuaded. Now most any man might beable to keep one vote in line, but that wasn't enough. Some of us had tokeep four or five votes all ready for use, for competition was prettyswift and there were a tremendous number of co-eds in school. You neversaw such a job as it was. No sooner would I have Miss A. Entirelyfriendly 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 todrop everything and walk over from chapel with her three morningshand-running, and take her to a play, and make a wild pass about notknowing whether any one would go to the prom with me or not. And thenjust as she would begin to smile when she saw me Miss A. Would pass meon the street and look at me as if I had robbed a hen-roost. And just asI was entirely friendly with both of them it would occur to me that Ihadn't called on Miss C. For three weeks and that Bannister, of theAlfalfa Delts, was waiting for Miss D. After chapel every morning andwould doubtless make a lowdown, underhanded attempt to talk politics toher in the spring. For a month before each election I felt like a giddyyoung squirrel running races with myself around a wheel. Some collegeboys can keep on terms of desperate and exclusive friendliness with adozen girls at a time--Petey Simmons got up to eighteen one spring whenwe won the big athletic election--but four or five were as many as Icould manage by any means, and it kept me busted, conditioned and allout of training to accomplish this. And when election-time approachedand it came to talking real politics, and the girl you had counted onall winter to swing her wing of the third floor in Browning Hall foryour candidate would suddenly remember in the midst of a businessliketalk on candidates and things that you had cut two dances with her atthe prom, and you couldn't explain that you simply had to do it becauseyou had to keep your stand-in with a girl on the first floor who had themusic-club vote in her pocket-book--well, I may get out over NiagaraFalls some day on a rotten old tight-rope, with a sprained ankle and afellow on my shoulders who is drunk and wants to make a speech, standingup--but if I do I won't feel any more wobbly and uncertain about thefuture than I used to feel on those occasions. 

Of course it was entirely impossible for the few dozen collegepoliticians to make personal friends and supporters of all the girls inSiwash. We didn't want to. There are girls and girls at Siwash, just asthere are everywhere else. Maybe a third of the Siwash girls were prettyand fascinating and wise and loyal, and nine or ten other exceedinglypleasant adjectives. And perhaps another third were--well, nice enoughto dance with at a class party and not remember it with terror. And thenthere was another third which--oh, well, you know how it goeseverywhere. They were grand young women, and they were there foreducational purposes. They took prizes and learned a lot, and this waspartly because there were no swarms of bumptious young collegianshanging around them and wasting their time. Far be it from me, MissAllstairs, to speak disparagingly of a single member of your sex--youare all too good for us--but, if you will force me to admit it, therewere girls at Siwash--ex-girls--who would have made a true and loyalstudent of art and beauty climb a high board--certainly, I said I wasn'tgoing to say anything against them, and I'm not. Anyway, it's no greatcompliment to be admired for your youth and beauty alone. Age has itsclaims 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 schoolhad her following, of course, at Browning Hall. So we just fought it outamong the popular girls. Before elections they'd line up on theirrespective sides, and then they'd line up the rest of the co-ed vote. Ona close election we'd get out every vote, and we'd have it accountedfor, too, beforehand. The real precinct leaders had nothing on us. Ittook 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 ofHorace and Trig, and Counterpoint and Rhetoric, and we'd cheer politelywhile they voted 'em. Then we'd take off our hats and bow low to saidslaves, and they would go back to their galleys after having done theirduty as free-born college girls, and that would be over for anotheryear. Everything would have continued lovely and comfortable and darnedexpensive 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 isbecause when we fellows of that period mention her name we usually cussa little in a hopeless and irritable sort of way. It's painful to thinkof her. It's humiliating to think that twenty-five of the case-hardenedand time-seasoned politicians of Siwash should have been double-crossed, checkmated, outwitted, out-generaled, sewed up into sacks and dumpedinto Salt Creek by a red-headed, freckled-nosed exile from a Missouriclay 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, Iknow, 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 andwas elected to the unnoticeables on the spot. She was a dumpy littlegirl, with about as much style as a cornplanter; and I suspect that shebade her pet calf a fond good-by when she left the dear old farm to comeand play tag with knowledge on the Siwash campus. Nobody saw her inparticular the first year, except that you couldn't help noticing herhair any more than you can help noticing a barn that's burning on adamp, 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 upjust locate the cyclone cellars in your immediate vicinity, say I. 

Well, Mary Jane Hicks went through her Freshman year without causing anymore excitement than you could make by throwing a clamshell into theAtlantic Ocean. She drew a couple of classy men for the class partiesand they reported that she towed unusually hard when dancing. She votedin 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 thattime--being a Junior who had had a rib smashed playing football and wasgoing to edit the college paper the next year--but the way she looked atme you would have thought that I was the fractional part of a peeledcipher. She just nodded at me and said "Howdedo, " and then asked if thevest-pocket vote was being successfully extracted that day. That wasnervy of her and I frowned; after which she remarked that she objectedto voting without being told in advance that the cause of liberty wastrembling in the voter's palm. I remember wondering at the time whereshe 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 herstudies 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 theEta Bita Pie-Fly Gam-Sigh Whoopsilon combination, because we hadgraduated a large number of men and we had to pull down the fallelections with a small voting strength. So I went down to college a dayearly to confer with some of the other patriotic leaders regardingslates and other matters concerning the good of the college. 

I hadn't more than stepped off the train until I met Frankling, thepresident of the Alfalfa Delts, and Randolph, of the Delta KappaSonofaguns, and Chickering, of the Mu Kow Moos, in close consultation. It was very evident that they were going to do a little high-classvoting too. And before night I discovered that the Shi Delts and theDelta Flushes and the Omega Salves had formed a coalition with theindependents, and that there was going to be more politics to the squareinch in old Siwash that year than there had been since the year of thebig wind--that's what we called the year when Maxwell was boss of thecollege and swept every election with his eloquence. 

