The Freshman (Holman)/Chapter 2
Do you remember those boyhood days when going to college was greater than going to Congress—and you'd rather be right tackle than President?
Harold's ambition to go to college had taken definite form one raw March afternoon five months before that Summer night he play-acted in front of his mirror. He had had thoughts of college before, but they had been fleeting, discouraged by his knowledge of the Lamb finances and of his father's oftrepeated opinion of the mental and moral competence of the products of our universities. Henry Lamb's opinion, to be sure, was based upon the performances of Walter Coburn, Jr., Union State '26 and son of the president of the First National Bank of Sanford. This was hardly giving our colleges an even break. Walter, Jr., spent his summers supposedly learning the banking business at the First National, at times under the tutelage of Henry Lamb. In reality Walter spent his summers driving a high-powered motor car between Sanford and fashionable resorts near by and reported for duty at the bank, sleepy and sulking, only after ultimatums from his self-made and apoplectic father.
On Harold Lamb's crucial March afternoon, Harlow Gaines, principal and chief professor in the Sanford High School, asked Harold to remain for a few minutes after the class in Senior English.
Gaines was thirty-two years of age and looked ten years older. He wore gold-rimmed eyeglasses with a black cord fastened to them. A lock of blond hair drooped over his forehead. From the cradle he was destined to be principal of a four-room high school in a middle western town of the size of Sanford. He taught English, Latin, French, German, physics, and chemistry; he also coached the baseball and football teams. This latter task he performed very badly, for he had played neither game himself. But the other two teachers in the Sanford High School were women, so Gaines got the coaching assignment.
He boarded with the Picketts, two houses from the school. Mrs. Pickett reported that Gaines spent all his spare time and cash on thick, depressing-looking books, some of them not even in English, and was hence "a very smart man." To corroborate this. Professor Gaines never spoke in words of one syllable when three syllables would do just as well. Moreover, to counterbalance the unimpressive appearance of his small, thin-chested body, he had cultivated a very deep voice. New acquaintances hearing this voice for the first time always visibly started, as if they had suddenly heard a rabbit roar like a lion.
Professor Gaines, tapping his gold-rimmed glasses upon his desk, jerked his nervous little head up toward the tall, awkward Harold and said gruffly, "Lamb, I wished to make a private comment upon the essay which you turned in to-day. While it was not devoid of errors in grammar and in syntactical construction, it was a decidedly creditable effort, decidedly creditable. I may safely say that it was noticeably above the average of the class. But what I desired to make special comment upon was the subject which you discussed. I believe that in the questionnaire which I had the class fill out last week you stated that you did not intend to pursue your education beyond the high-school grade, that you did not contemplate entering a university. Is that correct?"
Harold nodded.
"Yes," went on the principal with considerable satisfaction that his memory had not played pranks with him, "I was convinced I was correct in my impression. May I say then that it is all the more remarkable that you should have chosen 'The Advantages of a College Education' as the subject of your essay and, moreover, betrayed in the effective manner in which you presented your thesis that you are quite convinced of the benefits to be derived from colleges. You have evidently given the matter considerable thought."
Harold thought that through the barrage of sonorously mouthed big words he gleaned Gaines' meaning. He replied, "If you mean that I want to go to college, I do, you bet I do."
Gaines hesitated. Then he asked, "If you will permit me, may I ask if the obstacle thwarting your desire is of a financial character? For lack of pecuniary means is not necessarily a bar to a college education, you know. I, myself, for instance, worked my way through all four years at Tate University and was neither hampered in my educational pursuits nor looked down upon by my fellows."
"Money is one reason I can't go," Harold said frankly. "Another reason is that my father doesn't believe in colleges. He has arranged with my Uncle Peter Thatcher to have me go to work at the Thatcher Steel Works in Cleveland in the fall. Dad says the best education is gotten in the hard school of experience That's where he got his."
Professor Gaines said, "H'mm," with the suspicion of a sniff. He added, "Perhaps I could interview your father and convince him differently."
Harold knew Henry Lamb's opinion of the town highbrow. The youth said doubtfully, "I don't think it would do any good."