There were any number of important elections coming off that fall. Therewere all the class elections, of course, and the Oratorical election, and a couple of vacancies to fill in the Athletic Association, and acollege marshal to elect, and goodness knows what all else to nail downand tuck away before we could get down to the serious job of fightingconditions that fall. I was so busy for the first three days, wiring upthe new students and putting through a trade on the Athleticsecretaryship with the Delta Kap gang, that I couldn't pay any attentionto the class elections. But they were pretty safe anyway. It was onlyabout a day's job to put through a class slate. The Junior election camefirst, and we had arranged to give it to Miss Willoughby. We alwayselected women presidents of the Junior class at Siwash. LittleWilloughby had a cinch because, of course, our crowd backed herhard--and we were strong in Juniors--and, besides she had a goodfollowing among the girls. So we just turned the whole thing over to thegirls to manage and thought no more about it, being mighty hard pressedby the miserable and un-American bipartisan combination on the Athleticoffices. 

School opened on Tuesday. The Junior class election came off on Thursdayafternoon and a Miss Hamthrick was elected president. I would have beton the college bell against her. It was the shockingest thing that hadhappened in politics for five years. Miss Hamthrick was a conservatorystudent. Even when you shut your eyes and listened to her singing shedidn't sound good-looking. Davis drew her for the Sophomore class partythe 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 wentto--no, I'll not describe them. I'm sort of prejudiced anyway. They madeMiss Hamthrick seem beautiful and clever by comparison. 

It was a blow between the eyes. The worst of it was we couldn'tunderstand it. I went over to see Miss Willoughby about it, and she camedown all powdery and beautiful about the eyes and nose and talked to meas 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 theprivilege of being fooled by a man. She even accused me of helping electthe Hamthrick lady, said she wished me joy, and asked if it had been apretty romance. That made me tired, and I said--oh, well, no useremembering what I said. It was the last thing I ever had a chance tosay to Miss Willoughby anyway. I was pretty miserable overit--politically, of course, I mean, Miss Allstairs. You understand. Nowthere's no use saying that. It wasn't so. College girls are all verywell, 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 blowthan ever. The Freshman class election came off on a snap call, andabout half the class, mostly girls, elected a lean young lady withspectacles and a wasp-like conversation to the presidency. We raised astorm of indignation, but they blandly told us to go hence. There wasnothing in the Constitution of the United States to prevent a womanfrom being president of the Freshman class, and there didn't seem to beany other laws on the subject. Besides, the Freshman class was abrand-new republic and didn't need the advice of such an effete monarchyas the Senior class. While we were talking it all over the next day theSophomores met, and after a terrific struggle between the Eta Bita Pies, the Alfalfa Delts and the Shi Delts, Miss Hicks was elected president bywhat Shorty Gamble was pleased to term "the gargoyle vote. " I wouldn'tsay that myself of any girl, but Shorty had been working for the placefor a year, and when the twenty girls who had never known what it was tohave a sassy cab rumble up to Browning Hall and wait for them cast theirvotes solidly and elected the Missouri Prairie Fire he felt justified inmaking comments. 

By this time it was a case of save the pieces. The whole thing had beenas mysterious as the plague. We were getting mortal blows, we couldn'ttell from whom. All political signs were failing. The game was goingbackward. A lot of the leaders got together and held a meeting, and someof them were for declaring a constitutional monarchy and then losing theconstitution. My! But they were bitter. Everybody accused everybody elseof double-crossing, underhandedness, gum-shoeing, back-biting, trading, pilfering and horse-stealing. I think there was a window or two brokenduring the discussion. But we didn't get anywhere. The next day theSenior class elected officers, and every frat went out with a knife forits neighbor. A quiet lady by the name of Simpkins, who was one of thefinest old wartime relics in school, was elected president. 

That night I began putting two and two and fractional numbers togetherand called in calculus and second sight on the problem. I rememberedwhat the Hicks girl had said to me the year before. That was more thanthe ordinary girl ought to know about politics. I remembered seeing herdoing more or less close-harmony work with the other midnight-oilconsumers--and the upshot was I went over to Browning Hall that nightand called on her. 

She came down in due time--kept me waiting as long as if she had beenthe 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 sodelighted to renew our old friendship. "

Now, I don't like to be "my dear boyed" by a Sophomore, and there neverhad been any old friendship. I started to stiffen up--and then didn't. Ididn'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 couldbe. "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 lookedlike one of those most uncomfortable girls who can guy you in such aninnocent and friendly manner that you don't know what to say back. So Ibrushed the preliminaries aside and jumped right into the middle ofthings. "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 beeninstrumental 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 andevery professor was right side up with care where he belonged. And, moreover, you must not call an election a fool because it doesn't dowhat you want it to. It can't help itself. "

"Miss Hicks, " says I, feeling like a fly in an acre of web, "I am aplain 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 handin those class elections?"

Miss Hicks looked at me in the friendliest way possible. "It is moremodest to admit it than to declare it, isn't it?" she asked. 

"Certainly, " says I; "and this leads right back to question NumberOne--Why did you do it?"

"And this leads back to answer Number One--Why shouldn't I?" she askedagain. 

"Why, don't you see, Miss Hicks, " says I, "that you've elected a lot ofgirls that never have been active in college work, and that don'trepresent 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. "Butwhat's your object?"

"Education, " said Miss Hicks mildly. "I'm paying full tuition and I wantto get all there is out of college. I think politics is a fascinatingstudy. I didn't get a chance to do much at it last year, but I'mlearning something about it every day now. "

"But what's the good of it all?" I protested. "You'll just get thecollege 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. Whatcan 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 theBlanks. "

"The Blanks!" I repeated fretfully. "Never heard of 'em. "

"I know it, " said Miss Hicks, "but you named them yourselves. What doyou say you've drawn when you draw a homely girl's name out of the hatas a partner for a class party?"

"Oh!" said I. 

"We're the Blanks, " said Miss Hicks, "and we feel that we haven't beengetting our full share of college atmosphere. So we're going intopolitics. In this way we can mingle with the students and help runthings and have a very enjoyable time. It's most fascinating. All of usare dippy over it. "

"Oh, " said I again. "You mean you're going to ruin things for your ownselfish interests?"

"My dear boy, " said Miss Hicks--my, but that grated--"we're not going toruin 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 basiswe may as well terminate this interview. But I'll just tell you there'sno 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 infuriatinglygood-natured--"but I might as well tell you that we're going to get theAthletic offices, the prom committee, the Oratorical offices and theAthletic 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 havedropped on a Mexican cactus. It couldn't be any more uncomfortable. 

I went away and called our gang together and we seethed over thesituation most all night. They voted me campaign leader on the strengthof 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 andstrength of Siwash against a red-headed Missouri girl, weight aboutninety-five pounds; and we couldn't help feeling sorry for her. But shehad brought it on herself. Insurgency, Miss Allstairs, is a very wickedthing. It's a despicable attempt on the part of the minority to becomethe majority, and no true patriot will desert the majority in his timeof need. 

I'm not going to linger over the next month. I'll get it over in a fewwords. We started out to exterminate Miss Hicks. We put up our candidatefor the Oratorical Association presidency. The hall was jammed when thetime came, and before anything could be done Miss Hicks demanded that noone be allowed to vote who hadn't paid his or her dues. Half the fellowswe had there never had any intention of getting that far into Oratoricalwork, and backed out; but the rest of us paid up. There had never beenso much money in the treasury since the association began. Then theBlanks nominated a candidate and skinned us by three votes. When wethought of all that money gone to waste we almost went crazy. 

But that was just a starter. We were determined to have our own wayabout 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 asnap meeting called on us over in Browning Hall, in which threemiddle-aged young ladies who had never danced a step were named. Theroar we raised was terrific, but the president sweetly informed us thatthey had only followed precedent--we'd had to do the same thing the yearbefore to keep out the Mu Kow Moos. We appealed to the Faculty, and itlaughed 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 therewas fair play. Oh, yes. They saw it. They passed a rule that no studentwho was conditioned in any study could vote in any college election. That disenfranchised about half of us right on the spot. If ever anarchybreaks out in this country, Miss Allstairs, it will be because ofcollege Faculties. 

We made a last stand on the Athletic Association treasurership. Itlooked for a while as if it was going to be easy. We threw all the rulesaway and gave a magnificent party for all the girls we thought we couldcount on. It was the most gorgeous affair on record, and half the dresssuits in college went into hock afterward for the whole semester. Theresult was most encouraging. The girls were delighted. They pledgedtheir 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 hadentertained the non-fraternity men in the gymnasium that night and hadserved lemonade and wafers. She had alluded to them playfully as slaves, and they had broken up about fifty chairs demonstrating that they werenot. When the election came off she had the unattached vote solid, andwe lost out by a comfortable majority. An estimable lady, who didn'tknow athletics from croquet, was elected. And when the receptioncommittee of the prom was announced the next day it was composedexclusively of men who would have had to be led through the grand marchon wheels. 

After that we gave up. I tried to resign as campaign manager, but theboys wouldn't let me. They admitted that no one else could have done anybetter, and, besides, they wanted me to go over and see Miss Hicksagain. They wanted me to ask her what her crowd wanted. When I thoughtof her pleasant conversational hatpin work I felt like resigning fromcollege; but there always have to be martyrs, and in the end I went. 

Miss Hicks received me rapturously. You would have thought we had beenboy and girl friends. She insisted on asking how all the folks were athome, and how my health had been, and hadn't it been a gay winter, andwas I going to the prom, and how did I like her new gown? While I was atit I thought I might as well amuse myself, too, so I asked her to marryme. That was the only time I ever got ahead of her. She refusedindignantly, and I laughed at her for getting so fussed up over a littlething. 

"Marriage is a sacred subject, " she said very soberly. 

"So was politics, " said I, "until you came along. If you won't talkmarriage 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 usfellows 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 janitorshipsloose. "

"Hicksey, " says I. 

"Miss Hicks, " says she. 

"I beg your pardon--my dear girl, then, " said I. "I've come over to thebunch to confess. You've busted us. We're on the mat nine points downand yelling for help. We don't want to run things. We only want to beallowed to live. We surrender. We give up. We humbly ask that youprepare the crow and let us eat the neck. Isn't there any way by whichwe can get a little something to keep us busy and happy? We're in ahorrible situation. Aren't you even going to let us have the AthleticAssociation 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 mighttry to win my crowd away from me. You see, you've played right into myhand so far. You haven't paid any attention to my supporters. Now, ifyou were to go after them the way you do the other girls in the collegeI 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 youcould 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 themost bee-you-ti-ful votes you ever saw. "

"What you mean, " I said, "is that if we don't show those girls asuperlatively good time this winter we won't get a look at the electionnext 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 ofhonor are so high that I had to pay for the lemonade for the independentmen 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 enjoythese little confidences. "

Honestly, Miss Allstairs, when I think of that girl I shrink up untilI'm afraid I'll fall into my own hat. It ought not to be legal for agirl to talk to a man like that. It's inhuman. 

We thought matters over for two weeks and tried one or two little raidson 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 thepoliticians' burden. We gave those girls the time of theiryoung-to-middle-aged lives. We got up dances and crokinole parties andconcerts for them. We took them to see Hamlet. We had sleighing parties. We helped every lecture course in the college do a rushing business. Wejust backed into the shafts and took the bit without a murmur. And maybeyou think those girls didn't drive us. They seemed determined to make upfor the drought of all the past. They were as coy and uncertain and asinfernally hard to please as if they'd been used to getting one proposala day and two on Sunday. Let one of us so much as drop over to BrowningHall to pass the time of day with one of the real heart-disturbers, andthe particular vote that he was courting would go off the reservationfor a week. It would take a pair of theater tickets at the least tosquare 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 ofseventy-six, and we gave strawrides to girls who insisted on talkinghistory of art and missionary work to us all the way. When I think ofthe tons of candy and the mountains of flowers and the wagonloads oflatest books that we lavished, and of the hard feelings it made in otherquarters, and of our loneliness amid all this gayety, and of our franticefforts to make the prom a success, with ten couples dancing and therest decorating the walls, I sometimes wonder whether the college wasworth our great love for it after all. 