"My specific motive in bringing up this matter," Gaines continued resoundingly, "is that there is a smoker and get-together of the Ohio alumni branch of Tate University in Cleveland to-morrow evening. I have been urged to bring with me any members of my graduating class who might be interested in my alma mater. The alumni association will pay the traveling expenses of such guests. I regret that one of the requirements is that the high school or preparatory school students thus invited shall possess outstanding athletic prowess. I may say that I do not at all approve the tendency of our colleges proselytizing prospective entering men with athletic ability. However, I believe that you would meet even this regrettable requirement. You have acquitted yourself adequately upon the baseball and football teams here. I dare say I shall be justified in extending to you an invitation to accompany me to Cleveland to-morrow afternoon, if you would care to come and if you can secure your parents' permission. You will there meet several prominent Tate alumni, as well as the undergraduate captains of the football and baseball team. There will be speeches, a banquet and other entertainment."
Professor Gaines delivered the invitation as if it were to a presentation at the Court of St. James. And Harold regarded it in no less a light. The high school senior beamed.
He almost stuttered with excitement as he replied, "Say—that would be great! Thanks a lot. I'll ask my dad right away. He'll let me go, I'm sure, when he hears my expenses will be paid."
Sure enough. Henry Lamb grumbled, but he finally guessed it would be all right, "seeing that they're fools enough to pay your way. But don't come back here all heated up again about going to college. College is only for rich nincompoops like young Walt Coburn and half-baked bookworms like your Harlow Gaines, P.D.Q., B.V.D., and eight or nine other useless letters."
Master and pupil left the railroad station at four o'clock the following afternoon. Harold was wearing his gray college-cut suit, the over-length and over-width trousers of which had occasioned much ribald comment from Lamb, Sr., and his gayest barber-shop striped necktie. He took his seat beside Professor Gaines in the train with an eager light in his eyes like a Crusader embarking to join the army of Richard the Lionhearted. Gaines promptly pulled a well-thumbed copy of "Marius the Epicurean" from his pocket and buried his thin nose in it, ignoring his youthful guest. But Harold did not mind. He looked out of the window over the Ohio flats and imagined blissfully that he was actually starting out to enroll in the Freshman class at Tate.
From the smoky Cleveland station they took a trolley to the Public Library. Gaines explained that he was taking advantage of the excursion and the hour or so at his disposal before the dinner to do a little research work. Led by a mousy little assistant librarian, Harold and the savant burrowed into a musty, book-lined region of the library known as "the stacks." Gaines settled down with a heavy tome at a desk under a bad light and read diligently, stopping to scribble notes ever and anon in a dainty hand. Harold sat patiently near his guide. The boy regarded curiously the white-faced, stoop-shouldered attendants, flitting in and out among the books like wraiths, and wondered how human beings could endure in this close, hot atmosphere. Luckily he did not know that most of them were university graduates earning the munificent sum of fifteen dollars a week.
And then at seven o'clock they left the library, walked to the Hotel Stafford, and a portal of Paradise slid back.
The banquet was held in one of the private dining rooms of the palatial Stafford. Several of the banqueters were gathered about the cloakroom as they checked their wraps. They were, for the most part, boisterous and robust types, ranging from new graduates only four or five years older than Harold to distinguished-looking, Van Dyke-bearded gaffers. They were smoking, chattering, slapping each other on the back in an exceedingly informal manner.
As Professor Gaines divested himself of his coat, a resounding whack landed upon his back and his head bobbed around to meet the smiling red face and booming voice and extended paw of a husky man of about the principal's own age.
"Well, well, if it isn't 'Plugger' Gaines himself!" boomed the voice. "Taking a night off from the school-teaching game, eh? Good work! We missed you at reunion last June, 'Plugger.' What was the matter? Married or something? No? Well, the affair certainly needed the high moral tone you might have given it. Yes, sir, some of these boys deserved a little talking to at that 'titanic tenth,' as the committee so aptly called it. 'Titanic' was right. Say, if the 'Titanic' had had as much liquid to float in as we had, she'd never have sunk."
Professor Gaines frowned and interrupted by introducing the boisterous one to Harold. The name was James Shaw, and Harold decided that he must be the famous fullback, "Shock" Shaw, who had made the All-American by battering his way single-handed through the Union State line to an unexpected and glorious victory for Tate. "Shock" was now a little overgrown around the waistline, but was otherwise as good as new.