But we were winning out. By April it was easy to see this. The Blanksthawed with the snow-drifts. They got real friendly and sociable, andafter the warm weather came on we simply had to entertain them all thetime, they liked it so. When I think of those beautiful spring days, with us sauntering with our political fates about the campus, and thenicest 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 asif it was a genuine case of "Oh, those eyes!" and "Shut up, you thumpingheart. "

[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 justflocked by herself as usual, and watched us taking her votes away fromher without any concern apparently. I always felt that she had somethingsaved up for us, but I couldn't tell what it was; and anyway, we hadthose votes. By the time the Athletic election came around there wasn'ta doubt of it. 

I must say the women did pretty well during the year. They'd cleaned upthe Oratorical debt, and somehow there was about three times as muchmoney in the Athletic treasury after the football season as there hadever 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 bunchof last year's sunflowers. Besides, we'd earned it. We'd earned a starrycrown as a matter of fact, but all we asked was that they give ourlittle 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 incelebration, and had invited them already. Election day came and wehardly 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 votedfor 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 collegepatriotism. And, of course, it was a low-lived trick for Miss Hicks tofloat around the last day and spread the impression that we'd neverloved them except for their votes. She simply traded constituencies withus, that's all. Take it coming or going, year in or year out, youcouldn't beat that girl. I'll bet she goes out to Washington state andgets elected governor some day. 

I went over to Browning Hall the night after the election, ready to tellMiss Hicks just what everybody thought of her. I was prepared to tellher that every athletic team in college was going to disband and thatanarchy would be declared in the morning. She came down as pleasant asever and held out her hand. 

"Don't say it, please, " she said, "because I'm going to tell yousomething. I'm not coming back next year. "

"Not coming back!" said I, gulping down a piece of relief as big as anapple. 

"No, " she said, "I'm--I'm going to be married this summer. I've--I'vebeen engaged all this year to a man back home, but I wanted to come backand 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 fatherwill be so pleased. He's the chairman of the congressional committee outat home and he's always told me an awful lot about politics. I'veenjoyed this year so much. "

"Well, I haven't, " I said; "but I hope to enjoy next year. " And then Itook half an hour to tell her that, in spite of the fact that she wasthe most arrant, deceitful, unreliable, two-faced and scuttlingpolitician in the world, she was almost incredibly nice. She listenedquite patiently, and at the end she held up her fingers. They'd beencrossed all the time. 

No, that's the last I ever saw of her, Miss Allstairs. She left beforeCommencement. She sent me an invitation to the wedding. I'll bet shedidn't quite get the significance of the magnificent silver set weSiwash boys sent. We sent it to the groom. 

That was the end of women dominion at Siwash. There wasn't a rag of themovement left next fall. But we boys never entirely forgot what happenedto us, and it's still the custom to elect a co-ed to some Athleticoffice. They do say that the only way to teach a politician what thepeople want is to bore a shaft in his head and shout it in, but ourexperience ought to be proof to the contrary. Why, all we needed was thegentle 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'llnever know in this oversized, ingrowing, fenced-off, insulatedmetropolis till some one writes and tells you. Every fall I ask myselfthat same question all day Saturday and Sunday, and do you suppose Iever find a Siwash score in one of those muddy-faced, red-headed, ward-gossip parties that they call newspapers in New York? Never, not atall, you hopeful tenderfoot from the unimportant West. After you'veexisted in this secluded portion of the universe a few years you'll getover trying to find anything that looks like news from home in the dailydisturbances here. And I don't care whether your home is in Buffalo, Chicago or Strawberry Point, Iowa, either. Go down on the East Side andbeat up a policeman, and you'll get immortalized in ten-inch type. Goback West and get elected governor, and ten to one if you're mentionedat all they'll slip you the wrong state to preside over. 

Excuse me, but I'm considerably sore, just as I am every Sunday duringthe football season. Here I am, eating my heart out with longing to knowwhether good old Siwash has dusted off half a township withMuggledorfer again, and what do I get to read? Four yards of Gale; fiveyards of Jarhard; two yards of Ohell; and a page of Quincetown, Hardmouth, Jamhurst, Saint Mikes, Holy Moses College and the ConnecticutInstitute of Etymology. Nice fodder for a loyal alumnus eleven hundredand then some miles from home, isn't it? Honest, when I first hit thisseething burg I used to go down to the Grand Central station on Sundayafternoon and look at the people coming in from the trains, just becausesome of them were from the West. Once I took a New Yorker up toRiverside Park, pointed him west and asked him what he saw. He said hesaw a ferryboat coming to New York. That was all he had ever seen of theother shore. He called it Hinterland. That made me mad and I called himan electric-light bug. We had a lovely row. 

But we're blasting out a corner for the old coll. , even back here. We'vegot things fixed pretty nicely here now, we Siwash men. Down nearGramercy Park there's an old-fashioned city dwelling house, four storieshigh and elbow-room wide. It's the Siwash Alumni Club. There are half ahundred Siwash men in New York, gradually getting into the king row invarious lines of business, and we pay enough rent each year for thathouse to buy a pretty fair little cottage out in Jonesville. Whenever aSiwash man drops in there he's pretty sure to find another Siwash manwho smokes the same brand of tobacco and knows the same brand ofcollege songs. We've got one legislator, four magazine publishers, tworailroad officials, a city prosecutor and three bankers on themembership roll, and maybe some day we'll have a mayor. Then we'll passa law requiring the boys and girls of New York to spend at least onehour a day learning about Siwash College, Jonesville, the big team ofnaughty-nix and the formula for getting credit at the Horseshoe Café. We'll make it obligatory for every newspaper to publish a full pageabout each Siwash game in the fall, with pictures of the captain, thecoach 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 joinit. Ten dollars, please, and sign here. When we get a little huskierfinancially we won't charge new-fledged graduates anything for a year ortwo, but we've got to now. The soulless landlord wants his rent inadvance. You'll find the whole gang there Saturday nights. Just buttright in if I'm not around. You're a Siwash man, and if you want toborrow the doorknob to throw at a hackman you've a perfect right to doit. 

I'll tell you, old man, you don't know how nice it is to have a holethat you can hunt in this hurricane town, when you're a bright youngchap with a glorious college past and a business future that you can'thock for a plate of beans a day! Leaving college and going into businessin a big city is like taking a high dive from the hall of fame into anice-water tank. Think of that and be cheerful. You've got a nice timecoming. Just now you're Rudolph Weedon Burlingame, SiwashNaughty-several, late captain of the baseball team, prize orator, manager of two proms and president of the Senior class. To-morrow you'llbe a nameless cumberer of busy streets, useful only to the street-carcompanies to shake down for nickels. To-morrow you're going around tothe manager of some firm or other with a letter from some customer ofhis, and you're going to put your hand on your college diploma so as tohave it handy, and you're going to hand him the letter and prepare totell the story of your strong young life. But just before you beginyou'll go away, because the manager will tell you he's sorry, but he'sbusy, and there are fourteen applicants ahead of you, and anyway he'llnot be hiring any more men until 1918, and will you please come aroundthen, 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 daystrying to haul that diploma out. The fourth day you'll put it in yourtrunk. I've known men to cut 'em up for shaving paper. You'll stoptrying to tell the story of your life and in about a week you'll bewondering why you have been allowed to live so long. In two weeks aclerk will look as big as a senator to you and you'll begin to getbashful before elevator men. You'll get off the sidewalk when you see aman who looks as if he had a job and was in a hurry. You'll envy amessenger boy with a job and a future; you'll wonder if managers arereally carnivorous or only pretend to be. You feel as tall as the SingerBuilding 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 toclimb 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 yourhole and you'll hunt it every evening. You'll be a big man there, for wejudge 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 madeagainst Muggledorfer, and the man on your left, who won't touch a lawcase 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 reallife-sized human being instead of a job hunter, knee high to a copyingclerk. You'll be back in the old college atmosphere, as big as the bestof 'em, and after you've swapped yarns all evening you'll go to bed fullof tabasco and pepper and you'll tackle the first manager the nextmorning as if he were a Kiowa man and had the ball. And sooner or lateryou'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 youhaven't got the real Siwash spirit, that's all. 

Funny thing about college. It isn't merely an education. It's a wholelife in itself. You enter it unknown and tiny--just a Freshman with norights on earth. You work and toil and suffer--and fall in love--andclimb 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'tany world but the campus at college. Freshmen look up to you and admiremen who are big enough to talk with you. The Sophomores may sneer atfaculties and kings, but they wouldn't think of sassing you. The paperspublish your picture in your football clothes. You dine with theprofessors, and prominent alumni come back and shake you by the hand. Ofcourse, you know that somewhere in the dim nebulous outside there is aPresident of the United States who is quite a party in his way, but noneof the girls mention it when they tell you how grand you looked afterthey had hauled the other team off of you and sewed on your ear. Theytalk about you exclusively because you're really the only thing worthtalking about, you know. 

When Commencement comes you move about the campus like some tallmountain peak on legs. The students bring their young brothers up tomeet you and you try to be kind and approachable. They give you atremendous cheer when you go down the aisle in the chapel to get yourprizes. You are referred to on all sides as one of the reasons whyAmerica is great. The professors when they bid you good-by ask youanxiously not to forget them. Then Commencement is over and college lifeis past, and there is nothing left in life but to become a senator orrun a darned old trust. You leave the campus, taking care not to step onany of the buildings, and go out into the world pretty blue becauseyou're through with about everything worth while; and you wonder if youcan stand it to toil away making history eleven months in the year withonly time to hang around college a few weeks in spring or fall. You'redone with the real life. You're an old man, you've seen it all; and itsometimes takes you two weeks or more to recover and decide that afterall a great career may be almost as interesting in a way as collegeitself. So you buck up and decide to accept the career--and that's whereyou begin to catch on to the general drift of the universe in deadearnest. 

Take a man of sixty, with a permanent place in Who's Who and a largecircle of people who believe that he has some influence with the sunriseand sunset. Then let him suddenly find himself a ten-year-old boy withtwo empty pockets and an appetite for assets, and let him learn that itisn't considered even an impertinence to spank him whenever he tries tomix in and air his opinions. I don't believe he would be much moreshocked than the college man who finds, at the conclusion of a gloriousfour-year slosh in fame, that he is really just about to begin life, andthat the first thing he must learn is to keep out from under foot andsay "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 alwaysmesh. The college athlete may discover that the only use the world hasfor talented shoulder muscles is for hod-carrying purposes. The societyfashion plate may never get the hang of how to earn anything but lastyear's model pants; and the fishy-eyed nonentity, who never did anythingmore glorious in college than pay his class tax, may be doing abrokerage business in skyscrapers within ten years. 