"Lamb's the name?" he inquired of Harold. "Good. Well, it'll be 'in like a Lamb and out like a lion' if you come to Good Old Tate, yes, sir. That's the way Tate shoves 'em through the melting pot, eh, 'Plugger'?" He spoke with simulated privacy to Harold, "'Plugger' here kinda shone in the gentler arts when he was in college. He won the long-distance Horace-translating all four years and he was the best little old bullfighter the debating team had. Play football, Mr. Lamb?"
The "Mister" from the famous "Shock" Shaw made Harold feel all warm inside. "A little," he ventured. Then, feeling that he should say something on behalf of his host, he added, "Professor Gaines is our football coach at Sanford."
"What—'Plugger' coaching football?" Shaw suddenly roared. "Good night! Gainesey, old boy, you've been keeping something from us all these years. Next thing, you'll be telling me that Harlow is the town's champion dancer. Well, we certainly develop—we sure do. Meantime, let's go in, boys, to the big feed. 'Pep' Young, the chairman of the committee, tells me it's a wow."
They filed in toward the dining room, around the entrance of which another group of noisily chattering men of all ages were gathered. Shaw was enthusiastically greeted. Professor Gaines received a much milder salutation. The Sanford principal seemed a little out of place in this gathering, Harold could not help noting. It was being registered in Harold's eagerly absorbing mind that his mentor was hardly the typical Tate man. "Shock" Shaw, now, was different. Breezy, loquacious, back-slapping, broad-shouldered, popular, the redoubtable "Shock" was beginning to assume in the estimation of the high-school guest from Sanford the proportions of a hero.
But in the large, well-filled dining room other interests took Harold's attention. The Tate cohorts were already nearly all seated around the long tables. At the piano in the corner, lounged a group of youths between eighteen and twenty-four, all equipped with various musical instruments. They were conversing among themselves, smoking, tuning their weapons, regarding the assemblage with that mixture of naïveté and boredom with which undergraduates always look upon the alumni. This was the Tate Student Jazz Orchestra, which the summer before had made a tour of Europe, playing in several London and Paris night clubs and before the King of Spain. Harold learned, with awe, that they had been brought all the way from the University especially for this affair.
Sprinkled among the alum ni were various slickly clad youths of about Harold's age. Most of them, however, were of sturdier build than he, though just as wide-eyed. These were the preparatory school and high school guests of the alumni, prospective material for the athletic teams of Good Old Tate.
Harold's eager eyes shifted to the speaker's table. Beside the gray-bearded Cleveland banker whom "Shock" Shaw, from his seat on the other side of Harold, had pointed out as "Pep" Young, chairman and toastmaster, loomed a sleek black head and massive youthful body. Harold recalled the face under the dark hair. It was Chester Trask's—Trask, the present athletic pride of Tate, football captain, the most popular man in college. Harold watched Trask smiling and talking to Chairman Young and wondered what gems of thought were passing between these Olympians. Also at the speaker's table were other huskies of Trask's age—other present Tate gods of the diamond, gridiron and cinder track. It was wonderful. Professor Harlow Gaines was almost in a total eclipse, forgotten.
Pinckney Parsons ("Pep") Young, arose, grinning and immaculate, and tapped his knife upon his plate for order.
"On behalf of the Ohio branch of the alumni association of Good Old Tate," drawled Chairman Young, amid a few irresponsible yells of "Atta boy, 'Pep,'" and "When do we eat?" from the rear of the crowded, smoke-filled room, "I wish to welcome to this festive board our honored guests and also my fellow-members of the alumni. I know you boys are hungry, so we will dispense with the speaking and other features until after the food has been served. Before we eat, however, I want to ask you all to stand and sing one verse of 'Tate Takes the Lead.' Will the undergraduate orchestra, which has journeyed so far for our pleasure, oblige?"