When I left Siwash and came to New York I guess I was as big as the nextgraduate. Of course I hadn't been the one best bet on the campus, but Iknew all the college celebrities well enough to slap them on the backsand call them by pet names and lend them money. That of course should bea great assistance in knowing just how to approach the president of abig city bank and touch him for a cigar in a red-and-gold corset, whilehe is telling you to make yourself at home around the place until a jobturns up. Allie Bangs, my chum, went on East with me. We had decided torise side by side and to buy the same make of yachts. Of course we weresensible. We didn't expect to crowd out any magnates the first week ortwo. We intended to rise by honest worth, if it took a whole year. Allwe asked was that the fellows ahead should take care of themselves andnot hold it against us if we ran over them from behind. We didn't thinkwe 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 opportunityfor 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 establishour right to breathe our fair share of New York air. At the end of thattime neither one of us would have been surprised if we had been chargedrent while waiting in the ante-rooms of New York offices to be told thatno one had time to tell us that there was no use of our waiting to get achance to ask for anything. Talk about a come-down! It was worse thancoming down a bump-the-bumps with nails in it. It was three monthsbefore we got jobs. They were microscopic jobs in the same company, withwages that were so small that it seemed a shame to make out our weeklychecks on nice engraved bank paper--jobs where any one from theproprietor down could yell "Here, you!" and the office boy could havefired us and got away with it. If I had been hanging on to a ropetrailing behind a fifty-thousand-ton ocean liner I don't believe Ishould have felt more inconsequential and totally superfluous. 

But they were jobs just the same and we were game. I think most collegegraduates are after they get their feelings reduced to normal size. Wehung on and dug in, and sneaked more work into our positions, anddidn't quarrel with any one except the window-washer's little boy whobrought meat for the cats in the basement. We drew the line at lettinghim boss us. And how we did enjoy being part of the big rumpus onManhattan Island. We had a room--it wasn't so much of a room as it was asort of stationary vest--and we ate at those hunger cures where a girlpunches out your bill on a little ticket and you don't dare eat up abovethe third figure from the bottom or you'll go broke on Friday. By hookor crook we always managed to save a dollar from the wreckage each weekfor Sunday, and say, did you ever conduct a scientific investigationinto just how far a dollar will go providing a day's pleasure in a bigcity? We did that for six months, and if I do say it myself we stretchedsome of those dollars until the eagle's neck reached from Tarrytown toConey Island. We saw New York from roof garden to sub-cellar. We evengot to doing fancy stunts. We'd dig out our dress suits, go over to oneof those cafés where you begin owing money as soon as you see the headwaiter, and put on a bored and haughty front for two hours on a dollarand twenty cents, including tips. And what we didn't know about theSubway, the Snubway and the Grubway, the Clubway, and the variousDubways of New York wasn't worth discovering or even imagining. 

We hadn't been conducting our explorations for more than a week when amost tremendous thing happened to us. You know how you are alwaysrunning up against mastodons in the big town. You see about every onewho is big enough to die in scare-heads. Taking a stroll down FifthAvenue with an old residenter and having him tell about the people youpass 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 apieceon 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, thegreat football player. At that time I guess most of the college boys inAmerica said their prayers to him. Out West we students used to read ofhis terrific line plunges on the eastern fields and of his titanicdefense when his team was hard pushed, and wonder if any of us wouldever become great enough to meet him and shake him by the hand. What didwe care for the achievements of Achilles and Hector and Hercules andother eminent hasbeens, which we had to soak up at the rate of fortylines of Greek a day? They had old Homer to write them up--the best manever in the business. But they were too tame for us. I've caught myselfspeculating more than once on what Achilles would have done if Jarvishad tried to make a gain through him. Achilles was probably a prettygood spear artist, and all that, but if Jarvis had put hisleather-helmeted head down and hit the line low--about two points southof the solar plexus--they would have carted Ac. Away in a cab rightthere, invulnerability and all. 

That's about what we thought of Jarvis. We had his pictures pasted allover our training quarters along with those of the othersuper-dreadnoughts from the colleges that break into literature, and Iimagine that if he had suddenly appeared back in Jonesville we shouldhave put our heads right down and kow-towed until he gave us permissionto get up. And here we were, sitting in the same café with him. I'lltell you, I had never felt the glory of living in the metropolis andprowling around the ankles of the big chiefs more vividly than rightthere in that room the night we first saw him. 

We sat and watched Jarvis while our meat course got cold. There was nomistaking him--some people have their looks copyrighted and Jarvis wasone of them. We would have known it was he if we had seen him in a Romanmob. After a while Bangs, who always did have a triple reënforcedHarveyized steel cheek, straightened up. "I'm going over to speak tohim, " 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'tany more than freeze me. And after I've spoken to him they can take mylittle old job away from me and ship me back to the hayfields wheneverthey please. I'll be satisfied. "

"You ought to bottle that nerve of yours and sell it to thelightning-rod pedlers, " says I, getting all sweaty. "Just because youintroduced yourself to a governor once you think you can go as far asyou 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 whois watching his friend making a furry-eared nuisance of himself. Therewas the greatest football player in the world being pestered by afrying-sized sprig of a ninth assistant shipping clerk. It waspreposterous. I waited to see Bangs wilt and come slinking back. Then Iwas going to put on my hat and walk out as if I didn't belong with himat all. But instead of that Bangs shook hands with Jarvis, talked aminute and then sat down with him. When Bangs is routed out by the AngelGabriel he'll sit down on the edge of his grave and delay the wholeprocession, trying to find a mutual acquaintance or two. That's the kindof a leather-skin he is. 

Presently Bangs turned around and beckoned to me to come over. Morecolossal impudence. I wasn't going to do it, but Jarvis turned, too, andsmiled at me. Like a hypnotized man I went over to their table. "I wantyou to meet Mr. Jarvis, " said Bangs, with the air of a man who is givingaway 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 edgeof a chair. 

Well, sir, Jarvis--it was the real Jarvis all right--was as pleasant afellow as you would ever care to meet. There he was talking away to usfishworms just as cordially as if he enjoyed it. He didn't seem to be abit better than we were. I've often noticed that when you meet the verygreatest people they are that way. It's only the fellows who aren't surethey're great and who are pretty sure you aren't sure either, who haveto put up a haughty front. Jarvis offered us cigarettes and put us somuch at our ease that we stayed there an hour. It was a dazzlingexperience. He told us a lot about the city, and asked us aboutourselves and laughed at our experiences. And he told us that he oftendined there and hoped to see us again. When we got safely outside, afterhaving bade him good-by without any sort of a break, I mopped myforehead. Then I took off my hat. "Bangs, " said I, "you're the world'schampion. 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 andwalk home to pay for it. "

Incredible as it may sound, that was the beginning of a real friendshipbetween the three of us. Jarvis seemed to take a positive pleasure inbeing democratic. And he was wonderfully thoughtful, too. He realizedinstinctively that we had about nine cents apiece in our clothes as arule, and he didn't offer to be gorgeous and buy things we couldn't buyback. We got to dropping in at the café once a week or so and eating atthe same table with him. Why on earth he fancied eating around withgrubs like us, when he could have been tucking away classy fare up onFifth Avenue, we couldn't imagine. Some people are naturally Bohemian, however. It seemed to delight Jarvis to hear us tell about our team, andour college, and our prospects, and how lucky we had been up to date, not getting stepped on by any financial magnate or other tall citymonument. He wasn't a talkative man himself. It was especially hard topry 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 factsabout some great college game that we knew by heart from the newspaperaccounts. And he would mention all the famous players by their firstnames--you can't imagine how much more alarming it sounded than callinga president "Teddy"--and we would just sit there and drink it in, andwatch history from behind the scenes until suddenly he would stop, lookabsent 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 wethought we had offended him and we were miserable for a week. But whenwe ran across him again he seemed as pleased as ever to see us. It wasjust moods, after all, we finally decided, and thought no more aboutit. Great men have a right to have moods if they want to. We admired hismoods as much as the rest of him, and were only glad they weren'tviolent. 

It was a couple of months before we got up courage enough to ask him todrop in at our room. Even Allie got timid. He explained that he didn'twant to break the spell. But finally I braced up myself and invited himto drop around with us, and he consented as kindly as you please. Cameright up to our little three by twice and wouldn't even sit in the onechair. Sat on the bed and looked over our college pictures, and chatteduntil 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 fewminutes afterward he went home. We thought we'd offended him again, buta week afterward he turned up and called on us--we'd asked him to dropin any time. We decided that he didn't like to have too much familiarityabout his football career and we respected him for it. It's all rightfor a man like that to be affable and democratic, but he mustn't let youcrawl all over him. He's got his dignity to maintain. 

As the winter came on Jarvis dropped up to see us quite frequently. Henever asked us to come and see him and we were really a littlegrateful--for I don't believe I should have had the nerve to go bouncinginto the apartments of a national hero and hobnob with the mile-a-minuteclass. Anyway we didn't expect it or dream of it. And we didn't ask himany more questions about himself. We didn't care to try to elbow intohis circle. If he chose to come slumming and sit around with us, we weremore than content. We had seen enough of him already to keep us busyparalyzing 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 roomsright along. We happened to meet him in a café. And say, he tells usthat when he made that fifty-yard run--and so on. " We used to practisesaying things like this naturally and easily. We could just see theundergrads at the frat house sitting around in circles and lapping itup. 

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 businessin this Bedlam--when you break in you keep right on going. By the timeCommencement rolled around we were getting checks with two figures onthem, 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 buryour worst enemy. That's what business does to the dear old college dayswhen 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 withour heads in our hands over it. This business bug is a bad, bad biterall right. Just let it get its tooth into you, and what do you care ifsome other fellow is smoking your two-quart pipe back in the old chapterhouse? And for that matter, what do you care about anything else untilyou get up far enough to take breath and look around? Sometimes, after acouple of weeks of extra hard work, I've taken my mind off invoices longenough to wag it around a bit and I've felt like a swimmer coming upafter a long dive. 

We landed those promotions in July and went right after another pair. Igot mine in August--Allie in September. And along in December theycalled us both up in the office, where the big crash was. He said nicethings to us about getting a chance to fire our own chauffeurs if wekept on tending to business, and first thing we knew we had offices ofour own in the back of the building, with our names painted on thedoors, and call-bells that brought stenographers and the same old brandof office boys that used to blow us out of the other offices along withtheir cigarette smoke. And we realized then that if we worked likethunder for thirty years more and saved our money and made it earn onehundred per cent, perhaps some of the real business kings would noticeus on the street some day. That's about the way the college swellinggoes down. 

All this time we hadn't seen much of Jarvis. He'd stopped coming to thecafé and we'd really been so busy that we almost forgot about him. It'ssimply wonderful the things business will drive out of your mind. Itwasn't until late in the winter that we realized that we'd probably losttrack of Jarvis for good--that is, until we climbed up into his set anddiscovered him at some dinner that was a page out of the socialregister. We mixed around a lot more now. We went to themillion-candle-power restaurants every now and then, and ate a good dealmore than sixty-five cents' worth apiece without batting an eye; and wewent to see a play occasionally and didn't climb up into the rarefiedatmosphere to find our seats, either. And whenever we broke in with thelimousine crowd we kept a bright lookout for Jarvis. We wanted to seehim and show him that we were coming along. We wanted him to be proud ofus. I'd have given all my small bank balance to hear him say: "Finework, old man; keep it up. " I'll tell you when a big chap like thattakes an interest in you, it's just as bracing as a hypodermic ofginger. Baccalaureates and inspirational editorials can't touch it. 

I was holding down the proud position of shipping clerk and Allie was myassistant the next spring, and it seemed as if we had to empty thatwarehouse every twenty-four hours and find the men to load the stuffwith search-warrants. Help was scandalously scarce. We couldn't haveworked 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 barrelsby 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 fewbarrels myself. "Use him? Say, I'll give him a whole car to load all byhimself, and if he can get the job finished by yesterday he can haveanother 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 theoffice. He's a fine fellow and well educated, but he's on his uppers. Hecan't seem to land anywhere. I'm sorry for him. He looks as if he washeaded for the bread line. He's too good to roll barrels, but it won'thurt him. If you'll take him in and use him I'll give him a place assoon 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 ina bill of lading. After a while the door opened and some one said, "Isthis the shipping clerk?" It was the ghost of a voice I used to know andI turned around in a hurry. It was Jarvis. 