The undergraduate orchestra obliged by crashing lustily into the opening bars of the famous Tate marching song. Harold stood with the rest and made desperate efforts to join in the ear-splitting din of masculine voices that filled the room. He was far from alone in not knowing the words of the anthem. There was a difference of opinion, evidently, among many of Tate's sons as to some of the phrasing. Nor had the exact tune remained intact in the musical memory of scores of Tatians. The close harmony portions were very sour. "Shock" Shaw, for instance, was endeavoring to sing baritone and was achieving a bass two keys too low. The shouting assemblage finished the song with a roar a stanza behind the orchestra and sat down.
Pinckney Parsons Young stood up again and said dryly, "Now, if those in conference in the anteroom will kindly clear up their business and join us, dinner will be served."
A group, grinning sheepishly, filed out from a closetlike room, adjoining the banquet hall, and took their places at the table. Their "business" seemed to have had something to do with metallic objects that they were now replacing in their hip pockets. It was a noticeable fact that, thereafter, most of the cat-calling and interrupting of speakers was the handiwork of the late-comers from the ante room.
Harold consumed the regulation Hotel Stafford banquet dinner without further incident. He hardly tasted the food. He was too excited.
When the demi-tasse had been served and the orchestra had finished playing the last of the popular songs that accompanied the food, Chairman Young tapped his coffee-cup with his spoon for attention.
"It is not often," declared Tate's leading banker, "that I am privileged to gaze upon such a representative gathering of sons of Good Old Tate. Before me I note, for instance, good old 'Shock' Shaw, representing the brawn of the Class of 1914, and near him, 'Plugger' Gaines, representing, if I may say so without deprecating the mental capacities of his fellows, the brains. Between them, if I am not mistaken, sits a typical specimen of the rising young manhood that will form the brawn and brains of the Tate classes of the future."
Harold suddenly felt himself blushing violently. Two hundred eyes seemed to be fastened upon him. He lowered his head, wishing himself a hundred miles away, back in Sanford. Then he got hold of himself, banished his blushes, raised his head. How he wished that Banker Young's words could come true! That he, Harold Lamb, could become a son of Tate! An equal with "Shock" Shaw and Chester Trask. He was thrilled to the marrow by the very thought of it.
But the chairman had continued his remarks. He was on the point, Harold comprehended, of introducing "Chester Trask, one of the most distinguished, if not the most distinguished member of the present undergraduate body at Tate. Captain of the football team, chairman of the Junior Promenade committee, elected the most popular man at college. Gentlemen—Mr. Trask!"
Chester Trask arose easily and bestowed upon the company the frank, nonchalant smile that Harold had studied so minutely in the Tate "Tattler." As the applause gained in volume, the football leader thrust one hand into his pocket, wrote things on the tablecloth with his fork and lowered his eyes modestly. His clothes, Harold observed, did not follow the lines of the exaggerated models purchased by the Beau Brummels of Sanford High School from Klein's Kollege Klothes Emporium, on Main Street. They were of a more conservative hue, though the trousers were voluminously ballooned. At length the hand-clapping abated. The great young man was about to speak.
"I just want to say," Trask just wanted to say, "that we fellows now at Tate appreciate what the backing of the alumni means to us. We know you're always behind us, not only cheering at the games, but trying to dig up good material for the teams, as shown by meetings like this and the one we attended on the way. I want to say that if the football team made good last Fall, it wasn't due to any effort of mine personally." (Shouts of "Oh, no!" "Atta boy, Trask!" and "How about that fifty-yard run?") "I also want to say that in Mike Cavendish Tate has got one of the greatest football coaches that ever lived. (Applause.) Some people may think that Mike is a little rough in his methods, but he's a square fellow and he gets results. I guess that's what we're all looking for. (Cries of "You said it!") Mike couldn't come along with us this trip, unfortunately.
"Maybe it will sound kind of bold for me to say so, but I want to say that I believe we will have next Fall one of the strongest teams that ever represented the university." (Exclamations of "That's the stuff!" and "Atta boy, Trask!") "This year is the last the Freshmen will be able to play on the team. Next year the intercollegiate agreement goes into effect, barring Freshmen. So all the good football material you alumni can get into the university this Fall can be used with good results. In conclusion, I want to introduce one of the best football players that Tate has ever had, a member of the coaching staff last year and a fellow who did as much toward beating Union State as if he had played in the game—'Dusty' Rhoades, captain of the 1923 team."