I don't suppose it is strictly business to cry while you are shakinghands with a husky you're just putting into harness at one-fifty per. Ididn't intend to do it, but somehow when your whole conception of fameand glory comes clattering down about your ears, and you find you've gotto order your star and idol to get a hustle on him and load the car atdoor four damquick, you are likely to do something foolish. I juststood and sniveled and let my mouth hang open. Neither of us said aword, but presently I put my arm around his shoulders and led him outinto the shipping room. "There's the foreman, " I said, in a voice like awet sponge. "And you report here at six o'clock sharp. " Then I went andhunted 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 toreadjust society and the universe and the beacon lights of progress allafternoon. 

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 hetold us his story, while we learned a lot of things about glory wehadn't even vaguely suspected before. He was one of the greatestfootball players who ever carried a ball, Jarvis was. Of that there wasno doubt. He admitted it himself then. I might say he confessed it. He'dcome to his university without any real preparation--you know even inthe best regulated institutions of learning they sometimes get yourmarks on tackling mixed with your grades on entrance algebra. He'd spenttwo hours a day on football and the rest of his time being a collegehero. He'd had to work at it like a dog, he said. How he got by theexams, he never knew. It seemed to him as if he must have studied in hissleep. By the time he graduated he'd had about every honor that has beeninvented for campus consumption. He belonged to the exclusivesocieties. All kinds of big people had shaken hands with him--asked forthe privilege. He had a scrapbook of newspaper stories about his careerthat weighed four pounds. He knew the differences between eight kinds ofwine 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 andthe university moved off behind him and left him alone. It was up to himto keep on being a famous character, he felt. His college demanded it. He had to make good. But there he was with a magnificent footballeducation and no more football to play. His financial training consistedin knowing when his bank account was overdrawn. His folks had prettynearly paralyzed themselves putting him through and he wasn't going todraw on them any further. He went to New York because it seemed to bealmost as big as the university, and he started all alone on the job ofshouldering his way past the captains of finance up to the place wherehis college mates might feel proud of him some more. 

The result was so ridiculous that he had to laugh at it himself. He lostfive yards every time he bucked an office boy. His college friends keptinviting him out and he went until they began offering him help. Then hecut 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'tearned enough money to pay his room-rent in that time. There were timeswhen 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 aworld-beater and somehow he just couldn't tackle it. When we had comeover and paid homage to him he saw we had taken him for a successful manof the world, as well as a member of the All-America team, and he hadn'tbeen able to resist the desire to let two human beings look up to himagain. He hadn't invited us to his room, he said, because part of thetime he didn't have a room; and he even confessed that once or twicehe'd walked up to our rooms from downtown because he was crazy for asmoke and didn't have the price. 

I guess there never was a more peculiar dinner party in New York. Partof the time I sniveled and part of the time Allie sniveled, and once ortwice we were all three all balled up in our throats. But after a whilewe braced up and I told Jarvis what the Boss had told me, and we drank atoast to the glad new days, and another to success, and another toJarvis, the coming business pillar, and some more to our private yachtsand country homes, and to Commencement reunions, and this and that. Thenwe chartered a sea-going cab and took Jarvis home with us. We made himsleep in the bed while we slept on the floor, and the next morning weloaned him a pair of overalls that we had honorably retired and we allwent down to work together. 

The next three months were perfectly ridiculous. We simply couldn'torder Jarvis around. Suppose you had to ask the Statue of Liberty to geta move on and scrub the floors? We couldn't get our ingrained awe ofthat freight hustler out of our systems. Of course when any one wasaround we had to keep up appearances, but when I was alone and I hadsomething 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 havethe time? You know there's a shipment for Pittsburgh that's got to goout by noon. I think the car is at door 6. Those barrels ought to be putinto the car right away, and if you'd see that they get in there I'd bevery much obliged to you. I'd attend to it myself, but they've given mea lot of stuff to go over here. "

Then Jarvis would grin cheerfully and hustle those barrels in before Icould get over blushing. If you don't believe football has itsadvantages in after life you ought to watch a prize tackle waltzing athree-hundred-pound barrel through a car door. 

By day we ordered Jarvis about in this fashion, and made him earn hisone-fifty with the rest of the red-shirted gang. But at six o'clock wedropped all that like a hot poker. Nights we were his adoring youngfriends again. We sat together in restaurants and said "sir" to him tohis infinite disgust, and made him tell over and over again the storiesof the big games and the grand doings of the old days. When hispromotion came, three months later, and he went into a small job in theoffice, with a traveling job looming up in the offing, we held acelebration that set us back about half the price of a railroad tickethome. It meant more to us than it did to him. To him it was threedollars more a week, congenial work and a chance. But to us it was therelease of a great man from grinding captivity--a racehorse rescued fromthe shafts of a garbage cart; a Richard the Lion-hearted hauled from thegloomy dungeon, where he had had to peel his own potatoes, and set onthe road to kingly pomp and circumstance again. Excuse me for thisfrightful mess of language. I can't help getting a little squashy withmy adjectives when I think of that glorious banquet night. 

I'm glad to say that Jarvis kept coming along after that. He developedinto a first-class salesman, and in a couple of years he came in fromthe road and took a desk in the house with his name on the side in giltletters. When this happened we made him look up every one of his oldcollege friends again. He hesitated a little, but we got behind him andpushed. 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 seehim, of course, and to his amazement he found that he was still a grandold college institution among the alumni. So he trained with his owncrowd after that, but even now we go over to his club and dine with himat least once a year--always on some anniversary or other. And for thelast 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 fightany one about paying for your lunch just because you still have theprice. It's a privilege we older chaps insist on with you newcomersanyway. And remember, there is always a bunch of us before the fire atthe club Saturday evenings, and we don't talk business. While you'rewaiting for that job, don't you dare miss a meeting. And say--one thingmore. 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 spellingconsistent; every other effort has been made to remain true to theoriginal book.