Chester Trask gave a jerky nod in the best intercollegiate manner, clasped his two hands in front of him and shook them at his audience in a friendly gesture, smiled and sat down. Ecstatic applause ensued. "Pep" Young sprang up and suggested a "short cheer for Chester Trask," which was given boisterously. The orchestra played "Touchdown, Tate," and the gathering sang it a half key too low. When the din had subsided a bit, a short, chunky, red-haired youth arose. Harold, in the seventh heaven of delight, was thrilled anew. Not only was he seeing Chester Trask in the flesh, but before him blinked the previous Tate football king, "Dusty" Rhoades, elusive "Dusty" with the most highly educated straight-arm football had ever seen.
Strangely enough, the applause greeting "Dusty" was a trifle forced. The inside explanation of this was that Rhoades did not represent quite the correct traditions to be the perfect Tate hero. While Trask was a scion of one of America's best known and wealthiest families and there had been Trasks at Tate since the Civil War, Rhoades came from obscure origins, had worked his way through college and was not even a fraternity man. Thus, though he had been a better football leader than Trask would ever be, he did not make the same appeal. He was even resented somewhat as an outsider. Without wasting any superfluous gestures, he made a straightforward speech and took his seat again amid mild acclaim and a perfunctory "short cheer." Harold, trying to enjoy one of the few cigarettes he had ever smoked, found himself conspicuous by the heartiness of his hand-clapping.
There followed a halting dissertation by the baseball captain on prospects for next year on the diamond. Then a fat, unctuously smiling man, "colyumist" on a Cleveland newspaper and a professional after-dinner speaker with no collegiate affiliations, made some humorous remarks about football and other sports, using material that Harold had already read in his "colyum," but laughed at nevertheless. There was more singing and jazzily rendered numbers by the undergraduate music-makers. But the formal part of the program was about over. The company had split up into little conversing, bantering groups.
"Shock" Shaw suddenly asked Harold, "Like to meet Trask and the boys?" And, without waiting for Harold's ecstatic "yes," led him up to the speaker's table, parked him in front of the great man and introduced him.
Chester Trask, holding court like a potentate, arose smiling and extended his hand, seizing Harold's hand and shaking it with the swift downward movement that was all the rage in the colleges.
"I didn't get the name," Trask apologized.
"Lamb," Harold ventured. "Harold Lamb." Worship shone in his eyes.
"One of the finest football players in the middle west," Shaw, who had been investigating the side show in the anteroom, added glibly.
"Good," Trask exclaimed. "We'll look for you out at football practice in the Fall."
Harold did not have the heart to say that he would look in vain. At that moment Harold would willingly have given his right arm to go to Tate, to associate with these undergraduate demigods, to be eligible later for assemblages of real he-men like this.
Then he was being presented to the less spectacular Rhoades, whom he somehow fancied even more than the redoubtable Trask. And to "Chick" Spencer, knight of the diamond. And to "Pep" Young.
Harold was considerably annoyed when, a few minutes later, Professor Gaines, who had been hovering in the background, came to him and said nervously, "We shall have to depart now. Lamb, if we are to catch the eleven o'clock train back to Sanford." So, "Shock" Shaw dissenting, the Sanford contingent left the party just as it was, as "Shock" expressed it, "getting nice and clubby."
They made the train with ease, having a fifteen-minute interval in the dull waiting room, during which Harold's excited mind reviewed the events of this most wonderful evening in his life while Professor Gaines read by himself from his little pocket edition.
On the train, the principal cleared his throat and asked punctiliously, "Well, Lamb, how have you enjoyed your contact with a collegiate assemblage?"
"It was wonderful!" Harold enthused at once. "They are fine fellows, every one of them. I only wish I could go to Tate."
"My only regret is that there was not a representative present from the educational side of the university," said Professor Gaines. "After all, that is the main raison d'être of a college. The athletics are merely the side show."
Harold nodded, without agreeing with him. A minutes later Harold nodded for another reason. He was falling asleep. When the train reached Sanford at about one-thirty in the morning, the absent-minded Gaines nearly disembarked without waking up his young charge.